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Kennedy Family Friend or Commentator
There's definitely no conspiracy theories. People are still emailing me to this day and with all these conspiracy theories that I'm part of the conspiracy that I am kind of in cahoots with the media. But they're really, there is no, there's no conspiracy theory with anybody involved. I mean, this is just a classic. I mean, it's just a classic lost control of the airplane in bad weather. That's all it is. If it was conspiracy theory, it wouldn't have ended there. I mean, if it was conspiracy theory, the plane probably would have blown up probably right over, you know, after it passed Long island. But there, 100% is no conspiracy theories.
Kennedy Family Member or Close Associate
The other thing, and this has bothered me for a long time, is the fact that when the Navy fished the remains of the airplane and the three bodies out of the ocean, they immediately cremated the three bodies. Well, you would think that, you know, you'd want an autopsy to find out was there drugs involved, was some other problem? They didn't cremate John or Robert or any of the others and they didn't feel a need for that. So why didn't they feel the need for an autopsy on them? I mean, it really raises a lot of questions.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
Hello and welcome to the final episode of Fatal Voyage, the death of JFK Jr. I'm ex homicide detective Colin McLaren, and together we have spent the series uncovering the sometimes hidden truth about the life and death of a man they called America's crown prince. The heir to Camelot, John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy Family Commentator or Historian
Junior Was fearless, and some say he was very reckless, that he took extraordinary chances as a skier, as a kayaker on the water. There were just many occasions where people said, you're gonna kill yourself. What are you doing? He was so popular that if he ran for anything, it'd be lights out for anybody else. If he got into power, then he could use the mechanism of power to hold responsible those people that had killed his uncle and killed his father.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
But like his father and uncle before him, conspiracy intrigue and whispers have followed John Jr, especially since his Piper Saratoga plane slammed into the ocean in July 1999, killing him, his wife Carolyn and her sister Lauren. Conspiracies and the Kennedys are two words that are mutually acceptable. Something happens to a Kennedy, it's gotta be a conspiracy. So they say. Let me tell you something, detectives working on the highest level of investigations don't go for conspiracies at all. We look for stand alone facts, the stuff that a judge will welcome into his courtroom having applied that standard to the fatal crash of Junior's plane. And we have shown that conspiracy theories are just baseless. Here's air accident investigator Richard Bender.
Richard Bender (Air Accident Investigator)
There was nothing that indicated anything other than his own lack of knowledge regarding flying that caused that accident. It's that simple. Got himself into a situation that he couldn't figure out how to get out of it. And if he had gotten out of it, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. It's that simple.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
But that does not mean there was no cover up. That's a very different animal altogether. As you have heard, much of the truth about John Junior's short life and tragic death has been hidden from the world. Not because he was murdered, but because he wasn't. And in this final episode, we're going to find out how and why this happened.
Richard Bender (Air Accident Investigator)
I don't deal with rumors anyway, it's that simple. I mean, I gotta look at cold, hard facts. There was nothing there that indicated anything other than, again, like I said, young Kennedy's own inability to operate the airplane under instrument conditions. Plain and simple. And I mean, anybody tells me any different, I'm going to say prove it. You can show me something that verifies what you're telling me, then I'll believe it. But what I've seen, what I saw of the wreckage and my investigation of the wreckage along with the other investigators, no indication there it was anything other than, like I said, Kennedy's own inability to operate the airplane.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
After John Jr. S plane was reported missing, a massive sea and rescue operation was put into place. President Clinton even ordered the US Navy to assist with warships diverted to the waters around Martha's Vineyard to help locate what was left of the wreckage and its passengers. It was a move which understandably attracted some criticism at the time. Richard Bender explains.
Richard Bender (Air Accident Investigator)
The President at the time ordered the Navy to assist Kennedy's getting the airplane out. If it was anybody else, that wouldn't have happened. You're talking an asset which the Navy uses on, I think they use it for some of the shuttle debris and that when the Columbia went south and that was the end of it. But that wouldn't have happened for anybody else. Well, if that was a normal situation, we'd be fish food. You know, they would have never gotten the wreckage up, probably never, would have never recovered the remains in the airplane, the human remains, that is. But as I say, if that was you or me, we'd still be on the bottom of the ocean. We'd be fish food. It's that simple. The only reason it wasn't was because of Kennedy.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
Finally, on July 19, fragments of a plane were located by sonar, and the following night the fuselage was identified as belonging to Kennedy's Piper Saratoga, resting on the ocean floor seven and a half miles west of Martha's Vineyard. Two days later, the bodies and the plane were recovered. We will come to what happened to Junior's remains later. For the moment, though, I want to focus on the plane itself. Investigators from the National Transport Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration performed what was effectively an autopsy on the wreckage, examining it in minute detail. Here's investigator Richard Bender again, who was part of that team.
