[62] "Considering the unblemished record of the defendant, and insofar as the Commonwealth represents this is not a case where he was really trying to conceal his identity", Boyle sentenced him to the statutory minimum two months in prison, which he suspended, saying that he "has already been, and will continue to be punished far beyond anything this court can impose. Ted Kennedy didn't abandon Mary Jo Kopechne when his car plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island . I attempted to open the door and the window of the car, but have no re-collection of how I got out of the car. Listen to Teds own words what happened and ask yourself if he knew she was in the car. After proceeding for approximately one-half mile on Dyke [sic] Road, I descended a hill and came upon a narrow bridge. Boyle, p. 70, reported at Damore, p. 364. Readers Digestcommissioned a second study for the 1980 cover story; this time calling upon the expertise of an automobile-accident analyst. I was probably 50 yards off the shore, and I remembered being swept down toward the direction of the Edgartown Lighthouse and well out into the dark . Mary Jo Kopechne was a school teacher and a political campaign specialist who died in a car accident at Chappaquiddick Island on July 18, 1969. Gargan drove the three to the site of the crash, to try to rescue Kopechne from the car. Kennedy later stated that Kopechne felt ill and that they were headed for the ferry to Edgartown, where both were staying in different hotels. She was confined to bed because of two previous miscarriages, but she attended Kopechne's funeral and stood beside her husband in court. "[103] Before Chappaquiddick, public polls showed that a large majority expected Kennedy to run for the presidency in 1972, but he pledged not to run in 1972. Kennedy and Kopechne left the party together at 11 pm, and only one of them made it back alive. All the men were married, except Crimmins;[8] wives were not invited to the Chappaquiddick weekend. While some observers of the case suspected she could have been saved if Kennedy had gone for help earlier, othersincluding James E.T. [96] The suspension was required by Massachusetts law for any fatal motor vehicle accident if there were no witnesses. A full ten hours would elapse before hed finally report it. Farrar testified that Kopechne's body was pressed up in the car in the spot where an air bubble would have formed. 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. The next morning, he got breakfast, and returned to Chappaquiddick. Half a century later in August 2009, the only man with the answers, Ted Kennedy, took his secrets to the grave. Amazon.com Inc's palm-scanning or cashier-less checkout technology is in more than 200 establishments in and outside the company, a vice president told Reuters. On the way, he would have passed two separate houses with lights ontwo doors he could have knocked on and asked to use the phone to call for help. [43] Arena led Kennedy to another empty office where he could privately dictate his statement to Markham, who wrote it out in long hand. Kennedy first called Helga Wagner, a Kennedy family friend, to get a phone number for Smith, who was vacationing in Europe. [77] On September 2, Kennedy's lawyers petitioned the Massachusetts Supreme Court for a temporary injunction against the inquest,[75] which was granted. Kennedy provided a dramatic account of what he assured his listeners had been a harrowing swim, where for a second time that night he felt he surely would drown. See Chappaquiddick photos and images from satellite below, explore the aerial photographs of Chappaquiddick in United States. [127][128], Gargan's mother was the sister of Kennedy's mother. [16], Kennedy was still at the pay phone when he heard that his car and Kopechne's body had been discovered;[42] he then crossed back to Edgartown to go to the police station with Markham. In a speech the following week, Kennedy maintained he had not driven drunk, and that there was no truth, no truth whatever to the widely circulated suspicions of immoral conduct that have been leveled at my behavior and [Kopechnes] regarding that evening. Kennedy attributed his actions after the accident to injury (he suffered a concussion), shock and confusion. Her face was pressed into the footwell, and her hands gripped the back of the front seat, as if she had been trying to push her head into a pocket of air. This is the damning true story of the death of campaign strategist Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick and of the senator37-year-old Senator Ted Kennedywho left her trapped underwater while he returned to . The findings revealed that, if anything, currents that time of night (around 1:30 am) would have pushed a swimmer inward, toward the bay on the south side of the island, notoutward toward Nantucket Sound, as Kennedy had claimed. [80][81] Judge Brominski ruled against the exhumation on December 1, saying that there was "no evidence" that "anything other than drowning had caused the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. Principal photography began in Boston, in September 2016. Kopechne had been driven over Chappaquiddick road five times and over Dyke Road and Dyke Bridge twice. You can find her byline on pieces about grammar, fun facts, the meanings of various head-scratching words and phrases, and more. It was 7:30 am, and Kennedy had still not informed authorities about the accident. Gargan and Markham jumped into the pond and tried repeatedly to rescue her but were not able to, due to the strong tidal current. Get past the tawdry events of Chappaquiddick and this is a good car-spotting movie. You don't see many 1965-70 Olds 88s, on the street or otherwise, these days, so this . The judge stopped short of recommending charges, and a grand jury convened on April 6, 1970, returning no indictments. Arena then typed out the statement:[44][Notes 4]. On July 19, 1969, around 12:45 a.m., Look was driving back to his home on Chappaquiddick when he saw a dark car and thought the driver appeared "unsure or lost." He parked his car and got out. [17] Others in attendance were attorney Charles Tretter, a Kennedy advisor; and Raymond LaRosa, who had worked on Kennedy's Senate campaigns. But at the inquest, other partygoers said neither Gargan nor Markham appeared injured when they returned to the house on Chappaquiddick at around 2 am. Mortician Eugene Frieh examined the body and found that it contained far less