The family of the 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, has been shrouded in mystery and tragedy. The life of JFK, in many ways, was considered a close match to that of Abraham Lincoln, especially their untimely deaths by assassination. This trip down the Rabbit Hole will look at another untimely death in the Kennedy family, that of JFK Jr. the son of the 35th President.
John F. Kennedy Jr. turned 3 on the day of his father's funeral. He lived with his mother and sister in New York City until the time of his uncle's, Robert Kennedy, death in 1968. It was at that time his mother moved herself and her children out of the country for fear of them being targets for assassination.
JFK Jr. traveled extensively during his youth, was a great humanitarian, lawyer, journalist and a magazine publisher. He was also a pilot with over 700 hours of flight time recorded.
On the evening of July 16, 1999 at 8:38, JFK Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and her sister, Lauren Bessette took off from an airport in Fairfield, NJ in John's single engine Piper Saratoga. They were in route to Martha's Vineyard, an island in the Atlantic Ocean that sits just south of Cape Cod in the state of Massachusetts, to attend the wedding of John's cousin. Nearly one hour, to the minute of takeoff, later, the plane dropped several hundred feet and then disappeared from the radar. What follows are some interesting and very odd facts about that fateful time.
Although many phone calls had been made about the fact that JFK Jr, his wife and sister-in-law, along with the plane, were missing, it was 15 hours later before a search was launched.
The news reports said it was foggy and that JFK Jr. had gotten disoriented. The people who lived in that area said that the news reports were false. The sky was clear that evening.
One seat was missing from the plane. One person said that John had told them he was going to have a flight instructor accompany them on the trip. The flight recorder could give no leads as the battery had been removed.
There were mysterious helicopters in the area the night of the crash along with suspicious fishermen in a boat that was full of batteries. The fishermen said they were fishing for striped bass, but that particular species of fish did not reside in the waters at that location.
It was reported that when the plane was found, 5 days after the search began, the FBI made video tapes of the wreck on the bottom of the ocean floor. All these tapes have disappeared. It was also reported that the emergency location beacon from the plane was sending a signal, but this was not close to where the plane was found.
The coroner preformed three autopsies in less that 4 hours. The bodies were cremated, something that the Catholic Church did not approve of and buried at sea. They were distributed from a war ship and it is very unusual for the military to accord a burial at sea to a civilian, let alone three civilians.
Two separate people came forward to tell what they had witnessed the night the plane went down. One saw a large flash in the sky at exactly the same time the plane began its rapid descent and the other heard a loud noise they described sounded like a bomb had been set off.
There was talk about John F. Kennedy Jr. running for the Senate. Supposedly there was even a story set to be published in the July 26th edition of Newsweek, but that story never made it to print.
JFK Jr. had been investigating a couple of assassinations that had taken place during that era. Maybe his was getting to close to something. Maybe he was investigating the killing of his own father. Maybe John F. Kennedy Jr. is still alive.
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