CHAPPAQUIDDICK: DID SENATOR TED KENNEDY COMMIT MURDER? CONSPIRACY AND COVERUP ON MARTHA’S VINEYARD

[Music] this is martha's vineyard off the coast of massachusetts the summer playground of rich socialites and politicians [Music] nearby is the island of chappaquiddick just a few square miles of scrub and sand dune 25 years ago it was the setting for a bizarre and tragic accident that was to have long-term repercussions on the presidency of the united states [Music] [Applause] [Music] today this is all that remains of the bridge where the accident occurred in the early hours of the morning of the 19th of july 1969 a black oldsmobile skidded and crashed off the side of a narrow bridge at the end of a dirt road crossing a tidal pond the car ended up upside down submerged in the fast-flowing current beneath the bridge the car was registered to the senator for massachusetts edward kennedy the accident wasn't discovered until the following morning local police chief jim arena was first on the scene and tried to get into the car i tried to go under i'll be honest with you i probably a good swimmer but a lousy underwater swimmer i went under several times to see if i could you know take a look in but each time i did the tide sort of took me along so i gave that thought up and i boosted myself up and sat on the car and waited for the arrival of other help because of the nature of the call we were already dressed by the time we got here i was in dive gear ready to go and proceeded over to that piling there i went over to that and went into the water from that side as i approached the rear of the automobile which would face that way i saw two feet in the rear window john farrar discovered the body of a young woman in the car because of the strength of the current it took him another five minutes to get her out of the car and bring her up to the surface tell you the truth my immediate reaction was to look at her and and wonder who this was you know i mean in other words i i guess i was thinking to myself is this one of the kennedy clan they generally really have a look at that they almost all look alike you know it's a terrible thing to say but a lot of them resemble each other and i thought well it might be somebody that i know but it wasn't and i thought as as she laid in my my lap waiting for a ride that i mean waiting for the boat that um you know it was a strange thing to say but i said at the time that she looked unruffled if you fall i mean her clothes were in order and everything else that looked us off she propped her up he could take it through her party or something and and the only signs that i saw of her there was a slight foaming coming out of her mouth and nose but obviously to me she was deceased the body was identified as that of 28 year old mary jo kopechny and she had indeed been to a party [Music] there were 12 people at the party six men and six women all close political colleagues and associates of the kennedy family the women were a group known as the boiler room girls who had worked together for bobby kennedy's campaign for the presidency the year before [Music] one close colleague of mary jo copekney who was at the party was rosemary keogh the boiler room girls have always refused to talk about their friend mary jo now rosemary keough does so for the first time she was a normal red-butted american girl like all the rest of us she was hard-working she was energetic she was funny she had a wonderful wit um she drove around in a cute little volkswagen bug she she dressed nicely and and uh you know uh wore short skirts like all the rest of us did at that time you know she wasn't a saint she was a nice lovely girl who was very dedicated to what we were all dedicated to we were it was a it was a time of great commitment and it was a time to that people had to stand tall and take a stand on vietnam and and on civil rights and on the way we thought you know the country was going my thanks to all of you and now it's on to chicago and let's win there bobby kennedy was just three months into his campaign for the presidency when he was assassinated senator kennedy has been shot and another man a kennedy campaign manager and possibly shot in the head coming just five years after the assassination of president jack kennedy this left the remaining brother edward as the focus of presidential hopes and the boiler room group transferred their loyalties to him dunn gifford was one of the bobby kennedy insiders who now regrouped around edward the bonding that goes on in that circumstance is so powerful and it's hard not to want to be with the people and to relive and share the the awful absence because of the assassination the tragedy the what might have been the what was lost the just that emptiness you have to deal with that so who do you deal it with but the people you're closest to and had bonded most with so yes they spent a lot of time with each other and and naturally so i think and wonderfully so it was a great healing process in the year after the assassination the group were often to be found at the kennedy summer home in hyannisport or sometimes at nearby resorts such as martha's vineyard in the aftermath of the accident the press were quick to speculate about these get-togethers in lurid terms that whole myth of this uh single bunch of single girls being sort of served up to uh married men for some other purpose just didn't happen it didn't happen and it wasn't what it was about