Mary Jo Kopechne

Mary Jo Kopechne

Mary Jo Kopechne was a schoolteacher, secretary, and political campaign worker, who was killed one night forty years ago, in an automobile accident on Chappaquiddick Island at Martha's Vineyard. The driver, a prominent United States senator, claimed to have made several attempts to save her, but did not report the accident until the next morning, when the car and the body were found. The senator pleaded guilty to "leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury." He received a two month suspended sentence. The Kopechne family has never commented publicly on the incident.

The senator went on to a distinguished career in politics, but for a failed attempt at nomination to run for the Presidency. He died early this morning, after a long battle with cancer. The woman who was never able to live as full or as long a life as he, and whose family received little if any justice, can finally rest in peace.

May God have mercy on that senator. May God have mercy on us all.

Chappaquiddick

Chappaquiddick

The “Chappaquiddick incident” refers to circumstances surrounding the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a former campaign worker for the assassinated U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York. On July 18, 1969, Ted Kennedy attended a party on Chappaquiddick, a small island connected via ferry to the town of Edgartown on the adjoining larger island of Martha’s Vineyard.

The party was a reunion for a group of six women, including Kopechne, known as the “boiler-room girls”,who had served in his brother Robert’s 1968 presidential campaign. Also present were Joseph Gargan (Ted Kennedy’s cousin), Paul Markham (a school friend of Gargan’s who would become United States Attorney for Massachusetts under the patronage of the Kennedys), Charles Tretter (an attorney), Raymond La Rosa and John Crimmins (Ted Kennedy’s part-time driver). Kennedy was also competing in the Edgartown Yacht Club Regatta, a sailing competition which was taking place over several days.

Kopechne’s dead body was discovered inside an overturned car belonging to Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy of Massachusetts under water in a tidal channel on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. After the body was found, Kennedy gave a statement to police saying that on the previous night he had taken a wrong turn and accidentally driven his car off a bridge into the water. He pled guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury, and received a suspended sentence. The incident became a national scandal, and may have affected the Senator’s decision not to run for President in 1972.