E-mailed item shows five homes owned by Senator John Kerry and worth many millions of dollars

Snopes ^ | 4/1/04 | Snopes

[swilhelm73]

John Kerry, man of the common folk . . . he understands your pain, really . . trust him--dah, yeah--right!

The many homes of Democrat Presidential candiate John F. Kerry. Other foreign property ownership by John Kerry is unknown... because he denied repeated requests for this information.

Please e-mail this information to all your friends, family and contacts.

Class warfare is not right, but neither is being a hypocrite. This man wants to be our president, while claiming that he relates to Joe-6-pack and the common man. He wants to raise income taxes on the rich, well, guess what? He won't pay those taxes because he is already rich! He wants to make it harder for you to get rich by raising taxes on your income! Talk about snobbery and protecting his "class."

Please e-mail to at least 5 people.

Origins:   It's

certainly no secret to anyone familiar with the U.S. political scene that Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts has a net worth of several million dollars, and that his wife, Teresa, could accurately be described as "super wealthy." Mrs. Teresa Heinz Kerry was previously married for 25 years to the late Henry John Heinz III, a member of the founding family of the H.J. Heinz Company, and after his death in a 1991 plane crash she inherited a Heinz family fortune estimated at over $500 million.

John and/or Teresa Kerry do own several valuable properties in the U.S., including:

• A five-story, twelve-room brownstone townhouse (with six fireplaces, a rooftop deck, and an elevator) in Boston's Beacon Hill. This home is John Kerry's main residence and was assessed at a value of $6.6 million in 2003

• A nine-room colonial home on a 90-acre family farm in Fox Chapel near Pittsburgh. This home is Teresa Kerry's longtime residence, where she lived while was married to John Heinz and where she raised her three children. It is valued at $3.7 million.

• A ski/vacation home located near the banks of the Big Wood River in Ketchum, Idaho, fashioned from a reassembled barn originally built in England in 1485 and brought to Idaho by Teresa Heinz Kerry's late husband. It was purchased for $4.9 million in 1988.

• A three-story, five-bedroom waterfront estate near the Brant Point Lighthouse in Nantucket's harbor, where John and Teresa Kerry were married in 1995. The beachfront property is valued at $9.1 million.

• A 23-room townhouse in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., valued at $4.7 million.

The aggregate value of these five homes is roughly $29 million, but the claim that John Kerry "owns" all of these properties is problematic. John and Teresa Kerry signed a prenuptial agreement and have kept their premarital assets separate. The Boston townhouse (which John Kerry mortgaged in 2003 to finance his presidential bid) is the only one of these homes that they own as a couple; the other four belonged to Teresa before her 1995 marriage to John Kerry, and some of them are even still listed under the name of her late husband.

Also, according to the London Times, the Italian villa bought by actor George Clooney was sold a year before John Kerry announced his intention to seek the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, and it was owned not by John or Teresa Kerry, but by Mrs. Drue Heinz, a relative of Teresa's through her marriage to John Heinz:

The Hollywood star George Clooney has parted company with his long-time agent in a dispute over the purchase of a historic £5m Italian villa.

Clooney is reported to have been "incensed" when he discovered that Michael Gruber, who steered his career from the television medical drama ER to box office hits such as The Perfect Storm, had discussed a £175,000 fee for helping to arrange for the star to buy the house from Drue Heinz, the philanthropist.

The widow of Jack Heinz, grandson of the American entrepreneur who first bottled 57 varieties of pickle, Heinz lives in Ascot, Berkshire, but in recent years she had turned the Villa Oleandra on Lake Como, north of Milan, into a writers' sanctuary. Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of the American classic The Scarlet Letter, stayed there in the 1850s.

Family illnesses persuaded Heinz to sell the villa, situated in the village of Laglio, where the neighbours include Donatella Versace, the fashion designer.

Last updated:   1 April 2004  

The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/politics/kerry/homes.asp
Click here to e-mail this page to a friend

Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2004
by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
This material may not be reproduced without permission

---

  Sources:

    DePaulo, Lisa.   "Taming Teresa."

    Elle.   June 2003.

    Fee, Gayle and Laura Raposa.   "Crocodile Tears at Fleet If Dems Move Bash."

    The Boston Herald.   19 March 2004   (p. 20).

    Harlow, John.   "Angry Clooney Cuts Loose from Agent Who Steered Him to Film Stardom."

    The [London] Times.   27 October 2002   (p. 29).

    Kasindorf, Martin.   "Kerry Hits the Slopes, Fires Back After Bush's Criticism."

    USA Today.   20 March 2004.

    Noah, Timothy.   "Does Teresa Heinz Trust John Kerry?"

    Slate.   2 December 2003.

