In September 1996, John F. Kennedy Jr. married Carolyn Bessette in a small chapel on Cumberland Island, Georgia. The ceremony was secret, the bride wore a simple Narciso Rodriguez gown, and the press didn’t learn about it until it was over. America saw the photos and embraced the fairy tale: the last American prince and … Read more
The man in the wheelchair was 99 years old. He had been in hospice for nine months, a detail that made his presence at the Atlanta church on that November morning almost unfathomable to the gathered press. Yet there he was, wheeled in to sit beneath the casket of the woman he had married 77 … Read more
The photograph is one of the most famous in American history. St. Patrick's Cathedral, June 1968. The black veil. The widow pregnant with her 11th child, standing behind her husband's coffin while a nation wept. America made her a saint that week. The morning cards left out the rest. Inside her house, employees were fired … Read more
On April 4, 1945, a 23-year-old soldier from rural Ohio named Harold Lamont raised his M1 Garand rifle. He pressed the cold steel muzzle against the forehead of an SS guard who still wore his clean, pressed uniform. He pulled the trigger without hesitation, without regret, and without saying a word. No one stopped him. … Read more
Frances Ford Seymour died by suicide on April 14, 1950, her 42nd birthday, inside a private psychiatric sanatorium in Beacon, New York. The New York socialite and wife of actor Henry Fonda left six handwritten notes before her death—one for her doctor, one for a friend, one for her mother. None were addressed to her … Read more
In the spring of 1992, a young fashion executive walked into a Calvin Klein showroom in Manhattan to help dress an important client. She had no idea the private fitting would change her life forever. Carolyn Bessette was 26 years old, unknown to the public and comfortable in obscurity. She had worked her way up … Read more
In the summer of 1980, at a grand country house in the English countryside, a young woman stood alone at the edge of a brightly lit ballroom. The man who had brought her, the heir to the throne, had spent the evening on the other side of the room, next to another man’s wife. No … Read more
In January 1945, the frozen crossroads outside Houffalize, Belgium, became the setting for a confrontation that would become legend. Heavy snow covered the pine trees and the bodies of the fallen. A group of German soldiers stood in the middle of the road with their hands raised, having surrendered after a bitter hour-long firefight in … Read more
On May 23, 1934, six lawmen ambushed Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow on a rural Louisiana highway near Gibsland. More than 130 rounds were fired in about 16 seconds. Both outlaws died instantly in their stolen Ford V8 sedan. The photographs taken hours later became among the most famous crime scene images in American history. … Read more
On the night of November 28, 1934, the body of Lester Gillis arrived at the Sadowski Funeral Home in Chicago. The world knew him as Baby Face Nelson, and just 24 hours earlier, he had been J. Edgar Hoover’s Public Enemy Number One. The men waiting inside had no idea what they were about to … Read more