Jackie O. in Hustler, 1975

(Above, original spread in Italian magazine Playmen, December 1972)

In the years following John F. Kennedy’s as­sas­si­na­tion, Jackie Kennedy was the most famous widow in the world. She had many suit­ors and she eventually married Greek ty­coon Aris­to­tle Onas­sis. The marriage was not a success. Onas­sis carried on his affair with opera star Maria Cal­las from the beginning of their 1968 mar­riage.

In 1972, paparazzi in Greece were being tipped off about the villa Jackie Onassis was staying in. It was unclear who had tipped them off. Some said it was her stepchildren, who wanted to embarass her. Other claimed that it was Aristotle Onassis himself. After all, two years earlier, he had dined openly with Cal­las at Maxim’s in Paris and made sure paparazzi were there to show Jackie that he was undaunted and unconstrained by his marriage to her. Onassis was also getting annoyed by Jackie’s insistence that he sue every paparazzi that crossed her path. No longer will­ing to fi­nance her costly in­va­sion-of-pri­vacy law­suits, he might have hatched a plan to em­bar­rass Jackie to such an ex­tent that there would be noth­ing more that the press could do to hurt her.

In Novem­ber 1972, ten pho­tog­ra­phers put on wet­suits and slipped into the wa­ters off Sko­r­pios. One of them Settimio Garritano managed to get pass the island’s security and be in the right place at the right time to take photos of the former first lady taking a nap, doing yoga, swimming and sunbathing naked. Garritano noted that the tip came from an employee of Olympic Airways, Onassis’ airline and that a Skorpios worker told him that she sunbathed without clothes.

“Sometimes I have to undress to put on my bathing suit. My wife does the same thing,” shrugged off Aristotle Onassis when the photos appeared the Italian magazine Playmen in December 1972. American reactions were more explosive.

Onassis died in 1975, without getting his divorce from the former first lady. He left her a fortune of $26 million. She remained the center of attention for paparazzi until her death in 1994.