Did a broken ankle from a hang gliding accident ultimately result in John F. Kennedy Jr.'s tragic death in a plane crash? Here's what really happened before the accident.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Did a broken ankle from a hang gliding accident ultimately result in John F. Kennedy Jr.'s
00:05tragic death in a plane crash?
00:07Here's what really happened before the accident.
00:10John F. Kennedy Jr. spent his life in the pages of magazines, but when Kennedy got into
00:14the game himself with George magazine in 1995, it wasn't as a model or a subject, but as
00:20an editor.
00:21George was a glossy magazine dedicated to marrying political and celebrity coverage.
00:25Kennedy suggested in the inaugural issue that George was part of a shift in the way politicians
00:29spoke to voters.
00:31Some critics, including a particularly acidic reviewer in Spy magazine, suggested the whole
00:36enterprise was designed to make Kennedy look smart and shut up those members of the press
00:40who looked down on him.
00:41According to anonymous staffers interviewed by Spy, morale was initially high, and Kennedy
00:46was well thought of by his team.
00:48When it finally debuted, George reached a circulation number north of 400,000, but its
00:52early success wasn't maintained.
00:55Critics pounced, sharing rumors of incompetence and tensions behind the scene.
00:59But ultimately, this magazine is going to stand or fall on whether or not it's a good
01:04magazine.
01:05According to Edward Klein's 2003 book The Kennedy Curse, Why Tragedy Has Haunted America's
01:09First Family for 150 Years, George was projected to lose $10 million in 1999.
01:15Determined to keep it afloat, Kennedy sought to move the magazine to a new publisher, but
01:19died before those plans came to fruition.
01:22The magazine ultimately folded in 2001, 18 months after Kennedy's death.
01:27Kennedy had several high-profile relationships before settling down, with rumored partners
01:32including Madonna and Sarah Jessica Parker.
01:34But in September 1996, Kennedy married fashion publicist Carolyn Bessette, whom he had been
01:39involved with for some time.
01:41The photogenic couple were a strong draw for the media.
01:44Yet despite her background in publicity, Bessette came into her marriage unprepared for the degree
01:48of scrutiny the Kennedy family was subject to.
01:51According to Edward Klein's The Kennedy Curse, press intrusion into the marriage began almost
01:55the moment they came back from their honeymoon.
01:58Kennedy's reaction to the press, however, was very different from Bessette's.
02:01Klein suggests that Kennedy loved the attention, while Bessette increasingly sought ways to
02:05run from it.
02:06Former assistant to Jackie Kennedy, Kathy McCown, claimed in her book Jackie's Girl
02:10that Bessette wanted to lash out at the paparazzi.
02:13In their final months, Kennedy's magazine George was purportedly exacerbating tensions
02:17between the couple.
02:18Bessette resented the demands the magazine put on her husband's time.
02:22The hectic and heavily scrutinized nature of their lives also put her off having children,
02:26another point of conflict with Kennedy.
02:29Tensions were mounting in the final months of Kennedy and Carolyn's lives.
02:32Edward Klein painted a grim picture in The Kennedy Curse.
02:35Citing an anonymous friend, Klein wrote that Kennedy and Bessette were barely on speaking
02:39terms, and that Kennedy was talking divorce just two days before his plane crash.
02:44Bessette was alleged to be terrified at the thought of losing Kennedy, having been through
02:48divorce as a child, but was also controlling and antagonistic toward anyone else who commanded
02:52her husband's attention, even his sister.
02:55Other nameless sources suggested that Bessette used cocaine and got physically violent with
02:59Kennedy.
03:00But this portrait of the couple's married life in their last days has been disputed
03:03by other friends, some of whom were willing to actually go on the record.
03:07Ariel Paredes, the granddaughter of an assistant to Jackie Kennedy, conceded to People that
03:11Kennedy and Bessette often argued, but maintained that they were a loving couple.
03:15John Perry Barlow, a friend of Kennedy's, also disputed the unflattering media portrayal
03:20of Bessette.
03:21While another anonymous friend insisted that any tensions between the pair at the time
03:24of their deaths would have passed over.
03:27The death of John F. Kennedy Jr. came on the heels of a series of misfortunes for the family,
03:32leading to a rift among the Kennedys.