and the relationships were not that way so there was you never had a feeling of concern about going somewhere with uh i i went to salt lake city with senator edward kennedy and dunn gifford and i just three of us together and never felt threatened or concerned and you know my mother didn't worry you know and my sister didn't worry no one worried the party that the boiler room group attended in july 1969 was on the island of chappaquiddick a short ferry ride from the small coastal resort of edgartown where they were booked into hotels on the morning of the 18th of july the group crossed to the island and gathered at this rented cottage where a barbecue was to take place that night kennedy's driver delivered a car load of drink to the cottage before picking up kennedy himself from the airport in the early afternoon kennedy was driven to the cottage to change and then down to the beach in his black sedan to meet the others his journey to the beach took him along a dirt road at the end of which was the bridge where the tragic accident was to occur later that night [Music] just 18 hours later the police were recovering the dead body of a young woman from the wreckage of kennedy's car kennedy was back in edgartown at his hotel at this time no one had reported being involved in an accident [Music] it was more than an hour later almost 10 am that kennedy appeared at the police station in the town hall with a close associate to report that there had been an accident and that he was the driver senator was sitting there and paul markham was there i recognized paul markham senator stood up said hi jim and i said hello senator and i said i'm sorry about the accident he said something the effect yes i know i was the driver arena immediately told the county prosecutor walter steele steele reacted with incredulity jim marino who was at that time the police chief told me that kennedy drove a car off a bridge and i said that's preposterous you know senators don't drive cars off bridges was in my opinion they didn't do it in those days so he said yeah but and that was the first i heard about it i was at that time the county prosecutor but because of the statute that created this office i thought i should clear with the district attorney who was then the office was in new bedford and uh i did this however through jim marina he called he got district attorney denise and i believe his word said well is this just an accident and i think jim said yes it appears to be he said well you fellas handle it over there and that's what we did in the brief statement that he gave to the police kennedy said that he left the party with miss capeknee to catch the ferry back to edgartown on his way he had mistakenly turned onto a dirt road and crashed off the unlit bridge that lay at the end of it he had no recollection of how he got out of the car but did remember making an unsuccessful attempt to rescue miss kopechny he explained that his failure to report the accident for 10 hours was due to shock and claim that on realizing what had happened the next morning he immediately contacted the police kennedy's statement left public prosecutor walter steele a desperately worried man i was shocked when in fact he admitted driving the automobile and then uh when jim said you know that he admitted being the operator and then um i knew and i told jim there was a problem because of the passage of time that that was conduct of possible criminal significance it's called use the shorthand term leaving the scene of an accident after knowingly causing bodily injury but i was not going to participate in any unjust assault on kennedy because i'm a democrat i knew paul markham slightly i had been an assistant district attorney under a democratic regime in boston so i was not going to be perceived as somebody who would uh join in an unjust attack on kennedy's public reputation on the other hand i was not going to suppress anything it's going to do my job but not happily within an hour of giving the statement kennedy had fled to the seclusion of the family home in hyannisport 20 miles away leaving instructions with local police chief arena not to release the statement until his lawyers had had time to check it over meanwhile news of the tragedy was spreading i had now been thrown into a situation where i was not only the chief and the investigator but i was also the press man by mid-morning we were inundated with media people by noon time we couldn't move and by early afternoon the pressure on me to release the statement the press was enormous i hadn't heard from them them being senator kennedy and paul markham i didn't know where they were at that time under the pressure i read the statement to news people gathered at the station arena's decision to release kennedy's statement failed to quell the press after all here was a prominent politician telling a story that on the face of it didn't seem to make sense you had to decide whether this was a police story or a political story in my mind i had decided this was a police story and i really didn't care about uh maybe that was short-sighted at the moment but i was we weren't sitting around pondering what the historical implications of this thing were going to be i mean it was a dead girl and who often got lost in the shuffle of this whole thing um it always struck me that in the age of feminism what would happen now if there was a dead girl and with all the women involved behaved us and even