Why did Jackie Kennedy quietly burn personal letters and photos before her death?

In the final months of her life, Jackie Kennedy received a letter from her former lover, architect Jack Warnecke. He confided in her that the former first lady was rarely out of his thoughts.

According to J.Randy Taraborrelli's new biography Jackie: Public, Private, Secret , which is exclusively published in People magazine this week, the letter led to a reunion at Jackie's apartment a few months before she died on May 19, 1994, of cancer at the age of 64.

Jackie Kennedy (1929-1994)

Three decades earlier, Jackie Kennedy had fallen in love with architect Jack Warnecke, who designed the memorial tomb of her late husband, President John F. Kennedy, at Arlington National Cemetery.

Years later, Warnecke shared his memories with Taraborrelli—with a caveat. Because Jackie Kennedy was notoriously private, Warnecke asked that everything be kept private until a decade after his death. He died in 2010, at the age of 91.

Now, those details are among the many moments revealed and shared in Taraborrelli's new biography. "A lot of books about Jackie glorify the glamour and the fame. I wanted to write about the human side," Taraborrelli tells People .

Jackie Kennedy and Jack Warnecke

Below is an excerpt from Taraborrelli's book, Jackie: Public, Private, Secret.

… As night fell, Jack Warnecke walked to 1040 Fifth Avenue to visit his former lover, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The apartment was dark and quiet. Warnecke—better known as “Jack”—noticed a telescope in the corner. Jackie had told him she often looked into it to see how her other half was doing. He noticed a light coming from one of the rooms. Wearing a pink sweater over white silk pajamas, she was sitting near the fireplace. Jackie asked Jack not to tell anyone what was about to happen, not while either of them were alive, at any cost.

In a 1998 interview, Jack said: "When I sat down, Jackie handed me a stack of envelopes neatly tied with string. My presence that evening was part of the ritual. Every night of the week, she invited a trusted friend or family member to come over to join in."

Jackie: Public, Private, Secret by J.Randy Taraborrelli

Jackie untied the thread and took a letter from the pile of books. She read it before placing it in the fire. Jack recalled, "There were letters from Jackie's children, John and Caroline... There were also letters from John F. Kennedy, Aristotle Onassis, her father - Jack Bouvier, and even some from me." She picked up one of the photos and stared at it. It was a photo of her with John F. Kennedy on his inauguration day. "Keep this for me, okay?" she asked.

Jackie Kennedy was by her husband’s side in the Dallas motorcade when he was assassinated on November 22, 1963… Confused, she watched as John grabbed his throat and staggered to the left after the rifle shot. It all happened in less than five seconds.

"John turned around and I turned around to look," Jackie later recalled. "I could see a piece of his skull coming off. He was reaching out and I could see the piece of skull coming off his head. Then he fell into my arms."

Jackie Kennedy with her husband - President John F. Kennedy

Less than a year after her husband's death, architect Jack Warnecke approached Jackie – raising eyebrows among some of her relatives.

It was mid-May 1964 when Jack Warnecke called and asked her out. “A date?” she asked. “Because I don’t date, Jack, I never will,” Jackie said.

“No!” Jack told her, it wasn’t a date. It was just dinner. That night, he showed up at her door with flowers. “But, Jack, I didn’t say yes,” she told him, annoyed. “But you didn’t say no,” Jack said with a smile. “That’s how our story started,” Jack Warnecke recalled.

After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Jackie hired Jack Warnecke to design her husband's tomb at Arlington. Jackie told herself Jack deserved the job. However, her friends wondered, and so did John F. Kennedy's brother, Bobby Kennedy. Bobby believed Jack was moving on Jackie too quickly.

“It's too early, Jackie,” Bobby told her. “This is none of your business, Bobby,” Jackie replied.

Jackie Kennedy had a secret affair with architect Jack Warnecke

In November 1964, she took Warnecke to the Kennedy compound in Hyannis. "We had dinner—clam chowder—and talked until the sun went down, and then talked forever..."

Jackie took Jack upstairs to her bedroom, the same room she had shared with John F. Kennedy. To Jack's surprise, she wanted to make love, and they did. The next morning, Jack woke up to find her staring out at the beach. He tried to talk about what had happened the night before, but she wouldn't. Instead, she asked him to leave. He realized it was too early for her.

It was an emotional seesaw: up one moment, down the next. "Every time I thought I was having fun," Jackie later told Jack Warnecke, "I looked down at myself from above and could see it was all performance art."

They dated for three years. In 1966, Jack proposed to her in Hawaii.

The two simply started talking about marriage as if it were a fait accompli, but what troubled Jack was that no official plans had been made yet.

Their intimacy, however, has not been affected. Warnecke said they have sex not only in the bedroom but also in the car and on the beach "and as often as possible... as long as we are alive, it is fun to be together".

Soon after, Jack calls to tell her that the expansion of his architecture firm—and their lavish lifestyle—has left him a million dollars in debt.

After a moment of silence, Jackie's response was completely blank: "Oh?". Jack said that he hoped this wouldn't completely ruin things for them. Before hanging up, he told her that he loved her. She didn't respond. She stopped returning his calls.

“Is Uncle Jack coming today?” little John asked his mother one afternoon. “No, honey,” she said, hugging him. “We won’t see Uncle Jack again.”

Jackie Kennedy married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in 1968. It was a tumultuous marriage that ended with his death at age 69 in 1975. During that time, she entered therapy with a psychoanalyst, Dr. Marianne Kris.

"Dr. Kris would never discuss Mrs. Onassis, citing doctor-patient confidentiality," Patricia Atwood, Kris's secretary from 1972 to 1974, said in an email.

"They addressed Mrs. Onassis' ongoing PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) from the assassination, as well as some lingering issues with their marriage. 'John F. Kennedy died in a blaze of glory,' Mrs. Onassis once said."

President Kennedy and his wife were married in 1953.

Jackie Kennedy discovered that Dr. Kris had treated Marilyn Monroe - who was rumored to have had an affair with John F. Kennedy long ago.

In her later years, Jackie befriended diamond merchant Maurice Tempelsman. Then, in early 1994, she was diagnosed with lymphoma. Two months before her death, Jackie called Warnecke.

After Jack and she burned the letters in the fireplace, Jackie told Jack that after four rounds of chemotherapy, her tests had come back normal. She thought she had beaten the disease.

Then, incredibly, an MRI scan showed that the tumor had spread to her brain and spinal cord. Jack asked her if she had any regrets when she looked back on her life. Jackie said she wished she hadn't let November 22, 1963, poison the rest of her life.

"I never got over it. I could have gotten over it, but I never did. It's a shame. I spent so much time agonizing over something I could never change," Jackie said sadly.

"I told her I never stopped loving her," Jack recalled. "I think Jackie Kennedy would have said the same thing to me. Instead, she said, 'Thank you, Jack. I'd rather leave it at that if I could.'" They promised to talk again soon, but never did.

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