Newly revealed accounts from friends and insiders paint a raw, unfiltered picture of Carolyn Bessette’s turbulent marriage to John F. Kennedy Jr., exposing incidents of drug use, infidelity, and public humiliation that shattered their golden-couple image.

For years, the marriage of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette was mythologized as a fairy-tale union between America’s prince and the Calvin Klein beauty who seemed to embody effortless chic.

But behind the glossy magazine covers and the whispered adoration of Manhattan high society, the relationship was spiraling into chaos — a mix of drugs, jealousy, humiliating public moments, and emotional warfare that, according to friends and family, left both of them fractured long before their tragic deaths in 1999.

One infamous night at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, where Donald Trump’s club was buzzing with New York and D.C. elite, Carolyn made headlines among insiders for all the wrong reasons.

Guests remember her slurring her words, teetering in heels, and, at one point, dropping to the floor in a desperate, reckless attempt to snort a line of cocaine in full view of the social circle that once adored her.

It wasn’t just a scandalous moment; it was a humiliating public unraveling.

A friend later remarked, “That night at Mar-a-Lago was when people stopped seeing her as glamorous and started whispering about how far she had fallen.”

Her drug use, friends claimed, was part of the couple’s volatile cycle.

While John tried to maintain the image of the clean-cut Kennedy legacy — running his political magazine *George*, appearing at charity galas, and being photographed jogging in Central Park — Carolyn seemed determined to challenge him, to test limits, and to see how far she could push before he broke.

According to one confidante, she once boasted of deliberately flirting with other men in front of him, hinting at infidelities that may or may not have been real but were calculated to provoke. “She wanted him jealous,” the source said. “She wanted to remind him that she had power too.”

The darkest rumor that trailed them — whispered in Manhattan salons and Kennedy circles alike — was that Carolyn had “cuckolded” JFK Jr. by entertaining affairs with other men, some of them not even hiding the encounters from his watchful eye.

Whether true or exaggerated by gossip, the talk infuriated John, who, despite his own rumored dalliances with models and actresses, could not tolerate the humiliation of being undermined so publicly.

At one explosive dinner in TriBeCa, witnesses recalled John slamming his hand on the table after Carolyn flirted with another guest, snapping, “Do you think this is funny?” Carolyn, unfazed, reportedly laughed and sipped her wine.

Their fights weren’t confined to private spaces. In Central Park, photographers once caught the couple mid-argument — John gripping Carolyn’s arm while she shouted back, eyes flashing with a mix of anger and hurt.

Onlookers described their arguments as “cinematic,” with the rawness of a couple who seemed incapable of balancing love and war. Yet, beneath the shouting and jealousy, there was a codependence. They clung to each other in a way that was as destructive as it was passionate.

The cocaine-fueled episodes, however, became harder to ignore. Friends close to Carolyn claimed that she often disappeared into bathrooms at parties, emerging dazed and volatile.

Others alleged that she would call John repeatedly in fits of paranoia, accusing him of cheating whenever he wasn’t home. John’s friends urged him to leave, saying she was “toxic” and dragging him into chaos.

But John, who carried a lifelong burden of loss after his father’s assassination and his mother’s years of struggle, seemed determined to hold on. “He wanted to save her,” one Kennedy family insider said. “But the truth was, he couldn’t even save himself.”

The Mar-a-Lago humiliation was one of the final straws for many in their circle. Carolyn’s once-spotless reputation as a chic, modern Jackie Kennedy had collapsed into whispers of addiction, reckless behavior, and a relationship that had turned poisonous.

Even those who adored her began to distance themselves. She had walked into the Kennedy dynasty with elegance, but she was leaving behind only scandal.

And yet, as destructive as their marriage became, neither seemed willing to abandon it. They fought, they broke each other down, but they always returned.

Friends recall them disappearing together after the loudest arguments, re-emerging hours later holding hands, their bond inexplicably renewed. It was as if chaos itself had become the glue that held them together.

The tragedy of July 16, 1999 — when John, Carolyn, and her sister Lauren perished in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard — froze their story in time.

It preserved Carolyn not as the broken figure from Mar-a-Lago, nor as the jealous wife taunting her husband, but as the elegant woman forever walking hand-in-hand with America’s prince.

Still, the toxic details that bubbled beneath the surface — the drugs, the affairs, the humiliations — continue to haunt the Kennedy myth, reminding America that even its golden couple was not immune to the same flaws and poisons that plague ordinary marriages.

Behind closed doors, the Camelot dream had already shattered long before the plane went down. And those who knew them best say the tragedy was not only in the crash but in the slow, painful unraveling that led there.