you couldn't get your hands on anyone he witnesses the party girls no one there was nobody everybody was buttoned up but there was still this dead girl the story immediately became headline news worldwide and over 300 correspondents gathered in edgartown but after the statement was released at midday on saturday and through sunday and monday to the frustration of the press there was no further action by the authorities and no more information about what really happened to mary jo kopechny either why had kennedy failed to report the death for 10 hours why was he out with a young single woman late at night had they been drinking there were many questions but no answers kennedy was in hiding and none of the witnesses were talking it wasn't until the funeral of mary jo kopechny on the tuesday four days after the accident that kennedy emerged at last in public although speculation was rife kennedy remained tight-lipped [Music] immediately after the funeral kennedy and his entourage returned to the family home at hyannisport again the press were waiting looking for answers kennedy was confronted by nbc reporter liz trotter demanding a statement when do you think you might have a statement senator to clear up some of the uh appropriate times is there any way of giving us an indication as to when that appropriate time will be in spite of chotter's persistence kennedy refused to be drawn not long afterwards nbc received a call from a kennedy aide demanding the trotter be removed from her job it seems it was a political story after all oh i was very much given to believe that my job was at risk i was told by a vice president at nbc news that the kennedy people had in fact contacted the network and had very strongly hinted that i should be taken off the story to their credit they were not about to do that i mean it was kind of raw power reaching out i think i thought at the time god there's not even a velvet glove on this i mean there's that what we would call nowadays a spin it was just naked lay off take a fall throw the fight whatever expression once back in hyannisport kennedy remained in hiding inaccessible even to the legal authorities we became a little impatient when voluntary cooperation did not happen in the next few days and then both jim and i became a little upset about it i don't know how many days but we demanded some contact by somebody preferably an attorney eventually the kennedy team did make contact to offer a deal so when kennedy appeared in court a week after the accident the outcome had been secretly agreed in advance kennedy would plead guilty to the charge of leaving the scene of an accident after knowingly causing injury the least serious defense he could be charged with in the circumstances the guilty plea meant he didn't have to give evidence in court after a summary hearing he was given a two-month suspended sentence and a year's probation now legally if not morally off the hook kennedy was free to turn his attention to repairing the considerable damage done to his political image by his lack of candor during the previous week what is senator kennedy going to do is he going to resign is he going to run again he's going to make a speech not make a speech give an interview not give an interview and those are part of the part of the baggage that comes with being a political figure had he been a private individual that issue wouldn't have surfaced it would have been just him and his lawyers and the and the court system still refusing to speak to journalists kennedy sought and obtained access to a wider public i have made my plea and i've uh requested the networks for time this evening to make a report to the people of massachusetts a team of kennedy's top speechwriters had been assembled to put together what was to be the most important speech of his political career the speech was delivered from the reassuring surroundings of the library in his father's house at high ellisport these events the publicity innuendo and whispers which have surrounded them and my admission of guilt this morning raises the question in my mind of whether my standing among the people of my state has been so impaired that i should resign my seat in the united states senate there was a political speech he is a politician a very good one it wasn't a speech to mr mrs kopechny necessarily it was not a speech to his children necessarily it was not a speech to the lawyers necessarily it wasn't a speech to the journalists certainly it was a speech to his to his electorate and if you get in your head that it was a political speech and that's what its purpose was then you say nice job the fact that kennedy went on to produce a new story that was completely missing from his original statement to the police it placed him firmly at the center of a heroic second attempt to rescue mary jo kepney i 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 down and locate miss kopechny their strenuous efforts undertaken at some risk to their own lives also proved futile if the new story and the tv speech had worked for the electorate it didn't work for the press to them kennedy had failed to address the most important outstanding questions there was an expectation in this speech that questions would be answered that surely they couldn't hold out this long that they had to come forth with something they had to give a coherent story to satisfy all these questions the car the girl the time she was in the car what his