This date in history

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July 19 should have been a happy day for the Kennedy family. The Apollo 11 spacecraft was orbiting the moon, preparing for a lunar landing the following day that would accomplish the ambitious goal President John F. Kennedy had announced over eight years earlier. But instead of a day of celebration, for the Kennedys the day would be marked by tragedy and scandal. At about 10 a.m. that morning, Senator Ted Kennedy entered the police station in Edgartown, Massachusetts and gave a startling confession: the previous night (about 10 hours earlier) he had driven his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. He had been unable, he said, to rescue his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, who was trapped in the vehicle.
Twenty-eight-year-old Kopechne had been attending a party that night hosted by Kennedy and intended to be a reunion for six women, including Kopechne, who had worked on Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign. (There were 12 guests at the party, six men, five of whom were married, and six single women.) Kennedy claimed that he was giving Kopechne a ride to catch the ferry back to the mainland when he accidentally took a wrong turn and drove off the bridge. He claimed that after repeated failed attempts to extricate Kopechne from the submerged car, he walked back to the cottage on Chappaquiddick “in a state of shock.” Sometime later he had someone drive him to Edgartown, where he went back to his hotel room. “When I fully realized what had happened this morning,” his statement concluded, “I immediately contacted the police.” He later added that after walking back to the cottage, he returned to the scene with two of the male guests, his cousin Joe Gargan and lawyer Paul Markham, and that they too had unsuccessfully attempted to get Kopechne out of the car. He also later retracted his claim that he had been driven to Edgartown. Instead, he said, Gargan and Markham drove him to the ferry slip and from there he swam to Edgartown, went to his hotel room and collapsed in exhaustion.
Although Kennedy later added more detail to his initial statement, he never wavered from its basic claims: while driving Mary Jo Kopechne to catch the ferry he took a wrong turn, drove off the bridge and into the water, and tried unsuccessfully to rescue her. The incident so dazed him, he said, that it took him nearly 10 hours to report it. Kennedy denied that he had been driving while drunk, or that he and Kopechne had been engaged in any “immoral conduct.” Charged only with leaving the scene of an accident, he was given the minimum sentence of two months in jail, and that sentence was suspended by the judge.
But many unanswered questions persist. Kennedy claimed he was taking Kopechne to the ferry so she could return to her hotel in Edgartown. But a local deputy sheriff testified that he saw Kennedy and Kopechne in the car together at about 12:40 a.m., after the last ferry of the day had run. Further, Kopechne had left her purse and hotel key at the party, which suggests she had intended to return to the party, rather than leave the island. Kennedy claimed he took a wrong turn, but he was very familiar with the island and the turn he took led to a secluded beach to which he and Kopechne were known to have traveled before. On the way back to the cottage after the incident, Kennedy would have had to pass several other closer cottages. Why did he not stop at them for help? Although Kennedy claimed that he had been in a state of shock for ten hours after the incident, thus accounting for his delay in reporting it, he is known to have made several long distance telephone calls in the interim and before going to the police station Kennedy was reportedly seen having breakfast at the hotel restaurant and chatting normally.
Kennedy was never charged with anything more than leaving the scene of an accident, he served no jail time, and he was continuously reelected to the Senate until his death in 2009 (he was the third-longest serving senator in U.S. history). But the scandal of the incident clouded his career nevertheless and it likely ruined his chance of ever becoming president (he lost the Democratic nomination to Jimmy Carter in 1980 and never sought it again). There were more personal consequences as well. Kennedy’s wife Joan, who had been pregnant at the time of the incident, miscarried shortly after attending Mary Jo Kopechne’s funeral and blamed the miscarriage on the incident.
The party on Chappaquiddick Island that would lead to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne and the scandal that accompanied the rest of Ted Kennedy’s career occurred on July 18, 1969, fifty-seven years ago today.