Carolyn Jeanne Bessette-Kennedy (January 7, 1966 – July 16, 1999) was the wife of John F. Kennedy, Jr., the son of assassinated U.S. President John F. Kennedy. 

Background

Bessette was born in White Plains, Westchester County, New York to Dr. William J. Bessette and Ann Messina Freeman, an administrator in the New York public school system. She grew up in affluent Greenwich, Connecticut, and attended St. Mary's High School, where she was voted an "All-Around Beautiful Person." After graduating from Boston University in 1988, she went to work at a Calvin Klein store in Boston.

With her height and cool blonde looks, Bessette occasionally worked as a model. She worked as a saleswoman at the Calvin Klein store in Boston before being transferred to New York, where she worked as a publicist and met John F. Kennedy, Jr. The attractive couple became a popular paparazzi target, with gossip columns detailing where they ate and shopped and even covered the arguments they had. Photographers waited outside the couple's Tribeca apartment to snap photographs. Bessette was reportedly very uncomfortable with the media frenzy and the repeated comparisons to her mother-in-law Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She married her husband on September 21, 1996 on Cumberland Island, Georgia in a historic Baptist church, where their wedding was private and secret in an effort to elude the media.

Death

On the evening of July 16, 1999, Bessette departed Essex County Airport in Fairfield Township, New Jersey in a Piper Saratoga light aircraft piloted by her husband to attend a wedding for Kennedy's cousin Rory in Hyannis, Massachusetts. Her older sister, Lauren flew with them and was to be dropped off at Martha's Vineyard, before the couple continued on to their final destination. The plane never arrived at Martha's Vineyard, and its wreck was discovered four days later. Although the cause of the crash was never determined, the NTSB concluded that a confluence of circumstances, including poor visibility at nightfall, Kennedy's relative inexperience in flying in these conditions, and his recently-healed broken leg, caused him to lose his bearings. The plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, approximately seven miles off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, killing all three passengers onboard. Their ashes were scattered at sea a week later.

Legacy

In 2005, Bessette's close friend Carole Radziwill published her memoirs, containing fond memories of John, Carolyn, and Lauren, including her memories of the plane crash that took place just weeks before her husband's death from cancer. Before marrying her husband, Bessette was in a relationship with model Michael Bergin, who wrote a memoir about the couple's relationship The Other Man, which was published in 2004.