The Kennedy family has been subjected to many tragedies over the years, including two assassinations and a plane crash that took the lives of John F. Kennedy Jr. and two other passengers.
Twenty-five years ago, on July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and her older sister Lauren Bessette were killed in a plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. There were no survivors from the accident.
The deaths became a major news story and perpetuated rumors of a “Kennedy curse.”
JFK Jr.’s father, former President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963. His uncle, Robert “Bobby” Kennedy, was assassinated five years later in 1968. And two years before JFK Jr.’s death, his cousin Michael Kennedy also died after hitting a tree while skiing in Aspen, Colorado.
Here’s what we know about the plane crash that killed John F. Kennedy Jr. and two others.
John F. Kennedy Jr. frequently made headlines throughout the 1990s.
As the son of a president and a member of one of America’s most prominent political dynasties, John F. Kennedy Jr. was destined for the spotlight.
JFK Jr. was born on November 25, 1960, just two weeks after his father was elected president. His father was assassinated on November 22, 1963, just three days shy of JFK Jr.’s third birthday.
History reported that JFK Jr., affectionately nicknamed “John-John” by the public, attended the funeral on his birthday and was famously photographed saluting his father’s casket.
Throughout much of his adolescence and adulthood, he mostly remained out of the public eye.
However, according to History, his public image began to change after he introduced his uncle, Ted Kennedy, at the Democratic National Convention in 1988.
In September 1988, People named Kennedy, who was then a 27-year-old third-year law student at NYU, the “Sexiest Man Alive.”
JFK Jr. also dated a few celebrities throughout the 1990s, including “Sex and the City” star Sarah Jessica Parker and Cindy Crawford, according to Town & Country.
John F. Kennedy Jr. began dating Carolyn Bessette, a publicist for Calvin Klein, in 1994.
Tall, sophisticated, and beautiful, JFK Jr.’s new girlfriend captivated the public.
After two years of dating, the pair married in an intimate ceremony on Cumberland Island, Georgia, People reported.
While their wedding ceremony was private, their relationship was anything but, thanks to the prying eyes of the paparazzi.
The media attention may have even inspired Kennedy to get his pilot’s license in 1998.
“That was some of the happiest times he ever had. Floating around with the buzzards in his Buckeye [plane]. It was the freedom,” his close friend Robbie Littell told “JFK Jr: An Intimate Oral Biography” author RoseMarie Terenzio, according to People.
“He said, ‘It’s the only place I can go where no one is bothering me. I have complete silence, and no one can get to me except the air traffic controllers.’ Maybe that gives you insight into what he was really dealing with on the ground,” his college friend Gary Ginsberg said, People reported.
John F. Kennedy Jr. was traveling to Martha’s Vineyard with his wife and her older sister when their plane was reported missing.
The Washington Post reported that Kennedy departed Essex County Airport near Fairfield, New Jersey, at around 8:38 p.m. on Friday, July 16, 1999. The sun was already beginning to set and “hazy conditions,” which had been reported earlier in the evening, were getting worse, People reported.
Kennedy planned to drop his sister-in-law Lauren Bessette on Martha’s Vineyard before traveling to his family’s compound in Hyannis Port with Carolyn. The couple was due to attend his cousin Rory Kennedy’s wedding the following day, according to People.
However, the plane never landed in Martha’s Vineyard.
An unidentified driver reported the plane had failed to arrive at Martha’s Vineyard Airport as expected, according to the Post, citing an NBC report. It kicked off a search for the missing aircraft in the early hours of July 17.
The Kennedy family notified the Cape Cod Coast Guard that the couple had not made it back to Hyannis.
The Washington Post reported that the Coast Guard then began investigating whether the plane had landed at another airport.
By 4 a.m., the Coast Guard began searching for the missing plane, and by 7:30 a.m., the Air Force and Coast Guard had launched 20 aircraft vehicles and two boats to search the area between Long Island and Martha’s Vineyard, according to the Post’s timeline.
On Sunday afternoon, what was presumed to be debris from the plane was found on Philbin Beach on Martha’s Vineyard. Among the debris was a headrest that was later concluded to be from the missing aircraft and a black suitcase that contained Lauren Bessette’s business card.
Rory Kennedy’s wedding, scheduled for 6 p.m. that night, was put on hold as the family awaited more news.
The Washington Post reported that after more debris was found in the days to follow, the search-and-rescue mission became a search-and-recovery mission.
All three of the plane’s passengers were now presumed dead. John F. Kennedy Jr. was 38 years old. Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy was 33, and her sister Lauren Bessette was 34.
Five days after the crash, the bodies of John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and Lauren Bessette were recovered.
The debris field was identified off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, relatively near the estate once owned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Kennedy’s mother, The New York Times reported.
The bodies of John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and Lauren Bessette were discovered by Navy divers on July 22, 1999, after an extensive search approved by President Bill Clinton, per another New York Times report.
The bodies of the crash victims, which were ”near and under” the main body of the aircraft, were still strapped in, according to the Times.
Details began to emerge about what led to the crash.
Kennedy had only flown about 72 hours without a flight instructor, and had only about 300 total hours of flying experience, The New York Times reported in July 2000. He had reportedly rejected an offer to have a flight instructor accompany the group on their journey.
As a newly trained pilot, Kennedy was not licensed to fly and navigate the air using flying instruments. Instead, he had only trained to fly using sight alone, which would have been extremely difficult in dark or hazy conditions such as those on the night of July 16.
Warren Morningstar, a spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, told the Times that “flying at night over featureless terrain or water, and particularly in haze or in overcast, is a prime setup for spatial disorientation.”
About an hour into the trip, the plane’s flight path became irregular as it began its descent into Martha’s Vineyard, indicating that the pilot may have become disoriented by the darkness of the sky and the water, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded.
“His flight path into the water is consistent with what is known as a graveyard spiral,” Jeff Guzzetti, an NTSB investigator in the accident, told Terenzio, according to People. “The airplane makes a spiral nose down … kind of like going down a drain. The plane went into one final turn and it stayed in that turn pretty much all the way down to the ocean.”
The aircraft went down in the water about 7 miles from its intended destination of Martha’s Vineyard.
According to The Washington Post, the plane did not send out a distress call. Instead, it made its final descent and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in under 30 seconds.
Kennedy, Kennedy-Bessette, and Bessette’s bodies were cremated and buried at sea off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard on July 22, 1999.
“We are filled with unspeakable grief and sadness by the loss of John and Carolyn and Lauren Bessette,” Ted Kennedy said in a statement on behalf of the Kennedy family, according to The Washington Post. “John was a shining light in all our lives and in the lives of the nation and the world that first came to know him as a little boy.”
As the country mourned the loss, rumors of a “Kennedy curse” were reignited.
The extensive search captured the nation’s attention, as did the tragedy of the three young passengers’ deaths. Yet another tragic accident for the Kennedy family, the plane crash only added to rumors of a Kennedy family curse.
“I’ve looked high and low and cannot find another family since the ancient Greek House of Atreus that has suffered more calamities and misfortunes than the Kennedys,” Edward Klein, the author of “The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America’s First Family for 150 Years,” said, according to The Washington Post.
While there are many logical reasons for the fateful plane crash, it’s nevertheless poignant that the Kennedy family, one of the wealthiest and most influential political families in the world, has suffered so much tragedy throughout the last 100 years.
“The humanity of their story is what keeps us engaged,” Kennedy family biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli told NBC News in 2019.
“We peer behind the scenes of their wealthy lifestyle, and we see, for all the advantages they have, tragedy can still happen.”
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