July 16 is not an official day of mourning in America but since 1999, it is a day when Americans recall with sadness, the plane crash that killed John F. Kennedy, Jr.

Impossibly handsome, famous, and very rich, JFK Jr. was America's Prince Charming. Declared the "sexist man alive" by People Magazine, he dated a string of beautiful women, among them Sarah Jessica Parker, Madonna and Daryl Hannah, and he broke the hearts of thousands of American women when he chose the cool and elegant Carolyn Bessette as his wife.  Married in 1996 in a top secret ceremony on Cumberland Island, Georgia, they were America's golden couple and a symbol of what life could be at its best.

Their relationship was not perfect, however.  It was marked by several public rows, but their problems in some ways just made them more human and easy to identify with and the American public followed every emotional crisis of the high-profile couple with never flagging interest.  
 
Famous from birth, JFK Jr., was the son of America's 35th president.  As a small child in the White House, he and his older sister Caroline were spoiled by their Dad. John, Caroline and their style-setting mother, Jackie helped make John Kennedy's presidency seem like the magic era of Camelot.  But after only 1,000 days it brutally ended. 

When John was only three-years-old, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas and the image of the little boy saluting his father's coffin is etched in the memory of millions.

Thirty-six years later, that little boy would himself be dead.  
 
On the evening of July 16, 1999, 38-year old John F. Kennedy Jr. was flying to Hyannis Port, piloting his own plane to the wedding of his cousin Rory Kennedy.   Onboard his Piper Saratoga were his wife Carolyn Bessette, 33, and her sister Lauren Bessette, 34.  But they didn't arrive, and for four days no one really knew what had happened to them. 

Tune-in to this TLC special event to get the complete story of what happened along with expert and family accounts.