Impossible, I've been there. He knew he was leaving the main road to the ferry and he purposely was going down Dike Road to the Beach, just a few hundred yards past the bridge. I'm sure he was going for some "midnight delight" on the beach with the gal.
Kennedy was guilty of manslaughter as anyone would be if they killed a passenger while driving drunk.
At least.
If Kennedy went into the water because he was drunk, he was as you say guilty of manslaughter or accidental death, and anyone but a Kennedy would have been tried on such a charge.
But it's worse than that. He waited 9 hours to inform the police, whereas if he had called them from the first house near the bridge they might very likely have gotten her out before she died. There was a substantial pocket of air in the car, and she probably lived for some time before it ran out.
That's worse than manslaughter. And there's more. His motivation was almost certainly to figure out a way to cover up his involvement and preserve his political career, not that he was too drunk or incompetent to make the right decisions in an emergency.
That's murder, in my book. He didn't deliberately kill her, but he did deliberately let her die after putting her into a situation where she was certain to die.
We were on The Vineyard last week and went to Chappaquiddick to see "the bridge". There can be no doubt what Fat Ted had in mind. That bridge leads to one thing....the beach and is really far from civilization.
His lawyers Datum,Dickum and Dunkum served him well. He should have been tried and CONVICTED.
I'm sure he was going for some "midnight delight" on the beach with the gal.
...Delamore makes the case that he was fleeing from a summer constable, who, though in a police uniform, had no arrest powers and would likely only have tut-tutted about a married middle-aged Senator out with a young woman late a night. Kennedy had offered to drive Mary-Joe to the Edgartown ferry (it's about a 100-yard wide channel), apparently stopped and was approached by a uniformed summer constable, who thought he was lost tourist. (Chappaquick is featureless and the roads are poorly marked.) Kennedy panicked and took off at 60 MPH, and vaulted off the narrow Dyke Bridge, which at the time had no guard rails, only a pair of 2 x 10's nailed flat on top of one another. (The new Dyke Bridge has a 3' high guard rail constructed of 8 x 8 timbers suppored by a 1" steel cable running the length of the bridge and anchored at both ends.)
I believe that the law in Massachusetts was such that anyone involved in a vehicular death was AUTOMATICALLY charged with manslaughter. Except that Kennedy wasn't.
I lived on Cape Cod from 1991 to 1997 and was friendly with a guy who had been a "substitute" judge when Kennedy killed Kopechne. The regular judge - Boyle - was on vacation, I believe in NH or VT. My friend was called and told to be ready to go to Edgartown for the proceedings. Boyle cut short his vacation and returned to Edgartown in time, so that my friend was not needed. He really didn't want to be involved because of the hyper-political nature of the case.
My friend was a Republican. Boyle was a DemocRAT. I wonder if things would have been different if Boyle hadn't returned.