John F. Kennedy, Jr.

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John F. Kennedy Jr. (November 25, 1960 July 16, 1999) was a lawyer, journalist, and magazine publisher. He was a son of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and a younger brother of former Ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy. On July 16, 1999, Kennedy departed from Fairfield, New Jersey at the controls of his Piper Saratoga light aircraft. He was traveling with his wife Carolyn and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette to attend the wedding of his cousin Rory Kennedy at Martha's Vineyard. Kennedy had checked in with the control tower at the Martha's Vineyard Airport, but the plane was reported missing after it failed to arrive on schedule. On July 18, a Coast Guard admiral declared an end to hope that Kennedy, his wife and her sister could be found alive. The fragments of Kennedy's plane were found by the NOAA vessel Rude using side-scan sonar. The next day, Navy divers descended into the 62 °F water. The divers found part of the shattered plane strewn over a broad area of seabed 120 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. The search ended in the late afternoon of July 21, when the three bodies were recovered from the ocean floor by Navy divers and taken by motorcade to the county medical examiner's office. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that pilot error was the probable cause of the crash: "Kennedy's failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation." (AP Photo)