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>Another unnamed informant claimed that Gargan indeed agreed to take responsibility for the accident, but that Kennedy decided the next morning that "the alibi either couldn't work or he couldn't live with it." The Senator also denies this report.
> A scientific study determined that if the accident occurred at about 11:30 p.m., as Kennedy's time frame indicates, the tide at the bridge would have been slightly less than one knot, far weaker than the torrent that Kennedy claimed swept him away from the car. Had the accident taken place an hour later, as indicated by a deputy sheriff who saw a car like Kennedy's on Dike Road at 12:45 a.m., the tide would have been about 1.3 knots.
> Soon after the accident, Stephen Smith, Kennedy's brother-in-law, hired lawyers for some who had attended the party. The same two lawyers represented eight of the inquest witnesses. Said Ray LaRosa: "The lawyers coached us pretty good. We knew what to expect."
In all, the Globe discovered more than 100 discrepancies in the testimony of key witnesses. But the paper blunted the impact of its report by running the full text of the interview before publishing its own findings and by burying some of its disclosures in 51 columns of copy.
Despite these quirks, the series was well-reasoned and well-researched. If it did not break open the Chappaquiddick case, it did demonstrate the frailties of the original inquiry. It also raised enough new questions to encourage still deeper investigation by others.