DR A.J.F. O'Reilly, chairman of Heinz and Independent Newspapers, emerged yesterday as the mystery buyer at the Jacqueline Kennedy auction in New York of the 40 carat diamond engagement ring which shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis gave the former First Lady in 1968.
Dr O'Reilly paid $2,587,500 (£1.66 million) for the ring as a present for his wife, Chryss, at the auction of Mrs Kennedy Onassis's property by Sotheby's, which valued it at $900,000 (£578,406). The price paid for the gem caused a sensation in New York, where the four day sale has become a frenzied rush by the rich to acquire souvenirs of "Camelot".
The attraction of the Onassis ring to Dr O'Reilly was its symbolic significance, according to a source close to the Heinz chairman. Having been given first by a Greek shipping owner to the wife of an Irish American President, it now goes to Chryss O'Reilly, who also comes from a Greek ship owning family and is married to an Irishman.
Chryss Goulandris was born in New York of Greek parents. Her family came from the Greek. island of Andros. Her father moved to New York in 1941 and married Maria Lemos, a member of another prominent Greek ship owning family. She married Dr O'Reilly in 1991.
The bidding for Dr O'Reilly was done by Mr Al Lippert, a friend and former chairman of Weight Watchers, which was acquired by Heinz in 1978. Mr Lippert, a member of the Heinz board, refused to say who the purchaser was after bidding successfully for the ring against another telephone bidder.
As the price steadily rose, to gasps of astonishment from a packed auction room, Dr O'Reilly kept in touch with Mr Lippert by telephone from Castlemartin, his home in Co Kildare, where it was the early hours of yesterday morning before the lot came up, a family friend said.
Aristotle Onassis is said to have given the 40.42 carat Lesotho III gem to the former First Lady on the night he proposed marriage. It was the biggest diamond ring Mrs Kennedy Onassis ever owned.
The Goulandris and Onassis families knew each other, said a source close to Dr O'Reilly, adding that Mrs Chryss O'Reilly also admired Jacqueline Kennedy and her sense of style. The ring symbolised a lot of elegance and history and the Irish American connection."