JFK Jr., Carolyn Bessette's Lives and Last Moments Remembered

Sept. 30, 2005 — -- In the course of three terrible weeks in 1999, Carole Radziwill lost the three people closest to her.

Her best friends John F. Kennedy Jr., and his wife, Carolyn Bessette, perished in a plane crash, and her husband Anthony Radziwill died of cancer.

In her new memoir, "What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love," Radziwill describes her journey from working-class girl to a member of America's royal family, the Kennedys. The book offers a rare intimate look at JFK Jr., his wife, and others in the notoriously private family.

In the early 1990s, Carole DiFalco, whose family once lived on food stamps, was working at ABC News, when she met and began dating Anthony Radziwill, the son of a Polish prince and nephew of President John F. Kennedy.

Almost from the beginning, tragedy loomed. A lump was discovered in Anthony's stomach, and he was diagnosed with a rare cancer called fibro sarcoma, which is almost always fatal. Over the next five years he would endure five rounds of chemotherapy, dozens of surgeries and six radiation treatments.

Despite Anthony's cancer, the couple married in 1994, with John F. Kennedy Jr. as best man. It was, Radziwill told ABC News' 20/20, like a scene out of "The Great Gatsby."

Radziwill describes the relationship between her husband and John F. Kennedy Jr. as "like brothers." And she recalls meeting Carolyn Bessette, when Kennedy brought her out to their summer house in the Hamptons.

Bessette made a quick impression, Radziwill said. "She's quite striking, you know — blonde and 10 stories high. And, and I thought, 'Oh, this is, this is not a friend,'" she told ABC. Radziwill said she and Bessette bonded quickly, however, because they shared a feeling of being outsiders in the famous family.

"Without a doubt. I think she recognized it in me immediately and I recognized it in her," she said.

Still, she continued to feel like an outsider among the Kennedys. Her relationship with Anthony's mother, Lee Radziwill, was never warm and it was even frostier with JFK Jr.'s sister, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, she said.