52 years ago we had Chappaquiddick

Did you know that another woman’s purse was found in Ted Kennedy’s car the next morning after his Chappaquiddick crash? Liz McNeil writes,

On July 18, 1969, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne attended a reunion party on Chappaquiddick, off of Martha’s Vineyard, attended by then-Sen. Kennedy and some of the campaign workers who had worked for his brother Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign. (The six women who attended the party, including Kopechne, were known as the “Boiler Room Girls” because of the windowless room where they worked.)

Gathered on Chappaquiddick that night, they drank and reminisced — and sometime later that evening, Sen. Kennedy’s car went off the Dike Bridge and landed upside down in the water below, with Kopechne inside.

Was Senator Kennedy the one who called the police to report the accident? No, two guys who saw the car in the river reported it. Read more here: https://people.com/politics/52-years-after-chappaquiddick-mary-jo-kopechne-family-speaks/ Sarah Pruitt wrote,

Kennedy later claimed he dove repeatedly “into the strong and murky current” to try and find Kopechne before making his way back to the cottage. He then drove back to the scene with his cousin, Joseph Gargan, and aide Paul Markham, who both tried in vain to reach Kopechne. But rather than report the accident to the police at that time, Kennedy returned to his hotel in Edgartown. As a result, Mary Jo Kopechne remained underwater for some nine hours until her body was recovered the next morning.

Read more here: https://www.history.com/news/ted-kennedy-chappaquiddick-incident-what-really-happened-facts Jerry Oppenheimer also has a report here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5582233/How-Mary-Jo-Kopechne-victim-Kennedys-TWICE.html