Judith Exner and John F. Kennedy
JFK’s many mistresses and extramarital infidelities have become common knowledge in the years following his death. Of all his mistresses and dalliances, one stands out as being not only dangerous to his marriage and political career but possibly to his survival.
It began when Frank Sinatra, an early and avid Kennedy supporter, introduced the then Senator and Presidential candidate to a divorcee named Judith Exner, the ex-wife of actor William Campbell (Star Trek fans will remember him as Captain Koloth in the episode The Trouble with Tribbles). According to Exner, she and JFK began an affair which went on for at least the next two years.
Later in 1960 Sinatra again played matchmaker, introducing Exner to Sam Giancana, boss of the Chicago Mafia. Through Giancana Exner developed a “friendship” with Johnny Roselli, a mob enforcer who would later be implicated in CIA attempts to assassinate Castro. Thus Exner was contemporaneously sleeping with the President of the United States and the head of one of the nation’s most powerful criminal organizations. Neither Giancana nor Kennedy felt the need to show any loyalty to the women with whom they had affairs and the fact of she participated in more than one simultaneously indicates that neither did Exner.
Many years after the death of JFK and RFK, who worked assiduously to protect his brother’s reputation after Dallas, records emerged which confirmed the lengthy nature of the President’s affair with Judith. Telephone records and visitor logs confirmed her visits to the White House and other places where the President was staying, as did statements from former members of the President’s security detail.
The Kennedy’s fought back when Exner’s comments regarding the affair became public; she was the first of the many to emerge – other than the long-time rumors of his affair with Marilyn Monroe – and her story gained weight with the public as more Kennedy indiscretions came to light. The ramifications of the President and a Mafia Don sharing a mistress have never been fully revealed, although speculation – including whether it had some involvement in the many assassination conspiracy theories – remains rife to this day.