JFK Jr.: Kidnap Threats

By Stephen M. Silverman

Thursday September 03, 1998 12:00 AM EDT

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The late John Kennedy Jr. was the target of at least three different kidnapping attempts, according to sketchy and heavily censored FBI files released yesterday. The last attempt came four years before his death in a plane crash last July. As revealed in documents obtained by the Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act, someone allegedly called the FBI's New York office in 1995 with a tip about a plan by a South American group to kidnap JFK Jr., who was known to ride his bike around Manhattan without bodyguards. The bureau apparently found the message credible enough to contact the Kennedy clan's security firm, which said it would notify John Jr. The previous kidnapping attempts, according to the file, occurred in 1985 (the alleged kidnapper sounded drunk on the phone, and police hung up on him), and in 1972 (a group of eight Greeks apparently planned to nab Kennedy on the island of Skorpios, then owned by his stepfather, Aristotle Onassis).