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<DIV><FONT lang=0 FAMILY="SANSSERIF">LOS ANGELES (June 30) - By the time they
died in a 1999 plane crash, John F. Kennedy Jr., and his wife, Carolyn Bessette,
were living a life of drugs, separate beds and violence, according to a new book
by Kennedy family biographer Edward Klein excerpted in Vanity Fair on Monday
.<BR><BR>In ''The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America's First Family
for 150 Years,'' Klein said that two days before he died, Kennedy, the only son
of assassinated U.S. President John F. Kennedy, told a friend his marriage was
deteriorating.<BR><BR>''It's got to stop. Otherwise we're headed for divorce,''
Kennedy told the friend in a call from the Stanhope Hotel, where Klein said he
took refuge from his wife's cocaine habit and violent temper.<BR><BR>''I want to
have kids but whenever I raise the subject with Carolyn, she turns away and
refuses to have sex with me,'' Kennedy told the friend. He had picked out a
name, Flyn, for the son he dreamed of having, Klein reported.<BR><BR>Klein
quoted Bessette's fashion industry friends as saying it was known she was a
heavy user of drugs, and that Kennedy caught her snorting lines of cocaine with
friends at the couple's New York apartment. ''You're a cokehead,'' Kennedy
screamed at his wife.<BR><BR>A staff member from Kennedy's political magazine,
''George,'' told of a dinner in which Bessette made at least a half dozen trips
to the bathroom, returning to the table with white rings around her nostrils.
''We went from bar to bar, and she wanted to come over to my apartment, but I
said no, because I knew it would be an all-nighter,'' the friend said. ''I ...
dropped her off at 3 a.m.''<BR><BR>The next morning, Kennedy asked why the
staffer and his wife were out so late. The staff member replied: ''A better
question is why your wife didn't want to go home.''<BR><BR>According to friends,
Kennedy worried that Carolyn was cheating on him with old flame, Michael Bergin,
a ''Baywatch'' actor and former model of Calvin Klein underwear. They continued
their affair even after Bessette had moved in with Kennedy, Klein, a Vanity Fair
contributing editor as well as Kennedy biographer, said.<BR><BR>Although Bergin
cut off the affair after Bessette's marriage, she continued to taunt her husband
with Bergin.<BR><BR>Klein said the actor also revealed Carolyn's violent side in
an incident in which Bessette got angry after seeing him light an
ex-girlfriend's cigarette at a bar.<BR><BR>She showed up at Bergin's door and
threw two heavy candles through a window and a mirror, shattering both. ''Then
she knocked my television set and VCR onto the floor and jumped on my VCR and
squashed it,'' Bergin told Klein.<BR><BR>''I ran out of the apartment. I'm very
athletic and fast, but she caught up with me and started yelling at me and
taunting me, calling me a baby.''<BR><BR>Kennedy's friends suspected that
something similar happened to him when he was rushed to an emergency room for an
operation to repair a severed nerve. Kennedy said the injury was an accident,
but he had told friends that he felt trapped in an abusive relationship.
''Carolyn was like a wild horse,'' the acquaintance from George told Klein.
''She had a trash mouth... She used to call John a fag all the
time.''<BR><BR>Public scrutiny drove Bessette into depression, the friend said.
She refused to leave their apartment and spent long periods crying, telling
friends that she hated ''living in a fishbowl.'' Klein said Carolyn reportedly
stormed out of a marital counselor's office when her drug use was
raised.<BR><BR>Klein said Bessette's self-absorption made her late for the fatal
1999 plane ride with her husband and sister, who had arrived at the airport in
New Jersey while it was still light. The plane, piloted by Kennedy, went down in
darkness off the coast of Martha's Vineyard near Cape Cod,
Massachusetts.<BR><BR>Klein quotes a hair colorist named Colin Lively as saying
he saw Carolyn order a pedicurist to apply her toenail polish three times that
day to match a fabric she had brought to the salon. During the pedicure, her
mobile phone rang over and over, Lively told Klein. ''What?'' she said
impatiently into the phone. ''I told you I'm getting a pedicure.''
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