The girl who knew too much
All set for stardom, Karyn Kupcinet had the world at her feet — so why did someone want her dead? Ex-cop and psychic Nicky Alan investigates
The President is going to be killed,’ whispered a woman down the phone line.
The call was overheard by two operators for the General Telephone Company.
Twenty minutes later, at 12.30pm on Friday 22 November 1963, President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
Someone had tried to give a warning — but who?
When official documents were declassified decades later, a US newspaper stated that two telephone operators had indeed been questioned by FBI agents, right after the assassination.
If true, who was the woman who made that chilling prediction?
Although her existence has never been proved, one person believed he knew her identity.
In his 1967 book Forgive My Grief II, the researcher Penn Jones Jr claimed the woman was a 22-year-old actress called Karyn Kupcinet.
Jones further speculated that Karyn herself was silenced because she knew too much about Kennedy’s assassination.
On 30 November 1963, just days after JFK’s killing, she was found dead in her Hollywood home.
But how had a young woman, hundreds of miles away, learnt of the president’s imminent shooting — and who killed her?
Since childhood, Karyn Kupcinet had wanted to be a film star. In December of 1960, at the age of 19, she left her home town of Chicago and headed to Hollywood to make that dream come true.
However, Karyn wasn’t like the hundreds of other penniless young hopefuls who arrived in the movie capital each year.
Her father, Irv Kupcinet, was a famous newspaper columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Kupcinet apartment was often visited by celebrities.
Joan Crawford would play with the little girl, and Burt Lancaster carried her on his shoulders.
So when Karyn set her sights on stardom, her father’s influential contacts certainly helped.
It was family friend Jerry Lewis who offered Karyn her first film role — a bit part in his movie The Ladies Man.
Karyn Kupcinet was all set for a glittering career. Only, the beautiful young woman, who seemed to have it all, was filled with self-doubt and insecurities.
She worried producers only saw her as ‘Kup’s daughter’ and didn’t employ her for her talent.
She was also obsessed with her appearance and agonised over her fluctuating weight.
When The Ladies Man came out, she didn’t like what she saw on the big screen, and in May of 1961, she had cosmetic surgery to ‘correct’ her nose.
But nothing would take away Karyn’s feelings of never being pretty enough.
