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Christina Onassis

1950 – 1988

About

Heiress. She was the daughter of Greek shipping billionaire Aristotle Socrates Onassis and Athina Mary Livanos. She was plagued by personal problems and intense media scrunity for most of her life. The first taste of such scrutiny came in 1960 during her parents very public divorce. It intensified in 1968 when her father married former American First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and the rancor between stepmother and stepdaughter was splashed across tabloid pages worldwide. The early 1970s were not a good time for Christina. She was crushed at the death of her only sibling, Alexander, who was killed on January 22, 1973 when the plane he was flying crashed minutes after takeoff. Then on October 10, 1974, her mother Athina died due to poisoning and to further deepen her depression her father died a mere five months later on March 15, 1975. Upon the death of her brother, Christina became the sole heiress of the Onassis empire and she took full control when her father died. She displayed good business sense and continued to successfully run the empire but her quest to find the perfect man soon took precedence in her life. She began drinking heavily and taking large amounts of drugs in the 1970s to compensate for her alleged homely appearance (she had plastic surgery as a teenager to correct her nose). She was a yo-yo dieter, gaining weight and then losing it only to gain it back again. Her love life was tabloid fodder and she would marry four times. Her last husband, Frenchman Thierry Roussel, fathered her only child, Athina (born in 1985). Roussel publicly cheated on Christina with Swedish model Gaby Landhage, fathering two children with her, and they eventually divorced. Christina was determined to be a hands on mother to Athina, unlike her absentee parents, and showered her with love and expensive gifts. She once said, "I will move heaven and earth to stop my unhappiness continuing with Athina." That would last for only three years when Christina died in the bathroom of a friend's home in Buenos Aires. She left the entire Onassis empire to her daughter.