From a sailboat offshore, two men and a woman swam to the beach on Chappaquiddick Island one recent afternoon. Some startled fishermen—and Edgartown Police Chief Jessie J. Oliver III—recognized one of the trio as Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Two days before he was to announce his withdrawal as a candidate for President in 1976, there was Kennedy walking meditatively on the island where his White House hopes foundered five years ago.
Kennedy claimed that his withdrawal was chiefly motivated by concern for his family. But the Chappaquiddick affair, in which Mary Jo Kopechne died some time during the night of July 18-19, 1969, obviously was a crucial factor. Anticipating his candidacy and spurred by an effective New York Times Magazine piece by Robert Sherrill last July re-examining the case, several major news organizations had sent reporters to the tiny island across from Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard. TIME'S own preliminary probe turned up facts that contradicted key points in Kennedy's version of what happened; further disclosures seemed likely.
There are few incontrovertible facts about the incident. Around midnight of that fatal Friday, a black 1967 Oldsmobile sedan hurtled off narrow, humpbacked Dike Bridge, landing upside down in about eight feet of water in Poucha Pond, an inlet on the island's eastern end. Next morning, fishermen discovered the car and alerted the police.
At about 9 a.m., a skindiver, John N. Farrar, retrieved the stiffened body of the 28-year-old woman. An hour later Kennedy told Edgartown Police Chief Dominick Arena that he had been the driver of the car.
THE KENNEDY VERSION
The episode began with a party for twelve people. There were six women, former campaign workers for the late Robert Kennedy: Mary Jo; Rosemary Keough, 23; Maryellen Lyons, 27, and her sister Nance, 26; Esther Newberg, 26; and Susan Tannenbaum, 24. Besides Teddy, there were five men, longtime friends or retainers of the Kennedy clan: Jack Crimmins, 63, Kennedy's part-time chauffeur; Joseph Gargan, 39, Kennedy's cousin; Ray LaRosa, 41, a civil defense official and ex-fireman; Paul Markham, 39, a former U.S. Attorney; and Charles Tretter, 30, an attorney.
By about 8:30 p.m., the Senator and the others had taken the ferry from Edgartown to Chappaquiddick and driven three miles in an Oldsmobile or a rented 1968 white Valiant to a small cottage for an evening cookout. Between 11:15 and 11:30 p.m., Kennedy told Crimmins—but no one else—that he was tired and was returning to his room at the Shiretown Inn in Edgartown. Mary Jo left too, telling the Senator that she wanted to be driven back to her motel, some two miles from the Shiretown. But Mary Jo told none of the others; she left her pocketbook and her room key at the cottage.
Instead of turning west on the paved road to the ferry slip, Kennedy went east along the dirt road to Dike Bridge. Kennedy insisted that he thought he was headed for the ferry. At a speed of about 20 m.p.h., he came upon Dike Bridge, and the car crashed into the pond.