The crash that changed a career
Very few car accidents, or cover-ups, have achieved the notoriety of that which took place July 18, 1969 involving the now senior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy on Chappaquiddick Island, Martha's Vineyard. On that fateful night, nearly 4 decades ago, Ted Kennedy attended a reunion for staffers who had toiled on his brother Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign.
What happened that night when the party was over is still unclear to many and shrouded in secrecy. At best, what transpired was an unfathomable lack of judgment; at worst, a grand cover-up to prevent embarrassment to the Kennedy dynasty, reeking of privilege and entitlement.
During those hours of darkness, Ted Kennedy would get behind the wheel of a car and drive campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne back to her motel. They'd allegedly planned to catch a ferry. There's some dispute as to whether this was possible. Kennedy and Kopechne supposedly left after midnight – at which point the ferry would not have been running.
Mary Jo Kopechne was a “Boiler Room Girl”, as Bobby Kennedy’s female campaign workers were then called. She was one of six such girls for whom the party was held. It must be noted that all of them were single, and all the men who attended married. If that's not a recipe for adulterous temptation and/or disaster, who knows what is.
Kennedy drove Kopechne back to the ferry in his mother's 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88, along an unpaved road. At a crucial point he failed to see a narrow wooden bridge – Dike Bridge – built without guard rails and approaching in the darkness at an oblique angle to the road. By the time Kennedy saw it – if he saw it – it was too late; the car ran off the road and plunged into the pond below.
What happened next is as murky as the water that claimed the life of his young passenger.
Murky water, murky facts
According to Kennedy, he'd made a wrong turn onto the unlit road that led to Dike Bridge. Consistent with the driving skills of one who was intoxicated, he drove right over its side.
The car plunged into Poucha Pond, coming to rest upside down. Somehow, Kennedy was able to wiggle and swim free of the vehicle. Kopechne was not so lucky.
Kennedy claims he tried to swim down to reach her several times, before growing exhausted and resting on the bank for several minutes. Later he would walk back to the Lawrence Cottage, where the party had taken place.
One can only imagine the panic and dread going through Kennedy's head as he walked back. Those emotions would soon spread to the rest of the Kennedy family as the scope of the tragedy and its implications became clear to them.
Joseph Gargan, Kennedy's cousin, and party co-host Paul Markham returned to the pond with Kennedy to try to rescue Kopechne. Sadly and strangely, there was a telephone at the Lawrence Cottage. No-one used it to call for help.
Their efforts to save Kopechne failed. Abandoned inside a car she could not escape from, she'd drowned. Later that night, Kennedy decided to return to his hotel. To do so, he claims to have swum across the 500-foot wide channel back to Edgartown.
The next morning, police recovered Kennedy's car, from which they pulled out the body of Mary Jo Kopechne.
Kennedy discussed the night's events with several people, including his lawyer and Kopechne's parents, before meeting with police the next morning. In the end her death was ruled an accidental drowning. No autopsy was performed. The legal consequences appear to have been swept under the rug for the well-connected Massachusetts senator. Lucky for Kennedy. Unlucky for Kopechne.
Kennedy entered a plea of guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury. He received a sentence of two months in jail, which was suspended.
It's hard to imagine an ordinary defendant receiving the kind of leniency Kennedy received, given the gravity of the event and the severity of the local laws.
A car accident cover-up?
Shortly after Senator Kennedy and Paul Markham left the Edgartown police station, Police Chief Dominick Arena and Walter Steele, the Special Prosecutor for Dukes County, Martha's Vinyard, began their investigation.
Up to that point, Arena's only source of information about the accident was Senator Kennedy's report, which in Steele's opinion, "didn't add up at all."
John Farrar, the rescue diver who examined the Chappaquiddick accident scene, was convinced that Mary Jo Kopechne had not only survived the crash, but had lived for some time by breathing a pocket of trapped air. Farrar didn't believe she drowned. Instead, he surmised that asphyxiation was the cause of death, as the oxygen in the air Kopechne breathed was used up and replaced with carbon dioxide. "She was alive, easily an hour, maybe two," he said.
Questionable too, was the "shock and exhaustion" Kennedy said he'd suffered after the accident. The Senator had not sought medical attention, nor did he appear injured when he arrived at the police station. All of these factors and observations combined to suggest that the Senator was trying to avoid responsibility for Kopechne's death by delaying reporting to the police in order to sober up.
Steele told Chief Arena that unless there were mitigating circumstances to account for the ten-hour delay, there was no choice but to seek a complaint against Ted Kennedy for leaving the scene of an accident.
"That's all you can do," Steele said. "The statement is in clear violation of the statute."
To complete the citation, Arena needed to know Ted Kennedy's driver's license number and expiration date. Since the Senator had been unable to produce a license at the police station, Arena called the Registry office in Oak Bluffs. He was allegedly told, "We’ll get back to you."
"I found it hard to believe the Senator had been in a major automobile accident. His face bore no traces of any marks. He never sat down or appeared in any kind of physical discomfort. If he had been injured, in shock, or confused, nothing of it lingered in our meeting, to my observation."
– Police Chief Dominick Arena
State Police Detective George Killen was the senior officer responsible for the investigation and prosecution of criminal matters on Cape Cod and the islands. When Medical Examiner Donald Mills called to ask whether an autopsy should be performed on Kopechne, Killen told him he was satisfied with his diagnosis. Because there was no evidence of foul play, he said, no autopsy was necessary.
Aftermath and legacy
An Edgartown grand jury later reopened the investigation, but did not return an indictment. In the mean time, the Chappaquiddick incident quickly became a national scandal.
The most charitable of Kennedy's critics lambasted him for failing to save Kopechne, for failing to summon help immediately, and for calling his lawyers instead of the cops first. Other critics were less understanding, accusing Kennedy of callously leaving a girl to drown to save his own skin. Calling your lawyer instead of the cops may be politically savvy on some occasions, but in this situation it was surely not the moral thing for Kenndy to do.
Many observers point to the Chappaquiddick incident as the reason this Kennedy made only one half-hearted run for the White House, against Jimmy Carter, in the Democratic primaries of 1980.
"Senator Kennedy killed that girl the same as if he put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger."
- George Killen, State Police Detective-Lieutenant
The moral choice Edward Moore Kennedy faced that July night in 1969 would have required sacrifice – accounting for the poor choice of what surely amounts to drinking and driving, and potentially losing his Senate seat. Given his well-known penchant for the bottle, not drinking at the party would have amounted to a remarkable feat of self-discipline, heretofore unseen in the Senator.
But he didn't choose self-discipline. Instead, as fate would have it, he get behind the wheel of a car that became a coffin for Mary Jo Kopechne who would never live to the see the light of another day.
Was there a cover-up involved in this historic accident? It would appear so. But the truth is known only to three – to Ted Kennedy, to Mary Jo Kopechne, and to the murky depths of Poucha Pond.
Sources and additional reading...
- "Dinis Says Blood On Mary Jo's Body", Boston Herald Traveler, September 16, 1969
- Jones, Richard E. "The Chappaquiddick Inquest: The Complete Transcript of the Inquest into the Death of Mary Jo Kopechne" (1979)
- "Lampoon's Surrender", TIME Magazine, November 12, 1973, retrieved September 10, 2006
- Olsen, Jack (1970). The Bridge at Chappaquiddick. Little, Brown and Co.
