The woman who lives in the modest, three-bed cottage is quiet, reserved and entirely unremarkable.
She has long, wavy grey hair, dark-rimmed glasses and, neighbours say, a ready smile – though few have got to know her well in the 21 years she’s been here.
They see her getting coffee from a nearby cafe, buying plants at the Saturday market and, as witnessed by this newspaper last month, shovelling snow from her driveway.
The house, which the 61-year-old shares with her art history professor partner, Howard, is just a five-minute drive from the University of , on a tree-lined street in Ann Arbor, where most residents are students.
They are too young to know their neighbour’s true identity – or realise the significance of her surname. Most weren’t even born in 1999, the year that changed everything for Lisa Bessette. The horrific plane crash that shook the world on July 16 that year had an impact so devastating on this ‘forgotten’ or ‘secret’ Bessette sister, that it caused her to become something of a recluse.
For the fatalities that night numbered not only the pilot, John F. Kennedy Jr, the son of the late American president, but Lisa’s only siblings: her twin Lauren and younger sister, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, JFK Jr’s wife.
Until that night, Lisa, Lauren and Carolyn came as a trio. Though Lauren and Carolyn – who had glamorous, high-powered jobs in New York and were naturally more outgoing – were photographed together often, Lisa was no less close to her sisters.
The three spoke daily and visited one another often. Even into their 30s, Lisa and Lauren referred to Carolyn as ‘little sister’.
From left, Carolyn Bessette, Lisa Ann Bessette and Lauren Bessette. Though Lauren and Carolyn were photographed together often, Lisa was no less close to her sisters
Losing her beloved siblings in such a sudden, shocking way changed something in Lisa – as it would in anyone mourning the loss of a loved one, let alone two, so young.
Just 34 when Lauren and Carolyn died, she was too distraught to help plan their funerals and has refused to speak publicly about them for almost 27 long years. Her position hadn’t changed when she was approached by the Daily Mail.
No, she didn’t want to talk about her sisters, she said politely, before adding: ‘I never have.’
The same is true of their mother, Ann Messina Freeman, their father, William Bessette, whom Ann divorced in the mid-1980s, and their stepfather, Dr Richard Freeman.
Aside from issuing a brief, poignant statement about the loss of their girls after the accident, all three quietly disappeared from public life.
Not that all was calm behind closed doors, however.
Ann, it’s said, was so furious with her late son-in-law, whose inexperience and ‘arrogance’ as a pilot was ultimately blamed for the crash, that she refused to speak John Jr’s name in the house, referring to the former president’s son as ‘him’.
As one friend commented: ‘Ann is still mad at John – she blames him for her daughters’ deaths.’
The unease between the two families and the public’s fascination with John and Carolyn’s story – the alluring, mysterious, middle-class girl who captured the heart of America’s golden boy – has not dwindled over the years. Countless books, films and documentaries have chronicled her relationship with JFK Jr and their tragic and untimely deaths.
None, however, has come close to Love Story, the nine-episode dramatised series on Disney+, based on the 2024 biography, Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, by New York Times journalist Elizabeth Beller.
Currently the most watched series on the platform, Love Story has thrust Carolyn’s life, and that of her family, back into the spotlight.
While rumours circulated that Ann passed away in 2007, friends have confirmed both she and Richard, now 86 and 94 respectively, live in an upmarket retirement community in Connecticut, New England.
William, Carolyn’s estranged father with whom she rekindled her relationship shortly before her death, is now in his mid-80s and believed to reside in a suburb of New York.
A fter his daughters’ deaths, he too was said to be ‘very bitter’ and ‘living in awful grief’.
‘The Bessette family made a very deliberate decision to stay private and they’ve maintained that over the years,’ explains J. Randy Taraborrelli – author of JFK: Public, Private, Secret – and five other biographies of the Kennedy family.
‘There’s a lot of projection on them because of the visibility of the story,’ he says. ‘But in terms of how they actually lived through it, that’s something they’ve kept to themselves.’
One cannot blame them for shunning the limelight as they tried to process their grief. But, as the Daily Mail has uncovered, there may be other reasons for them keeping such a low profile.
First, there is the fraught matter of the financial settlement – reportedly as much as £11.2 million – paid by the Kennedy family in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the Bessettes.