movements were who he called why he didn't report the accident how could a night go by didn't anybody see him all of these things what happened to the party were they drunk i mean it's endless we thought that some of these things would be answered in the television speech and of course all the the television speech did was to further include the events and only added the confusion and certainly to a deep deep skepticism this thing was rigged suspicions of a cover-up were further increased by the fact that there had been no autopsy on the body of mary jo kopechny after all it was a procedure that should have followed automatically in any case where the circumstances of a death were unclear even the doctor responsible was unable to provide a coherent explanation did you request an autopsy actually not in those exact not in those exact words did you tell me the exact words doctor um i stated to the district attorneys if the district attorney could advised it uh under the particular circumstances that i would like that i would like an autopsy could you restate that please i'm sorry i sent word to the district attorney's office the particular circumstances of the case and ask if under these circumstances if they follow an autopsy should be done i would like to have it done edmond denise the district attorney referred to by dr mills now came under increasing pressure to take some further action but he was caught in a dilemma between his sympathy for kennedy as a fellow democrat and his legal duty however he finally succumbed to the pressure and announced that there would be an inquest into the death of mary jo to consider whether there was any criminal responsibility the inquest finally got underway six months later at edgartown courthouse but at the instigation of kennedy's council the press was excluded it was the first and only time that any of the witnesses could be questioned on the record kennedy himself was first into the witness box he gave an account of what happened which proved to be a combination of the statement he gave to the police on the morning after the accident and his television speech a week later kennedy claimed that he and mary jo were both tired and left the cottage where the party was held at 11 15 to catch the ferry back to edgartown a short distance from the cottage instead of following the road round to the left which would have led to the ferry kennedy made a mistaken turn hard right onto a dirt road it was this road that led to the bridge where the accident happened in his inquest report the judge expressed disbelief at this part of the story for a number of reasons first kennedy and kopechne had slipped away from the party without telling anyone secondly kopechny left her handbag and hotel room key behind at the cottage the judge concluded that kennedy had never intended to return to edgartown the judge also doubted that kennedy's turn right onto the dirt road could have been accidental or mistaken after all kennedy was not unfamiliar with the route since he had actually traveled down the dirt road to the beach the previous afternoon and would have recognized the change in terrain once he was on the rough surface in spite of his reservations about aspects of kennedy's story the judge was unable to resolve many of the questions raised even the precise time of the accident remained a mystery nevertheless he took no further action once the press got hold of the inquest testimony the judge's disbelief at kennedy's account was widely reported but they were also highly critical of the way the proceedings were conducted they never did have senator kennedy deal with all the inconsistencies and implausibilities that were testified to by other witnesses they the inquest was deeply flawed they let senator kennedy go first instead of last so he basically went first and gave a speech and with very little probing questions so his version of events has never truly been tested and gut questions were not asked and it always seemed rather foolish and unproductive to have the witnesses tell their stories after he had or he had told his the way the inquest was conducted meant that significant parts of kennedy's story relating to the accident and the aftermath went unchallenged kennedy claimed the accident happened before 11 45 pm after the car crashed off the bridge he escaped and tried repeatedly to rescue mary jo he failed and lay exhausted on the bank he then walked nearly a mile back to the party cottage [Applause] his walk took him past several houses with lights on which he claimed not to have noticed as well as the island fire station yet he failed to raise the alarm arriving back at the party cottage he apparently managed to summon his friends gargan and markham without attracting the attention of the other party-goers and together they drove back to the bridge to make a second rescue attempt they all agreed that this took up 45 minutes when this too failed they drove into the ferry landing a discussion took place there then kennedy claimed he unaccountably jumped into the water and impulsively swam across to edgartown and returned to his hotel where he changed into dry clothes according to his own timings the entire sequence of events would have taken him at least two hours and 40 minutes to complete given that the hotel manager testified that he'd spoken to kennedy outside his office at 2 25 am kennedy's account is only credible if the accident happened before 11 45 