On April 8 , 1963 , while in her bedroom , with her 14-year-old stepdaughter , Marina Cassini , by her side , as the teenager watched the 35th Academy Awards on television , Charlene Cassini swallowed 30 sleeping pills and died the next day . She reportedly was distraught after Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had indicted her husband for failing to register under the U.S. Registration Act , as an agent of a foreign government ( a public relations agency he helped found , Martial & Company , had taken on the Dominican Republic as a client ) . She also suffered from headaches following a minor household accident , was depressed after the suicide of a ski instructor friend , and had become bitterly estranged from her father
35th Academy Awards
35th Academy Awards
Igor Cassini