    Reston, Maeve.   "Teresa Heinz Kerry Speaks Her Mind, But in N.H., It's Not Hurting Husband."

    Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.   30 November 2003.

    Silberman, Ellen J. and Jack Meyers.   "Kerry Loan Twice As Nice."

    The Boston Herald.   25 Feburary 2004.

    Associated Press..   "Five Kerry Homes Valued at Nearly $33M."

    USA Today.   22 March 2004.

[billhilly]

Snopes does not disappoint! Whenever there is a rumor circulating about some democrat, they are quick to put the label of Urband Legend on it. In this case they could not do that. What they could do, and what they did do, was to ignore the fact that it was John Heinz, United States Senator (R-Pa) who had inherited the Heinz fortune that was passed on to Teresa at his death. She, being bi-partisan, would no doubt have supported a presidential bid by her former husband had that occasion presented itself.

On the other hand, Kerry, ever the opportunist, was willing to accept the republican inheritance to further his political ambitions. I hope he gets exactly what he deserves.

[NativeNewYorker]

Moseley-Braun is worth more than Kucinich? This is the very definition of loser.

[NativeNewYorker]

I can't imagine the priviledge involved in owning multiple $4-5 million dollar estates (and having the means to own them outright).

The dirty little secret to this is that the homes' value is not even the biggest ticket item involved here. The annual cost of maintaining top drawer properties -- from taxes to toilets -- is staggering. The upkeep on ONE of these palaces is a multiple of the average family income. The ability to carry these properties, even without a mortgage, is nothing short of breathtaking.

[CyberAnt]

Aren't these homes owned by Tah-Ray-Sah ..??

[rockrr]

Hey Look1
I'm giving Kucinich a serious run for the money!

[rockrr]

Hey Look1
I'm giving Kucinich a serious run for the money!

[lonestar]

I don't even want to know what SHE pays in insurance every year.

[Zeppo]

A five-story, twelve-room brownstone townhouse (with six fireplaces, a rooftop deck, and an elevator) in Boston's Beacon Hill. This home is John Kerry's main residence and was assessed at a value of $6.6 million in 2003

Snopes could have done a better job of reporting the value - didn't Kerry mortgage half of that property for $6 million, meaning that it is supposedly worth $12 million? Why is Snopes lowballing the value?

A ski/vacation home located near the banks of the Big Wood River in Ketchum, Idaho, fashioned from a reassembled barn originally built in England in 1485 and brought to Idaho by Teresa Heinz Kerry's late husband. It was purchased for $4.9 million in 1988.

Again, Snopes is lowballing the value. The purchase price in 1988 is certainly much much lower than its current value.

[Rebelbase]

"The annual cost of maintaining top drawer properties -- from taxes to toilets -- is staggering."

Oh, I hear you. Its a fantasy world that is so far removed from reality it's pathetic to think someone raised in such could possibly indentify as having "been there and done that" with the "common man".

[an amused spectator]

Snopes does a great job. They printed the truth about the bin Laden family flights. Michael Moore's lies faced the truth at Snopes.

Snopes.com does a great job unless the issue is political. They revealed themselves when they did a bait-and-switch with the meticulous documentation of Alamo-Girl.

I just look at their political stuff and laugh.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for remembering!

[swilhelm73]

Yes indeed. I normally peruse Snopes.com as a source for news of the wierd and unusual. For serious political analysis Snopes isn't a completely hack job, but it has a strong leftist bias.

I mean, come on, the houses are in Kerry's wife's name so they don't bare on his living the life of a pampered prince while claiming to be a man of the people? Snopes, seriously, get a conservative to work with you on the political stuff - and you need one badly.

[swilhelm73]

Which bait and switch was this?

[Howlin]

Your post:

Story from a month ago...http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1103095/posts

My reply to you: ABSOLUTELY. I'm damn tired of these people getting this stuff off FR and NOT giving us credit!

[an amused spectator]

Snopes and Alamo-Girl got into it over her Clinton administration lists, and they pretended that she was promoting the "Clinton Body Count" BS, which of course she was NOT.

[Andy from Beaverton]

Snopes.com does a great job unless the issue is political
And the fake story about the bin Laden's flying out on 9/12 was not political?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank y'all for the pings!

In case you're interested, here's the research showing all sides of the "body count" assertions:

Body Count Research Project

[an amused spectator]

And the fake story about the bin Laden's flying out on 9/12 was not political?

I give them about a 93% on political stories. My standards are a 98%+ for reliability. As you can see, there's about a 5% discrepancy there. Which ain't good enough.

See my above posts on Alamo-Girl, whose standards are considerably higher than Snopes.

[an amused spectator]

You want real reliability, peruse The Downside Legacy (by FR's own A-G)

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for the kudos and encouragements! Hugs!