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John F Kennedy fathered my son, woman claims

John F Kennedy fathered a secret lovechild while recuperating from a war injury and later offered to marry the boy's mother, she has claimed.

In the latest claim to emerge about the former US president's energetic love life, Lisa Lanett, an Austrian-born American, said she had a two-year affair with Kennedy after they met in Phoenix, Arizona, during the Second World War.

Now 87, she told the Austrian newspaper Kurier that Kennedy, then a young and single US navy officer and long before he earned his reputation as a notorious womaniser, had offered to marry her when she became pregnant with their son, Tony, but she had turned him down.

He did, however, pay for the boy's education at Peekshill Military Academy, a private school outside New York, until the president's assassination in 1963, she said.

Tony Bohler, the alleged son, is now 63 and a retired art dealer living in California. Divorced and with two sons of his own, he told the newspaper he could never work out why he did not look like the Mexican-born man who his mother told him was his father.

Mrs Lanett, who admitted that she had no way of proving her claims, said her son was adopted by his grandmother, Charlotte Bohler.

She provided no explanation as to why she had waited so long before coming forward with her claims. A DNA test could prove the truth of her assertion if compared to a sample provided by Caroline Kennedy, the late president's daughter.

Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)