After 20 years, healing and heartache from TWA Flight 800

Soon after the Paris-bound flight took off from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York on July 17, 1996, the Boeing 747 exploded off Long Island, killing all 230 aboard and leaving a surreal, fiery crash site on the water.

Some still question the findings that the jet airliner was brought down by a center fuel-tank explosion ignited by a spark from a short-circuit — a conclusion reached after investigators painstakingly reassembled the wreckage like a jigsaw puzzle.

Naysayers contend witnesses saw a missile hit the plane, something the National Transportation Safety Board has consistently rejected.

Among the most heart-wrenching tragedies were the deaths of 16 teenagers and five chaperones, part of a high school French club from Montoursville, Pennsylvania.

The Rev. Mychal Judge, the Fire Department of New York's chaplain, raced to a hotel near Kennedy Airport where families had gathered after the crash.

Judge is the only person other than the victims remembered at a memorial built at Smith Point County Park on Long Island near the crash site.

Over many months, the Suffolk County police officers joined FBI, State Police, Navy and other divers in the recovery.

Maybe because the Olympics were that year or it was an election year and (President Bill) Clinton didn't want to have a terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Actor Joe Mantegna pauses each year on the TWA Flight 800 anniversary to remember Lois Van Epps.

The film and television star fondly recalls Epps as a young English teacher in Cicero, Illinois, in the mid-1960s, when she encouraged him to join the drama club after seeing him play bass in his rock back, the Apocryphals.