Posted on 08/30/2009 9:54:27 PM PDT by advance_copy
The truth of what really happened on July 18, 1969, on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts will never be known. What is known is that at the end of the evening, Mary Jo Kopechne was found dead in a car that Edward (Ted) Kennedy had been driving. Was her death the result of a tragic accident or due to gross negligence on the part of Ted Kennedy?
Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne attended the same party on the evening of July 18, 1969. Kennedy left the party with Kopechne as a passenger in his car and accidentally drove off the road and into a tidal channel on Chappaquiddick Island. As reported in the Boston Globe, Kennedy was able to escape the submerged car and swim to safety. Kopechne was not and her body was later found in the car. Kennedy contacted multiple aids right after the accident, but did not notify authorities until the following morning. In fact, by the time Kennedy contacted local police, Kopechne's body had already been found.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
What effect this Ted Kennedy had on America can only be described as dreadful. I care not for a Republican that calls him "friend". For Edward Kennedy was no friend of this Republic, and that by his own choice.
Teddy could have received help from several nearby occupants, including a Fire Station; he could have gone just up the hill to the party house and called for help.
He did not.
God Bless Mary Jo.
he committed murder
he committed treason.
he was NOT a statesman.
God knows.
Kennedy didn’t get away with it.
(Mark Steyn)
Ted Kennedy went a different route. He got kitted out with a neck brace and went on TV and announced the invention of the Kennedy curse, a concept that yoked him to his murdered brothers as a fellow victim and not, as Mary Jo perhaps realized in those final hours, the perpetrator. He dared us to call his bluff, and, when we didnt, he made all of us complicit in what hed done. We are all prey to human frailty, but few of us get to inflict ours on an entire nation
The senators actions in the hours and days after emerging from that pond tell us something ugly about Kennedy the man. That he got away with it tells us something ugly about American public life.
Wonder if he even was in the car when it left the bridge. How’d he escape? Out a window? The car flipped and went in top first.
Or if Mary Jo was heavily drugged or so badly injured such that even if Ted could clamber out a window, Mary Jo could not.
How convenient for Teddy that Mary Jo’s folks wanted to cover up the problem as badly as Teddy did.
What? Save a girl when your entire political career is on the line? Calling his attorneys was far more important to him. If he could have called Keith Oberman at that time, he would have, before he let on that there was any problem with his car in the drink and there was drink in his veins.
snakesman!
Albeit full justice was denied, the man pleaded guilty in what was in effect a plea bargain. Of course he was negligent. We don't need to know the "whole" story, the negligence and the post-negligence obfuscation say it all. If anyone thought they'd get so much as a unequivocal mea culpa from the guy, they don't know the Kennedy's.
I try not to speak of the recently departed, so I have been studiously avoiding the news the last few days. Whenever I turn on even Fox for a few moments, the dishonest gushing about Mr. Kennedy is just too much.
What? .. he closed the door after him? .. under water?
All the truth one needs is that Kennedy could have saved her but chose to HIDE the accident and go to the hotel, establish an alibi, call his lawyer, and sleep off his drunk. All to preserve HIS POLITICAL CAREER at the expense of Miss Kopechne’s life, and all those who loved her.
This is not a brave statesman, deserving of his many years in the Senate, but a murderer. The accident itself was only drunken negligence. The coverup was deliberate murder while Mary Jo breathed the few hours of oxygen left in the car.
I think Mary Jo’s parents were well paid for silence.
the article I read today said he went to a hotel.
Did anyone ever say if they saw him wet? or dry?
One thing I don’t understand is, why was Kennedy able to exit the car, but not Mary Jo? And how could the car have maintained a bubble of air, after Kennedy had opened the door or broken the window, or however he exited the car? It seems like the water would have rushed in at that time.
he murdered her ... he got out with her passed out and pushed the car in.
Oh come on - he was with a single woman - driving off the main road to go to a deserted beach - had been at a party with 8 young single women and 8 married men - without their wives - and drives off a bridge where the young woman dies and doesn’t call the authorities until enough time as gone by for an alcohol test to be meaningless... yeah, no one will ever know... right.
