The Donovans Put the Fictional Roys to Shame

Riches, gunshots, and deception all factor into this profile
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 6, 2022 4:50 PM CST
The Donovans Put the Fictional Roys to Shame
   (Getty Images / Pineapple Studio)

If you're eagerly awaiting the next season of Succession, here's something to tide you over: a profile of John Donovan and his five children. It's a doozy. As Ian Frisch explicitly points out in his piece for Town & Country, the Donovans rank as one of Massachusetts' richest families, but they're much less Kennedy and much more like Succession's Roys, complete "with a cunning business mogul engaging in a sordid feud with his children to keep all the power and riches that he had, ostensibly, earned for them all along." The patriarch at the heart of it is John Donovan, whose path wound from poverty to a Yale PhD to a professorship at MIT to the riches he made in founding a series of tech-related companies. A trust set up for his kids in 1992 was worth almost $100 million five years later, but relations were strained with all but his youngest, John Jr.

But when one daughter in 2002 accused him of molesting her as a child, relations deteriorated even more, and disputes over the family's holdings made their way to court. Then on Dec. 16, 2005, John was shot in the stomach; he told 911 that two Russian hitman hired by his son James did it. The story fell apart. Authorities found a sea of evidence indicating John staged it all; he was convicted of filing a false police report and sentenced to probation. John Jr. was later diagnosed with terminal cancer and died in 2015—and things got crazier, with John accused of secretly taping his son before his death and mashing together the recordings to create an audio indicating his son wanted him to manage his estate. But John Jr. had taken steps to prevent this very deception—and John would end up convicted of forgery and sentenced to prison. (Read the full story.)

Stories to sink your teeth into.
Get our roundup of longform stories every Saturday.
Sign up
Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X