Back to Chappaquiddick

What really happened that night on Chappaquiddick five years ago, when Mary Jo Kopechne drowned and Edward Kennedy's career nearly perished? To this day the full truth is obscure. The official investigation was sluggish, Kennedy and other witnesses evasive, and journalists lost interest after a few months. This year, however, a number of publications, anticipating Kennedy's presidential candidacy in 1976, started new inquiries. Last week the Boston Globe published the results of the most exhaustive of the current investigations. The densely packed five-part series further undermined Kennedy's sworn version of the events before and after his black 1967 Oldsmobile hurtled off Dike Bridge into Poucha Pond.

The two-month examination by three Globe staffers, begun before Kennedy withdrew from the 1976 race, was not a hatchet job. The liberal paper has always been sympathetic to Kennedy, yet felt that it had to go ahead with the story despite the Senator's decision to bow out as a national candidate. Said Editor Thomas Winship: "We are not out to drive Ted Kennedy from office. We are trying to get more details on an important story affecting a public figure who will continue to be important." The biggest obstacle in obtaining those details was the continued silence of most of the ten men and women guests at the party thrown by Kennedy that night at a Chappaquiddick cottage.

Kennedy himself was reluctant to talk to the Globe and initially requested that questions be submitted in advance. He also wanted a one-hour limit. After five weeks of bargaining, it was agreed that the three reporters would provide general subjects in advance and that they would be able to ask follow-up questions. The conversation lasted two hours--the first lengthy interview Kennedy has granted on the incident. Rather plaintively, he acknowledged that his behavior after the accident had been "irrational and indefensible and inexcusable and inexplicable." Kennedy stuck to the main points of his original story, sometimes ducking tough questions by referring the reporters to his inconclusive testimony at the official inquest. He did admit, however, that he had erred in telling the court that he had never been on Chappaquiddick before the day of the accident, and that he had fixed the time of his return to the cottage after the accident by the dashboard clock of a Valiant driven by his cousin and sometime factotum, Joseph Gargan.

TIME recently disclosed that Kennedy had visited the island at least once before and that the 1968 Valiant was not equipped with a clock (TIME, Oct. 7). Kennedy has always insisted that he and Kopechne left the party at about 11:15 p.m. to return to Martha's Vineyard aboard a ferry. The question of time is important because the ferry stopped regular operations at midnight; if Kennedy wanted service later, he would have had to request it. A crucial point in Kennedy's version is that he mistakenly turned right onto Dike Road leading to the bridge, rather than left toward the ferry. The Globe's findings challenge parts of this account. Items:

> According to one unnamed source, Kennedy told someone at the party that he was leaving with Mary Jo to take a walk on the beach beyond the bridge, where both had swum earlier in the day. Kennedy denies the report.

>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.

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