pm but there was another witness deputy sheriff huck look who saw a car he identified as kennedy's black oldsmobile with two people in it much later than this he flatly contradicted kennedy's story the time that he he says he left the party and the time that the accident happened seems totally undermined by the testimony of the deputy sheriff who comes upon what he says is senator kennedy's car at 12 45 a quarter of one in the morning senator kennedy said he left at 11 15. the deputy sheriff who has no reason to lie uh basically was never never pursued and never really uh had his version of events uh brought to the fore hack looks testimony created one of the most glaring inconsistencies of the case for if look was right then not only was kennedy wrong about when the accident happened but there would not have been time to make the second rescue attempt that he and his friends had so vividly described remember the first time kennedy mentioned a second rescue attempt was in the tv speech a week after the accident the phrasing of his statement on the morning after the accident excluded the possibility of a second rescue attempt altogether these doubts are reinforced by the inquest testimony of the young women at the party when they returned to their motel in edgartown the following morning and received the stunning news from joe gargan that their friend mary jo was dead he made no mention of the attempted rescue but finally it was the investigative journalists of the boston globe who pinned down the lie senator kennedy verified the time of the rescue attempt by his two two friends by looking at at a car clock that doesn't exist i mean that rented car that they had on the island does not have a clock in it and we went and eyeballed it and was more than satisfied that there was no clock although the inquest largely discredited kennedy's story many of the questions raised have remained unresolved ever since the experience gathered by modern crash researchers throws a new and revealing light on aspects of kennedy's account that have up to now never been challenged for example kennedy's story of the ease with which he escaped from the sinking car seems highly implausible a lot of testing has been done on vehicles that go in the water auto manufacturers do it routinely to see what happens to a vehicle and from testing that has been done in the past you can watch scuba divers that are in these vehicles that go into the water at lower speeds than what we're looking at here and as you watch the scuba divers underwater it takes a few moments for them to get their orientation and this is with goggles and with breathing apparatus to be able to find a way out of the vehicle very difficult uh and if the water's murky then it becomes far more difficult so the description that is given as to what happened in the car is just amazing to me that one could be as composed as he describes when in real life that's not what's going to happen i mean this vehicle is is essentially on its side and then on its roof and there's no direction at all dubois has conducted interviews with thousands of survivors of traumatic car crashes they tend to have either total recollection of events or none at all kennedy claimed to have clearly remembered trying the door handle at the window in his efforts to escape yet had no recollection of how he eventually did get out of the car that's a little bit uh unusual to me that he can recall that he went for the door handle and went for the window handle and then doesn't recall how he exited the vehicle that to me is a very important part of this event and um to to forget how that occurred or not remember is surprising i think my god feeling about the whole thing is that there's more than has been said i mean the man has a has said many times that he was the driver and that's the end of it and yet i feel that there are probably some things that quite frankly uh i feel would have that's a hell of an expression he used but would have gotten him off the hook i i honestly sometimes wonder if he was the driver on the face of it jim marina's doubt about kennedy being in the car may seem just too incredible but if it were true it would certainly help to explain kennedy's remarkably casual behavior the morning after the accident at the same time that his car was being dragged from the water kennedy was seen by several people back at his edgartown hotel looking relaxed and dressed for a day's sailing he spent some time chatting amiably with two fellow guests mr and mrs richards on the porch of his hotel room they later gave a statement to the police saying they had noticed nothing untoward about kennedy who seemed quite normal they said that while he was chatting to them his two friends gargan and markham came rushing up the steps of the hotel this visit prompted a dramatic change in behavior the richard's statement was taken by detective dunn whose partner in the da's office was detective bernie flynn as gogan come rushing by them he grabbed kennedy by the arm and direct them away from the richards and took them into the motel room they stated that they were in the hotel room approximately three minutes and out they came and they said now kennedy was not the same man that they were talking to a few minutes earlier where he was composed and natural they said now he's all upset he's excited he didn't even say goodbye hello to them they said the three of them rushed down the steps of the shia