When John F Kennedy Jr lost control of his Piper Saratoga II on the night of July 16, 1999, Captain W Russell ‘Russ’ Webster was one of the first on the scene.
The crash – seven and a quarter miles off the southwest tip of Martha’s Vineyard – killed Kennedy, his wife, Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren, instantly, the wreckage settling 116 feet beneath the surface on the ocean floor.
As it happened in his area of responsibility as Coast Guard Commander of Group Woods Hole on the western edge of Cape Cod, Webster served as Incident Commander for Operations of the grueling five-day mission – the largest search-and-rescue operation for private citizens in a small-aircraft crash in US history.
Twenty-seven years later, his full account of those days is detailed through The Last Flight: The Untold Story of the Search for JFK Jr and the Race Against the Atlantic, written with his historian wife Theresa Mitchell Webster.
In this exclusive excerpt, he describes how the Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Navy worked together to find the plane wreck site. Then, after nearly calling off the search for its passengers, they undertook the heartbreaking and extremely delicate mission to recover the son of a revered, assassinated president and his passengers, and respectfully bury the three victims at sea.
Senator Ted Kennedy, in a red-and-white-striped short-sleeved polo shirt and a life jacket, watches intently as the divers descend, his face inscrutable.
His adamant request is that Navy divers raise John, Carolyn, and Lauren at the same time – that way his nephew isn’t perceived as receiving special treatment, even in death.
Once at the wreck, the divers are on a strict timetable. Walking the Atlantic floor stirs up silt, further compromising low visibility. But sunrays filtering through the 116-foot water column provide a bit of natural light as they descend into the Atlantic.
JFK Jr and his wife Carolyn were killed instantly in the crash
Wreckage of the single-engine Saratoga settled 116 feet beneath the surface on the ocean floor
Ted Kennedy aboard the USS Grasp on Wednesday morning, July 21, 1999, being briefed by Lieutenant Commander Eric Anderson
JFK Jr is on his side on the ocean floor near his wrecked Saratoga.
The divers, with care and reverence, lift his remains and bring him to where the body bags are stowed on the Navy’s salvage basket.
It is then that they discover that Kennedy’s legs are missing – or that’s what they report up the chain, according to retired Navy diver Josh Benjamins.
Whatever the circumstance, the divers still must do their job.
There is little light 116 feet below the surface, and divers can hardly see. But skilled as they are, they undo the tape affixing the rolled-up body bags to the basket. Next, they unroll one of the bags, laying it flat on the seafloor. The zipper extends the full length of the bag and is carefully opened.
Finally, once the top of the bag is opened, Kennedy is lowered into it. The bag is lifted and secured at four points.
It’s time to recover the Bessette sisters.
Together, the divers walk through rising sandy silt, again with limited light, toward the fuselage to retrieve Carolyn and Lauren.
Both women’s bodies are intact but badly damaged and horribly so. (Later, a witness at the autopsies, Frank Ciaccio of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), would only say that Carolyn and Lauren ‘were not facially recognizable.’)
The impact of the crash forced the backs of their seats to fold in forward over them.
The wreckage of JFK Jr’s plane was pulled from the water
The rescue team fought the tides and the weather to recover the beloved son of a slain president and his passengers (photographed: John and Carolyn in January 1997)
The divers pry the seats back, slowly, then cut the seat belts. They can’t tell which sister is which except by hair color. Lauren is a brunette, Carolyn an unmistakable blonde.
In a high-impact collision, this is not an unexpected outcome. Out of respect for the Kennedy and Bessette families, we leave further descriptions unsaid.
The first sister is lifted from her seat and, using a fireman’s shoulder carry, her diver exits the fuselage, slowly and with great care, and walks toward the salvage basket.
He places the deceased into a body bag.
He returns to the basket and, together with another diver, retrieves the second sister and places her into a body bag.
It’s zipped, slowly, methodically. Both sisters are finally secured, together at last.
The Navy divers prepare to surface.
But before the basket reaches the surface, the Navy’s Jeff Pauls informs Senator Kennedy about the suspected condition of his nephew’s remains.
The uncertainty unsettles all. Will the other half of his body – if the impact had indeed cut JFK Jr in half – rise on its own?
Then the dive team and the basket holding the deceased ascend into daylight. All three victims are together in the salvage basket, just as Senator Kennedy had insisted. For the first time in days, JFK Jr, Carolyn, and Lauren are above the waterline.
It will be a few hours before a second dive team descends to attempt to raise the fuselage and engine.
In Pocasset, north of Woods Hole, the afternoon slides into early evening.
Three men – and only those three – are in a small, cream-tiled room at the aging Barnstable County Hospital, site of the medical examiner’s office.