water than most drowning victims. Markham and Crimmins intended to spend the night at the cottage, while the others were booked at hotels on Martha's Vineyard - the men at the Shiretown Inn, one block from the Edgartown ferry slip, and the women at the Katama Shores motor inn, about 2 miles (3.2km) south of the ferry slip. The report from the inquest into the accident released by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1970 concluded that as there was no evidence any air remained in the submerged car, it wouldnt seek or allow any testimony about how long she may have lived, as this could only be conjecture and purely speculative.. Chappaquiddick was not just an auto accident. [22], The exact time the crash occurred is unknown, due to a conflict between the testimony of Kennedy and a deputy sheriff who claimed to have seen his car at a later time. Margaret Knight, who grew up on Chappy in the '50s and '60s, wrote in a piece for The Times, "Before Kennedy's accident at the Dyke Bridge, Chappaquiddick was a world away from the big . A movie about the incident called "Chappaquiddick" is set to open in theaters on Friday. A photographic reproduction of Arena's typing was Exhibit number 2 at the inquest, and is available at, Arena for some reason typed "Dyke", though Markham used the correct spelling "Dike". [75] The request was opposed by Kopechne's parents. Senator Ted . When questioned by the guests, they said that Kennedy had swum back to Edgartown and Kopechne was probably at her hotel. Neither said good night to their friends, which was especially strange, considering Kennedy was the host of the party. [57][58][59], Kennedy returned to his family's compound in Hyannis Port. Ted and Mary Jo, a former staff member of Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign, were driving in Kennedy's 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 after a party when Kennedy apparently No one can look at the beautiful rolling fields of Gettysburg without mentally peopling them with the mangled corpses of men and horses. Kennedy left a party on Chappaquiddick at 11:15p.m. Friday. The next morning, Kennedy appeared composed when he ran into friend and fellow participant in the Regatta, Ross Richards, who was the first person to see Kennedy that morning. Crimmins had stocked the house party for a dozen people with three half-gallon bottles of vodka, four fifths of scotch, two bottles of rum, and two cases of beer, Barron reported. In it, he claimed that he wasnt aware that hed made a wrong turn until he was seconds away from hitting the bridge. Crimmins said that he had chosen to take Kopechne home himself because she wasnt feeling well. Kennedy testified that Kopechne told him, when he was about to leave the party, "that she was desirous of leaving" and asked "if I would be kind enough to drop her back at her hotel." The car Ted Kennedy drove in the Chappaquiddick incident. In late 1979, Kennedy announced his candidacy for the presidency when he challenged President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination for the 1980 election. The Senator can swim that five or six times both ways.. I know she suffocated when her oxygen ran out, the diver, John Farrar, said in a book about the incident. Chappaquiddick is an island within an island. He still did not call the police. Finally, Kennedy wrote that my burden is nothing compared to [Kopechnes] loss and the suffering her family had to endure. Director: John Curran. Answer: 'Yes, but I sure wouldn't let Teddy drive it. Can he make the kind of split-second decisions the astronauts had to make in their landing on the moon? For reasons he was never able to convincingly explain, it took Kennedy 10 hours to report the accident, and he ultimately pled guilty to a misdemeanor for leaving the scene. She has been a frequent contributor to History.com since 2005, and is the author of Breaking History: Vanished! He maintained that his intent was to immediately take Kopechne to a ferry landing and return to Edgartown, but that he accidentally made a wrong turn onto a dirt road leading to a one-lane bridge. Meanwhile, Gargan went to the Katama Shores to inform the Boiler Room Girls of the incident. 'that is what I said and I dove into the water. Was therea third person in the car? In his definitive book on Chappaquiddick, Leo Damore wrote that Teddy's cousin Joe Gargan said that in the moments after the accident, Teddy considered telling police that Mary Jo had been in the. [16] Kennedy entered the police station at approximately 9:50a.m. Even though Oldsmobile has been gone for more than a decade doomed in the marketplace, no doubt, by the focus-group-dismaying first three letters in its name we still celebrate the marque in music to this day. [21] Returning to Edgartown and Katama required making the last ferry, which left the island at midnight, or else calling to arrange a later ferry. Kennedy would serve Massachusetts in the Senate for three more decades, and would become one of the nations most respected elder statesmen by the time of his death, of brain cancer, in 2009. The island has only one store, and the rest is almost entirely woods, fields, and marshes- scattered houses, many with incredible views, others hidden away in the woods. [55] Bob Molla, an inspector for the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles who investigated the crash at the time, said that parts of the roof and the trunk appeared to be dry. [56] Farrar publicly asserted that Kopechne likely would have survived if a more timely rescue attempt had been conducted. [75] Nash advised Dinis that a grand jury investigation had more "teeth" than an inquest, as it had the power to indict defendants, whereas an inquest was only authorized to determine if a crime has been committed. After his car skidded off the bridge into Poucha Pond, Kennedy swam free, and maintained that he tried to rescue Kopechne from the submerged car, but that he could not. Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and received a suspended two-month jail sentence. Bettmann/Getty Images "[We] were portrayed as girls of no significance even as party girls. We will likely never have answers to all the questions raised about events of that night in July 1969 that sent a senators car careening off a bridge and Mary Jo Kopechne to a premature death. "Ted Kennedy didn't want to admit being drunk with a broad in a car late at night. 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