Posted on 07/26/2005 12:59:12 AM PDT by lunarbicep
Mary Jo Kopechne, the daughter of an insurance salesman, was born in the village of Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, on 26th July 1940. After graduating from Caldwell College for Women in New Jersey, she moved to Washington where she worked as a secretary for George Smathers and Robert Kennedy. During this time she shared an apartment with Nancy Carole Tyler, who worked for Bobby Baker.
On 17th July, 1969, Kopechne joined several other women who had worked for the Kennedy family at the Edgartown Regatta. She stayed at the Katama Shores Motor Inn on the southern tip of Martha's Vineyard. The following day the women travelled across to Chappaquiddick Island. They were joined by Edward Kennedy and that night they held a party at Lawrence Cottage. At the party was Kennedy, Kopechne, Susan Tannenbaum, Maryellen Lyons, Ann Lyons, Rosemary Keough, Esther Newburgh, Joe Gargan, Paul Markham, Charles Tretter, Raymond La Rosa and John Crimmins.
Kopechne and Kennedy left the party at 11.15pm. Kennedy had offered to take Kopechne back to her hotel. He later explained what happened: "I was unfamiliar with the road and turned onto Dyke Road instead of bearing left on Main Street. After proceeding for approximately a half mile on Dyke Road I descended a hill and came upon a narrow bridge. The car went off the side of the bridge.... 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 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."
Instead of reporting the accident Edward Kennedy returned to the party. According to a statement issued by Kennedy on 25th July, 1969: "instead of looking directly for a telephone number after lying exhausted in the grass for an undetermined time, walked back to the cottage where the party was being held and requested the help of two friends, my cousin Joseph Gargan and Paul Markham, and directed them to return immediately to the scene with me - this was some time after midnight - in order to undertake a new effort to dive."
When this effort to rescue Kopechne ended in failure, Kennedy decided to return to his hotel. As the ferry had shut down for the night Kennedy, swam back to Edgartown. It was not until the following morning that Kennedy reported the accident to the police. By this time the police had found Mary Jo Kopechne's body in Kennedy's car.
Edward Kennedy was found guilty of leaving the scene of the accident and received a suspended two-month jail term and one-year driving ban. That night he appeared on television to explain what had happened. He explained: "My conduct and conversations during the next several hours to the extent that I can remember them make no sense to me at all. Although my doctors informed me that I suffered a cerebral concussion as well as shock, I do not seek to escape responsibility for my actions by placing the blame either on the physical, emotional trauma brought on by the accident or on anyone else. I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the police immediately."
At the inquest Judge James Boyle raised doubts about Kennedy's testimony. He pointed out that as Kennedy had a good knowledge of Chappaquiddick Island he could not understand how he managed to drive down Dyke Road by mistake. For example, on the day of the accident, Kennedy had twice had driven on Dyke Road to go to the beach for a swim. To get to Dyke Road involved a 90-degree turn off a metalled road onto the rough, bumpy dirt-track.
An investigation at the scene of the accident by Raymond R. McHenry, suggested that Kennedy approached the bridge at an estimated 34 miles (55 kilometres) per hour. At around 5 metres (17 feet) from the bridge, Kennedy braked violently. This locked the front wheels. According to McHenry: "The car skidded 5 metres (17 feet) along the road, 8 metres (25 feet) up the humpback bridge, jumped a 14 centimetre barrier, somersaulted through the air for about 10 metres (35 feet) into the water and landed upside-down."
Investigators found it difficult to understand why he was crossing Dyke Bridge when he said he was attempting to reach Edgartown which was in the opposite direction. They also could not understand why he was driving so fast on this unlit, uneven, road. They also could not work out how Kennedy escaped from the car. When it was recovered from the water all the doors were locked. Three of the windows were either open or smashed in. If Kennedy, a large-framed 6 foot 2 inches tall man could manage to get out of the car, why was it impossible for Mary JO Kopechne, a slender 5 foot 2 inches tall, not do the same?
Local experts could not understand why Kennedy (and later, Markham and Gargan) could not rescue Kopechne from the car. It also surprised investigators that Kennedy did not seek help from Pierre Malm, who only lived 135 metres from the bridge. At the inquest Kennedy was unable to answer this question.
There were also doubts about the way Kopechne died. Dr. Donald Mills of Edgartown, wrote on the death certificate: "death by drowning". However, Gene Frieh, the undertaker, told reporters that death "was due to suffocation rather than drowning". John Farrar, the diver who removed Kopechne from the car, claimed she was "too buoyant to be full of water". It is assumed that she died from drowning, although her parents filed a petition preventing an autopsy.
