caitlyn jenner© Photo: ITV

I'm a Celebrity's Caitlyn Jenner opens up about tragic death of her brother

Caitlyn was just 26 when her brother Burt died

US Lifestyle Editor
Updated: November 21, 2019

Caitlyn Jenner relived the tragic loss of her brother Burt in her memoir The Secrets Of My Life. The I'm a Celebrity star revealed that she was just 26 years old when her younger brother died while driving a Porsche with his friend, 16-year-old Judith Hutchings, that Caitlyn had allowed him to borrow after she was loaned the car by a dealership following her 1976 win at the Montreal Olympics. She wrote: "There was a rise, and Burt took it too fast. The Porsche went airborne and then crooked. It hit a tree and then a rock wall of sizeable boulders. Hutchings was flung from the car and killed instantly. Burt suffered critical injuries. I have struggled with guilt."

She added: "For an eighteen-year-old kid who’s just graduated from high school, few things in life, if anything, are sweeter than tooling around town in a Porsche 911. What if I had never taken the car from the dealer? What if I had never lent it to Burt? Why did he pick up an innocent young woman who had her whole life in front of her? Why did he drive so carelessly?"

Caitlyn is taking part in this year's I'm a Celebrity

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Caitlyn, who was known as Bruce at the time, continued: "Never in my life have I ever beat myself up about it. It is a mechanism of protection, I know, but I have come to the conclusion that it was Burt’s day to die, just as, on the beaches of Normandy, it was my father’s day not to. It was the way it was. The accident had a fate and will of its own: two people tragically lost their lives, and my brother was the one responsible."

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"But I have to move on because so much of my life has been about moving on – get over it, get through it, don’t show outward emotion because it only leads to inner emotions, and I must keep those in check. The floodgates open and I am done.”

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