Image, July 19, 1969, Ted Kennedy's car in which his date, 28 year old Mary Jo Kopechne, was trapped and drowned to death. "Kennedy, who had been elected majority whip in the Senate the previous January...was a contender for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination....Kennedy was married to his first wife Joan at the time."
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| 7/19/1969, Mary Jo Kopechne removed from Ted Kennedy's sunken car |
Image caption: "The removal of Kopechne's body - drowned or suffocated? There was no autopsy."... Image from 9/14/2009 article, "Chappaquiddick: The Pathetic Legacy of Senator Edward Kennedy," TraditionInAction.org, Lyle J. Arnold, Jr.
Added: Tragically for all Americans, Ted Kennedy remained in the US Senate for 47 years.
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| Mary Jo Kopechne |
7/24/1989, "Frustrated Grand Jurors Say It Was No Accident Ted Kennedy Got Off Easy," people.com, James S. Kunen, Dirk Mathison, S. Avery Brown, and Tom Nugent
"Dike Bridge marked the end of the road for Sen. Ted Kennedy’s presidential chances, and the end of life for a young woman named Mary Jo Kopechne.
It was 20 years ago [1969], on the hot, humid night of July 18, 1969, that Kennedy’s black Oldsmobile hurtled off the bridge, the car’s momentum carrying it 23 feet before it sank upside down in six feet of swirling, dark water. Kennedy somehow got out of the car; Kopechne did not. Kennedy did not report the accident until some nine hours later. Why he did not, and exactly what happened that night, has never been adequately explained.
And the passage of time has only increased the bitterness of those who feel the truth was hidden. Some of them have begun to speak out. “It was a cover-up,” says Leslie Leland, foreman of the grand jury that considered the case. “All [the authorities] were concerned about was protecting Kennedy.”
Kopechne, an attractive, blond 28-year-old, had been at a party with five other young women—all veterans of Robert Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign—and Ted Kennedy and five other men.
She and Kennedy apparently left some time before midnight. In the written statement he gave to police the next day, Kennedy claimed they had been driving to the ferry that crosses the channel to Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard when he made a wrong turn off the paved highway and down the dirt road to Dike Bridge. He said he dived repeatedly to try to save Mary Jo, but then left the scene “exhausted and in a state of shock.” He said he walked the mile and a quarter back to the cottage where the party was still on and “asked for someone” to take him to Edgartown.
“When I fully realized what had happened this morning,” he wrote, “I immediately contacted the police.”
Six days later, in a nationally televised speech, Kennedy changed his account. This time he made no mention of asking someone at the party to take him to Edgartown.
On the day of the speech, Kennedy had pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and had received a two-month suspended sentence. After an inquest held the following January, Edgartown District Court Judge James A. Boyle concluded that there was probable cause to believe Kennedy’s negligent driving had “contributed to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne,” but Dukes County District Attorney Edmund S. Dinis chose not to seek the manslaughter indictment that such a finding might have supported.
Kennedy never explained how he could have mistakenly taken a sharp right turn off the island’s only paved road onto a dirt road. Nor why he walked past four houses without bothering to call for help. Nor why he put on dry clothes and exchanged pleasantries with the desk clerk at his motel in Edgartown at 2 in the morning."...Image above of Mary Jo Kopechne via TraditionInAction.org
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