40 Years Ago Today

40th anniversary of Mary Jo Kopechne’s drowning at Chappaquiddick...Kennedy's story still doubtful

Sometime around midnight, on July 18, 1969 Kennedy drove his Oldsmobile 88 off of a small bridge on Chappaquiddick island, into eight feet of chilly water. The vehicle landed upside-down. While Kennedy managed to free himself from the wreck and swim to safety, his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne was left in the car to drown.

Once he reached shore, Kennedy claims to have made seven or eight attempts to rescue Kopechne, but could not free her.

Kennedy then walked back to the cottage where he and four other men, were partying with several young women known as the “Boiler Room Girls“ who had worked on Robert Kennedy‘s campaign. Though Kennedy passed by a fire station and a private home to return to the cottage, he never stopped to ask for help for the trapped Kopechne.

He returned to the party and according to Kennedy himself, informed his cousin and a friend of the situation. The two men, Joseph Gargan and Paul Markham claim to have returned to the scene of the accident and made several unsuccessful attempts to free Kopechne.

Then Kennedy’s story takes an even stranger turn.

After the failed rescue attempts, Kennedy claims to have jumped back into the water and made the 500-foot swim across the channel back to Edgartown. He then walked back to his hotel and spent the night. He even took the time to change clothes and pay a visit to the front-desk, to complain about a noisy party--no doubt Kennedy's sloppy attempt at securing an alibi.

The next morning, Gargan and Markham around 8:00 a.m., and were supposedly shocked to discover that Kennedy never reported the accident to police. According to Kennedy‘s own testimony, he told them: "about my own thoughts and feelings as I swam across that channel ... that somehow when they arrived in the morning that they were going to say that Mary Jo was still alive"

The two men along with Kennedy went back to Chappaquiddick, where Kennedy spent some time making phone calls, seeking advice from various individuals as to how to proceed.

Meanwhile, two fisherman had discovered the submerged car and notified police. At 8:45a.m. a diver recovered the lifeless body of Mary Jo Kopechne.

It was not until 10a.m., over nine hours after driving-off of the bridge that Ted Kennedy went to the police station in Edgarton to report the accident.

Kennedy then gave the following prepared statement to police: “On July 18, 1969, at approximately 11:15 p.m. in Chappaquiddick, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, I was driving my car on Main Street on my way to get the ferry back to Edgartown. I was unfamiliar with the road and turned right onto Dike Road, instead of bearing hard left on Main Street. After proceeding for approximately one-half mile on Dike Road I descended a hill and came upon a narrow bridge.

The car went off the side of the bridge. There was one passenger with me, one Miss Mary [Kopechne], a former secretary of my brother Sen. Robert Kennedy. The car turned over and sank into the water and landed with the roof resting on the bottom. I attempted to open the door and the window of the car but have no recollection of how I got out of the car. I came to the surface and then repeatedly dove down to the car in an attempt to see if the passenger was still in the car. I was unsuccessful in the attempt. I was exhausted and in a state of shock.

I recall walking back to where my friends were eating. There was a car parked in front of the cottage and I climbed into the backseat. I then asked for someone to bring me back to Edgartown. I remember walking around for a period and then going back to my hotel room. When I fully realized what had happened this morning, I immediately contacted the police”

In a move which must have been rather tortuous for her parents, Kennedy attended Mary Jo's funeral, wearing a neck brace (which he reportedly never wore again) and looking rather pathetic.

The diver who recovered Kopechne’s body, John Farrar testified at the official inquest that her body was found where the air pocket would have formed. He said: “Had I received a call within five to ten minutes of the accident occurring, and was able, as I was the following morning, to be at the victim's side within twenty-five minutes of receiving the call, in such event there is a strong possibility that she would have been alive on removal from the submerged car.”

A week after the incident, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and received a suspended two-month sentence. Kennedy then went on national television to repeat his rather implausible story, and to ask for the public’s “prayers.”

The ensuing scandal and questionable details given by all of those involved is now left to speculation. It was obvious to most people that Kennedy had allowed a young girl to drown, in a desperate and self-serving attempt to protect his political career.

The incident all but guaranteed that Kennedy could never be a serious candidate for President of the United States.

The Kennedy family is connected to organized crime through the patriarch Joe Kennedy, who made the family fortune bootlegging during Prohibition.

It is a practice in such circles to require someone to "make his bones" by committing a murder, a capital crime from which there can be go going back, in order to prove his loyalty and cement him firmly into the organization.

I strongly suspect that Ms. Kopechne was for some reason potentially dangerous or embarrassing to someone in the Kennedy family or to one of its criminal associates. Ted was required to make his bones by getting rid of the young woman.

Doing this forced him to abandon any realistic presidential aspirations but in return he was guaranteed a lifetime seat in the US Senate.

In this life Ted Kennedy's name and family wealth has protected him from any real consequences of his actions (other than never being president). He is now an old man who is dying from cancer and has but a short span upon this earth left to him.

He will very soon face One whose wheels of justice grind slow but grind exceedingly fine.