'JFK Love Child': Now I Don't Want To Know
Jack Worthington says his quest for truth has ruined his life.
March 7, 2008— -- The man who told ABC News and numerous other media outlets that he might be the love child of John F. Kennedy now says his quest for the truth has ruined his life and he no longer wants his DNA tested against that of the former president.
Jack Worthington II, who is featured in an exclusive broadcast interview on tonight's "20/20," is standing by his story that his mother told him his father is JFK, but says that if his mother lied, "at a minimum she is emotionally disturbed, if not criminally liable in my view," he wrote in an e-mail to ABC News earlier this week.
Worthington, who is featured in a lengthy article in this week's Vanity Fair magazine, told ABC News that four years ago his mother told him that he is the late president's son.
"I lived my whole life believing in one thing, and then all of a sudden, the blocks have been thrown up into the air," he said.
During the illness, which would eventually lead to the death of the father that raised him, Jack Worthington Sr., Worthington says he wanted to test himself and his children for the genetic disease that his father carried.
"'Mom, we should, everybody should be tested,'" he says he told his mother. "She says, 'Jack, that's not important; you don't have to do that. Your father isn't Jack Worthington. It's John Kennedy,'" Worthington recounts.
Vanity Fair editor David Friend spent almost a year investigating Worthington's claim.
"Well there was this notion that what sort of person would out their own parent unless there was something to back it up?," Friend told ABC News. "And secondly, it seemed sort of the holy grail of journalism." As Friend pointed out, JFK was known for his wandering eye.
In fact, author Laurence Leamer, who has written three books on the Kennedys, said even he was surprised by the number of women that the former president bedded.
"When I began my research, I thought all this stuff about JFK's sex life was exaggerated," Leamer said. "But I'm just amazed at how many women there were. He really was a sexual addict."
Jack Worthington II was born on Nov. 22, 1961, ironically two years to the day that JFK would be assassinated. His birth date also means that he would have had to have been conceived during Kennedy's first few months in office. When asked if this was really credible, that JFK would have had an affair with a woman who lived in Texas during those crucial first months of his administration, Worthington said he hadn't considered it.
"Oh, I don't know, I have no idea," he said. "We didn't talk about that," he added.
But when ABC News went through the official daily appointment schedule of JFK's first three months in office, it is clear that JFK never visited Texas during that time, and he almost never left Washington, D.C.
Worthington claims that he has no interest in a piece of the Kennedy estate or in fame or notoriety.
"As far as fame, I don't really have any need for fame," he said. "I don't have that personal drive, desire in me."
Yet in this month's Vanity Fair he appears in a photo spread shot by one of Jacqueline Kennedy's favorite photographers, Harry Benson, who has shot numerous past presidents and Caroline Kennedy's wedding.
Worthington says he approached Vanity Fair under the conditions that he would go public if the magazine performed DNA testing.
"From my perspective, that's really what I need out of this project," he said.
The Kennedy family was not interested in cooperating with this project, but the magazine did obtain some hair samples believed to have been swept from the floor of Peter Lawson's home after JFK received a haircut there. They compared the samples to Worthington's; no match. While the tests are not definitive, they do suggest non-paternity, said Friend.
And more troubling evidence. Friend soon discovered a yearbook picture of Jack Worthington Sr., who looked very similar to Jack Jr.
Then following the ABC interview and on the eve of the Vanity Fair publication date, Worthington's family spoke out. They released a statement saying that Jack Worthington's claims are "unequivocally false and have been fabricated."
But Worthington's own response is that he is telling the truth and that he will "proceed with criminal charges against her for willfully and maliciously misleading me regarding my paternity."