Posted on 07/26/2005 12:59:12 AM PDT by lunarbicep
Mary Jo Kopechne, the daughter of an insurance salesman, was born in the village of Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, on 26th July 1940. After graduating from Caldwell College for Women in New Jersey, she moved to Washington where she worked as a secretary for George Smathers and Robert Kennedy. During this time she shared an apartment with Nancy Carole Tyler, who worked for Bobby Baker.
On 17th July, 1969, Kopechne joined several other women who had worked for the Kennedy family at the Edgartown Regatta. She stayed at the Katama Shores Motor Inn on the southern tip of Martha's Vineyard. The following day the women travelled across to Chappaquiddick Island. They were joined by Edward Kennedy and that night they held a party at Lawrence Cottage. At the party was Kennedy, Kopechne, Susan Tannenbaum, Maryellen Lyons, Ann Lyons, Rosemary Keough, Esther Newburgh, Joe Gargan, Paul Markham, Charles Tretter, Raymond La Rosa and John Crimmins.
Kopechne and Kennedy left the party at 11.15pm. Kennedy had offered to take Kopechne back to her hotel. He later explained what happened: "I was unfamiliar with the road and turned onto Dyke Road instead of bearing left on Main Street. After proceeding for approximately a half mile on Dyke Road I descended a hill and came upon a narrow bridge. The car went off the side of the bridge.... The car turned over and sank into the water and landed with the roof resting on the bottom. I attempted to open the door and window of the car but have no recollection of how I got out of the car. 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. I was unsuccessful in the attempt."
Instead of reporting the accident Edward Kennedy returned to the party. According to a statement issued by Kennedy on 25th July, 1969: "instead of looking directly for a telephone number after lying exhausted in the grass for an undetermined time, walked back to the cottage where the party was being held and requested the help of two friends, my cousin Joseph Gargan and Paul Markham, and directed them to return immediately to the scene with me - this was some time after midnight - in order to undertake a new effort to dive."
When this effort to rescue Kopechne ended in failure, Kennedy decided to return to his hotel. As the ferry had shut down for the night Kennedy, swam back to Edgartown. It was not until the following morning that Kennedy reported the accident to the police. By this time the police had found Mary Jo Kopechne's body in Kennedy's car.
Edward Kennedy was found guilty of leaving the scene of the accident and received a suspended two-month jail term and one-year driving ban. That night he appeared on television to explain what had happened. He explained: "My conduct and conversations during the next several hours to the extent that I can remember them make no sense to me at all. Although my doctors informed me that I suffered a cerebral concussion as well as shock, I do not seek to escape responsibility for my actions by placing the blame either on the physical, emotional trauma brought on by the accident or on anyone else. I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the police immediately."
At the inquest Judge James Boyle raised doubts about Kennedy's testimony. He pointed out that as Kennedy had a good knowledge of Chappaquiddick Island he could not understand how he managed to drive down Dyke Road by mistake. For example, on the day of the accident, Kennedy had twice had driven on Dyke Road to go to the beach for a swim. To get to Dyke Road involved a 90-degree turn off a metalled road onto the rough, bumpy dirt-track.
An investigation at the scene of the accident by Raymond R. McHenry, suggested that Kennedy approached the bridge at an estimated 34 miles (55 kilometres) per hour. At around 5 metres (17 feet) from the bridge, Kennedy braked violently. This locked the front wheels. According to McHenry: "The car skidded 5 metres (17 feet) along the road, 8 metres (25 feet) up the humpback bridge, jumped a 14 centimetre barrier, somersaulted through the air for about 10 metres (35 feet) into the water and landed upside-down."
Investigators found it difficult to understand why he was crossing Dyke Bridge when he said he was attempting to reach Edgartown which was in the opposite direction. They also could not understand why he was driving so fast on this unlit, uneven, road. They also could not work out how Kennedy escaped from the car. When it was recovered from the water all the doors were locked. Three of the windows were either open or smashed in. If Kennedy, a large-framed 6 foot 2 inches tall man could manage to get out of the car, why was it impossible for Mary JO Kopechne, a slender 5 foot 2 inches tall, not do the same?
Local experts could not understand why Kennedy (and later, Markham and Gargan) could not rescue Kopechne from the car. It also surprised investigators that Kennedy did not seek help from Pierre Malm, who only lived 135 metres from the bridge. At the inquest Kennedy was unable to answer this question.
