The rule of thumb in spiral recovery is to level the wings first, then apply back pressure to the control stick to arrest the loss of altitude. In a complex plane such as the Saratoga, absolute attention to every detail is vital, but pilots have to remember that the first job is to safely fly the plane. This is difficult to accomplish for an inexperienced pilot. He was flying at night over water in such hazy conditions that he had no visual horizon by which to right the plane. And now, more than likely, he was extremely nervous about the position in which he had placed himself and his passengers.
Graveyard spirals take only a moment or two to set up.
By the time Kennedy would have looked back to his instruments, the plane would already have been gathering momentum in a turn. If he pulled back on the stick, obsessing on the loss of altitude shown on the vertical speed indicator, rather than first leveling the wings, he would have been positioned for a graveyard spiral. No amount of back pressure on the stick would have recovered the plane until the wings were leveled. In this case, the fatal plunge to the ocean would have built so fast that Kennedy would have had no time to even understand what was happening to the plane. I put the plane into a steep bank and applied back pressure, then told the student to open his eyes and recover.