Richard Bender (Air Accident Investigator)
Well, what they did was they got it out of the water, but I mean, it was in, I Forget now, like, 110ft of water or something like that. And they brought it up, got it into New Bedford, put it on a flatbed and took it up here to Otis, up to the Coast Guard base up there. And that's where we did the forensic examination on it. They just wanted to get it out of there, get it, so we could look at it, we being the ntsb, FAA and myself, so we could dig into it, see if we could find out what happened.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
Jeff Gazzetti of the NTSB was also part of the investigation team. He says their work was meticulous and exhaustive.
Jeff Gazzetti (NTSB Investigator)
So it took about eight days for the airplane to be found, to be raised, to be boated over to the shore and placed at the Coast Guard Air Station, Cape Cod at Otis Air Force Base in Massachusetts. So I began on July 24, I formed a group of experts, representative of each of the parties to the investigation, like the faa, Piper, the engine manufacturer. And we stayed there for three solid days with the initial investigation. And then we probably did five additional trips after that to various places to conduct testing and re examinations and things like that. So I will say at the time, of course there was a lot of scrutiny, a lot of news media, but the wreckage was kept away from where the news media was being briefed and it was kept under wraps, pretty secure. Because of course people would love to get photographs of the wreckage, but you know, this was pretty high visibility and we did our best to not to make sure there were no leaks of photographs of the wreckage. I mean, the NTSB has a very rigorous process and they'll publish eventually the photographs of the evidence. But at the time we wanted to keep things secure. So the Air Force provided good security
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
considering the force at which the plane smashed into the ocean. Both men say there was enough left of it to put together a very detailed picture of what happened.
Jeff Gazzetti (NTSB Investigator)
So we showed up at the hangar and like I said, there were about a dozen people there. And the wreckage was, was just a big heap of mangled wings and tail and cockpit fuselage. And the engine was there separate, as well as the landing gear. And it was in just a pretty big pile on a large plastic mat. And my job was to get the team of experts, engineers to reconstruct the airplane. So we separated the wing pieces from the cabin and the fuselage and we photo documented all of the wreckage. What you normally try to do is first make sure that all four corners of the airplane are there. So there was no evidence of an in flight breakup or missing pieces or an explosion. So we were able to do that. We laid out the wings and the nose and the engine and the tail feathers as if it were the positions they would normally be in with the airplane flying.
Richard Bender (Air Accident Investigator)
I mean, the top of the cabin of the airplane was ripped right out and bent over. It was torn off from the floor of the cabin on, on the right side of the airplane and lifted over, opened up that way like you do with a can using a can opener. I mean, the wings were still attached as I remember, as was the tail. So that made it pretty easy. The only thing that was not attached at the Time was the engine. You can imagine the impact forces at that point, you know, and you're just looking at little metal tubing that hold the engine on them, engine mounts, so they broke right off. But it was still there in the vicinity of the. Of the wreckage, because they had it all together when they brought it up here.
Jeff Gazzetti (NTSB Investigator)
And we took photographs of that, and those photographs are in the public docket. And then we began to make general assessments as to just how much of the wreckage did we have and how much, you know, was the right side more damaged than the left side. So we made those observations, and that was documented in the report. So about 75% of the fuselage structure was recovered. And what was interesting was, is most of the bottom part of the fuselage, which is where the people sit in and the cockpit. But the roof was not present. And that's indicative of the airplane hitting the water at a high rate of speed, inverted, peeling off and separating the roof particles.
Richard Bender (Air Accident Investigator)
Well, going over. When doing the wreckage, there were parts of the airplane that didn't get water into it or washed into it, I should say. So if there was an explosion, we'd have found residue in those areas. We never did or whatever. There'd be some type of indication or the way the metal was bent or something like that, but there was nothing there that had any indication at all that there was something wrong with it.
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Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
The NTSB final report was unequivocal. They found no evidence of any explosion or tampering or sabotage. All of their carefully documented evidence led to the conclusion that JFK Jr. Was not the subject of a targeted hit. Their official report read that the probable cause of the crash was the pilot's failure to maintain control of the aircraft during a descent over water at night, which was a result of disorientation. Jeff Gazzetti explains.
