Ted Kennedy

On the weekend of July 18th, 1969, Ted Kennedy was involved in a controversial accident in which he drove his car off a bridge on the island of Chappaquiddick, off of Martha's Vinyard. He was not traveling alone in the vehicle. He was accompanied by a woman named Mary Jo Kopechne. Mary Jo tragically died as a result of this accident. There were many things that followed this accident that made it a controversial situation. The state of Massachusetts, "a manslaughter charge is always given when someone leaves the scene of a deadly accident" (Simone par 2). He was never charged with this crime. Kennedy addressed the nation on television about what had happened that night on Chappaquiddick Island. There are many people that feel that there are too many holes in Kennedy's story as to what happened that night. Following this accident, there were many testimonies and statement made in regards to the situation Kennedy had at hand. Many people feel that the accident at Chappaquiddick was a cover-up because he did not report it until the next day and when he made his speech, there were parts to his story that were not believable.

Kennedy made his speech to the public on July 25th, 1969. He stated that he entered a plea of guilty to leaving the scene of an accident. Kennedy said that "Only reasons of health" kept his wife from not attending at the party (Eidenmuller par 2). "When I left the party, around 11:15 P.M., I was accompanied by one of these girls, Miss Mary Jo Kopechne. Mary J was one of the most devoted members of the staff of Senator Robert Kennedy. She worked for him for four years and was broken up over his death. For this reason, and because she was such a gentle, kind, and idealistic person, all of us tried to help her feel that she still had a home with the Kennedy family" (Eidenmuller par 3). Some feel that this is not true and that he was having an affair with Mary Jo Kopechne. He denied any wrong doing with Miss Kopechne. In his speech he stated, "There is not truth, not truth whatever, to the widely circulated suspicions of immoral conduct that have been leveled at my behavior and hers regarding that evening. There has never been a private relationship between us of any kind. I know of nothing in Mary Jo's conduct on that or nay other occasion -- the same is true of the other girls at that party -- that would lend any substance to such ugly speculation about their character" (Eidenmuller par 4). He also denied that he was driving under the influence of alcohol, although there were people who confirmed that Kennedy had been drinking from the time that he arrived to the island. He explained how the accident happened and the location of the bridge in which he drove off. He explained he rescue attempts to save Mary Jo and how was unsuccessful in doing so. He stated, "I made immediate and repeated efforts to save Mary Jo be diving into strong and murky current, but succeeded only in increasing my state of utter exhaustion and alarm. My conduct and conversations during the next several hours, to the extent that I can remember them, make no sense to me at all" (Eidenmuller par 7). He stated that he suffered a concussion and shock but said that he was not trying to use that as an excuse for what he did. "I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the policy immediately" (Eidenmuller par 5). He said that he walked back to the cottage after lying in the grass, exhausted, for an amount of time unknown to him. He did not report the accident at this time. He ended up getting the help of two people, Joseph Gargan and Phil Markham. Both were lawyers and Gargan is Kennedy's cousin. He stated that he instructed both men to go back to the accident scene to help save Mary Jo. He stated that this was "sometime after midnight" (Eidenmuller par 9). He stated that their attempts were also unsuccessful. He could not explain his action at this point. Kennedy said, "All kinds of scrambled thoughts -- all of them confused, some of them irrational, many of them which I cannot recall, and some of which I would not have seriously entertained under normal circumstances -- went through my mind during this period. They were reflected in the various inexplicable, inconsistent, and inconclusive things I said and did, including such questions as whether the girl might still be alive somewhere out of that immediate area, whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys, whether there was some justifiable reason for me to doubt what has happened and to delay my report, whether somehow the awful weight of this incredible incident might, in some way, pass from my shoulders. I was overcome, I'm frank to say, by a jumble of emotions, grief, fear, doubt, exhaustion, panic, confusion and shock" (Eidenmuller par 10). Instead of report the accident after the ineffective attempts to save this woman, Kennedy said that he dove into the water and swan back to the mainland to go back to his hotel. He claims that this was around two in the morning and went to sleep. He also stated that he remembered "going out at one point and saying something to the room clerk" (Eidenmuller par 12). He did not report the accident to the clerk either. In the morning of the next day, he "made an effort to call a family legal advisor, Burke Marshall, from a public telephone on the Chappaquiddick side of the ferry and belatedly reported the accident to the Martha's Vineyard police" (Eidenmuller par 13). Many people find this quite suspicious, since he called his attorney before contacting the police, knowing that a friend of his and his family may have died in the car accident in which he caused. He claimed that he felt terrible about what had happened. He then was debating if he should resign from the Senate. He then seemed to try and gain some empathy from the people of Massachusetts to help him make his decision on if he should resign. He ended his speech saying that "I pray that I can have the courage to make the right decision" (Eidenmuller par 20).

Kennedy made a statement to the police about what happened that night. He said in a written statement, "On July 18, 1969, at approximately 11:15 PM in Chappaquiddick, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, I was driving my car on Main Street on my way to get the ferry back to Edgartown. I was unfamiliar with the road and turned right onto Dike Road, instead of bearing hard left on Main Street. After proceeding for approximately one-half mile on Dike Road I descended a hill and came upon a narrow bridge. The car went off the side of the bridge. There was one passenger with me, one Miss Mary ________( There was a blank space here because Kennedy was not sure of the spelling of the dead girl's last name, and instead offered a rough phonetic approximation ), a former secretary