03:34JFK Jr. had used his editorial in George magazine to denounce the behavior of his cousins, Michael
03:39Kennedy and U.S. Representative Joseph Kennedy.
03:42After Joseph tried to have a previous marriage annulled, and Michael was caught having an
03:45inappropriate relationship with his underage babysitter, things seemed to only be patched
03:50up after Michael's untimely death in a skiing accident on New Year's Eve 1997.
03:55John Jr. attended and participated in the service, and was seen embracing Joseph.
04:00The Kennedys are sometimes referred to as American royalty, but John F. Kennedy's cousin
04:04and best friend Tony was literally royalty.
04:07The son of Kennedy's aunt, Princess Leigh Radziwill, Anthony Radziwill, made his living
04:12in media, working his way from an associate sports producer with NBC in 1988 to an Emmy
04:17award-winning news producer with ABC by 1990.
04:21With his work well-regarded by journalists like Diane Sawyer, he and Kennedy were each
04:25other's best men at their respective weddings.
04:28But in 1994, the same year he married his wife Carol, Radziwill was diagnosed with testicular
04:33cancer.
04:34By 1999, the 40-year-old Radziwill, his wife, and his cousin Kennedy knew that he wasn't
04:39going to make it.
04:40So sure was Radziwill's impending death that Kennedy was working on a eulogy for him right
04:44before his own death.
04:45Kennedy's wife, Carolyn Bessette, was also close to the Radziwills, and did her best
04:50to see to their needs.
04:51On August 10, 1999, less than a month after Kennedy's tragic plane crash, Anthony Radziwill
04:56died.
04:58Besides his name and good looks, Kennedy Jr.'s public persona was defined by his love of
05:03adventure.
05:04He liked to bike, rollerblade, scuba dive, kayak, drive a powered parachute, glide, and
05:09fly.
05:10Friends and instructors remembered him as loving the freedom of such endeavors while
05:13still taking care and pursuing them.
05:15But an accident from one of his adventures has become tied in with theories about his
05:19tragic death.
05:20Six weeks prior to his last flight, Kennedy was hang gliding when he broke his ankle.
05:24He was put in a cast and had to get around on crutches.
05:27He still wasn't fully healed when he had his cast removed on July 15, 1999, but Kennedy
05:32was delighted.
05:33He told his friends that he was most happy because having the cast off meant he could
05:37fly planes on his own.
05:39It was an enthusiasm not shared by his friends or doctors, who all counseled Kennedy to wait
05:44until he was more fully healed.
05:46Some of that worry came from Kennedy's inexperience as a pilot.
05:49According to the podcast Fatal Voyage, The Death of JFK Jr., while he was licensed to
05:53fly by 1999, he was still unskilled in monitoring instruments.
05:57On top of that, he would need to foot-operate his plane's pedals.
06:01It's been speculated that Kennedy's injury and inexperience both contributed to his fatal
06:05plane crash, though a fellow pilot disputed that theory based on Kennedy's movement before
06:10the flight.
06:11At the time of his last flight, John F. Kennedy Jr. was a licensed private pilot, but he had
06:16only held that license since April of the previous year, and his credentials were not
06:19complete in July 1999.
06:22He was not yet qualified to fly solely by instruments.
06:25According to historian John Hanke on the Fatal Voyage podcast, Kennedy was in the process
06:29of getting an instrument rating before his death, having passed the relevant exams.
06:33His flight instructor, Lloyd Howard, said,
06:35I think it gave him freedom.
06:38Freedom from press, freedom from pictures, freedom from people wanting autographs.
06:43But air crash investigator Richard Bender told Fatal Voyage that Kennedy still wasn't
06:47solid enough on the instruments to always know which one to look at, and his 37 logged
06:52flight hours in his private plane weren't enough to qualify for personal liability insurance
06:56— a fact that, according to Edward Klein's The Kennedy Curse, Kennedy kept even from
07:00his own wife.
07:02Kennedy wasn't intimidated by his limited experience.
07:04Editor Barry Levine told Fatal Voyage that flying was Kennedy's great passion and release
07:09from cares.
