Celeb Family Members That Allegedly Killed People

It's no secret that celebrities lead glamorous lives, but all the expensive vacations, designer labels, private jets, and multi-million dollar mansions can't mend a family tragedy. Worse yet, A-listers are under a unique microscope ... so when awful things happen, they tend to spread like wildfire through the tabloids. Would the movie Chappaquiddick even exist if our culture wasn't immensely drawn towards a tragic celeb scandal?

More often than not, celebrity families find themselves navigating their most trying times in the public eye. In rare cases, this even extends to death. However, there are a shocking amount of celebrity family members who have actually killed someone — whether it was accidental or not. At the heart of it, no one wants to read a headline about the time they were allegedly responsible for another human being's passing in an unavoidable accident. That's something that would be unbelievably difficult to deal with on its own, but members of Tinseltown aren't really afforded that grace. 

These celeb family members all allegedly took someone else's life.

R&B songstress Brandy comes from a star-studded family that rose out of the music industry and became TV and film stars. Yup, the Norwoods have got all angles of Hollywood covered. The singer was, perhaps, the most iconic live-action Cinderella to ever grace the screen (sorry, Hilary Duff), and her brother, Ray J, has innumerable reality TV credits (his other major projects include Sharknado 3 and Kim Kardashian's leaked sex tape). 

Despite the wholesome nature of Moesha and Cinderella, there is some tragedy in this Norwood family fairy tale. According to Reuters, Brandy was involved in a "fatal, four-car accident" in Los Angeles in December 2006, which claimed the life of a 38-year-old mother named Awatef Aboudihaj. Aboudihaj was driving the car that Brandy rear-ended.

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, the Grammy award-winning singer, who faced no criminal charges, admitted the accident was understandably one of the worst times in her life. "You never wake up thinking that ... today is the day that something like this would happen," she said, adding, "I just, I couldn't believe it, and I don't like to think about, because I don't think that's something I can ever get over or ever truly understand."

Venus and Serena Williams are a dynamic duo in the world of tennis, but Venus found herself navigating a wrongful death lawsuit without her sister after a fatal car crash in 2017. According to CNN, it all started when a Hyundai Accent — belonging to Linda and Jerome Barson — crashed into the pro athlete's Toyota Sequoia at an intersection in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Driver Linda sustained major injuries, while husband Jerome, who was a passenger, passed away from his injuries two weeks after the accident. Charges were not filed against Venus, but the Barsons brought on a wrongful death lawsuit.

Per TMZ, their case alleged that Williams "failed to yield the right of way, blew through a red light, drove too fast while distracted, and recklessly created a situation where the accident was unavoidable." People even reports that Venus was originally told she was "at fault" for the accident. However, after reviewing surveillance video footage, police determined that the tennis star entered the intersection lawfully during a green light. Authorities had "no final determination" of which party was at fault, and the suit was eventually settled for an undisclosed sum in 2018.

During a Wimbledon press conference in July 2017, Venus tearfully opened up about the accident: "There are really no words to describe how devastating and — yeah. I'm completely speechless" (via CNN).

Caitlyn Jenner should be used to the cameras after years of starring on Keeping Up with the Kardashians. That's just the price of being part of ex Kris Jenner's crew. But unfortunately, the paparazzi still sometimes trips her up. That was, at the very least, what allegedly happened when she was involved in a tragic multi-car accident in 2015.

According to USA Today, the incident was triggered when a woman named Jessica Steindorff suddenly stopped on a highway in Malibu, Calif. Her car was struck by a Lexus sedan, which "tried to break in time," but was rear-ended by Jenner's black Cadillac Escalade. The woman driving the Lexus "veered into oncoming traffic," where she "collided head-on with a black Hummer" and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Though police reportedly claimed Jenner wasn't being chased by paps at the time of the incident, the reality star told a different story. Her lawyer filed a cross-complaint that asserted Jenner was "visually distracted" because of the paparazzi who were "stalking" and "harassing" her. Furthermore, Jenner was reportedly driving below the speed limit and did try to brake at the time of the incident. According to ABC News, the former Olympian paid $800,000 to settle a lawsuit that was connected to the crash, but did not face any criminal charges.

The Kennedy family is equally as famous for their politics as they are for their long list of tragedies. One of the most infamous was Ted Kennedy's 1969 car accident that claimed the life of Mary Jo Kopechne, a 28-year-old woman who previously worked on Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign. 

According to History, Ted Kennedy was driving his Oldsmobile in Chappaquiddick, a small island right off of Martha's Vineyard, Mass. Kopechne was riding along as a passenger when the car plunged off a bridge and landed upside down in the water. The former senator managed to escape and reportedly dove into the water to try to find Kopechne. However, his attempts to rescue her — even later with the help of cousin Joseph Gargan and aide Paul Markham — were ultimately unsuccessful. Kennedy reportedly went back hotel room, and "Kopechne remained underwater for some nine hours until her body was recovered the next morning."

The accident famously destroyed Ted Kennedy's political career, and even to this day, the actual events aren't exactly clear. Some reports claim he frantically called his mistress for help in the wake of the accident, while others allege that Kopechne was pregnant with his baby. In 2017, the former senator's darkest moment became the subject of a movie called Chappaquiddick.

Laura Bush is notoriously mum about the tragedy that struck her when she was just 17 years old, but she did open up about it in her memoir, Laura Bush: Spoken from the Heart. In 1963, the former first lady was involved in a fatal car accident that claimed the life of her high school friend, Mike Douglas.

According to her memoir, Bush was driving her father's Chevy Impala down a dark country road in Midland, Texas when she ran a stop sign in a rush to get to a drive-in movie theater (via The New York Times). She subsequently smashed into Douglas' car, and he later died from his injuries. Bush was "wracked by guilt" in the years following the crash, especially because she didn't attend Douglas' funeral or reach out to his parents. Instead, she just dealt with it by pretending it didn't happen.

"I lost my faith that November, lost it for many, many years," Bush, who shares two daughters with Former President George W. Bush, wrote. "It was the first time that I had prayed to God for something, begged him for something, not the simple childhood wishing on a star but humbly begging for another human life. And it was as if no one heard. My begging, to my seventeen-year-old mind, had made no difference."

Shark Tank star Kevin O'Leary was involved in a boat accident that killed two people and left several others injured in late August 2019. O'Leary's wife, Linda, was operating his boat at the time, his rep told TMZ, and passed a sobriety test at the time of the crash, which occurred on Lake Joseph in Ontario, Canada. 

According to the Canadian entrepreneur's camp, the other boat involved allegedly did not have its navigation lights on at the time of the collision and reportedly "fled the scene of the accident." Meanwhile, O'Leary's boat has been accused of hitting the other, larger boat before "going directly over its bow and striking" 64-year-old Gary Poltash in the head. He tragically died on contact. A second passenger, Susanne Brito, 48, also sadly succumbed to her injuries in the hospital days later after reportedly suffering severe brain damage from the accident. 

For his part, O'Leary told NBC News in a statement that he was "devastated" by the incident and the pain it had caused, and noted that he would be cooperating with authorities. At the time of this writing, an investigation into this devastating accident is ongoing.