John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr. (November 25, 1960 - July 16, 1999) was an American lawyer, journalist, publisher, and sex symbol. He was the son of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.
John Jr., graduated from Brown University in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in history. In 1989, he earned a law degree from New York University Law School. He spoke at the 1988 Democratic Party convention in Atlanta, Georgia. He was an assistant district attorney for New York, New York from 1989 to 1993. In 1995, he founded George, a glossy politics-as-lifestyle monthly which ceased publication in 2001.
He married Carolyn Bessette in 1996.
In 1999, Kennedy was killed, along with his wife and his sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette, when the aircraft he was piloting, a Piper Saratoga, crashed in the sea en route from Essex County Airport in Fairfield, New Jersey, to Martha's Vineyard, where his family has a vacation house.
Kennedy had 310 hours of flight experience, including 55 hours of night flying experience, and 36 hours on the high-performance Piper Saratoga, and had completed about half of an instrument training course. The National Transportation Safety Board investigation found no evidence of mechanical malfunction in airframe, systems, avionics, or engine, and determined that the probable cause was "the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation. Factors in the accident were haze, and the dark night." The report noted that spatial disorientation as a result of continued VFR flight into adverse weather conditions is a regular cause of fatal aircraft accidents.
See also: Kennedy family