I figure, Mary Jo had the privilege of Meeting TEDDY KEGGER at the Pearly Gates, and to KICK HIS *** All the way to HELL!
Her death was the result of a tragic accident caused by Kennedy's gross negligence. Driving off the bridge was his crime, and the girl was as good as dead the moment it happened, whatever his ensuing culpabilities may have been.
It's all so obvious! He was taking her to the beach, and couldn't wait to get there. He had raced across the same bridge many times under similar circumstances, as unmindful of the danger on those occasions as he was on this, the fateful occasion ...
... so it seems to me.
He was a liar when he killed Mary Jo
He was a liar (and admitted it) when he promised to be faithful to his wife
He was a liar when he pushed renewable energy then blocked it for his own personal reasons
He spent his entire life as a decrepit liar.
Honor his memory? Not likely!
“The truth of what really happened on July 18, 1969, on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts will never be known.”
One day, it will be shouted from the mountaintops.
He was also responsible for the immigration bill he persuaded Reagan to sign. That may end up destroying the state of CA, if not the entire US. Way to go, Ted!
not to mention the attempted (and some will opine successful) undermining of the greatest of American Presidents in the early-mid ‘80’s by his treasonous collaboration with the soviet union’s KGB.
I have the feeling that when Teddy met his maker the dressing down he gave Robert Bork was mild in comparison to the one he recieved.
Mary Jo and 1 to 2 million Asians that were killed when he cut off ammunition to the South Vietnamese Army. He is going to have to give one heck of a speech to get by that group and he won’t have the press there to cover for him.
That part really disturbs me. You couldn’t pay me a billion dollars to shut up if that happened to my child. How could they do that to their own daughter?
I agree. It was embarrassing. Perhaps they were libs too. Life is not more important than an agenda to liberals. Clinton was a very moral man because he espoused the agenda. His personal wrong doing is of no concern. He could use and abuse women as long as he voted/espoused the party line.
There is no other "truth".
she was as good as dead not when the car left the bridge but when she couldn’t get out to join him in a made up story about about the accident
... when Kennedy saw that he was not going to be able to get Mary Jo out of that car without the help of the authorities she was a dead woman whether she was alive(like the diver said she surely was for at least an hour) or not..
there was no way he could have afforded to have the police called before he sobered up.. so Kennedy decided to let her stay down there not really caring if she was alive or dead.. he knew if he waited enough hours it was a no brainer by morning she would be dead and the warped story of it being just an innocent accident was created to cover for his political career
what a sack of crap
Excellent post, it was his choice.
I saw the comments of the diver in another thread, and I had never known of them all these years. I assume the 1 hour figure is based on trapped air, but I am unconvinced that the average person would have the presence of mind required to seek it out and breath from it in the dire circumstances of the crash.
Mythbusters investigated this experimentally, in a pool, and even from their experience in the clear, well lighted water I believe the comments were to the effect that it would be very difficult to use this air.
Of course, this doesn’t release Kennedy from responsibility for his actions, but I have always supposed that he assumed she was already drowned, and I still think so.
I also can’t picture how she could have been saved, whatever the diver said, even if Kennedy had promptly reported the accident. To me, the most damning fact is the whole pattern of behavior, including his reckless driving, that led to the crash, and Mary Jo Kopechne’s death.
To all of the Washington elite that described Senator Ted Kennedy in glowing terms and gushed that he will “ will be missed for both his friendship and personality” (Orrin Hatch). Your “vigorous opponent, valued friend” (Omaha World Herald Op Ed page headline) murdered a woman. The drunk coward abandoned Mary Jo Kopeckne alone in the dead of of night in sinking car screaming and drowning. He headed for his hotel room to dry off and call a lawyer she headed for the bottom of the Chappaquiddick Isand waters scratching at the carpet of the car floor. Her life and her death was and is just an irrelevant, inconvenient footnote to the life of this “class act” (Bob Dole)
You raise a good question and I agree with you.
