Christopher “Huck” Look was a deputy sheriff who was working that night as a special police officer at the Edgartown regatta dance. At 12:30 a.m., Look left the dance, crossed over to Chappaquiddick in the yacht club’s launch boat, got into his parked car and drove toward his home, which was south of the Dike Bridge. He testified that between 12:30 and 12:45 a.m., he saw a dark car approaching the intersection of Dike Road. The car was driven by a man with a female passenger in the front seat. The car first drove onto the private Cemetery Road and stopped there. Thinking that the occupants of the car might be lost, Look got out of his car and walked towards the other vehicle. When he was 25 to 30 ft (7.6 to 9.1 m) away, the car started backing towards him. When Look called out to offer his help, the car moved quickly eastward, towards the ocean, along Dike Road leaving a cloud of dust. Look recalled that the car’s license plate began with an “L” and contained two “7”‘s, both details true of Kennedy’s 1967 four-door Oldsmobile Delmont 88; the license plate on Kennedy’s vehicle was “L78-207”.
According to Kennedy’s inquest testimony, he made a wrong turn onto Dike Road, which was an unlit dirt road that led to Dike Bridge (also spelled Dyke Bridge). Dike Road was unpaved, but Kennedy, driving at “approximately twenty miles an hour [30 km/h]”, took “no particular notice” of that fact, and did not realize that he was no longer headed toward the ferry landing. Dike Bridge was a wooden structure that at the time was not protected by a guardrail and was angled obliquely to the road. A fraction of a second before he reached the bridge, Kennedy applied his brakes and then drove over the side of the bridge. The car plunged into tide-swept Poucha Pond (there a channel) and came to rest, upside down, underwater. Kennedy recalled later that he was able to swim free of the vehicle, but Kopechne was not. At the inquest, Kennedy claimed that he called Kopechne’s name several times from the shore and tried to swim down to reach her seven or eight times. Knowing that the woman was still trapped inside the vehicle, Kennedy rested on the bank for around 15 minutes before he returned on foot to Lawrence Cottage, which was the site of the party that was attended by Kopechne and the other “boiler room girls”. Kennedy denied seeing any house with a light on during his walk back to Lawrence Cottage.
According to one commentator, Kennedy’s foot route back to Lawrence Cottage would have taken him past four houses from which he could have telephoned and summoned help before he reached the working phone at the cottage; however, he did not attempt to contact the local residents. The first of the houses, referred to as “Dike House”, was 150 yards away from the bridge and was occupied by Sylvia Malm and her family at the time of the incident. Malm stated later that she had left a light on at the residence when she retired that evening.
According to Kennedy’s testimony, Gargan and party co-host Paul Markham then returned to the waterway with him to try to rescue Kopechne. Both of the other men also tried multiple times to dive into the water and rescue Kopechne. Kennedy testified that their efforts to rescue Kopechne failed, and Gargan and Markham drove with him to the ferry landing. Both men insisted multiple times that the crash had to be reported to the authorities. According to Markham’s testimony, Kennedy was sobbing and on the verge of becoming crazed. Kennedy went on to testify, “I had full intention of reporting it. And I mentioned to Gargan and Markham something like, ‘You take care of the other girls; I will take care of the accident!’—that is what I said and I dove into the water. “Kennedy had already told Gargan and Markham not to tell the other women anything about the incident “because I felt strongly that if these girls were notified that an accident had taken place and Mary Jo had, in fact, drowned, that it would only be a matter of seconds before all of those girls, who were long and dear friends of Mary Jo’s, would go to the scene of the accident and enter the water with, I felt, a good chance that some serious mishap might have occurred to any one of them.”
Gargan and Markam later testified that they assumed that Kennedy was going to inform the authorities once he got back to Edgartown, and they did not do the reporting themselves. According to Kennedy’s own testimony, he swam across the 500-foot (150 m) channel, back to Edgartown and returned to his hotel room, where he removed his clothes and collapsed on his bed. Hearing noises, he later put on dry clothes and asked someone what the time was: it was something like 2:30 a.m., the senator recalled. He testified that, as the night went on, “I almost tossed and turned and walked around that room…. I had not given up hope all night long that, by some miracle, Mary Jo would have escaped from the car.”
Back at his hotel, Kennedy complained at 2:55 a.m. to the hotel owner that he had been awakened by a noisy party. By 7:30 a.m., he was talking “casually” to the winner of the previous day’s sailing race and gave no indication that anything was amiss. At 8:00 a.m., Gargan and Markham joined Kennedy at his hotel where they had a “heated conversation.” According to Kennedy’s testimony, the two men asked why he had not reported the crash. Kennedy responded by telling them “about my own thoughts and feelings as I swam across that channel… that somehow when they arrived in the morning that they were going to say that Mary Jo was still alive. “The three men subsequently crossed back to Chappaquiddick Island on the ferry, where Kennedy made a series of telephone calls from a pay telephone near the crossing. He made the phone calls to his friends for advice. Again, Kennedy did not report the crash to authorities.
Wikipedia
The basic timeline, itself, speaks volumes about the night of July 18, 1969, on the remote Island of Chappaquiddick off of Massachusetts. Mary Jo supposedly asked the Senator for a lift back to the ferry to return to her hotel room for the night, but left her keys and pocketbook behind. The Kennedy car was headed away from the ferry when it flipped over into the water.
This mystery is a death investigation and an historical conundrum, but it’s most intriguing questions may lie in the psyches of the Senator, his aides, the Massachusetts public.
When someone lies dead or dying in an overturned car, isn’t a no-brainer what needs to happen? After any rescue at the scene is attempted, official help is summoned. The authorities are notified. Does anyone over the age of eighteen, anywhere at any level of sophistication, have any trouble understanding that?
The Senator himself, in the televised speech designed to excuse his behavior overall, even conceded that his tardiness to talk to authorities was “indefensible.”
Senator Kennedy never reported the crime of his own volition, even the following morning. Only after the overturned car was discovered and identified as Ted Kennedy’s did he interact with law enforcement, and only then in guarded fashion.
To say that the Senator didn’t wish to be forthcoming about the accident is an understatement. What could have gone on in his mind for the ten hours before authorities were in touch with him? With a young woman dead or dying, below the water? What mental process could have possibly led him to delay alerting the authorities?
Concussion, shock, guilt, confusion? Or, some would speculate, the emotion of ‘political anguish.’ Is it true, or apocryphal that when first asked by intimates what happened? he replied “I’m not going to be president of the United States.”
Therefore Sherlock will forever contemplate two sets of questions about the Chappaquiddick incident. The first set of questions involve exactly what happened, and when to leave a vehicle upside down with Mary Jo inside of it.
The second set will involve human psyches, and hard-nosed Washington politics.