When John F Kennedy Jr lost control of his Piper Saratoga II on the night of July 16, 1999, Captain W Russell ‘Russ’ Webster was one of the first on the scene.
The crash – seven and a quarter miles off the southwest tip of Martha’s Vineyard – killed Kennedy, his wife, Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren, instantly, the wreckage settling 116 feet beneath the surface on the ocean floor.
As it happened in his area of responsibility as Coast Guard Commander of Group Woods Hole on the western edge of Cape Cod, Webster served as Incident Commander for Operations of the
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