The Fate of JFK Jr. & Carolyn Bessette’s Bodies Revealed After the Kennedys Fought Over What to Do with Their Remains Following Their Fatal Plane Crash
Ryan Murphy’s Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette has now ended the way we always knew it had to end, with the deaths of JFK Jr., Carolyn Bessette, and her sister, Lauren. And with the final episode of the show that examined the life of the couple now out there, there have been a lot of questions about the accident that claimed their lives.
What exactly happened? How did they die? And where were they buried? Here’s everything we know.
Where Are JFK Jr & Carolyn Bessette Buried?
JFK Jr., his wife Carolyn, and her sister Lauren all perished on July 16, 1999, when the small plane JFK Jr. was piloting crashed into the ocean. The couple was on its way to Rory Kennedy’s wedding. Navy divers recovered the three bodies on July 21, 1999. Autopsies concluded they all died upon impact.
A day after that, on July 22, 1999, the ashes of all three were scattered into the waters off Martha’s Vineyard. According to CNN, they were spread in the vicinity of the plane crash, about seven miles off the Massachusetts island. The burial at sea took place on a U.S. Navy destroyer, the USS Briscoe. 17 members of the Kennedy, Bessette, and Freeman families were present.
But before this funeral, there were discussions about the funeral. In the book JFK Jr.: An Intimate Oral Biography, its authors, Liz McNeil and RoseMarie Terenzio, revealed that there were disagreements about what to do.
Reportedly, Ted Kennedy wanted his nephew to be buried in the family plot, in Brookline, Mass. However, Lauren wasn’t a Kennedy, so she couldn’t be buried there. And the mother of Carolyn and Lauren, Ann Freeman did not want her daughters separated. This is when a meeting was held about the funeral, with Caroline Kennedy’s husband Ed Schlossberg and Ted Kennedy’s wife Victoria “Vicki” Reggie representing the Kennedys.
“Vicki was trying to convince them to bury John and Carolyn in Brookline,” Terenzio wrote, adding that she was “inserting herself” in the decision, which the Bessette family found “disrespectful.”
When cremation was discussed as a possibility, Terenzio, who was JFK Jr.’s former assistant, says Caroline Kennedy called and asked her “how Catholic” he was, to make sure spreading the ashes would “be the right thing.”
“I said, ‘Caroline, I think you should cremate them, and they should all stay together. I think John would want that,’ ” Terenzio wrote in the book. “She wanted to honor her brother.”
At the time the Bessette family shared the following statement, “John F. Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette were true soul mates, and we hope to honor them in death in the simple manner in which they chose to live their lives. We take solace in the thought that together they will comfort Lauren for eternity,” the statement read, according to The New York Times.
For people taking what happened in the show as gospel, it’s important to remember that the Kennedy family has criticized the show. “Well, if you want to know someone who’s never met anyone in my family, knows nothing about us, talk to Ryan Murphy. I would just want people who do watch the show to watch it with one letter in mind, and that’s a capital F for fiction,” Jack Schlossberg, JFK Jr.’s nephew, told CBS News.
