In the aftermath of the Chappaquiddick automobile accident, Ted Kennedy advised his friends to “say nothing and do nothing,” according to a personal and previously undisclosed journal.
According to author and former Boston Globe writer John Farrell’s new book, Ted Kennedy: A Life, the late senator “panicked” and attempted to “cover up” the incident and passenger Mary Jo Kopechne’s murder by dictating what was said to the police.
Kennedy went before the hotel clerk the next morning to “create an alibi” for himself after failing to sound the alarm the night of the collision.
The assertion demonstrates that, despite his contemporaneous public declarations that he was “overcome with perplexity and astonishment,” Kennedy had been working to protect his own image before the tragedy.
The comments may be found in the private journals of historian and close friend of the Kennedy family Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who visited Kennedy and his family in the weeks after the event in July 1969. Now that they have been disclosed, John Farrell’s book uses the word “craven” to describe Kennedy’s post-crash behavior.
Kennedy believed he would get “special and favored treatment” from police and prosecutors because he was a Kennedy and a sitting US Senator, which he did with a shoddy investigation that omitted an autopsy.
On the night in question, Kennedy was throwing a gathering on the island of Chappaquiddick, close to Martha’s Vineyard, for friends and the “Boiler Room Girls,” women who worked on his brother Robert Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign.
He left with Mary Jo Kopechne, a 28-year-old secretary, about midnight with the intention of giving her a lift back to her hotel by the last boat of the night.
Kennedy, however, lost control of the automobile on a bridge, and it crashed, coming to rest upside down in a pond.
Kopechne drowned while Kennedy was able to escape.
What transpired next became the subject that threw doubt on Kennedy’s life for the remainder of it.
Instead of sounding the alarm right away, he silently asked his cousin Joseph Gargan and Gargan’s school mate Paul Markham to talk with him before returning to the party after passing four residences.
The high current and sand-filled waters prevented all three from successfully rescuing Kopechne as they drove to the site of the accident.
Kennedy could have plunged into the sea and swam to the adjacent town of Edgartown, where he was staying, as Garage and Markham suggested, but he chose not to.
He slept off and awoke the next morning.
Kopechne’s corpse wasn’t discovered in the automobile until 8.20 a.m. the next morning, when a homeowner discovered the car in the pond.
Kennedy eventually showed up at the police station at least eight hours after the collision.
According to Farrell, Kennedy had a “kind of crack-up” that was partly brought on by the stress of having had both of his brothers killed within the previous six years.
He adds, “Now he’d experienced a thundering vehicle crash, the frightening feelings of drowning, and a vivacious young lady was dead by his hand.”
Farrell claims that although members of the Kennedy family were capable of courageous deeds, they were also capable of “acts of indifference, nurtured by riches, regarding regulations that applied to others but not to them.”
“There was an irresponsibility.” Evasion was present. There was a history of immoral conduct in the service of goals in the family. Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident inflicting bodily harm rather than being charged with manslaughter. He received the minimum sentence of two months in jail, which was suspended.
Kennedy said, “This couldn’t have occurred,” as he laid on the bridge with Gargan and Markam. Are you serious? I don’t think I could be affected by this.
Kennedy, however, “could not face it” and “tried to shoulder the guilt” for Kopechne’s death “in order to rescue himself,” Farrell writes words.
The “family’s legendary reputation” in Massachusetts, according to Farrell, “gave them the edge.”
Because they accepted Kennedy’s version of events and “bent over backwards to give their US Senator a break,” the police decided without doing an autopsy, according to Farrell.
An autopsy would have confirmed the death’s cause—drowning—and disproved some of the more outrageous conspiracy theories, such as the idea that Kennedy killed Kopechne because she was carrying his kid.
Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident inflicting bodily harm rather than being charged with manslaughter. He received the minimum sentence of two months in jail, which was suspended.
Kennedy said in a television speech about the collision that he delayed reporting it because he was overtaken by a “jumble of emotions,” including “grief, fear, uncertainty, tiredness, panic, bewilderment, and astonishment.”
But the most recent book tells a quite different tale.
Kennedy was accosted by Markham and Gargan the morning after the incident, according to Farrell, who were now furious that he hadn’t called the police.
I’m going to claim Mary Jo was driving, he said, telling them.
