Today, July 18th 1969

http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=5189

1969 : Incident on Chappaquiddick Island

Shortly after leaving a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy of Massachusetts drives an Oldsmobile off a wooden bridge into a tide-swept pond. Kennedy escaped the submerged car, but his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, did not. The senator did not report the fatal car accident for 10 hours.

On the evening of July 18, 1969, while most Americans were home watching television reports on the progress of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission, Kennedy and his cousin Joe Gargan were hosting a cookout and party at a rented cottage on Chappaquiddick Island, an affluent island near Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. The party was planned as a reunion for Kopechne and five other women, all veterans of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign. Bobby Kennedy was Ted Kennedy's older brother, and following Bobby's assassination in June 1968 Ted took up his family's political torch. In 1969, Ted Kennedy was elected majority whip in the U.S. Senate, and he seemed an early front-runner for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination.

Just after 11 p.m., Kennedy left the party with Kopechne, by his account to drive to the ferry slip where they would catch a boat back to their respective lodgings in Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard. While driving down the main roadway, Kennedy took a sharp turn onto the unpaved Dike Road, drove for a short distance, and then missed the ramp to a narrow wooden bridge and drove into Poucha Pond. Kennedy, a married man, claimed the Dike Road excursion was a wrong turn. However, both he and Kopechne had previously driven down the same road, which led to a secluded ocean beach just beyond the bridge. In addition, Kopechne had left both her purse and room key at the party.

Kennedy escaped the car and then dove down in an attempt to retrieve Kopechne from the sunken Oldsmobile. Failing, he stumbled back to the cottage, where he enlisted Gargan and another friend in a second attempt to save Kopechne. The three men were unsuccessful; her body was not recovered. The trio then went to the ferry slip, where Kennedy dove into the water and swam back to Edgartown, about a mile away. He returned to his room at the Shiretown Inn, changed his clothes, and at 2:25 a.m. stepped out of his room when he spotted the innkeeper, Russell Peachey. He told Peachey that he been awakened by noise next door and asked what time it was. He then returned to his room.

Was Kennedy trying to establish an alibi? In Leo Damore's Senatorial Privilege--the Chappaquiddick Cover-up (198, the author recounts an interview with Joe Gargan in which Gargan claimed that Kennedy had plotted to make Kopechne the driver and sole occupant of the automobile. Whatever Kennedy's intentions, on the morning of July 19 he went back to Chappaquiddick Island and then returned to Edgartown. At 9:45 a.m., 10 hours after driving off Dike Road bridge, Kennedy reported the accident to Edgartown Police Chief Dominick Arena and admitted that he was the driver.

On July 25, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, received a two-month suspended sentence, and had his license suspended for a year. That evening, in a televised statement, he called the delayed reporting of the accident "indefensible" but vehemently denied that he been involved in any improprieties with Kopeche. He also asked his constituents to help him decide whether to continue his political career. Receiving a positive response, he resumed his senatorial duties at the end of a month.

There is speculation that he used his considerable influence to avoid more serious charges that could have resulted from the episode. Although the incident on Chappaquiddick Island derailed his presidential hopes, Kennedy continued to serve as a U.S. senator of Massachusetts into the 21st century.


Chappaquiddick and Questions

In comments to a post below, ConservaTim suggests that I am not familiar with the events that occurred at Chappaquiddick, and that I am parroting a right wing line whenever I bring up Sen Kennedy's actions on that fateful day, and that the line is innaccurate, that Kennedy was totally absolved of wrong doing by a grand jury.

Well, he was half right, anyway.

I never did do a lot of research on Chappaquiddick simply because it seemed like a fairly clear case of a wealthy kid getting away with killing a young woman. But maybe ConservaTIm was right. Maybe I was taking too much for granted. Maybe the whole mess was a right wing hatchet job that's been perpetuated for nearly 40 years now.

So I looked into it.

Nope. Ted Kennedy covered up the accident for 10 hours, and then the Kennedy clan went into a full court press to make sure that Teddy didn't go to jail.

* Kennedy waited over 9 hours to report the accident to police, and he reported it only after the car and body were found.
* Based on his own testimony and the testimony of witnesses to his drinking throughout the day, Kennedy undoubtably was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the accident.
* His statement does not match the statements of other witnesses, nor is it internally consistent. It appears that the accident took place around 12:30AM, not 11:15 PM as he claimed. This leaves just over an hour unaccounted for between the time he left the party and was seen driving towards the bridge.
* After his attempts to rescue Mary Jo, he claimed to have passed out on the beach for 20 minutes or so, then went back to the cottage to get his lawyer/friend/cousin to help him. Even though the cottage had a phone, he didn't call to report the accident.
* After his friends tried to rescue Mary Jo, he again failed to use a phone available at the ferry terminal to report the accident, instead telling his friends that he was going to swim the channel and report the accident on the mainland. He went back to his motel, changed clothes, spoke to the night clerk, and went to bed. He made no mention of the accident.
* The next morning, he had breakfast with friends, again, never mentioning the accident, or attempting to report it to police.
* When his friends who tried to rescue Mary Jo came across the channel to the mainland, they found him neatly dressed and having breakfast. They brought him back to the island, where once again, he failed to use the phone to call in the accident. By this time, the tide was going out, revealing the car. Rescue efforts began immediately. Seeing this activity, Kennedy still failed to report to the rescuers or the police that he had been driving the car.
* The rescue diver found Mary Jo in a position consistent with a person breathing air trapped in an air pocket. It was his opinion that she asphyxiated when the oxygen ran out, rather than drowned. The coroner's cursory examination revealed very little liquid in the lungs, unusual for a drowning victim, yet he pronounced the COD as drowning, based on the circumstances. No autopsy was ever performed.
* Kennedy spoke with many people from 2:30AM the morning of the accident through 10:00AM when he finally reported it to the police. At no time did he give any sign to any of these folks that he'd been in a wreck, or that a young woman had drowned. And nobody who spoke with him during those hours characterized him as "in shock" or disoriented." Indeed, most described him as acting normally.
* Even though state law required a mandatory sentence of at least 20 days in jail for leaving the scene of an accident where there was bodily injury, Kennedy was given a suspended sentence, serving no time.
* Kennedy was driving on an expired license, a fact the police were unaware of due to intervention at the Motor Vehicle Reqistry.
* Kennedy had a history of motor vehicle violations, including driving under the influence and driving without a license. This information was also unavailable to the police or the judge.

So, after looking through all the reports, I'm even more firmly convinced that Mary Jo died because Ted Kennedy tried to cover up an accident caused by his drunken driving.

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