Divers try to raise the car belonging to Senator Edward Kennedy in which he was seriously injured and his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne was killed, at the Chappaquiddick Bridge.
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Beyond what would seem to be a natural instinct to get help quickly, a prompt call to the police would have saved Kennedy from some of the innuendo that followed—if indeed he was innocent of drunkenness. One minor point not explained in any statement is how the two men—after undergoing the experience Kennedy describes—could return to the small group and arouse no curiosity. Kennedy says only that he instructed them "not to alarm Mary Jo's friends." As it is, the suspicion is bound to linger that the only reason the two men did not call the police is that they were afraid that Kennedy was in no shape to undergo breath or other tests for alcohol. Thus, they might have chosen to risk the lesser charge of leaving the scene of an accident over the graver charges that might have arisen from drunken driving. It is, of course, possible that the two men were simply being inept. Whatever the explanation, that point remains one of the weakest in Kennedy's story.
How Did Kennedy Get Back to Edgartown?
On TV he said that he had Gargan and Markham drive him to the ferry crossing. The last scheduled ferry had already left—though it was possible by special arrangements to have service resumed. On a sudden impulse, Kennedy said, he jumped into the water and swam the 250-yard channel separating Chappaquiddick from Martha's Vineyard, "nearly drowning once again in the effort." Finally, he said, he collapsed in his hotel room, going out only once before morning to talk to a man he identified as a clerk. Russell E. Peachey, actually a co-owner of the Shiretown Inn, later told TIME Correspondent Frank Merrick that he did indeed see Kennedy at 2:25 a.m., dressed in a suit coat and trousers that appeared dry. Kennedy complained that party noise from an adjacent building was keeping him awake, and inquired what the time was. To Peachey, Kennedy did not seem to be acting or talking strangely. As in the phase of his story concerning his escape from the Oldsmobile, his recapitulation raises odd questions. How did he have the strength to make the dangerous swim? If he was trying to sleep, as Peachey's recollection indicates, why the suit?
On Chappaquiddick, meanwhile, the party apparently continued long past the time of the accident. The remaining members of the group missed the ferry back to Edgartown and spent the night in the cottage. There were not enough beds to go around and some had to sleep on couches or the floor. Apparently Markham and Gargan left the party to help Ted without being noticed. What they did or where they were for the remainder of the night is still not known.
Were the Authorities Lax?
Edgartown Police Chief Dominick Arena, a well-meaning former state trooper who had escaped to the island to avoid the tensions of the mainland, was on a diet of tranquilizers last week. In his own words, he had never investigated anything more serious than complaints of "snapping turtles or snakes in people's yards." Though Kennedy spent some time in Arena's office the morning after the accident preparing his initial statement, Arena never thought to question him. Nor were the other participants in the party interrogated. "After all," Arena told reporters, "when you have a U.S. Senator, you have to give him some credibility."
Inundated with telephone calls and telegrams charging that Kennedy was not receiving the same scrutiny anyone else might have, Arena heatedly said to newsmen: "Let me tell you—he is being treated the same as everyone else." This hardly seems to have been the case. According to John Farrar, the diver who retrieved Mary Jo's body the next morning after an islander had reported the submerged car and after Arena had himself made an unsuccessful attempt to recover the body, the chief was informed that Kennedy was waiting for him back at Edgartown. By this time Arena knew that it was Kennedy's car and was attempting to have his office locate the Senator. When Arena heard that Kennedy preferred to talk to him in Edgartown rather than on Chappaquiddick, said Farrar, Arena said: "Teddy wants me to go back to the station. I've got to go." Oddly, Kennedy had already gone from Edgartown to Chappaquiddick not long before word of his presence in the area reached Arena. He lingered at the ferry slip and while there, he said on TV, he tried to call Burke Marshall, a prominent attorney and family friend, from a public telephone booth. Then he went back to Edgartown and appeared at the police station.