Mary Jo Kopechne

by Anonymous

A few days ago, from her grave, I thought I heard Mary Jo Kopechne (July 26, 1940-July 18, 1969) call. "This year, I would have been 67 years old. As my only wish, please refresh your memory of me and my murderer."

"Sometime around midnight, on July 18, 1969 Kennedy drove his Oldsmobile 88 off of a small bridge on Chappaquiddick island, into eight feet of chilly water. The vehicle landed upside-down. While Kennedy managed to free himself from the wreck and swim to safety, his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne was left in the car to drown."

{"Leaving the scene of an accident is a felony. If someone dies it might even be manslaughter. This would be even more likely if the person who died could have been saved by a simple call to a rescue team...the accident at Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island on July 18, 1969 probably cost Edward M. Kennedy the presidency. It certainly cost Mary Jo Kopechne her life." }

"Sen Kennedy told the police that he was driving Kopechne to the ferry after a party on the island when his car left the unfamiliar road."In the interview with John Farrar, the scuba diver who found Mary Jo, stated that engineers determined that Kennedy hit the water at between 35 to 40 mph, but Kennedy testified it was no more than 20 mph. Mary Jo took more than an hour to die, trapped in Kennedy's 1967 oldsmobile, in only 8 ft of salty water beneath Dike bridge.

Ted Kennedy drunkenly drove his car off a bridge, extricated himself, and left Miss Kopechne behind to die in the waters underneath the Edgartown, Massachusetts, Bridge on July 17th, 1969 after a night of drinking and partying with the young blonde campaign worker. But most Americans under 40 have never heard that story, or the details of how Kennedy swam to safety, and then tried to get his cousin Joe Garghan to say he, Garghan, was behind the wheel.

"Right from the start, the reporters who arrived at the scene were skeptical of his story, skeptical even of how he claimed he got back to Edgartown that night. Markham and Gargan said when they drove to the ferry landing — the ferry had stopped running by then — Kennedy took them by surprise by jumping in the water, and swimming across the channel towards Edgartown. They assumed, they said, he would report the accident that night to the police. Instead Kennedy went back to his hotel, ostensibly to change his clothes but instead, went downstairs to complain about a noisy party that was going on. "

"Because no autopsy is ever performed on Kopechne's body (her body had been promptly whisked out of state) it is uncertain how long it took her to drown, if she wasn't killed on impact. Likewise, it is never established whether Kopechne was pregnant or exhibited signs of recent sexual activity."

Young voters don't know how Miss Kopechne, trapped inside Kennedy's Oldsmobile, gasped for air until she finally died (some medical experts saying two and one-half hours later), while this leading Democrat war critic rushed back to his family's compound to formulate the best alibi he could think of.

Nor does Generation X know how Kennedy was thrown out of Harvard on his ear in 1951 for paying a fellow student to take his Spanish final. Nor why the US Army denied him a commission because he cheated on tests.

As they listen to the Democrats' "Liberal Lion" accuse President Bush of "telling lie after lie after lie" to get America to go to war in Iraq, young voters don't know about that notorious 1991 Easter weekend in Palm Beach, when Uncle Teddy rounded up his nephews for a night on the town, an evening that ended with one of them credibly accused of rape.