Free Republic

We should every year remember the true story of Mary Jo's death, and how it revealed the true "character" of one Edward M Kennedy.

To this day, only one person truly knows what happened on a lonely Massachusetts bridge on the night of July 18, 1969. Sometime that evening, a car driven by US senator Ted Kennedy plunged into the icy water below. While the politician survived, his passenger, a 28-year-old aide, was not so lucky. Mary Jo Kopechne died on the road from Chappaquiddick that Friday night. In the ensuing scandal, the presidential hopes of the last of the Kennedy brothers were destroyed. Now the senator has signed a £4million deal to write his memoirs, due out in 2010, raising hopes he is...

Late on the night of July 18, 1969, a car went off a bridge on Martha’s Vineyard. With a young senator from Massachusetts, Edward Kennedy, at the wheel, the Oldsmobile sank into the water beneath the Dike Bridge. In a sequence of events that instantly became famous, Senator Kennedy escaped from the submerged vehicle and swam to shore. By 2:30 a.m. he had made his way back to his hotel in Edgartown, where he was sighted in the lobby. He made 17 phone calls to family members and associates. But not until 10 hours after the accident did he call...

In 1969, a car driven by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha's Vineyard; passenger Mary Jo Kopechne died.