town inn and walked or ran towards a ferry landing if he wasn't in the car at the time of the accident could this possibly be the moment that kennedy first learnt of it in rushing to the ferry kennedy may have wanted to visit the accident scene but if so by the time they reached chappaquiddick he had changed his mind and instead headed for the nearest phone kennedy later admitted that he called his lawyer burke marshall from this phone at the ferry landing on the island did he also call dunn gifford one of his political aides summoning him over from nearby nantucket island gifford was only about 10 minutes away in a single-engined aircraft during the flight he asked if i would possibly make a low pass over chap acquitted and over the dyke bridge and he explained that ted kennedy had had an accident i had to divert the flight in order to fly over chappaquiddick and the dyke bridge i asked if ted kennedy had been hurt and he says no he's all right and as we flew over the bridge i'm sorry black vehicle partially submerged the tail end was partially out of the water and dunn looked down and says oh god there goes the kennedy presidency the pilot's testimony significantly places gifford over the accident scene at the latest just after nine o'clock if true this means that at the time of contacting gifford kennedy had still not reported the accident to the police nor had he yet informed the copeknes of their daughter's death were you contacted before senator kennedy spoke to jim arena i think the records are unclear about all that and it's uh you can understand the intensity and the differential memory so i think it's just one of those things that the mists of time have it and we don't oh i had no doubt whatsoever that it was before nine o'clock that i got the call from dunn gifford wilfred rock was his pilot's name he flew me over water in a single engine plane 150 times i never argued with him so you would accept what he said i i i just never argued with will rock my life was in his hands too many times by contacting dunn gifford and lawyer burke marshall two loyal advisers was kennedy the politician taking the first steps to deal with the consequences of the accident if kennedy was in that car when it went over with mary jo kopechny he would have called burke marshall at one o'clock two o'clock in the morning awoken him and told him the story and asked for his help ask him uh what direction he should go in you know but we didn't do that you know this is the man that he often seeks advice from at this crucial stage he's going to ignore him so the only time he called him was when he learned about the accident which was eight o'clock in the morning but if kennedy only found out about the accident the morning after what could possibly have happened the night before when he left the party with mary jo bernie flynn's investigation as a detective for the district attorney's office left him with a growing conviction about what really happened they're having a good time at the party and they had been drinking they had discrepancies in the time they left the cottage but they left the cottage prior to 12 o'clock midnight and i believe it's my opinion that kennedy wanted to have make love with mary jo kopechny from the time kennedy is known to have left the party it was over an hour until his car was next seen at about 12 45 a.m by deputy sheriff huck look on his way home from work the car was only 400 yards from the cottage look stopped to see if the occupants needed help kennedy looked in the rear-view mirror saw this man who we assume was a police officer and he took off down the road though huckle confirmed that the car took off real fast [Music] kenny at that time was out with a young lady he was driving under the influence he didn't want to get stopped by a police officer and get locked up for driving on the influence he was married at the time to drone it was a very awkward position to be caught in so in my opinion he stopped that car halfway down the road he got out told mary jones you take over you were alone and she did and the poor girl she didn't drive too many big cars i believe she owned a volkswagen but also the poor girl she's excited thinking the police officer may be after her and i believe she drove down that road all by herself had accepted excessive speed and i was obviously not knowing the area and she went overboard the speed at which the vehicle was traveling would have been a critical factor in the accident whilst claiming to be the driver kennedy always maintained that the car was traveling at a sensible 20 miles an hour when it hit the bridge tests were done at the time which appeared to verify kennedy's story but new evidence suggests that the data obtained was never properly analyzed we asked leading forensic scientist and crash expert bill fisher to re-examine the case from the measurements we took and from some photographs and a diagram done at the seam which was full of excellent measurements that i really needed using what's known as a fall formula we were able to calculate using the distance the height and the pitch that at the point that the car left the edge of the bridge it was traveling at 27 miles an hour now to that we've got to add how much speed it lost in the skid the car left 33 feet of skid marks on the bridge 33 feet 2 inches and that would have lost an additional 3.14 miles per hour the best calculation i can give you within a range a reasonable range of