HELBI

Shipping heiress Christina Onassis died in Buenos Aires on November 19, 1988, of pulmonary edema at the home of a friend, Marina Dodero. There had been much speculation as to whether Onassis, 38 years old at the time, had been planning to marry Dodero’s brother, Jorge Tsolmetsoglou. Onassis doted on her 3-year-old daughter, Athena, who at that time had not traveled to Argentina with her. Onassis’s body was brought back to the family home on the Ionian island of Skorpios after a funeral in Athens, to be buried alongside her father, the legendary Aristotle and her brother Alexandros, who had been killed in a plane crash. The media talked about her death being the final chapter in the Onassis trilogy of tragedy. The stories surrounding the Onassis family are in the spotlight again with the announcement by Christie’s auctioneers of 45 pieces of the late heiress’s jewelry on June 11. International director of Christie’s jewelry department John Souglides, in an interview with Kathimerini arts editor Nikos Vatopoulos, said the source of these pieces was “confidential,” but the fact that the pieces include a Harry Winston necklace with a unique, pear-shaped 38-carat diamond, as well as a ruby and sapphire necklace, means one can only wonder whether it was Athena, now married to Brazilian equestrian Alvaro Alfonso de Miranda Neto, who authorized the sale. Silence is golden.