Heart-wrenching new details about JFK Jr’s burial at sea have been revealed for the very first time – 25 years after the former President’s son was laid to rest alongside his wife Carolyn during the incredibly secretive ceremony.
In a new book JFK Jr: An Intimate Oral Biography, by RoseMarie Terenzio and Liz McNeil, the two Navy chaplains who presided over the burial speak out about the event – which was, at the time, shrouded in mystery and kept largely hidden from the public.
Chaplain Barry C Black discloses that he personally carried the urns containing the ashes of both John and his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. A Roman Catholic priest carried Carolyn’s sister Lauren’s remains after all three perished in a tragic plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard on July 16, 1999.
‘I’ve officiated at over a hundred funerals,’ he says. ‘I have not seen such palpable grief anywhere else in my life.’
Unlike the mass held at the Church of St Thomas More on Manhattan’s Upper East Side – which was attended by celebrities and politicians, and was covered by hundreds of journalists – the scattering of the ashes was a purely family affair.
Heart-wrenching new details about former President John F. Kennedy’s son JFK Jr’s burial at sea have been revealed for the very first time (seen together in 1963)
JFK Jr and his wife Carolyn Besette-Kennedy (seen together in 1998) were both killed in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard in 1999, alongside her sister Lauren
Now, the two Navy chaplains who presided over their burial have shared intimate new details from the ceremony – recalling devastating grief his sister Caroline (seen together) displayed
Just 17 people were in attendance, including Ted Kennedy, John’s elder sister Caroline and her husband Ed, Bobby Kennedy, and Maria Shriver.
There was a single moment of controversy, recalls chaplain Louis Iasiello, explaining that civilians are generally not entitled to a burial at sea from a Naval vessel.
However, he adds: ‘President Clinton quickly put an end to that discussion. When the Commander in Chief says this is what’s going to happen, that’s exactly what happens.’
The ashes of John, Carolyn, and Lauren, were scattered off the destroyer USS Briscoe, anchored close to where they had lost their lives in a plane crash six days earlier.
‘When it came time to put the ashes in the water,’ says Black, ‘I first led the Bessettes down.’
As the ashes went into the water, they clumped together, he recalls, then, ‘like someone from Harry Potter touching it with a wand, the clump just disappeared.’
Next, he led John’s grief-stricken sister Caroline down the steps of the vessel. He says she touched the urn as if to signal that she wasn’t ready to let go of her brother so quickly.
‘I calmed her and we went down,’ he says. ‘I mean, oh my God, contorted with grief is not even an adequate description. I can still see her.
‘She put the ashes in. As the ashes were pouring, she reached her hand into the water to put some water back on her.’
He imagined her thinking: ‘I’m not going to let go of his hand.’
Another chaplain, William Petruska, then recalls how Teddy took Caroline in his arms as she came back up from the water. ‘They embraced for a good long while… He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw. It was such a grimace of pain.’
He adds: ‘We had taken three beautiful wreaths with us: red and white carnations with red roses. They were never used. One of the family members had a canvas bag with wild flowers. They each took some and threw them over the side as the ashes were scattered.
‘I noticed that members of the Bessette family threw envelopes into the water as well.’
The funeral was a star-studded affair, with attendees including Muhammad Ali
Maria Shriver and her then-husband Arnold Schwarzenegger attend the funeral
Senator Ted Kennedy (right, wearing sunglasses) and other members of the Kennedy family were taken to the USS Briscoe to scatter the ashes
The flag is raised to half mast aboard the Navy Destroyer USS Briscoe
Caroline was ‘contorted with grief… As the ashes were pouring, she reached her hand into the water to put some water back on her’
JFK Jr: An Intimate Oral Biography by RoseMarie Terenzio and Liz McNeil, is published by Gallery Books
John Kennedy Jr, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and Lauren Bessette died in a tragic plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard in July 1999.
JFK Jr was piloting the aircraft, and the book includes an in-depth examination of what might have happened in those final moments, based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigations.
‘If I were sitting down with a friend and they asked what happened to JFK Jr, here’s what I’d say,’ recounts the NTSB’s Jeff Guzzetti.
‘He took off just after sunset from New Jersey. I don’t think he intended on taking off at night, but it just worked out that way.’
As he followed the Connecticut and Rhode Island coastline, he probably had no horizon to follow, says Guzzetti, because it was dark, the weather was hazy, and he was over the ocean.
Those conditions would have required him to be trained in using his instruments – ‘however, he was not trained for instrument flying. He was trained to look outside to get his visual cues. There were no visual cues.’
Guzzetti believes he was on autopilot for most of the journey, but as he turned towards Martha’s Vineyard, he disengaged either on purpose or by accident. and his flying became erratic.
‘His flight path into the water is indicative of something called spatial disorientation,’ he says, describing how his inner ears would have been playing tricks with his sense of orientation.
‘Your inner ear says you’re turning to the left and you’re actually not. So you correct to the right, thinking that you’re leveling the airplane.’
Those actions had fatal consequences: ‘His flight path into the water is consistent with what is known as a graveyard spiral. The airplane makes a spiral nose-down, down, down to the grave, kind of like going down a drain.’
He believes the craft then went into one final turn before plunging, nose-down, into the Atlantic, killing all three passengers instantly.
However, in her new book, Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed, DailyMail.com columnist Maureen Callahan proposes a stunning alternative theory that JFK Jr was, in fact, on a murder-suicide mission on the night he and his passengers died.
‘He had a death wish,’ Callahan writes, ‘not only for himself, but the women in his life. He had more near-misses in his teens and twenties than the public knew.’
JFK Jr: An Intimate Oral Biography by RoseMarie Terenzio and Liz McNeil, is published by Gallery Books
