Missing Kennedys now presumed dead in latest family tragedy

One of America's best known political families have been beset with tragedy including assassinations, plane crashes and drug overdoses

David McKean, Maeve Kennedy Townsend Mckean and their children attend the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Hosts 2019 Ripple Of Hope Gala & Auction In NYC on December 12, 2019. AFP via GETTY  

Two members of the Kennedy political dynasty, including a grandniece of assassinated president John F Kennedy, are now presumed dead after they went missing during a canoe trip, the family said on Saturday.

It looks to be the latest chapter of heartbreak for a family that has suffered tragedy after tragedy in the form of untimely deaths since president Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963.

This time, it involves a grandniece of the late president, Maeve Kennedy McKean, 40, and her son Gideon, 8. They disappeared on Thursday while canoeing in the South River in Maryland, near the vast Chesapeake Bay, Governor Larry Hogan said on Friday.

The coastguard, police and firefighters immediately launched a search but did not find the missing Kennedys.

"It has been more than 24 hours, and the chances they have survived are impossibly small. It is clear that Maeve and Gideon have passed away," husband David McKean wrote on Facebook on Saturday.

The rescue operation has now shifted to one of finding the bodies, said Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the mother and grandmother of the missing two.

Kennedy Townsend, 68, is a former Maryland lieutenant governor, and the daughter of Robert F Kennedy, who was US attorney general in his brother's administration.

RFK was killed 1968 as he campaigned for president five years after his brother's death.

In 1999, John F Kennedy Jr and his wife and sister-in-law died when the small plane he was piloting crashed off the Massachusetts coast.

Saoirse Kennedy Hill, a granddaughter of RFK, died of what was ruled an accidental drug overdose last year at age 22.

David Kennedy, a son of Robert, died at 28 of a cocaine overdose at a Florida hotel in 1984.

Another son of RFK, Michael, died in a skiing accident in Colorado in 1997.