Jeff Gazzetti (NTSB Investigator)
It was clear to me, and ultimately it was clear to the agency as a whole that this was your classic facial disorientation accident. With a good weather pilot that was not trained for instrument flight got himself into a situation where he could not see the horizon. The weather was barely met the requirements for visual. But because it was night and because it was over the ocean, the pilot became spatially disoriented and lost control of the airplane. And it impacted the water in a steep descent without the pilot really knowing what was happening. We found absolutely no evidence of any kind of a pre impact mechanical malfunction. And we did a lot of testing of the autopilot to see, you know, maybe this was an autopilot issue and could have exacerbated the situation. But the autopilot, the examination and testing that we did did not reveal any problems. And it really had all the classic signatures, all consistent and corroborated with different pieces of evidence of a pilot's spatial disorientation.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
The NTSB remit was for the plane alone, whereas the pilot himself is the responsibility of the medical examiner's office. And as Richard Bender and Jeff Gazzetti say, conducting autopsies in such cases is standard procedure simply because blood tests and toxicology reports might give an indication as to why the pilot failed. To me, the taking of blood for analysis will show signs of pharmaceutical drugs or illicit drugs or alcohol. If it was used by John Jr. All of these are impairments to flying.
Richard Bender (Air Accident Investigator)
Anytime there's a sudden death, there has to be an autopsy done on the individual.
Jeff Gazzetti (NTSB Investigator)
I mean, that's just normal protocol. If it's an accidental death, there has to be either an autopsy or an external, what they call an external examination. I think that happened in this case. But yes, that's the normal procedure. In fact, the FAA pays for that to be done. They'll pay the coroner and send them a kit to say, please conduct the autopsy and draw these samples and everything like that. It depends on, like I said, the condition of the bodies, the wishes of the family. It could be what they call an external examination. There can be religious concerns that can be involved. So there definitely has to be an examination and a determination of cause of death. But to what detail? I'm not quite sure. What happened in the JFK Jr case.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
We know that Jr had been taking pain medication for his broken ankle in the weeks leading up to the crash. And there were also rumours that he'd been drinking. They're all obvious factors for a sudden loss of control, perhaps. I teamed up with James Robertson again to examine the official Coroner's report on JFK Jr. S autopsy. And what we found was certainly surprising.
James Robertson (Investigator/Researcher)
There's something else that's just a little bit odd here. This is what looks like an autopsy report or a coroner's report on the examination of JFK Jr having been fished out of the Atlantic Ocean. But it's. This is freed of information again. But it's only one page, James. Have you got the other pages?
James Robison (Investigator/Researcher)
No, this is. This is everything. This is all that's ever been. Been publicly available. This is a single page. John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. Date of death, July 16, 1999. And I mean, there's. There's maybe 300 words in total on this page. And normally you'd expect much more. Correct me if I'm wrong.
James Robertson (Investigator/Researcher)
Well, normally a pathologist's report would be a file of 10 to 20 to 30 pages, depending, depending on the complexity of what he's doing. And we've got three bodies here. We've got a real tragedy, We've got something that's worldwide news. So this sort of coroner's inspection or this sort of autopsy will generate a file of at least 10 or 20 pages, probably much more.
James Robison (Investigator/Researcher)
Absolutely. I'm looking at this and I'm seeing the medical note here that. Multiple traumatic injuries, yet it's written on one line, those three words on one page.
James Robertson (Investigator/Researcher)
And this is a typed copy of the handwritten. What actually happens? Just to explain to you, when you do the pathology or the autopsy, the pathologist, he's too busy, he's gloved up, he's kitted up and he's writing all of his notes and they're all handwritten notes. And you can imagine the mess all over the pages. And he gets them all together and puts them in his tray, then gives the tray to the assistant and then the assistant types it up and you can see this is, you know, really beautifully laid out report. All the margins are correct, etc, but there's nothing in it. It's just a cover sheet is a better word for it I guess. Multiple traumatic injuries is just so vague it's ridiculous.
James Robison (Investigator/Researcher)
What is the explanation behind this? Because I can't imagine this to have been something which was overlooked or treated with such disregard.
James Robertson (Investigator/Researcher)
What we're looking for, this is the obvious. There's got to be a toxicology report attached to this, there's got to be a file. And what that means is in a case of say, unnatural death or a violent death, a homicide, one of the very first things they do is they take blood for a toxicology analysis. That is to check if there's alcohol in the bloodstream, illicit drugs, pharmaceutical drugs, if for example, there's been a stroke. All of this is evidence in the blood. So we're looking to see if we can find those reports which should be part of this file, but they're not to see whether he was drugged up, to see whether he was drinking, etc etc, because causation is the key thing here. How did this plane come down?
