Bodies retrieved as services set

Sen. Edward Kennedy, center, is accompanied by his sons as an unidentified victim's casket is loaded into a vehicle. [AP photo]

©New York Times

• Web tribute • Guestbook Flight school's newsletter mentioned training Kennedy Simulators re-create crash on desktop Sea burial is ancient ritual with modern popularity Divers brave hazards to bring closure

WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- On the fifth day of a search that framed a great national wake, a red sonar blotch led searchers to the bodies of John F. Kennedy Jr. and his two passengers, entombed in the shattered fuselage of his plane on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

Kennedy's remains were located before dawn by an underwater camera checking objects detected by sonar. Several hours later, Navy divers in heavy-duty gear adjusted the crumpled wreckage and found the passengers on his flight through black haze Friday night: his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and his sister-in-law Lauren Bessette.

The three bodies, found at 110 feet, about 7 miles off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, were raised about 4:30 p.m.

Just after noon, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, wearing shorts and looking exhausted, boarded a Coast Guard helicopter at his compound in nearby Hyannis Port and was taken to a Navy salvage ship, the USS Grasp, to witness the recovery. He was accompanied by his sons, Rep. Patrick Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy Jr.

Sen. Kennedy accompanied the bodies Wednesday night to the Coast Guard station in this fishing village at the toe of Cape Cod. Because the deaths were accidental, the bodies were to be autopsied before being turned over to the families.

The water temperature, about 52 degrees, helped preserve the bodies, an investigator told the New York Times in an interview.

John Kennedy, 38, was piloting a single-engine Piper Saratoga with his wife and sister-in-law aboard when it was lost in the Atlantic on Friday night. He had intended to drop Lauren Bessette off at Martha's Vineyard, then fly on to Hyannis Port for the wedding Saturday of his cousin, Rory Kennedy.

Kennedy family members, anxious to avoid having a spectacle made of John Kennedy's final resting place, are making preparations for him to be buried at sea in a Navy ceremony, a family adviser told the New York Times.

A Navy destroyer, the USS Briscoe, was headed to Cape Cod for Kennedy's burial at sea today, a senior government official told the Associated Press. The official did not know whether all three victims would be on board.

The family decided after much internal debate to hold an intimate memorial service, which will be closed to the media. The service will be held at a Roman Catholic Church that Kennedy's late mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, attended, the Church of St. Thomas More in Manhattan. The stone church seats just 350.

The service for Kennedy and his wife will be at 11 a.m. Friday. The White House said President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton will attend.

A candlelight memorial service for Lauren Bessette will be at 7 p.m. Saturday at Christ Church in Greenwich, Conn.

Capt. Christopher C. Murray, the Navy's superintendent of diving, said in an interview that Kennedy's body was in the largest of several pieces of wreckage found near each other. Murray said the divers made the recovery in difficult conditions; visibility was less than 8 feet, the current was strong and the ocean floor was littered with rocks and boulders.

Now that the bodies have been removed, divers will put slings around the pieces of plane before hoisting them on the Grasp's boom, which can lift 40 tons.

Clinton, who has talked continually with Kennedy family members since the plane was reported missing, said Wednesday that he had authorized a continuation of the unusually long search, which has been criticized as excessive for three private citizens.

"Because of the role of the Kennedy family in our national lives and because of the enormous losses that they have sustained in our lifetimes, I thought it was appropriate to give them a few more days," Clinton said Wednesday afternoon during a news conference.

"If anyone believes that was wrong, the Coast Guard is not at fault -- I am. It was because I thought it was the right thing to do under the circumstances."

The National Transportation Safety Board said "a large portion of the fuselage" was discovered about 11:40 p.m. Tuesday.

Kennedy's body was identified within three hours. Then in a 45-minute dive that began just before noon, Navy divers located the other two bodies. On Wednesday afternoon, a second set of divers recovered the bodies.

The autopsy will determine whether Kennedy was killed by the trauma of impact or -- based on whether there is water in the lungs -- survived the crash and drowned, said Michael L. Barr, director of the Aviation Safety Program at the University of Southern California, a training center for crash investigators.

However, Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, the Allegheny, Pa., county coroner, said that after five days in the ocean there almost certainly would be water in the lungs, regardless of how they died, making a determination of drowning questionable.

Wecht said the bodies would be X-rayed for broken bones, and a review would be undertaken to determine if a heart attack or stroke could have incapacitated the pilot.

Toxicology studies will be used to learn whether Kennedy had taken any prescription or non-prescription drugs. Kennedy injured his ankle in a paragliding accident several weeks before the crash, and witnesses said he was limping during his preflight inspection Friday night. Investigators want to know whether he had taken painkillers before flying, Barr said.

Tests will also determine the amount of carbon monoxide in his blood, an excess of which would suggest engine troubles.

The debris field, which investigators call the plane's "splash point," is just off Gay Head, the western tip of Martha's Vineyard, and near a private beach that was owned by Mrs. Onassis and now belongs to her last surviving child, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg.

The National Transportation Safety Board said its investigation will continue for six to nine months. James Hall, the chairman, said the agency will make no other comment until all memorial and funeral services are complete.

-- Information from the Boston Globe was used in this report.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.