‘Murder-Suicide Mission’: Stunning New Claims 'Dark Forces' Drove JFK Jr.'s 'Death Wish' in Plane Crash With Wife Carolyn Bessette
June 18 2024, Published 3:00 p.m. ET
John F. Kennedy Jr. may have struggled with a "death wish" driven by dark forces that led him to crash his plane in a shocking "murder-suicide" mission, RadarOnline.com has learned.
Kennedy, his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and her sister Lauren Bessette all died when Kennedy crashed the small plane he was still learning to pilot off the coast of Martha's Vineyard on their way to a family wedding in Cape Cod in July 1999.
"John's carelessness was rivalled only by his recklessness," The Daily Mail columnist Maureen Callahan claims in her sensational new book Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed.
"He had a death wish — not only for himself, but the women in his life. He had more near-misses in his teens and twenties than the public knew," Callahan writes.
"Speeding, swimming too far out into the ocean, driving recklessly onto pavements or while high on pot, skiing in white-out conditions, acting like an expert in all sports when he was really just an amateur — there was little John wouldn't dare, and he bullied almost everyone in his life to be as wild as he was."
Kennedy reportedly "nearly killed his first serious girlfriend, Christina" during a kayaking trip in the open sea off Jamaica without life jackets or proper safety equipment in 1986.
"Crash-landing on a remote beach, John went into a trance. 'Don't tell Mummy', he said. 'Don't tell Mummy'. The weird thing was the look in his eyes, Christina later wrote," according to Callahan. "It was almost as if he was turned on. Dying, getting that close to it, seemed a high for him."
"We could have died," Christina told him after they nearly died again on their way back to the mainland. "Yeah. But what a way to go," he allegedly responded.
Over a decade later, Kennedy and Bessette's marriage was in shambles, and he had reportedly moved out of their home. But he convinced her to fly with him to his cousin's wedding to avoid public speculation about divorce, and her sister agreed to come to help keep the peace between them.
Just six weeks before the fatal plane crash, Kennedy had broken his ankle in a paragliding accident, and he apparently showed up at the airport on crutches, carrying an open bottle of wine.
Although other pilots warned him about poor visibility conditions that night, Kennedy insisted on going ahead with the trip and refused to bring a flight instructor with him.
"At 8:38 PM, he was given clearance to take off in his Piper Saratoga, despite defying one of aviation's most basic rules: he hadn't filed a flight plan. Once aloft, he defied another and cut off all communication with air traffic control," Callahan writes.
"Less than 20 minutes later, Carolyn and Lauren strapped into their back seats, John was on a collision course with a commercial airliner. The pilots of American Airlines flight 1484, with 128 passengers and six crew members aboard, tried to reach John but got radio silence. They sent an emergency message to ground control, who couldn't make contact with him either."
"Without knowing which way the clueless pilot of this small prop plane was going, the American Airlines pilots had to divert from their flight path to avoid a fatal mid-air collision."
"John kept on climbing. At 5,500 feet, despite the fog and worsening visibility, he didn't turn on his autopilot. Nor did he hug the lit-up coastline," Callahan says. "Instead, he turned right and went out over the Atlantic, and before he knew it the sea and sky had turned into one seamless black mass and he couldn't tell up from down."
"Now would have been the time to start using his instruments, but he couldn't. Now would have been the time to radio ground control, but he did not," she continues.
"The question is unavoidable: Was JFK Jr. flirting with murder-suicide that night? His marriage was in tatters, as was his magazine. His sister Caroline, upset that John was trying to stop her from auctioning off their mother's possessions — Jackie's deathbed suggestion — was barely speaking to him."
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"I don't trust him," Bessette reportedly told family members, friends, and a waitress at her favorite restaurant after reluctantly agreeing to accompany him on the doomed flight.
An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found Kennedy solely responsible for the crash. Carolyn and Lauren Bessette's mother, Ann Freeman, received millions in a wrongful-death settlement against his estate.