Nearly two decades after the death of cousin-in-law John F. Kennedy Jr. and best friend Carolyn Bessette in a plane crash, Carole Radziwill has opened up about her final conversation with Bessette.
The “Real Housewives of New York” personality detailed the fateful phone call with Bessette for HLN’s “How It Really Happened,” in an episode airing Friday centered on the doomed 1999 flight.
“Carolyn called me from the plane right before they were taking off. And I think it was probably a little bit after 8 o’clock,” Radziwill described, via a clip obtained by the Daily Mail. “I don’t remember anything really important from that conversation. I didn’t certainly think it would be the last time I would speak to my friend.
“I remember at the end she said, you know, ‘I love you.’ And, I don’t know, for some reason I didn’t say ‘I love you’ back and that always stuck with me. And she said ‘I’ll call you when I land.’ And then that was the last I ever heard from her or anyone.”
Radziwill, 53, married Kennedy’s cousin, Anthony Radziwill, in 1994. She planned to see the couple the night of the crash, as they were set to arrive on Martha’s Vineyard ahead of Rory Kennedy’s wedding. The late president’s son, 38, and Bessette, 33, never made it to their final destination.
“The phone rang at midnight, and I got just this sick feeling in my stomach, and it was John’s friend Pinky, and he said, you know, ‘Are they there with you? I’m at the airport and they’re not here,'” Radziwill recounted. “And then, and then I thought, ‘Oh. Oh s–t.’ And I just bolted out of bed.
“One call led to another to another to another, and I called the Hyannis Airport many times, because I assumed they had made a mistake and the whole time I’m calling John’s friend and screaming into the phone, ‘Please, you have to find somebody in John’s family, to tell them what’s going on.’ ”
A journalist at ABC News for 15 years, Radziwill hoped to find an answer immediately.
“I spent 15 years as a journalist and producer at ABC News, and I thought, ‘OK, I need to figure out this story and solve it somehow. I need to figure out where they are, because they’re out there somewhere,'” she said.
“It was probably between 2 or 3 when I realized I had to call the Coast Guard and report John’s plane missing,” she added. “I said, ‘My cousin’s missing.’ And, and then he took the name, and I think there was a little bit of a, like, a gasp on the other end of the phone.”
Kennedy, Bessette and her sister, Lauren, were scheduled to arrive at Martha’s Vineyard after taking off from Essex County Airport in New Jersey on the evening of July 16, 1999. Parts of the plane were later discovered on the ocean floor, and the three bodies were removed from the site on July 21.
The National Transportation Safety Board determined the cause of the crash was pilot error as Kennedy had little experience flying his aircraft alone at night.
Amid the loss of her dear friend and family, Radziwill’s heartbreak continued after husband Anthony succumbed to cancer less than a month later.