They would have to kill me to shut me up if that were my daughter. But, the DNC and the Kennedy's would probably be more than willing to do so.
Yep...It was a very ugly moment.
Senator Hatch embarrassed himself. But, in the Senate they glad hand people that are diligent in destroying the country. Basically, the contract with the people and the states (the Constitution) is of no concern to either party. Look at Judge Roberts (I now call him Pirate Roberts) who has the oath he took to defend the Constitution yet he allows cases brushed aside that deal with Obama’s constitutional credentials for Presidential office. We have a well coordinated attack on the Constitution which has been going on for many years. The states and people are no longer considered participants in the contract. We are led by oath breakers at all levels of government.
I read somewhere she was quickly moved to her town for burial - you mean the parents were paid off that soon, not to get an autopsy? And no one ever wanted to exhume the body?
I don’t think the author is correct when she implies Teddy got the other men to try to get MJ out - I have never heard any account of 4 or 5 OTHER married men diving to rescue her - rescue Teddy from the PR nightmare, yes.
It wasn’t a deep pond. It wasn’t far to shore. Why was she not able to exit the same way as Teddy? The car wasn’t that badly damaged. She was at the air pocket.
I’d say she was disoriented and panicked. The air pocket proves she was alive for some time.
She was definitely able to be rescued.
The author says Kennedy paid a high price. The price was not high enough.
http://tomroeser.com/blogview.asp?blogID=24593
http://dailysally.blogspot.com/2006/01/my-ted-kennedy-chappaquiddick-story.html
What would happen to a contract with Mary Jo’s parents now that Ted is dead?
Now I know this is probably going to make one or more of the Libertarians on FR unhappy, but the truth is that the matter is NOT over with in this matter. There is a day coming when Ted Kennedy will stand before the Supreme Judge and answer for this. Count on it.
There is only one person who knew what happened at Chappaquiddick. Ted took that secret to the grave.
IMO Teddy was never in the car. He was never ever seen wet, as he would have been had he been in the car. He had driven over Dike Bridge hundreds of times and it is unlikely he would have missed the turnoff for the Ferry and gone into the drink.
Mary Jo’s parents were paid off to go away and keep their silence. So what did happen that night? We can only speculate.
One hypothesis that Mary Jo was murdered to cover up a pregnancy. More like is that Mary Jo was murdered to rtuin Teddy’s career. The plane crash he was in that injured his back for life was just a warning.
The Kennedys played hard ball with the big boys. They were heavily involved with the Chicago mob, organized crime in general and had many political enemies.
No one will ever know the truth.
I seem to remember hearing that a couple saw him around 2am, heading back toward his hotel, which, IIRC was in Edgartown, and he was soaking wet. The Ferry had stopped running for the night, and he had just swum across the channel that separates Chappaquiddick Island from Edgartown.
From what I’ve read in the past few days, there was an effort to exhume her body but her parents fought it. I’ve also heard that shortly after her death the parents moved to a much nice house.
No doubt her parents were persuaded by a consiglieri with a big check that convicting Teddy wouldn’t bring MaryJo back, so they might as well have some (blood) money for their loss. How could a perfectly middle class couple ever go up against the Kennedys and their slime machine without destroying their daughter’s reputation, as surely would happen? She was, after all, heading off in a car from a drinking party to a hotel with a married man. Better to just be quiet and let the whole thing die down. So, once again, at least it appears, the Kennedy power and money got Teddy out of a mess.
My memory from the time was that he tried to get a cousin to say he (the cousin) was driving the car. Thus, the call to the desk clerk complaining of the noise next door, and asking the desk clerk what time it was, to establish his alibi.
Honorable statesman, right.
back then,a different world morally,she could have,as has been speculated,been pregnant which would have been a motivation for the parents to not want to look deeply.Perhaps even the hint and not even the reality would have been enough.
gee whiz,he wasn’t able to become president.
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