What Remains: A Memoir of JFK Jr.

December 15, 1996: Angie Coqueran was inside the Toyota car. She was the paparazzo who, along with her business partner Ken Katz, filmed and photographed John Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette’s fight in Central Park in February, and they were paid a rumoured sum of $250,000 for the footage. These two paps were the ones who basically camped outside their apartment and they were the reason why John started photographing the paparazzi license plates, because they just wouldn’t leave, no matter what (John even threatened with harassment lawsuits to no avail). So one day, John saw Coqueran in her car there near their apartment again and flipped, jumped on the hood of the car and allegedly screamed repeatedly: “I’m going to get you.” He also grabbed hold of her coat through her window and tried to get her car keys. Carolyn tried to pull John away and started crying. Then Ken Katz came (the guy in the last pics) and they confronted him, saying: “Why the hell don’t the two of you leave us alone?” Ken Katz added that he apologized to John and Carolyn and he left with Coqueran.

On February 25, 1996, John Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette had become involved in a publicized fight. Photographers Ken Katz and his associate Angie Coqueran captured much of the sequence. "It was a Sunday morning," Katz recalled, "and John & Carolyn had gone to the Tribeca Grill for brunch. They had their dog Friday with them. When they emerged from the restaurant, you could see and hear Carolyn yelling at John. She was saying how cold she felt, she went on and on. So John told her to go home and get another jacket. He waited for her with the dog in front of the restaurant. She must have been gone for a good half hour. When she returned, she was wearing one of his jackets. John seemed to ask her what had taken her so long. Then they hopped in a cab and headed up to Central Park. We followed the cab and caught up with them there. They appeared to have calmed down. They were talking back and forth when Carolyn suddenly ran off, leaving John with the dog. He looked pissed, but he followed her steps. They were talking again and without a warning, she belted him with a closed fist. She hit him somewhere between the chest and shoulder. John went nuts and grabbed her by the throat. He then grabbed her hand and pulled the engagement ring off her finger, storming off with the ring. Shortly after, he turned around, returned to her side and they began yelling again. Carolyn looked dazed. John looked sad. They walked for a while, they hugged each other and reconciled."

 

Adele Edisen (2012): Years ago on the Deep Politics 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 Dark Legacy 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 Vineyard. They had planned to go to Hyannis Port to spend the weekend at family wedding festivities. From my readings of books written by John's friends, associates, colleagues, and his cousin's wife, Carole Radziwill, I find it entirely possible that John did have a flight instructor with him. He was not totally familiar with his 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 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 George Magazine spoke with him on that Friday afternoon before he left for the airport in New 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 Vineyard 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. 

Carole Radziwill 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 instructor 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 deranged 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 perpetrators had plenty of time to accomplish this, as the wreckage was not found for a few days. 

However, other investigators have suggested 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 Vineyard Airport. According to the National Transportation 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 DelaRosa told me that he thought it had been done with a "pressure bomb". Investigators Sherman Skolnick, Scott Meyers, and John DiNaerdo have concluded similarly on this topic. Lisa Pease believes there are some very suspicious circumstances in this case. To my knowledge, Jim DiEugenio feels pretty much the same way as Lisa. Author Donald Jeffries became completely convinced that John Kennedy Jr.'s plane was sabotaged, and he was killed. 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 Tuesday when the wreckage was found. According to John Hankey, the Pentagon was brought in to do the searching 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 Vineyard toward New York. The site of the crash was about seven miles east of Martha's Vineyard and the exact latitude and longitude coordinates of the plane just before it crashed had been radioed by John Kennedy to the Martha's Vineyard 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. Source: educationforum.ipbhost.com