There, a pathologist, a Massachusetts State Police photographer, and Frank Ciaccio of the NTSB are present for the autopsies.
The medical examiner is methodical in his work during the four-hour autopsy procedures. There is very little talking; they discuss only what is essential.
Captain Webster coordinates the exit strategy meeting with Rear Admiral Richard M Larrabee (hand on chin), NTSB Chairman Jim Hall, and NTSB Managing Director Pete Goelz (leaning on table)
Deep sea Navy divers prepare to descend 116 feet to the Atlantic floor to retrieve the remains of John, Carolyn, and Lauren
As Coast Guard Commander of Group Woods Hole on the western edge of Cape Cod, Webster (left) served as Incident Commander for Operations
‘There is no other extenuating conversation going on in the room, compared to other cases that I have worked on,’ remembers Ciaccio. ‘In all my years of doing autopsies and everything, this was probably one of the most solemn I was ever a part of.’
It is determined that John, Carolyn, and Lauren were killed instantly from numerous traumatic injuries when the Saratoga slammed into the Atlantic.
Toxicology tests on JFK Jr reveal no alcohol or drug use.
‘You never want to make these things personal,’ adds Ciaccio. ‘But I think what made this very difficult for a lot of us is what we knew of the person. The two others in the room told me afterward they visualized this little boy saluting his father, the president, when he had died. It was very solemn. We knew what our job was.’
The question of the condition of Kennedy’s body has been answered yet remains controversial.
The story I was told at the time of the tragedy was that JFK Jr’s legs were folded up into his chest cavity, and this was revealed during the medical examiner’s autopsy.
Others concur. ‘The report I received was that he had been jammed up, so that he was basically compressed from the impact. But everything was there. It was just mashed together,’ says the USS Grasp’s commanding officer, Eric Anderson. [Grasp was the Navy rescue and salvage ship that led recovery operations.]
The NTSB’s forensic anthropologist, Frank Ciaccio, as noted before, witnessed the autopsies: ‘I will tell you 100 percent that [the report that Kennedy’s legs were missing] is false. His legs were not severed.
‘His legs were in fact fragile and hanging on by tendons and muscles. But they were not amputated at all.’
This account differs from that of Navy diver Josh Benjamins.
Benjamins is one of two divers on the second plunge a few hours after the three deceased were respectfully recovered.
According to Benjamins, he and his diving partner are briefed by the master diver during the safety check process. The two are tasked with retrieving the plane wreckage and the engine. Unofficially, however, they are to undertake ‘a quick search for the legs.’
Benjamins says the first set of divers did a quick check but didn’t see any body parts.
Benjamins and his partner descend. They first search for human limbs. Finding none, the divers set to work hoisting the fuselage and, minutes later, the engine.
A flag flies at half staff at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port on July 19, 1999
The public mourned the deaths, creating a makeshift shrine outside their apartment building in New York
Family members embrace at the burial service
Benjamins insists, even after all these years, that what he had heard that day was that ‘[Kennedy’s] torso up was all they had’ before he was placed in the body bag.
‘They both [the divers below] had actual physical hands on him, and they both had done multiple body jobs before. They went on record saying, “We know for sure that only his upper half was recovered,”‘ Benjamins will recall.
‘Somewhere the story changed,’ he says.
From Tuesday through Thursday, Navy divers continue to recover items at the wreck site, Benjamins recalls. This is to be the Navy’s last plunge in recovery efforts.
Always in pairs, this last set of divers goes for the larger remnants first: bits of wreckage like parts of the wings. When big items are placed in the salvage basket, the divers reach for smaller things, digging through sand and silt in the low light. They come up with watch bands and CDs and hats.
Something else is discovered: a chunk of scalp tightly wrapped around an air diving hose. Benjamins, then a mere 23 years old, is manning the communications microphone when word of the discovery reaches him.
‘Hey, Topside, we have this substantial size scalp with long blonde hair wrapped around our umbilical [the communications hose that acted like a lifeline to above]. What do we do?’
Benjamins recalls turning to a senior diver and relaying the message.
‘No, you didn’t,’ is the reply – in other words, no, you didn’t see anything of the kind.
The divers untangle the tissue and convey the locks to the currents.
‘So, in all our wisdom mindset, [we thought] what was the difference? They did a ceremony, they put them at sea, let them go to sea.’
The last physical part of Carolyn remaining on Earth had its own burial at sea the same day her ashes were conveyed to the nearby depths.
Taken from The Last Flight by Captain W Russell ‘Russ’ Webster and Theresa Mitchell Webster. Copyright © 2026 by William Russell Webster and Theresa Mitchell Webster. Used by permission of Harper Select, an imprint of HarperCollins Focus, LLC.
