Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy is the topic of two latest books that, in other ways, seek to counteract the image of her as a superficial, vain, cocaine-addicted “witch” who made the last months of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s life a living hell.
In fact, when it comes to egocentrism, it’d even have been the opposite way around: the one son of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis comes across as demanding, ruthless, narcissistic and never exactly brilliant in a minimum of certainly one of the books.
What is undisputed, nonetheless, is that “America’s Prince” mustn’t have been flying alone on the July night of 1999 when his small Piper-Saratoga plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean and he, Bessette-Kennedy and her sister Lauren Bessette were killed.
The National Transportation Safety Board blamed pilot error for the crash off Martha's Vineyard, saying Kennedy Jr., 38, had no experience flying at night without an instructor and was not yet qualified to fly using instruments alone, versus visual cues from the window. The New York Times reported in 2000.
A protracted-held belief in regards to the night of the crash, refuted in each books, is that 33-year-old Bessette-Kennedy by some means caused the accident by leaving her husband and sister waiting on the airport while she had her toenails redone 3 times by a podiatrist.
All three arrived late on the airport in New Jersey because they were stuck in traffic, writes Elizabeth Beller in “Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.” in accordance with PeopleThe plan was for Kennedy to drop Lauren Bessette off in Martha's Vineyard before flying along with his wife to a Kennedy family wedding in Hyannis Port.
By the night of the crash, Bessette-Kennedy regretted the trip and having her husband fly her to the marriage, in accordance with the book “Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed” by Maureen Callahan, a columnist for the Daily Mail.
“I don't trust him,” she told family and friends, in accordance with an excerpt from Callahan's book. within the Daily Mail.
Bessette-Kennedy didn’t consider her husband of three years “had the patience, diligence or attention span to be a good pilot,” Callahan wrote. He didn’t take his training seriously and didn’t have nearly enough flight hours to fly solo, “and yet he regularly broke the rules and smuggled in solo flights when he was supposed to have an instructor with him.”
No one admonished him or threatened to revoke his training certificate, Callahan continued. “No, John was simply a Kennedy, a villain like his beloved father,” Callahan said.
Kennedy was also recovering from a broken ankle and would wish months of physical therapy, Callahan wrote. His forged was removed the day before the flight.
Kennedy, nonetheless, swore that his doctor had cleared him to fly that night, Callahan said. A flight instructor had also offered to fly with him that night, but Kennedy said “he wanted to do it alone,” the NTSB said in its report on the crash.
Callahan's book suggests that Kennedy can have had “a death wish” on the time of the crash. He was at all times “reckless.”
In 1986, he nearly killed his first serious girlfriend, a lady named Christina, when he took her kayaking within the open ocean off Jamaica, without life jackets and with none experience navigating the open sea, Callahan wrote. During the ordeal, Kennedy and Christina were nearly crushed against a boulder by strong currents, crashed onto a beach and were submerged underwater in several places.
“We could have died,” Christina told Kennedy, in accordance with Callahan, once they finally reached land.
“Yes,” he said. “But what an exit.”
Before their fatal flight, Kennedy and his wife were having problems of their marriage, in accordance with Beller's book. They had began dating in 1994, before his mother's death, and married in a small, private ceremony in 1996.
Kennedy and Bessette-Kennedy, a former public relations agent for Calvin Klein, had begun marriage counseling as he struggled with the approaching death of his beloved cousin Anthony Radziwell and pressures at his political magazine George, Beller wrote, in accordance with People. Meanwhile, Besette-Kennedy was having trouble being within the highlight, with photographers consistently camped outside the door of her Tribeca apartment constructing.
“They were both very understanding of what the other was going through, but they were also getting a little impatient,” Beller told People. She said it was a matter of, 'When is George going to be OK? When do we’ve to stop going out every night to advertise the magazine or search for advertisers?' And (John) thought, 'When are you going to have the ability to handle the press, since it's not going to go away?'”
However, there were also reports that Bessette-Kennedy had an affair with Calvin Klein model Michael Bergin, which Bergin himself admitted in his 2005 book, The Other Man, according to People. Vanity Fair also reported in 2014 that Bessette-Kennedy's “insecurity fueled a necessity for control and manipulation; her frequent cocaine use made her paranoid.” She was also jealous of his older sister Caroline and his business partner George, Michael Berman.
Callahan wrote that Kennedy had indeed moved out of their Tribeca loft and may have gotten back together with his ex-girlfriend, Daryl Hannah. He also told friends that his wife was “crazy,” that she had therapy sessions five times a week, that she was a severe drug addict, and that she refused to have sex with him.
Beller believes that Kennedy and Besette-Kennedy were still trying to maintain their marriage and that is why she agreed to accompany him to the family wedding.
“I do know (Carolyn) didn't need to go to the marriage,” Baller told People.
But Bessette-Kennedy may also have felt pressured to go because Kennedy had told her the press would “attack her” if he went to the wedding alone, Beller said.
Callahan said Kennedy needed his wife as a companion. He was also under pressure because his magazine, which attempted to combine pop culture and politics, was “collapsing.” George went from being one of the most successful magazines in history to a spectacular failure, Callahan wrote.
The last thing Kennedy wanted was press speculation about his marriage. Kennedy's assistant strongly advised Bessette-Kennedy to accompany him on the flight because “otherwise the media would report that they were getting a divorce.”
Bessette-Kennedy knew she would be blamed if her marriage failed, Callahan wrote. She wanted out of the marriage but felt trapped. “I can't break up,” she said, according to Callahan. “I’d live in a trailer park and go crazy and say, 'I used to be once married to JFK Jr.'”
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