Brother’s crash mystery cast shadow over JFK’s lunar legacy
As the world prepared to celebrate one of the greatest visions of his brother’s presidency, US senator Ted Kennedy was embroiled in a tragic controversy
As the world prepared to celebrate one of the greatest legacies of his brother’s presidency, US Senator Ted Kennedy was embroiled in a tragic controversy that would leave a young woman dead and cause irreparable damage to the prominent political family’s name.
Apollo 11 was just two days away from landing on the moon, a daring mission kickstarted by president John F, Kennedy before his November 1963 assassination, when late on July 18, 1969, younger brother Ted, a US senator, drove off a Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, bridge, killing his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne.
Despite taking place 50 years ago today, there are still more questions than answers about exactly what happened on that fateful night: Why were the pair in the car together? Where were they going? Was Kennedy drunk behind the wheel? Why did it take the senator 10 hours to alert authorities about the deadly crash?
Kennedy and his cousin Joseph Gargan were hosting an intimate party on the island, the two inviting a number of influential married men together with a small group of young single women who had been involved in the 1968 presidential campaign of Kennedy’s brother Robert. They were known as the “Boiler Room Girls” for the hot, windowless room they had worked from during the campaign.
Kopechne had been an aide to Robert Kennedy during his campaign and was said to have been devastated by her boss’s assassination in June the previous year, the 28-year-old leaving Washington DC because it reminded her too much of him.
She was at the Chappaquiddick Island party and left with Senator Kennedy in his black Oldsmobile. The pair slipped out quietly and while Kennedy said after the incident that Kopechne had asked for a lift back to the mainland as she was ready to leave, she had left her belongings at the party.
Kennedy said he had taken a wrong turn, turning right instead of bearing left towards the ferry, and suddenly found himself at the bridge where the car went over and landed upside down in the water.
The senator managed to free himself from the submerged vehicle but Kopechne didn’t make it out. Kennedy said he tried several times to rescue his passenger.
“I attempted to open the door and the window of the car but have no recollection of how I got out of the car,” he explained in a written statement to police. “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.”
Instead of heading to the nearest house, which was just seconds from the scene, Kennedy walked back to the house where the party was being held and summonsed Gargan and former US attorney Paul Markham. The trio returned to the car and another desperate effort was made to release Kopechne, again to no avail.
After being advised by the other two men that he should contact police, Kennedy agreed and jumped into the water to swim back to the mainland where he went to his hotel — without calling the authorities.
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It would not be until the following morning that the wreckage was found and a diver called to release the body of Kopechne. John Farrer, the firefighter who had that grim task, told The St Petersburg Times that there was a good chance the victim would still be alive if Kennedy had gone straight to the nearest house and raised the alarm.
“Had I received a call within five to 10 minutes of the accident occurring and was able, as I was the following morning, to be at the victim’s side within 25 minutes of receiving the call, in such event there is a strong possibility that she would have been alive upon removal from this submerged car,” he said.
Kennedy said that he failed to report the accident until the following day because he was in a state of shock and suffering from concussion.
While the accident and Kennedy’s delay to report it initially made headlines, it was soon forgotten when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped foot on the moon. When the moon landing news died down, the focus was once again directed towards the man many thought had a good chance of occupying the Oval Office.
Only ever charged with leaving the scene of an accident, for which he was handed a two-year suspended sentence, Kennedy went on to serve in the US Senate for a record 47 years before his death from brain cancer in 2009. But the enduring mystery and suspicion around Chappaquiddick meant he was never able to rise to the level of his brothers before him.
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