JFK Jr

[Dawn Meredith]

Years ago on the Rich DellaRosa forum we had discussions about the death of John Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn, and his sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette. About that time John Hankey had introduced his DVDs on the assassination of JFK and one on the death of his son, John, Jr. Along with John, Jr., his wife Carolyn, his sister-in-law Lauren Bessette, and possibly a flight instructor who was thought to have been aboard the Piper Saratoga plane with them perished in an unusual airplane crash in to the sea near Martha's Vinyard where they were to land and drop off Lauren Bessette so she could meet her good friend, Carole Radziwill. They then would proceed to Hannisport to spend the weekend at family wedding festivities.

From my readings of books written by John's friends, associates, colleagues, and cousin's wife, Carole Radziwill, I find it entirely possible that John did have a flight instructor with him. He was not quite totally familiar with his newly acquired plane, a Piper Saratoga, so he would very frequently fly with an instructor. Also, he was logging in more instrument-time flying for which he needed to be under the supervision of a flight instructor. Another problem was that he was still using crutches and limping due to an earlier ankle injury. In order to maneuver a plane on the ground, he needed full use of the foot pedals to do this, and probably would have asked his flight instructor to perform this task.

Richard Blow, an editor of his GEORGE Magazine spoke with him on that Friday afternoon before he left for the airport inNew Jersey where his plane was stored. John told him that he would have a flight instructor flying with him. Carole Radziwill, who was waiting at Martha's Vinyard Airport the arrival of Lauren Bessette, became greatly concerned when the plane was delayed. She called a flight instructor with whom she was familiar from previous flights to tell his wife of the delay, and was surprised when he answered the phone. Obviously, another instructor had been chosen in New Jersey. She describes her experiences that night in her book, WHAT REMAINS: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship and Love.

John Hankey states that the the body of a flight instructor was not found. We know from the National Transportation Safety Board's Report that the seat in which the flight instructor would have been occupying next to John's pilot seat was missing from the debris found of the wreckage at the bottom of the sea, 150 feet below. The other three occupants' bodies were found strapped in their seats, all of which were bolted to the floor of the cabin. John's flight log which would record details of the flight from take-off to destination would also list passengers and any other personnel, was kept in an aqua colored flight bag. Some luggage and the flight bag washed up on shore, but the flight bag did not contain the Flight Log Book.

John Hankey proposed that the flight istructor was suicidal, or rather had been programmed to be suicidal by the murderers. This was based on the crash of an Egyptian military plane, flying from the US to Egypt in which a derangexd pilot had overpowered the pilots in the cabin of the plane and made the plane plunge into the sea. Hankey proposed that the body of the flight instructor had to be removed from John's plane so that it would appear that the only pilot on board was John and the crash could be described as due to pilot error. The perpretrators had plenty of time to accomplish this, as the wreckage was not found for a few days.

However, other investigators have suggestd that some kind of explosive device was placed on the plane before take-off at the New Jersey airport.

Eye-witnesses on the beach overlooking the crash site saw flashes of light in the dark sky about the time of John's plane approach to the Martha';s Vinyard Airport. According to the National Transpiortation Safety Board's Report, the distribution of debris from the plane's crash was very widespread and I would attribute that to an explosion in the air. Rich DellaRosa told me that he thought it had been done with a "pressure bomb". Sherman Skolnick, Scott Meyers, and John DiNaerdo investigators mentioned by Greg Burnham on this topic have concluded similarly.

It is both curious and suspicious that John's plane went down around 9:30 PM, Friday, July 16, 1999. Yet it took all of Saturday, Sunday, Monday until Tuesay when the wreckage was found. According to John Hankey, the Pentagon was brought in to do the searchng and it seems that they were flying in a wide elliptical pattern of about two hundred miles in width along the coast from Martha's Vinyard toward New York. The site of the crash was about seven miles east of Martha's Vinyard and the exact latitude and longitude coordinates of the plane just before it crashed had been radioed by John Kennedy to the Marthas Vinyard Airport Tower as was required of planes preparing to land as they drop in altitude to the required 2500 feet before beginning their final descent. There was no haze in the vicinity as reported by other pilots coming to land around that same time, and the airport lights were visible from the air. Since the Airport Tower's radar followed the descent of the plane, the wreckage should have been very easy to locate.

Adele

Many thanks Adele for summerizing some of the major evidence in this case.
Dawn