There were also doubts about the way Kopechne died. Dr. Donald Mills of Edgartown, wrote on the death certificate: "death by drowning". However, Gene Frieh, the undertaker, told reporters that death "was due to suffocation rather than drowning". John Farrar, the diver who removed Kopechne from the car, claimed she was "too buoyant to be full of water". It is assumed that she died from drowning, although her parents filed a petition preventing an autopsy.
Other questions were asked about Kennedy's decision to swim back to Edgartown. The 150 metre channel had strong currents and only the strongest of swimmers would have been able to make the journey safely. Also no one saw Kennedy arrive back at the Shiretown Inn in wet clothes. Ross Richards, who had a conversation with Kennedy the following morning at the hotel described him as casual and at ease.
Kennedy did not inform the police of the accident while he was at the hotel. Instead at 9am he joined Gargan and Markham on the ferry back to Chappaquiddick. Steve Ewing, the ferry operator, reported Kennedy in a jovial mood. It was only when Kennedy reached the island that he phoned the authorities about the accident that had taken place the previous night.
Dr. Robert Watt, Kennedy's family doctor, explained his patient's strange behaviour by claiming he was in a state of shock and confusion and "possible concussion."
-- Charles Pierce in a January 5, 2003 Boston Globe Magazine article.
I suggest we all send a little note to good, ol Ted!
AAWWWW, please don't get me started on this murderer!
Acute Alcoholic Poisoning is far too easy a way out for this human excrement. I wish him a very slow one!
Total bull.
I've always thought she was pregnant (for a Kennedy) and thus she became a liability.
What makes you think that?
Kennedy's actions after the "accident" and society influences and pressures at that time. It seems he was more relaxed and at ease "after" the accident. And one should remember just how the family's wealth was "earned" (deals with the Mafia). It wouldn't be the first time a male from the Kennedy clan killed a female where sex was involved. Moreover, the family decided to "silence" Rosemary Kennedy's life via a lobotomy. Sometimes desperate people (and families) do desperate things.
I attempted to open the door and window of the car but have no recollection of how I got out of the car. 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. I was unsuccessful in the attempt."....Sure Ted and snowbirds fly in hell...
Not too wise.
As I have read, it was a failed operation, not an attempt to silence the daughter.
The Kennedys have done a lot of shameful things over the decades, but you're way off base on that.
You may be more correct on your not so veiled words about Marilyn M.
http://www.ytedk.com/lobotomy.htm
"I was unfamiliar with the road
but he knew the name of every street...
Like Jack's "assassination", no one will ever know the truth.
To name just one of the one's we know. The tragedies of the family kinda makes one believe in some sort of Karma influence amongst humanity.
I was told by a limo driver that he personally delivered a million dollars in cash to Mary Jo's parents. Don't know if it was the truth but it explains a lot.
Mary Jo died for her country. In doing so, she saved us from any possibility that Admiral Oldsmobile would ever be president.
There have been a few famous cases over the years. For example, Rosemary Kennedy, sister to John, Robert, and Edward Kennedy, was given a lobotomy when her father complained about the mildly retarded girl’s embarrassing new interest in boys.The sad conclusion around these here parts (and I have had several family members directly involved in the poor woman's care at St. Coletta's over the years) is that Joe couldn't have a sexually precocious DAUGHTER.
Her father never informed the rest of the family about what he had done. She lived out her life in a Wisconsin institution and died January 7, 2005, at the age of 86. Her sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founded the Special Olympics in her honor in 1968.
SOURCE
But as she got older, her father worried that his daughter’s mild condition would lead her into situations that could damage the family’s reputation.
“Rosemary was a woman, and there was a dread fear of pregnancy, disease and disgrace,” author Laurence Leamer wrote in an unauthorized Kennedy biography called “The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family.” He wrote that Rosemary had taken to sneaking out of the convent where she was staying at the time.
Doctors told Joseph Kennedy that a lobotomy, a medical procedure in which the frontal lobes of a patient’s brain are scraped away, would help his daughter and calm her mood swings that the family found difficult to handle at home.
SOURCE
I was rather young at the time but, didn't kennedy get a quick burial and no autopsy...
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