High-tech sonar scanners located John F. Kennedy Jr.'s body about 10 feet from the wreckage of his small plane, resting 116 feet beneath the Atlantic Ocean, after a search that stretched across five grueling days in July 1999. Kennedy, his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and her sister Lauren Bessette had been flying from Caldwell, New Jersey, to Martha's Vineyard for the wedding of Kennedy's cousin Rory when the Piper Saratoga II vanished on the night of July 16, 1999.
The bodies of all three were recovered from the wreckage, according to the Washington Post, which reported that Kennedy's body was found in the cockpit while the women's bodies were located amid the twisted fuselage, with all three still strapped into their seats. The site sat roughly 7.5 miles off the Vineyard's shores, the paper reported, though other accounts place the wreckage closer to seven miles southwest of the island — a discrepancy that has persisted across reporting on the crash. Divers reached the site after scouring the ocean floor for about 18 hours, the Post reported, in a search area spanning a 24-mile swath broken into at least 10 grids.
A New Book Pulls Back the Curtain
Those details, and many more, are resurfacing now because of a new book, The Last Flight: The Untold Story of the Search for JFK Jr. and the Race Against the Atlantic, co-authored by retired Coast Guard Capt. W. Russell “Russ” Webster and Theresa Mitchell Webster, who led and chronicled the search operation. Published October 13, the book draws on close to 45 interviews and is the product of 15 years of research, according to the New York Post, which first reported on the book's revelations. Webster served 26 years in the Coast Guard and, per the Post, worked roughly 10,000 missions over his career — but this one, he has said, was unlike any other.
The search spanned 100 nautical miles between Cape Cod and Long Island and drew in thousands of staffers from at least 28 local, state and federal agencies, the Post reported — though other accounts put the number of participating agencies at 32, according to People. A unified command post opened that Sunday as the operation grew. Webster has estimated the search cost up to $5 million, per the Post's reporting, and the Boston Herald described it as the nation's largest and most expensive search ever mounted for private citizens in a small air crash, calling it a focused five-day mission that unleashed a national wave of mourning that caught everyone off guard, according to the Boston Herald.
Flying Blind Under Visual Rules
Kennedy, 38 at the time, was piloting the aircraft under visual flight rules, meaning the FAA was not tracking his plane, Webster has said, per the Post's reporting. It wasn't his first trip on that route — he had flown from New Jersey to Martha's Vineyard 35 times before. But he was still working toward his certified flight instructor certification, having completed just 12 of 25 required modules, and his instructor had warned him on July 1, 1999, that he needed more experience flying with instruments alone.
That inexperience, investigators believe, hindered his ability to fly in poor visibility and could have caused the spatial disorientation that ultimately doomed the flight. The National Transportation Safety Board's final determination attributed the crash to spatial disorientation as a byproduct of decisions Kennedy made during the flight, the Boston Herald reported. According to the Post's account of the NTSB report, the plane fell at 4,700 feet per minute, while the Washington Post reported separately that investigators determined Kennedy lost control and the aircraft plunged into the ocean in a 53-mph dive.
Hoaxes and False Hope During the Search
As the search dragged on, the Coast Guard fielded a flood of calls from people convinced the three passengers were still alive, Webster has recalled. One caller insisted Kennedy was logged into an AOL chat room. In another bizarre episode, the Coast Guard received a fax from an unnamed New York City spiritual organization declaring the passengers dead based on its analysis of their magnetic auras, according to the Post's reporting.
Meanwhile, those close to the Kennedy family braced for the worst. Maria Hooton, a friend of Theresa Mitchell Webster who was married to a close friend of Sen. Ted Kennedy, was at the senator's house the day after the plane went missing. She has said she saw John Kennedy's pressed suit — presumably meant for the wedding — hanging in the laundry room, a detail the book's authors use to underscore how quickly hope curdled into dread.
The Search Nearly Ended Before It Found Answers
By the fourth day, search officials had begun planning an exit strategy, and the search team had started discussing calling off the operation altogether, according to the Post's reporting on the book. On July 18, the Coast Guard had already suspended the search for survivors and shifted its focus from search-and-rescue to search-and-recovery, according to UPI, which reported that sonar had picked up possible wreckage pieces even though the plane's emergency beacon had never been found.
The USNS Grasp identified the fuselage at 11:30 p.m. A side-looking sonar from another vessel had helped narrow the search area, the Washington Post reported. Sonar scanners and a video camera helped locate Kennedy's body; divers later recovered all three bodies.
Divers recovered all three bodies the following morning, the fourth day's end giving way to resolution at around 10:30 a.m. on July 21. Webster has said that if the search had stretched another day, Kennedy — reported by the New York Post to have been found outside the aircraft, though the Washington Post reported that he was found in the cockpit — might have been swept away entirely in a 1.6-knot current. Theresa Mitchell Webster has recalled that they might never have found him at all had that extra day passed.
Identifying the Victims
Carolyn Bessette, 33, and Lauren Bessette, reported as 34 by the Washington Post and Deseret News though UPI listed her age as 35, were ultimately identified by their different hair colors, according to the Post's reporting on the book. Theresa Mitchell Webster has said the NTSB's forensic anthropologist told the team the women were not facially recognizable after their time in the water. High-tech sonar scanners had located Kennedy's body on the ocean floor, while the wreckage itself held the strapped-in bodies of both women, authorities determined. The operation remains one of the largest maritime searches the U.S. government has ever conducted for private citizens.
