Curse of the clan

When British columnist Peaches Geldof was found dead in her home in rustic Wrotham, Kent, on Monday, the scene was eeriely familiar.

Her baby boy, Phaedra, was next to her body, said The Sun newspaper. He will be one this month and his older brother, Astala, will be two.

Fourteen years ago, in 2000, when Geldof's mother, television host Paula Yates, died of a heroin overdose in her home in London, Yates' little girl and Geldof's half-sister, Tiger Lily, then four, was found near her body.

It was also the 10th birthday of Geldof's younger sister, Pixie.

Geldof's sudden death at age 25 has been shocking and baffling. The cause of her death has not been determined and police are awaiting the results of toxicology tests.

Yet the demise is not wholly surprising, in the context of a saga that has played out for years in the tabloids.

In 1995, Yates left her husband, benefit concert organiser Bob Geldof, for INXS singer Michael Hutchence, after she did an infamous interview with Hutchence on a bed, with her legs wrapped around his thigh.

Things soon turned tragic. Hutchence, 37, was found hanged by a belt in a hotel in Sydney in 1997, a year after he had Tiger Lily with Yates.

A coroner ruled that Hutchence had committed suicide but Yates said her lover had died of auto-erotic asphyxiation.

Afterwards, she never quite recovered from losing him.

She was 41 when she died. Peaches Geldof was 11 then, and her older sister, Fifi Trixibelle, 17.

In an interview with Grazia Daily last year, Geldof said: "Out of my sisters, I'm most like my mother. My father says that to me. I look like her and her personality has rubbed off on me."

In her teens, Geldof was keen to follow her parents' path into the limelight. She became a writer, model, DJ and, as she put it, "the poster girl for partying in London".

But she seemed to overhaul her lifestyle entirely, marrying rock musician Thomas Cohen in 2012, moving to Wrotham and becoming an advocate of attachment parenting.

In her last piece for Mother & Baby magazine published on Tuesday, she wrote that she was "happier than ever", after "having two fat little cherubs". Speaking to Grazia, she said motherhood "healed many things" in her.

Sadly, she has now succumbed to a fate too like her mother's.

SundayLife! looks at other famous families stalked by tragedy.

woeiwan@sph.com.sg

The Kennedy clan

The history of the Kennedy family is so tragic, there has long been talk of a Kennedy curse.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 while he and his wife, Jacqueline, were riding in an open limousine in a motorcade through downtown Dallas. He was 46.

His funeral was three days later, coinciding with the third birthday of his son, John F. Kennedy Jr.

His brother, senator Robert F. Kennedy, 42, was assassinated in 1968.

John F. Kennedy Jr, 38, died with his wife Carolyn Bessette, 33, and his sister-in-law Lauren, 34, when his plane crashed into the Atlantic in 1991. He had been flying them to his cousin's wedding in Cape Cod.

The Lees

Martial arts legend Bruce Lee was 32 when he died of a cerebral oedema in actress Betty Ting Pei's home in Hong Kong in 1973. For decades, speculation persisted about his death. Even in 2005, his former producer Raymond Chow had to try to set the record straight. He said Lee took Equagesic for a headache and turned out to be fatally sensitive to an ingredient in the medication.

Lee left a wife, Linda, son Brandon (both above in an old photograph) and daughter Shannon. The Game Of Death, an action movie still in production when Lee died, opened in 1978.

Brandon, who became an actor, was 28 when he was fatally shot on the set of a fantasy film, The Crow, in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1993. The gun was supposed to be loaded with blanks but a cartridge loaded in it for a close-up had not been removed properly. The Crow, which opened in 1994, was Brandon's most popular movie.

The Brandos

The story of the death of Cheyenne Brando (right), Hollywood icon Marlon Brando's daughter with Tahitian actress Tarita, might ultimately be a tale of paternal failure.

In 1989, Cheyenne wanted to visit her father in Toronto but he would not let her, said People magazine. "I have come to despise my father for the way he ignored me when I was a child," she later said.

A furious Cheyenne had an accident in her half-brother Christian's car in Tahiti, which left her disfigured, said the report. Her father had her flown to Los Angeles for cosmetic surgery, which fixed her face but not her depression.

In 1990, she visited Los Angeles for psychiatric care with her boyfriend, Dag Drollet, when disaster struck. Drollet, 26, was shot dead by her half-brother in her father's home. Christian told police it was an accident. He also said Cheyenne, who was pregnant, had told him she had been hit by her boyfriend.

Christian later pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter. Marlon Brando said at the hearing: "I tried to be a good father. I did the best I could." The actor became a recluse eventually.

Christian was freed after five years in jail. But before his release, Cheyenne, 25, had hanged herself in her mother's home in Tahiti in 1995. Her son, Tuki Brando, now 23, is a model.

Christian, 49, died of complications from pneumonia in 2008.

This article was published on April 13 in The Straits Times.

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