For journalists who covered JFK Jr.’s fatal plane crash, the memories are much more vivid than ‘Love Story’

By Dan Heching, CNN

(CNN) — FX’s “Love Story” — the Ryan Murphy-produced show that revisits the lives of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy — concludes this week with the episode that won’t be easy to watch, even if everyone knew it was coming.

The nine-episode series began by teeing up the fate that met the couple, who were killed along with Bessette Kennedy’s sister Lauren in a plane crash in July 1999. The tragedy was a seminal moment for some the same way the death of Princess Diana was just two years earlier for others. Bessette Kennedy’s reaction to the former royal’s death in a paparazzi-caused car crash was even fictionalized in last week’s penultimate episode of the show, which has renewed interest in the fashions of the time and in the couple’s life and death.

Some of the journalists who covered America’s answer to a royal couple don’t need a slick limited series to remember the summer weekend when Kennedy’s plane was reported missing after taking off in New Jersey. What followed was a multi-day stakeout both on the mainland in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts near the famed Kennedy compound, and on Martha’s Vineyard, which had been their destination, as the search for the plane continued.

“Plane crashes are always kind of a hard thing to cover, but in this case, it was just over the top,” Steve Heaslip, who covered the story for the Cape Cod Times, said in a phone conversation with CNN.

The amount of media, police and general onlookers drawn to the scene was unprecedented, Heaslip said, but he also noted that it was “completely expected,” given who was involved.

“Love Story” retraces the history of Kennedy, son of President John F. Kennedy, as he carves a place for himself at the helm of George magazine, at the nexus of celebrity and politics, while also navigating his dating life. Moving on from attention-getting romances with actresses like Daryl Hannah, he eventually meets, and courts, Bessette Kennedy, then a PR assistant at Calvin Klein, in the series. The show depicts the planning and execution of their storied wedding on a remote island off of Georgia in 1996, and spends ample time showing the intense media scrutiny they faced both before, and especially after, their nuptials.

Last week’s episode displayed the cracks in their union as they grapple with their evolution in the public eye, and the series has shown Kennedy going to an airfield to practice flying, a hobby he took up in the years leading up to his death. The pair were on their way to Kennedy’s cousin Rory’s wedding when his plane crashed off of Martha’s Vineyard on the evening of Friday, July 16, 1999, killing all three passengers on board instantly — roughly two months shy of the couple’s third wedding anniversary.

“I just remember the whole thing as being very just — personally but also covering it — it was really sad,” said Heaslip, who had photographed JFK Jr. a number of times prior. The young man once dubbed “America’s most eligible bachelor” would often come to Hyannis to visit his mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Like Heaslip, Bernadette Tuazon, currently CNN’s director of photography, spent several days in the area trying to gather information. At the time, she was a photo editor for the Associated Press and had just returned home to New Jersey from another assignment when she got the call saying she needed to get to Martha’s Vineyard.

“At that point, they were assuming that the worst had happened,” Tuazon recalled. “I just remember steadying myself, and I knew what I had to do: I had to get myself out, not even do laundry, just take whatever I have, then go back out.”

In an era before smartphones, newsgathering had its challenges. Speculation and rumors ran rampant and the dissemination of official information was slow.

“Everything was sort of rumor-based, because there wasn’t really much information coming out from anything,” Heaslip said. Tidbits would sometimes filter in from new arrivals joining the media stakeout in front of the Kennedy compound.

Tuazon strategized with her team about how to get the images needed of both the search operation and any potential memorial, while also remaining cognizant of boundaries – something that the couple often were not afforded during their short lives.

“We heard some paparazzi got thrown out of the island because this person went with a long lens and shot through bushes,” she said. “I was very firm with the team. I said under no circumstances we’re going to do this.”

The family, she told her team at the time, “just lost someone. We need to be respectful of that.”

Heaslip, who worked for the Cape Cod Times for 45 years and just retired earlier this month, was also familiar with keeping boundaries when it came to the Kennedys.

“The Cape and the Kennedys are sort of symbiotic, and there’s a lot of old-time people here, that if you go into their house, they still have a picture of JFK up on the wall somewhere,” he said. “The legacy is still pretty strong, so when that happened, it really struck a lot of people.”

The shocking nature of their deaths, of course, is a large part of the reason why the famous couple serve as the focal point of “Love Story,” a time capsule of a show created by Connor Hines and co-executive produced by Murphy, who has spent considerable time examining ‘90s-era media spectacles from the Menendez brothers and O.J Simpson to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

Both Tuazon and Heaslip have yet to watch the new series, with the latter saying that it might be difficult “having lived through” the ordeal of reporting on the tragedy.

“I think probably I will at some point, it just will sort of be like a rip the band-aid moment off for me.”

The finale of “Love Story” airs Thursday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on FX, and streams on Hulu the following day.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.