Posted on 08/29/2009 3:09:07 PM PDT by ETL
Birth: Jul. 26, 1940
Death: Jul. 19, 1969
Teacher and Administrator, she is most remembered for her controversial death in an automobile accident with Senator Edward Kennedy; the resulting political scandal caused Kennedy to reverse his decision to run for the US Presidency. Born in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, she was the only child of insurance salesman Joseph and Gwen Kopechne. After graduating from Caldwell College, New Jersey, she taught at Montgomery Catholic High School in Montgomery, Alabama, and then moved to Washington DC to work as a secretary for Florida Senator George Smathers. Shortly afterwards, she went to work as a secretary for New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy following his election in 1964. After Senator Robert F. Kennedy's death in 1968, she moved to Matt Reese Associates, a Washington DC firm that helped politicians establish campaign headquarters, and it was there she met Senator Edward Kennedy, Robert Kennedy's younger brother.
On the evening of July 18, 1969, she attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island, near Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, in honor of the "Boiler Room Girls," a name given to the six young women who had helped the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy during his presidential campaign, and who had closed up his files after his assassination in June 1968. All six of the women were single, and the six men in attendance were all married but present without their wives, and the attendees gathered for a late night party at the Lawrence Cottage, rented by Joe Gargan for the occasion.
Late that evening (the exact time is in dispute), Kennedy offered to drive Kopechne back to her hotel at the Katama Shores Motor Inn in Edgartown, and later claimed that he mistakenly took a wrong, right turn onto Dyke Road, a dirt road leading to a beach about a mile down the road, instead of turning left onto the paved Chappaquiddick Road leading to the ferryboat which they would need to use to go to Kopechne's motel.
A half-mile down Dyke Road, Kennedy drove off the side of the Dyke Bridge, and the car overturned into Poucha Pond. Kennedy got out of the overturned car, but Kopechne failed to exit the car and died. Kopechne's body was recovered later that morning; the diver reporting that Kopechne had positioned herself near the back seat wheel well where an air pocket had formed, and had apparently suffocated rather than drowned. Her parents ruled out an autopsy, so the cause of death was never officially determined.
Senator Kennedy later pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury, for which he received a two-month suspended sentence and one year probation. Kopechne's death and Kennedy's failure to properly deal with the accident, along with numerous discrepancies in his account of what happened, damaged his reputation and is regarded by many as the major reason that he decided to cancel his run for the presidency in 1972 and subsequent years.
Kopechne's funeral was held on July 22, 1969, at St. Vincent's Roman Catholic Church in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, and she was buried in the parish cemetery there.
(bio by: Kit and Morgan Benson)
Burial:
Saint Vincents Cemetery
Larksville
Luzerne County
Pennsylvania, USA
The new family tombstone, erected after the death of Mary Jo's mother in December, 2007.
Added by: Geoff Wilson, 9/04/2008
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=4569
The new family tombstone, erected after the death of Mary Jo's mother in December, 2007.
Added by: Geoff Wilson, 9/04/2008
Johnson was a jack%$!!!!!!!!!! I hope in hell he is in an outhouse and it gets bombed over and over and Ted Kennedy get driven over that bridge by Mary Joe!!!!
“I wonder if he made a joke about her at the Pearly Gates?”
Doubt he ever saw those gates ;0
Kennedy’s statement that he made a “wrong turn” onto Dyke Bridge road was probably the most unbelievable part of his story.
I have seen pictures of that tiny dirt road which turns off a highway. No one would ever have accidentally turned onto that road, especially someone like Kennedy who was totlly familiar with the area.
whoa, the diver interviewed on the audio link was audited three times in the year after he went public with what he knew about this.
Except that Kennedy did run in 1980 and thought about running again afterwards (see the KGB memo in 1983).
I'll never forget the lead up to Ted entering the race. All summer of 1980, the media ran polls showing Kennedy more popular than President Carter and literally insisted that he run. They were orgasmic when Kennedy decided to run.
Then Kennedy did an interview with Roger Mudd on "60 Minutes" where Mudd asked simply "Why do you want to be president?" It was a typical liberal softball question but Teddy fumbled his way through it so badly that the American public must have had a collective gasp. Heck, even "that Reagan" *knew* why he wanted to be president!
Then various media started re-examining Chappaquiddick and the more they tried to cover it (or spin it), the worse it looked for Teddy's campaign. Carter might be incompetant but at least he wasn't a murderer.
I think the party apparatus decided it would be fatal to try to replace a sitting president of their own party and rallied back around Carter who then lost to Reagan.
Yes, I think Chappaquiddick played a role but I also think Teddy was simply too liberal for even his own party to stomach outside the Northeast and the West Coast. Remember, not only was he never president, he was also never the party's nominee for president.
He might have had an answer to this if he had ever been to a job interview.
Another revealing piece of information from this documentary was an interview with neighbors who lived near the bridge. I also saw a photo from the bridge which showed several houses only a short walking distance from the bridge. The neighbors said that they had been home that night but that they heard nothing and no one knocked on their doors or rang their bells. So Kennedy could have very easily run to one of these houses and rang their doorbell. Isn't that what any normal human being would do?
When you see someone in peril and you cannot help them, do you not seek help?
When there is a life or death situation, minutes count. If he had gone to the neighbors and called for the police, they might have arrived there with the proper equipment to save her life. Instead he did everything possible to avoid calling the police? Why?
Mary Jo did not drown, instead she died of asphyxia. Her head was in an air bubble so there was some time for her to have been rescued, if Kennedy had called the police right away. We will never know if she could have been saved, but it is apparent that she was not given every opportunity possible to save her life.
Did you really expect them to learn about that in government skewls? They should watch this 12 minute video to see what a self-serving SOB he was.
Kennedy Appeals to the People of Mass. (After Chappaquiddick)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgL6BsLmyQ8
I think it was a perfect choice.
Also an autopsy would have revealed if she had died by drowning or lack of air. As someone earlier observed, the car apparently was in fairly shallow water and the diver stated that her body was positioned where an air pocket had developed. And if it was by lack of air, then she was alive for a longer period of time, giving Teddy plenty of time to at least attempt a relatively safe and easy shallow water rescue.
I don’t think it was MURDER, and thus intentional. I’d say it was more criminally negligent homocide. Still, he DID get off WAY to easy!
Even with the air pocket, after breathing for awhile, most of it would become carbon dioxide, hence the asphyxiation.
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