how fast that car went off the bridge was between 32 and 35 miles an hour at 35 miles an hour when it reached the bridge the car would have been difficult to control had the driver been drinking it would have been almost impossible the only forensic test conducted on mary jo's body after death was a blood alcohol test significantly showing a level of 90 milligrams a liter and although the law at that time at least required 100 milligrams instead of 90 to consider the person as driving on the while under the influence we do know that the effects of the alcohol as far as driving ability appear well below the 100 0.1 level and therefore impairing her judgment her ability to evaluate the road configuration or even her reaction time if she suddenly realized that there was a danger he had the case for mary jo being the driver is made yet more credible when we examine what would have happened to anyone in the car when it hit the water as the vehicle is going in to the water the occupants are traveling a number of different directions they're going forward as a result of the vehicle's forward momentum but because the car is going to end up on its side the bodies are also traveling to the right i would expect that an impact the passenger in the right front seat would be making contact with the door of the car as well as the window now almost simultaneous to that the window on the right side is going to be fractured from the force of the water so there's two forces acting on on the passenger considerably the force of the vehicle going down striking the water and then the force of the water coming in i would expect that the the passenger on the right hand side would exhibit considerable evidence of injury the tempered window on the passenger side when it breaks breaks into little popcorn sized pieces and they're very sharp they're little shards of glass and when they are thrown onto bare skin they will cause an effect known as dicing the skin will be will show evidence of cuts and the lack of any evidence to the skin any injury is simply amazing to me there were no cuts no bruises no puncture wounds no lacerations no broken bones no broken teeth no broken fingernails she appeared to have died of a drowning in a submerged automobile the only conclusion that i can draw is that she had to be somewhere else other than the the passenger seat in the front if she were the driver then it's conceivable that she would escape those types of injuries i've described but the right front seat it just doesn't seem to make any sense to me at all [Music] if mary jo was indeed the driver and kennedy did not hear of the accident until the following morning it would explain his relaxed behavior and crucially why the accident went unreported for so long one thing is certain by claiming to be the driver and pleading guilty to the minor charge of leaving the scene of an accident without reporting it he avoided what would surely have been a more serious investigation and turned himself into the heroic victim of a tragic accident you had the accident but now we have to make you a hero you dove in that water and you try to save her and you couldn't do it and you're in a state of shock seems to me a lot better than saying you got that car because you're afraid of getting picked up for driving under and you were afraid of being with this girl that out of the morning because you were married to joan and you let this poor girl drive the car by herself and have her go into the water so they made him look like a hero [Music] mary jo kopeckley lost her life at chappaquiddick her parents lost a daughter [Music] senator edward kennedy lost forever the chance of presidential honours and after the tragedy at chappaquiddick the boiler room girls and their friends were never again able to meet as a group the circumstantial and forensic evidence available denies kennedy's tale of what happened that night at the bridge and he himself now refuses to speak yet there is no one else who can testify as to the real truth [Music] as the son of a large and religious family i was taught the meaning and value of faith and i was taught to pursue excellence in public life for the good of those who are most in need i was taught also to accept responsibility for my own mistakes to admit them and to accept the consequences and i was taught that to do so was a sign of character over ten years ago i testified in court in detail under oath to god to the truth about the accident at chappaquiddick that caused the death of mary jo kopechny that sworn testimony has been published and reprinted many times since then i know that there are many who do not believe it but my testimony is the only truth i can tell because that is the way it happened [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] you

Channel: JOHN EDGINTON DOCUMENTARIES

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Keywords: chappaquiddick, chappaquiddick documentary, chappaquiddick incident, chappaquiddick movie, chappaquiddick scene, conspiracy documentaries, conspiracy documentary, edward kennedy, jfk assassination conspiracy, martha's vineyard, mary jo kopechne, ted kennedy, ted kennedy chappaquiddick, ted kennedy chappaquiddick documentary, ted kennedy documentary, teddy kennedy, the kennedys documentary, the kennedys miniseries, robert kennedy, president kennedy, nixon

Id: mtP389IZ3TM

Length: 46min 44sec (2804 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 05 2021