James Robison (Investigator/Researcher)
Well, and also you've got to ask yourself is if this is a man who was taking pain medication for the injury that he sustained, which of course we've already discussed. There's, there's of course many unanswered questions here and I think the lack of information only inspires us to try and find more answers.
James Robertson (Investigator/Researcher)
The painkillers will be in the bloodstream, there's no doubt about it. He's probably been on painkillers about eight weeks because he snapped his ankle really bad.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
So his blood will be full of
James Robertson (Investigator/Researcher)
painkillers, at least evidence of painkillers. So we're looking for that also. Another thing that's missing in this report is one of the very first things that you do in the autopsy in the death of a pilot because of issues of insurance liability and all sorts of controversies. You unzip the person, you would cut them open and check their heart, see if they'd suffered a cardiac arrest. Now of course pilots do have cardiac arrest in the air and that causes the pain to come down. And insurance companies need this as well as it helps the foreclosure. We don't have any of that here. We don't have anything to suggest there was any full on proper procedural autopsy.
James Robison (Investigator/Researcher)
This certainly looks improper. I mean Dr. Evans will obviously have a reason or an explanation to why but this could be another example, great example of the Kennedy influence. There's a reason why the rest isn't out there.
James Robertson (Investigator/Researcher)
You're suggesting that just feeding the chooks, giving a little bit out there to satisfy people, like one cover sheet. That'll do them. That's enough.
James Robison (Investigator/Researcher)
It confirms his dad but says nothing more.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
If this flimsy excuse for a Coroner's report on JFK Jr's body sounds like a rush job, that's because it was. The bodies of John, Carolyn and Lauren were recovered on the afternoon of July 21, examined that same day, and then most extraordinarily of all, cremated hours later. By the next morning, their ashes had been scattered at sea. I spoke to noted forensic examiner Cyril Wecht, who in the course of his long career consulted in the autopsies of both JFK Senior and Bobby Kennedy.
Cyril Wecht (Forensic Examiner)
With regard to autopsies on JFK Jr, his wife and sister in law, my recollection is that the family tried not even to have autopsies done. The Kennedys had this uptight feeling, setting aside politics, setting aside everything that was sinister and malevolent from third parties and entities. The Kennedies have this uptight feeling about autopsies.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
Can a family in such circumstances actually refuse permission for an autopsy to be conducted?
Cyril Wecht (Forensic Examiner)
Well, you must do autopsies on pilots. You should do autopsies on passengers. While I don't believe that a young man is likely to have had a heart attack or a stroke or a pulmonary embolism or for some other reason to have lost consciousness, you can never be absolutely certain. And you do autopsies on passengers to determine the nature and extent of their injuries. They weren't even going to do autopsy. Then you get to the issue of they're doing it that evening and completing it. The bodies think were received say about 7:15, and the bodies were released about 11:00 o' clock at night. If I have that right to do these autopsies like that, you got to rush the bodies in. And I can tell you this, that it would not be done. I wouldn't give a damn if it were your, your mayor or your governor or my mayor. Governor. There's not the autopsy. And when you get in in the evening, the person has died, it'll be done the next goddamn morning. This is the Kennedy thing. It just plays out. It emphasizes and corroborates my observation about they wanted, they didn't want to get autopsies. Okay, so you go ahead, you got to do it then. You got to do it then goddamn do it. And we want these bodies out of there.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
And what of the apparent lack of information regarding the toxicology report? Cyril Wecht is incredulous that such tests might not have been performed
Jeff Gazzetti (NTSB Investigator)
in every
Cyril Wecht (Forensic Examiner)
airline death case, in every vehicular death case, whether it's a car, a motorcycle, a truck, a van, a speedboat, and an airplane, not only must autopsies be done of the drivers, but toxicology tests are done absolutely. You do not have a complete, valid autopsy. You cannot have complete, knowledgeable, postmortem findings in the absence of toxicological analyses. When you do autopsies on the drivers, and I believe on the passengers, too. But let's concentrate on the drivers of vehicular accidents, air, land and sea. The toxicological analyses are performed to determine if there was involvement of any kind of drug, including, of course, ethanol, alcohol, that might have played a role in causing the death.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
Could the Kennedys really have pressured the medical examiner to not conduct toxicology tests on John Jr. I returned to Jeff Cassetti to ask him what he knew. He says that despite the lack of information, the report we were given, those tests did happen.