Other questions were asked about Kennedy's decision to swim back to Edgartown. The 150 metre channel had strong currents and only the strongest of swimmers would have been able to make the journey safely. Also no one saw Kennedy arrive back at the Shiretown Inn in wet clothes. Ross Richards, who had a conversation with Kennedy the following morning at the hotel described him as casual and at ease.
Kennedy did not inform the police of the accident while he was at the hotel. Instead at 9am he joined Gargan and Markham on the ferry back to Chappaquiddick. Steve Ewing, the ferry operator, reported Kennedy in a jovial mood. It was only when Kennedy reached the island that he phoned the authorities about the accident that had taken place the previous night.
Dr. Robert Watt, Kennedy's family doctor, explained his patient's strange behaviour by claiming he was in a state of shock and confusion and "possible concussion."
Can we all say worthless??
Don't hold your breath for one of our GOP Senatorial cowards to mention this in the Senate.
Right................. not enough for anyone with .....
BTW a question for you........................... where is that Supposed EVIDENCE!!!!!?????
Don't fake it.
There ought to be a marble statue placed to the honor of this lady who unwittingly prevented fat boy from becoming President on the strength of sympathy for his two "martyred" brothers, JFK and RFK ( aka Dumb and Dumber ).
I tend to agree with you and I think your version of the story is closer to the truth then the story we know.
Exactly!
God bless you gakrak and
H A P P Y -- B I R T H D A Y
and many more!
What evidence? MJ's parents were handed a lawyer (one of the Kennedy family lawyers) who advised them to take the Kennedy's out of court settlement, $1,000,000 , for which they would forgo an autopsy (which would prove she died of being choked to death by Ted Kennedy's hand instead of drowning in the water). She was not pregnant.
Compare MJ's death to Natalie Holloway. Rapee fought back and was killed, then disposed of. Killer had time and friends to help work on storyline and friends in government to help with the coverup. Same story, different day.
Happy Birthday, Mary Jo!
He was effing drunk. This event today would be vehicular manslaughter at the least.
I read with interest your recent blog posting regarding Charlie Pierce’s 2003 Boston Globe profile of Ted Kennedy. Regrettably, you are perpetuating an urban myth, and mischaracterizing the piece. If you had actually read the piece, you would have continued on to this paragraph:
“She’s always there. Even if she doesn’t fit in the narrative line, she is so much of the dark energy behind it. She denies to him forever the moral credibility that lay behind not merely all those rhetorical thunderclaps that came so easily in the New Frontier but also Robert Kennedy’s anguished appeals to the country’s better angels. He was forced from the rhetoric of moral outrage and into the incremental nitty-gritty of social justice. He learned to plod, because soaring made him look ridiculous. “It’s really 3 yards and a cloud of dust with him,” says his son Patrick. And if his name were Edward Moore, he would have done time.”
Variously, writers from The Wall Street Journal to the Northeastern University School of Journalism have characterized the paragraph you cite as a paragraph “of pure poison” (who exactly first characterized it as that is up for debate). But then they actually read the piece, and had the paragraph in its proper context. WSJ’s James Taranto put it like this:
From the WSJ Opinion Archives
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110002879
by JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, January 9, 2003 1:19 P.M. EST
Drowning in Bathos
Charles Pierce must really hate Ted Kennedy. Pierce is the author of a piece on the Massachusetts senator that ran more than 5,000 words in Sunday’s Boston Globe magazine. Tucked into it is this paragraph of pure poison:
And that’s the key. That’s how you survive what he’s survived. That’s how you move forward, one step after another, even though your name is Edward Moore Kennedy. You work, always, as though your name were Edward Moore. If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.
Charlie’s own reaction to certain representatives of the right wing media’s attempts to distort the piece to their own advantage can be found here in the October 22, 2004 issue of The American Prospect:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=8799
The original Boston Globe piece can be obtained from LexisNexis or, for a small fee, from the Boston Globe archives.
I understand that it is difficult for opinion writers to always make their way back to the original source, especially when they find the second hand “facts” so often repeated on the web. However, now that your information has been corrected, I trust you will be able to report it correctly going forward.
Sincerely,
Webmaster, www.charlespierce.com
Mary Jo Kopechne would have been 69 had she lived to see today, the day Ted Kennedy died.
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