The Kennedy family has broken the silence it has maintained since JFK Junior's crash, saying that it was filled with "unspeakable grief and sadness." In a statement, Senator Edward Kennedy said that the family loved John deeply, and that his loss leaves an enormous void in all their lives. He called John a " shining light in all our lives, and in the lives of the nation and the world that first came to know him when he was a little boy." He said that he was the adored son of two proud parents, whom he now joins with God.
New radar tracking information, which has just been released showed that the small Piper Saratoga aircraft, in which John, his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and her sister Lauren Bessette perished on Friday, plummeted uncontrollably toward the sea. Investigators said that the plane dived 1,100 feet in the seconds before it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere off the island of Martha's Vineyard.
The speed of the ill-fated plane's descent was equal to 4,700 feet per minute, far faster than previous information had indicated, National Transportation Safety Board chief investigator Robert Pearce told reporters at Otis. Aviation experts said that the rapid rate of descent could mean that Kennedy lost control of the plane, or that the aircraft stalled and spiraled into the sea. But their officials refused to characterise the descent as abnormal. Ships continued to sweep the ocean south of Martha's Vineyard with sonar through the night in the hope of finding pieces of the plane that might provide clues to what caused the crash.