Jeff Gazzetti (NTSB Investigator)
Now, but you have to remember that the bodies were not recovered for two or three days, and they were at the bottom of the ocean. And there's just so much you can get from the toxicology, but, you know. So examinations were performed on all three of the folks by the chief medical examiner in Massachusetts, and he determined that the pilot and passengers died from multiple injuries as a result of the airplane accident. And they did draw samples, whatever samples they could find for toxicological testing. And as per usual, they sent those to the FAA's tox lab in Oklahoma City, which is the best lab in the country for finding alcohol, opiates, marijuana, those kinds of things. And those toxins tests came back negative for alcohol and drugs.
James Robertson (Investigator/Researcher)
Negative.
Jeff Gazzetti (NTSB Investigator)
Negative. Correct. There was no evidence of alcohol or marijuana or opioids or pharmaceuticals. Right.
James Robertson (Investigator/Researcher)
He had been on fairly hefty painkillers for eight weeks previous up until the same day. That would come through as a pharmaceutical on a toxicology test wouldn't.
Jeff Gazzetti (NTSB Investigator)
Would you would see that if it was a painkiller, it'd be an opioid and that would be detected.
James Robertson (Investigator/Researcher)
But you say there were zeros on the entire report?
Jeff Gazzetti (NTSB Investigator)
That's correct.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
Zero reading when he was on painkillers. Odd. Cyril Wecht also does not believe that such tests were not conducted.
Cyril Wecht (Forensic Examiner)
I can assure you that the FAA would have seen to it that they were done. And I. I do believe that all of that information is out there. And has just been covered up, as have things in the JFK and RFK assassination. I again must say, and I don't. I did not know that Chief Medical Examiner. So I don't say this in any personal way, but I find it hard to believe that while he agreed to perform the autopsies in hasty fashion, that he would not have taken specimens for toxicology and gotten results and he would not have taken photographs.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
The rushed autopsy and vague coroner's report is one thing. A missing toxicology report is another entirely. I dispatched James Robison to rattle a few cages and see what he could dig up. Whilst James and I aren't medically trained and some of the jargon in the report needs clarification, I took it to the forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht to have him explain it to us.
Forensic Pathologist
The toxicology report is quite puzzling because it indicates that carbon monoxide test was not done. You have in front of you it says not performed. Cyanide, not performed. I am just very surprised. And this is a report from the Department of Transportation. I doubt that the injuries that were sustained by Kennedy were so extensive as to have caused him to bleed out with no blood present. And then they tested lung and muscle and they got some levels.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
Sloppiness. Another rush job or was something else going on here? Cyril Wech says that the report also claims that there was no trace of any drugs of any kind in Junior's system.
Forensic Pathologist
The drugs were negative. They tested, and you have the list at the bottom. The amphetamines, the opiates, the marijuana, and then all the antidepressants, antihistamines.
Jeff Gazzetti (NTSB Investigator)
So what on earth does that mean? The man's been on these painkillers for eight weeks.
Forensic Pathologist
Well, it means that he didn't take them before he left. Maybe he didn't take them because he didn't want to be under the influence of barber's rights.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
He also points out that those results have to be taken as gospel because in another apparent bungle or consequence of the rush, Junior's blood samples were not collected or stored properly.
Forensic Pathologist
The reason that blood is collected at autopsy is that what's in the blood is what was affecting the brain at the time of the incident. Whatever it is, whatever the death may have been. And so important then more so usually in homicides and accidents and suicides, to see what is present in the bride. And that's why this report, frankly, insofar as correlating it with the accident, is. Is meaningless. It's. It's a disgrace. It's a Goddamn disgrace. Somebody was negligent. Somebody let the blood stay out in non refrigerated state. I'm just, I'm nonplussed. Especially having dealt with the FAA and airplane crashes. You know, they're very meticulous, they're very thorough and so on. So how in the hell this was handled in this fashion, I do not understand.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
And of course, just hours after this sorry excuse for an autopsy, what was left of the body of JFK Jr. Was cremated and then his ashes scattered to the four winds, meaning no chance of any further tests being conducted.