The two guys, both attorneys, yelled at him to change his mind.
By this time, according to Farrell, Kennedy appeared to be a man seeking an explanation as his friends concocted an excuse for him.
Either that, or the driver was impatiently awaiting the effects of alcohol to leave his bloodstream.
The Kennedy family’s world had been turned “upside down” by the scandal, according to Schlesinger’s diary, when he returned from a vacation in Europe a week after the crash.
He had three drinks that night, according to Schlesinger’s notes of his conversations with Kennedy family members and the president himself, which may have impair his judgment when he approached the bridge, which was challenging to cross even at 20 mph.
In his essay, he said that Jean Smith, the sister of John F. Kennedy, “thinks that he panicked, that he hoped…he might find some way to cover it all up.”
There was no plan, according to Smith.
The others were instructed by (Kennedy) to remain silent and take no action until they heard from him.
He appeared before the hotel clerk in a bewildered manner, presumably to provide an alibi.
Smith said that she did not believe it was done to prevent Kennedy from running for president, something he had expressed a desire to avoid because he was “confident that he would be assassinated if he became president.”
According to Schlesinger, Smith said that he could not stomach the idea of betraying the family or undoing what Jack and Bobby had accomplished.
In the journal, Schlesinger noted that Kennedy was “maddeningly contradictory” about the collision, telling some people he couldn’t recall how he got out of the automobile and others that he had fled via the window.
According to Schlesinger, “Ted Kennedy’s wounds are self inflicted, but what happened to John and Robert Kennedy was beyond their control.”
Although no one believed that Kennedy was intoxicated, Schlesinger argued that Kennedy’s three drinks “may have been the margin that sent the automobile over the bridge.”
In a dry admission, Kennedy said, “No other automobile has ever driven off the bridge.”
Judge James Boyle of the Massachusetts District Court presided over the inquiry into the disaster in private in 1970, and four months later he made the transcript public.
He was critical of Kennedy and said that it was “likely” that he was aware of how risky the bridge was yet “failed to take necessary care” as he approached.
Boyle said that after conducting an investigation, he discovered “probable cause to think that (Kennedy) drove his motor vehicle recklessly,” which is thought to have led to Kopechne’s demise.
Kennedy was not charged with manslaughter because Judge Boyle, who was a few months away from retiring, decided not to pursue a prosecution.
The horrifying twist was that John Farrar, the fire department diver who retrieved Kopechne’s corpse, believed she had been breathing from a pocket of air for some time based on the way her hands were grasping the back seat and her head was in the footwell.
If Kennedy had gone immediately to a neighboring residence and called for him, according to Farrell, they may have been able to get Kopechne out of the automobile in 40 to 50 minutes.
Regardless of his motivations, Kennedy was profoundly affected by the collision and was seen for weeks thereafter wandering about in a “catatonic daze.”
The tension they were both experiencing led to Joan Kennedy, Kennedy’s wife, miscarrying their newborn child.
The effect on Kennedy’s sick father, Joseph Kennedy Sr., the family patriarch and former US ambassador to the UK, added to his problems.
Rita Dallas, Joseph Srnurse, .’s detailed how Kennedy visited his father to clear up any suspicions that he had killed anybody.
“Dad, I want you to know that they’re not true,” Kennedy remarked. An accident occurred. Dad, I’m being honest with you. An accident occurred. A girl drowned, dad.
After that, Joseph Srcondition .’s quickly deteriorated (he had aphasia) and he passed away a few months later.
Kennedy told a friend: “I murdered my father,” attributing his father’s decline on himself.
The book also discusses Joseph Srmany .’s extramarital relationships and claims that his children picked up lessons from his parents’ “transactional” relationship.
Every “night of luxury” they spent at Windsor Castle as guests of the British royal family, his wife Rose experienced a “terrible humiliation” at the hands of her husband.
That includes the time he took Gloria Swanson, an actress, to Cape Cod on what was supposed to be a family vacation.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, a historian, claims that Rose “willed the distasteful information out of her memory.”
Because of her wealth, status, and children as well as her own need for “sexual distance,” she put up with the affairs.
Because of this, their kids found solace from women’s embraces, which helps to explain why Jack and Ted Kennedy engaged in many relationships.