Devastating details of JFK Jr’s ultra-secretive burial at sea are revealed for the first time – including his sister Caroline’s heart-breaking display of grief as she said her final goodbye

For the first time, heartbreaking new details have been revealed about JFK Jr.’s burial at sea, 25 years after the former president’s son was laid to rest next to his wife Carolyn in the incredibly secretive ceremony.

In the new book JFK Jr.: An Intimate Oral Biography by RoseMarie Terenzio and Liz McNeil, the two Navy chaplains who officiated at the funeral recount the event, which was shrouded in mystery at the time and largely kept from the public.

Chaplain Barry C Black reveals that he personally carried the urns containing the ashes of both John and his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. A Roman Catholic priest carried the remains of Carolyn’s sister Lauren after all three died in a tragic plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard on July 16, 1999.

“I’ve officiated at over a hundred funerals,” he says. “Nowhere else in my life have I seen such palpable grief.”

Unlike the Mass at St. Thomas More Church on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, which was attended by celebrities and politicians and covered by hundreds of journalists, the scattering of the ashes was a purely family affair.

Only 17 people attended, including Ted Kennedy, John’s older sister Caroline and her husband Ed, Bobby Kennedy and Maria Shriver.

There was one moment of controversy, Chaplain Louis Iasiello recalled, when he explained that civilians generally do not have the right to a burial at sea from a naval vessel.

But he added: “President Clinton quickly put an end to that discussion. When the commander in chief says this is what’s going to happen, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

The ashes of John, Carolyn and Lauren were scattered from the destroyer USS Briscoe, which was anchored near the spot where they died in a plane crash six days earlier.

“When it came time to put the ashes in the water,” Black says, “I led the Bessettes down first.”

As the ash disappeared into the water, it clumped together, he recalled, “like someone from Harry Potter touched it with a magic wand, and the clump just disappeared.”

He then led John’s grief-stricken sister Caroline down the stairs from the barrel. He says she touched the urn as if to indicate she wasn’t ready to let go of her brother so soon.

“I calmed her down and we went downstairs,” he says. “I mean, oh my God, contorted with grief is not even an adequate description. I can still see her.

‘She put the ashes in. As the ashes flowed out, she put her hand in the water to add some more water.’

He imagined her thinking, “I’m not letting go of his hand.”

Another chaplain, William Petruska, remembers Teddy taking Caroline in his arms as she emerged from the water. “They hugged for a long time. . . . He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. It was such a grimace of pain.”

He added: ‘We brought three beautiful wreaths: red and white carnations with red roses. They were never used. One of the family members had a canvas bag with wild flowers. They all took a few and threw them overboard when the ashes were scattered.

‘I also saw members of the Bessette family throwing envelopes into the water.’

John Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and Lauren Bessette died in a tragic plane crash near Martha’s Vineyard in July 1999.

JFK Jr. piloted the plane and the book is an in-depth examination of what may have happened in those final moments, based on investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board.

“If I were sitting with a friend and he asked me what happened to JFK Jr., here’s what I would say,” said Jeff Guzzetti of the NTSB.

“He left New Jersey just after dark. I don’t think he planned to leave at night, but it just happened that way.”

As he followed the coastline of Connecticut and Rhode Island, he likely had no horizon to follow, Guzzetti says, because it was dark, the weather was foggy and he was flying over the ocean.

Those circumstances would require him to be trained in the use of his instruments – ‘but he was not trained for instrument flying. He was trained to look outside to get his visual cues. There were no visual cues.’

Guzzetti believes he was flying on autopilot for most of the journey, but as he turned toward Martha’s Vineyard he disengaged the autopilot, either on purpose or by accident, and his flying became erratic.

“His flight path in the water is a sign of something called spatial disorientation,” he says, describing how his inner ears were playing tricks on his sense of direction.

“Your inner ear tells you to turn left, but you’re not actually turning left. So you correct right, thinking you’re leveling the plane.”

Those actions had fatal consequences: ‘His flight path in the water corresponds to what is known as a graveyard spiral. The plane spirals nose down, down, down toward the grave, a bit like going down a drain.’

He suspects that the plane then made a final turn and then crashed nose down into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all three passengers on the spot.

JFK Jr.: An intimate oral biography by RoseMarie Terenzio and Liz McNeil, published by Gallery Books