About every five or six years.....I bring up this little story.
This is about the Chappaquiddick Island episode with Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne...happening on 18 July 1969.
The basic outline is that Ted left a party on the isle with Mary Jo....took a wrong turn...got over a bridge, and then ran off into the water. Ted managed to climb out. Mary Jo didn't make it. Ted was considered somewhat drunk. Ted somehow made it back to the hotel at 2AM. Cops come in the early morning to the site. Ted gets signed off as it being just an accident. End of the story.
Some things about the episode don't fit.
The purse in the car? It's not Mary Jo's, and no one ever really determined who owned the purse. Three people in the car? Well....I've come to think that.
The wrong turn?
Here's the thing about Chapaquiddick. The party house is on the south side of the isle. You drive up one single road for 3/4 of a mile and there a left or right turn. Left goes to the ferry to return to the mainland. Right goes to a bridge which only takes you to another sandbar area....running four miles in length.
Ted turns right. It's 4,000 feet to the bridge.
I don't think this was a one-car situation. I think Ted left with two ladies in his car...with a friend/associate (with another lady) in the lead car. The lead car crosses over and goes up the sandbar. Late night party fun is anticipated. Ted is about a minute behind. Ted drives off the bridge. The lead car driver, I humbly think....waited around fifteen to twenty minutes for Ted, and then came back around....finding the car in the water, and Ted on the bank....probably with another woman, and Mary Jo in the sunken car.
As the cops tell the story....Ted walks down the road....turns left, and for some reason (in the darkness around midnight) goes back to the party house. No one can explain any good reason for this. Oddly, all the booze bottles and beer cans? The cops find none there the next day.
Ted apparently sits around for a while, and then walks from there to the ferry area. It's a 2.4 mile walk.....in the dark....with Ted still somewhat drunk. The fact that houses and cottages exist there....mid-summer, with people who could help? This never figures into the cop investigation.
Ted arrives at the ferry dock, and then swims (yes, unbelievable)....roughly a quarter-mile swim in the dark at 1AM while somewhat drunk. Then Ted arrives at the hotel where he sleeps off the drunken episode.
For me, it's hard to believe the story as it stands. Ted would have had to walk at least four miles in the dark....in a fairly drunken state. I think the folks in the second car helped Ted clean up the mess and just get him to the dock. The cops do shift some blame onto Ted.
The affect of this episode on the 1972 Presidential election? That's an interesting episode.
Ted Kennedy instead of Hubert Humphrey? Without the Chappaquiddick incident, I think Ted would have come very close to defeating Nixon in 1972. The news folks would have hyped up the Ted agenda, and Nixon's war situation would have been a negative.