07:10He got into flying every weekend with his dog Friday, and he enjoyed flying his planes
07:14without a co-pilot.
07:16Kennedy was quick to tell friends after getting the ankle cast off on July 15th that he could
07:20now fly solo, but delaying getting the cast off might have required that he enlisted a
07:24co-pilot for the trip up to Martha's Vineyard.
07:26Some also think that Kennedy, underqualified in reading instruments, wasn't capable of
07:30landing his plane safely when it ran into haze.
07:34The Kennedy name is inextricably linked to politics and American life, but John F. Kennedy
07:38Jr. did not go into the family business other than through the magazine George.
07:42In the final months of his life, though, the political itch seemed to have reached him.
07:46According to biographer Stephen M. Gillen, though Kennedy was keen to find his own identity
07:51and felt no compunction to become a politician, he still began exploring a run for the U.S.
07:55Senate in March 1999.
07:57New York was about to have an open seat, but the precarious state of George magazine,
08:01the poor health of his cousin Anthony Radziwill, and tensions within the family all discouraged
08:05him.
08:06And though his father had served in the Senate, Kennedy was not attracted to the legislative
08:10branch, said Gillen.
08:11He was interested in perhaps running for New York governor down the road.
08:14We all know that politics is a tough profession these days, but I think a very rewarding one.
08:20And after that, perhaps 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Gillen has claimed that Kennedy, upon
08:25seeing George H.W. Bush's inauguration with an unnamed friend, talked about going home,
08:30as in the White House, where Kennedy had grown up as a child.
08:33If a presidential run wasn't immediately in the cards, it might have factored into Kennedy's
08:37long-term planning.
08:39While John F. Kennedy Jr. was regularly in the spotlight, his older sister Caroline was
08:43a much quieter presence in American life.
08:46Never one to court the press or attract them in the way her other family members did, Caroline
08:50worked with the American Ballet Theater and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
08:54Though she would later become a U.S. ambassador, she mostly avoided politics in her younger
08:58years.
08:59Her social circle included the Clintons and Hollywood stars, and she was, for a time,
09:03close to her brother.
09:04Edward Klein speculated in The Kennedy Curse that John Jr. took after the Bouvier family
09:09more in looks, but the Kennedys in temperament, outgoing and daring, while the reverse was
09:14true with Caroline.
09:15As they entered adulthood, tensions started to develop between these siblings of such
09:19different attitudes.
09:20Caroline reportedly didn't think much of George Magazine, which John Jr. took personally,
09:25and neither of them liked the other's spouse.
09:27According to Stephen M. Gillen's biography, America's Reluctant Prince, Caroline's husband,
09:32Ed Schlossberg, inserted himself into Kennedy family decisions in a way that irked John
09:36Jr.
09:37And Caroline allegedly got off on the wrong foot with John Jr.'s wife, Carolyn, on their
09:41wedding day.
09:42In their final months, John Jr. and Bessette barely spoke with Caroline.
09:46Such family tension was hard, and John Jr. and Caroline had tentatively begun to mend
09:51fences, but both counted on having more time to do so.
09:54On July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr. took to the air to attend the wedding of his cousin,
10:00Rory.
10:01There was a question in the days immediately before the flight whether John Jr.'s wife,
10:05Carolyn, would attend as well.
10:06Husband and wife were alleged not to be on speaking terms, and according to Edward Klein's
10:10The Kennedy Curse, Carolyn was also reluctant to go anywhere near John Jr.'s flying hobby.
10:15Klein wrote that Carolyn's sister, Lauren, persuaded her sister to join her husband at
10:19the wedding and join the flight party herself.
10:21The plan was for Lauren to get dropped off at Martha's Vineyard.
10:24John Jr. and Carolyn would then fly to Hyannisport, to the Kennedy compound, for the wedding.
10:29The flight was late in getting off the ground, and it was contrary to other flights out of
10:33New Jersey that night, which were called off on account of poor visibility.
10:37John Jr.'s plane never arrived at Martha's Vineyard.
10:40Tragically, it crashed into the sea, killing all three on board.
10:44The accident was later ruled to be due to pilot error, leading to an outpouring of grief
10:48from around the globe.
10:49I want to express our family's support and offer our prayers and those of all Americans.