(6 of 6)
In Kennedy's apartment in New York City's Tribeca neighborhood, the phone rang not long afterward. It was answered by a friend of John and Carolyn's whose air conditioning had broken down and who had been invited to stay at their apartment. The late-night caller was Senator Ted Kennedy, who had learned that his nephew's plane was overdue and was wondering if perhaps he had never left New York. The friend, alarms probably going off, informed him that he had.
It was not until 2:15 a.m. that a Kennedy-family friend made a call to the Coast Guard--a much more urgent call than Budd's--and the search for the lost plane at last got under way. Six days later, after the plane was found and the bodies were recovered, their ashes were committed, forever, to the deep.
--Reported by William Dowell, Jodie Morse and Elizabeth Rudulph/New York, Greg Fulton/Atlanta and Dick Thompson/Cape Cod