Cyril Wecht (Forensic Examiner)
Taking the bodies for fast cremation certainly would preclude any subsequent examination. You cannot stop a body from being cremated if that is the family's decision. But yes, once you cremate, then you are obviously destroying any opportunity for someone to do a follow up examination.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
What are we to make of this information? As a seasoned detective, I smell a rat. It's just not tidy and it should be, and it usually is. The NTSB report into the reason for the crash is clear yet. The medical examiner's report into the man who was piloting the plane, by contrast, is full of holes. Add to that the fact that the autopsy was a rushed job, that samples were subsequently spoiled, and that Junior's body was cremated double quicktime. And that the Kennedy family did not even want him examined at all. And it looks very much like a cover up. And as we have learned throughout this podcast, it would not be the first time the Kennedys have tried to cover up the truth. From everything I've learned about the deaths of John, Caroline and Lauren, it seems that the Kennedys themselves instigated an immediate cover up of the truth simply to preserve the mythology of the family name. God forbid that a Kennedy, and especially little John John should ever be shown to be less than perfect. John Jr. Lived his life carrying the burden of his famous name. It seems that thanks to that name, he was not allowed to simply be himself. The handsome guy on the block doing his own thing. And perhaps that's the real tragedy.
Kennedy Family Friend or Commentator
He was such a nice guy. He was very down to earth with everybody. That's the way he conveyed himself through his life. Even though he had millions and millions of dollars from his parents and the family fortune, he pretty much went about his life like he was just a normal guy and a very nice person who wanted to be a success in life.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
This has been fatal. The death of JFK Jr. And I've been your host, Colin McLaren, until next time. Thank you for listening.
Cyril Wecht (Forensic Examiner)
It's very good to be the son of a legend.
Kennedy Family Member or Close Associate
I mean, it's complicated and it makes for a rich and complicated life.
Kennedy Family Friend or Commentator
So.
Kennedy Family Member or Close Associate
But that's, I think, part of the puzzle to figure out in my life.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
The death of JFK Jr. Is hosted
James Robertson (Investigator/Researcher)
by myself, Colin McLaren. It's executive produced by Dylan Howard and Matt Sprouse, and is a production of
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
Broad and Water Studios and Endeavour Audio.
James Robertson (Investigator/Researcher)
Executive producers also include Tom Freestone, James Robertson and Andy Tillett. And the series is written by Dominic Utten, reporting by Douglas Monteiro. The series is mixed and engineered by Sean Kravit and Sam Adda.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
There is so much more to this
James Robertson (Investigator/Researcher)
story and you don't want to miss anything, I can assure you.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
Make sure you subscribe to Fatal the death of JFK Jr. Wherever you get your podcasts.
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Richard Bender (Air Accident Investigator)
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Hey, everyone. Check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?
VRBO Host/Advertiser
Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
VRBO Host/Advertiser
Anyways, get a quote@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
Liberty. Liberty.
Cyril Wecht (Forensic Examiner)
Liberty.
Colin McLaren (Podcast Host)
Liberty.
Date: March 25, 2020
Host: Colin McLaren
Podcast By: a360media
This final chapter of the series dives into the lasting impact of the death of John F. Kennedy Jr.—exploring not only the events and investigations surrounding his fatal plane crash but also the Kennedy family's response to the tragedy, the controversies that followed, and the ways in which the family's storied legacy shaped—perhaps even distorted—the truth. Host Colin McLaren, an ex-homicide detective, brings rigorous scrutiny to the evidence, challenging conspiracy theories and examining the policies and actions that have contributed to questions around the cause of the crash and the aftermath, particularly the handling of the autopsies and the speed of cremations.
On Conspiracies:
"Conspiracies and the Kennedys are two words that are mutually acceptable. Something happens to a Kennedy, it’s got to be a conspiracy."
— Colin McLaren (03:38)
On the Immediate Cremation:
"Taking the bodies for fast cremation certainly would preclude any subsequent examination... once you cremate, then you are obviously destroying any opportunity for someone to do a follow up examination."
— Cyril Wecht (33:12)
On the Kennedy 'Cover-Up':
"From everything I’ve learned... it seems that the Kennedys themselves instigated an immediate cover up of the truth simply to preserve the mythology of the family name. God forbid that a Kennedy, and especially little John John, should ever be shown to be less than perfect."
— Colin McLaren (33:37)
On the Forensic Handling:
"It’s... a disgrace. Somebody was negligent. Somebody let the blood stay out in non-refrigerated state."
— Forensic Pathologist (31:56)
The tone is investigative, critical, and at times incredulous—especially regarding the handling of the autopsy and the family’s resistance to transparency. There’s a blend of empathy for JFK Jr. as a person and a quest for objective truth, with repeated skepticism about the thoroughness and honesty of official procedures.