The case was settled in July 2001 after 18 months of negotiations, avoiding the need for a public trial.
Carolyn and Lauren’s mother was said to be the driving force behind the lawsuit. Fiercely protective of her youngest daughter, Ann was wary of her union with JFK Jr from the start; a sentiment captured in Love Story in the episode portraying the couple’s 1996 wedding, at which she gave a terse, cautionary speech focusing on the pressure of marrying into such a high-profile dynasty.
The poignant scene was very much taken from real life. John was said to be ‘visibly stung by his mother-in-law’s remarks’ according to Beller.
Carolyn with husband John F. Kennedy Jr – the alluring, mysterious, middle-class girl who captured the heart of America’s golden boy
Lisa was not directly involved in the financial wranglings, though she no doubt benefited from the payout. In October 1999, however, there was an intriguing public display of unity with the Kennedys when Lisa attended a charity concert in New Jersey, with prominent members of the family’s inner circle.
She was chaperoned by Bobby Shriver, a cousin of the Kennedys, and accompanied by close friend Carole Radziwill, who was married to John’s first cousin – and best man – the late Anthony Radziwill. But such allegiances did not extend to all members of the clan.
Veteran reporter Grant Stinchfield, a close family friend of the Bessettes who acted as their spokesman in the aftermath of the plane crash, says there are still deeply held emotions – and blame – surrounding the events of July 16, 1999.
An aviation report ultimately found pilot error to be the cause of the crash, with JFK Jr, a relatively new pilot who had owned the Piper Saratoga II for just three months before it plunged into the Atlantic, lacking experience in flying a plane at night and in hazy conditions.
‘I know for Carolyn and Lauren’s family, the pain from the tragic and very preventable deadly crash will never get any easier,’ Grant says, speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail this week. ‘I firmly believe John had no business flying that plane in those conditions and I still have anger over his arrogance that cost my two friends their beautiful and promising young lives.’
Whether Lisa shared his anger is unknown. Friends of Carolyn’s who spoke to the Daily Mail this week professed never to have known Lisa, so different is she in character to her bubbly, confident younger sister.
Indeed, she doesn’t appear in Love Story at all, with her character only mentioned in passing. Born in 1954 to Ann, a school administrator, and William, an architectural engineer, Lisa was the elder of the Bessette twins. Their little sister, Carolyn, came along 14 months later.
Their father was often away for work and the girls were eight and ten when their parents divorced – which had a lasting impact on them.
In Love Story, viewers see Carolyn wearing William’s wedding band on a gold chain around her neck – not, she says, because she loved him, but as a reminder that ‘what he seemed to be, he wasn’t’.
Growing up, Lisa was bookish and more contemplative than ambitious Lauren and charismatic Carolyn, whose Nordic composure and Mediterranean charm (their mother was of Italian descent) ensured she stood out. A former classmate at Greenwich High School in Connecticut recalls daily bus journeys with the trio: ‘All the sisters seemed gorgeous and popular and sat in the back of the bus with the popular kids. It was hard not to notice them. Though Lisa seemed a bit less outgoing than Carolyn and Lauren.’
Having majored in art, Lisa went on to pursue a PhD in art history at the University of Michigan. She spent two years studying in Munich, where she researched in the city’s ancient libraries for a dissertation on psalms. Her sisters, meanwhile, were pursuing their own careers in New York: Carolyn as a publicist for Calvin Klein and Lauren as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.
As her romance with JFK Jr thrust her into the spotlight, Lisa stepped into the role of Carolyn’s protective elder sister.
She attended galas and gallery openings by her side, something in which Carolyn ‘found solace’, Beller says. At the small, secret wedding on Georgia’s Cumberland Island in 1996, where Carolyn stunned guests in a breathtaking £30,000 gown by Narciso Rodriguez, Lisa and Lauren kept their distance from the rest of the invitees. One attendee, novelist Robbie Littell, described them both as ‘fierce’. Lisa, he adds, was ‘kind of cool – I liked her’.
Spectating from a distance is something Lisa has become very adept at over the years. She was in Munich when she received the call to say her sisters’ plane had gone down, and back in Connecticut anxiously awaiting news with her mother and stepfather when, four days later, their bodies were recovered from the ocean.
