Martha Stewart has revealed the haunting warning she gave John F. Kennedy Jr. just days before the 1999 plane crash that killed him, his wife and her sister.
Stewart, 85, said she urged JFK Jr. to bring a co-pilot on the flight — advice she says she has thought about countless times since the tragedy.
President John F. Kennedy’s only son was 38 when the small plane he was piloting plunged into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha’s Vineyard on July 16, 1999.
Kennedy was killed along with his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, 33, and her older sister, Lauren Bessette, 34.
Stewart opened up about her final conversation with Kennedy during Tuesday’s premiere of The Real Housewives of New York City while speaking with her makeup artist and new cast member Daisy Toye.
“I was with John-John the Monday before the Friday when they died. He called me,” Stewart recalled.
At the time, Kennedy was running George, his politics and lifestyle magazine, while Stewart was overseeing Martha Stewart Living.
According to Stewart, Kennedy reached out because he was struggling with the magazine and wanted her advice.
“He called me and he said he’s in trouble,” Stewart said.
“I said, of course, anything you want. We had a very nice dinner.”
But it was what happened at the end of that dinner that Stewart says has stayed with her for more than 27 years.
She asked Kennedy what he planned to do that weekend.
“He said, ‘Oh, we’re going to a wedding in Martha’s Vineyard, and I’m taking my wife and her sister,’” Stewart recalled.
That prompted her to ask who would be flying the plane.
Kennedy told her he would be the pilot.
“I said, ‘You have a co-pilot, right?’” Stewart remembered asking.
According to Stewart, Kennedy replied, “No, I don’t need a co-pilot.”
Days later, he was dead.
“I’ve thought about that so many times that I told him to get a co-pilot,” Stewart said. “I feel sorry.”
Stewart brought up the chilling memory after Toye asked what she had been watching on television.
“Love Story, of course,” Stewart replied, referring to Ryan Murphy’s recent FX drama about Kennedy and Bessette.
The nine-episode series, starring Paul Anthony Kelly as Kennedy and Sarah Pidgeon as Bessette, was inspired by Elizabeth Beller’s book Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.
The show explored the couple’s intense romance, whirlwind courtship and heavily scrutinized marriage.
Kennedy and Bessette secretly married in 1996, but Bessette remained intensely private and never gave an interview before her death.
On the night of the crash, Kennedy was flying the couple and Lauren from New Jersey toward Massachusetts.
They were heading to the Cape Cod area ahead of the wedding of Kennedy’s cousin Rory Kennedy and Mark Bailey.
The National Transportation Safety Board later concluded that the probable cause of the crash was Kennedy’s failure to maintain control of the airplane during a nighttime descent over water because of spatial disorientation.
Investigators also cited haze and the dark night as contributing factors.
A massive search followed the disappearance.
The wreckage was finally located on the afternoon of July 21, 1999, five days after the crash.
Navy divers recovered the bodies from the ocean floor, and they were transported to the county medical examiner’s office.
Autopsies determined that Kennedy, Bessette and Lauren had all died on impact.
More than two decades later, Stewart says one of her final exchanges with Kennedy still haunts her — especially the question she asked him about bringing another pilot aboard.
New episodes of The Real Housewives of New York City air Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Bravo and stream the following day on Peacock.
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