I don’t understand. If he wasn’t in the car it is obvious he wouldn’t have been able to crawl out the window.
And if Ted Kennedy wasn’t in the car at all, why would they have come up with an explanation that made him look so bad and probably ruined his career?
Well yeah. I have no dog in the fight but why would he plead guilty to leaving the scene of an accident he could not have been at?
OK, negligent manslaughter or the like, I could maybe see. But murder? That’s a stretch.
It wasn’t fucking “murder” regardless.
Everybody also knows that Gary Condit was never a suspect in the Chandra Levy murder, don’t they? They do know that somebody else has been arrested and charged with that crime, don’t they?
Reminds me of an old bumper sticker that was popular for a while –
“Nixon put a man on the moon
Kennedy couldn’t get a whore across a bridge”
Again, got any actual cites?
First he lied and said he was driving, then he said he crawled out the window. Crawling out the window in that kind of accident would have been impossible for a man in his condition. This is according to the experienced diver in the A&E report. He would only have a few seconds to get out of the car before it went under the water and he had been drinking.
Ted left the party with Mary Jo but soon realized that he was too drunk to drive so he told her to drive her self home. She had little experience on the roads around Chappaquiddick and quite possibly had been drinking herself. She drove off the bridge. The diver that removed her body said that the one thing that stuck in his mind was that her body was in near perfect condition. The car hit the water on the passenger side and was badly smashed in. Had she been on that side of the car, her body would have been mangled. Her body was in good condition because she had held on to the steering wheel.
After the party Ted went to an apartment to sleep not knowing what had happened to Mary Jo. The next morning witnesses said they saw a group of Ted’s friend drive up to the apartment and run up to the door. Only a few minutes later the witnesses said Ted and the others rushed out of the apartment and headed off quickly in the car. This is when Ted first found out about the accident. And this is why Ted had “waited” to file the police report about the crash. He “waited” because he didn’t even know it had happened!
Had Ted admitted that he was too drunk to drive Mary Jo home and that she must have driven off the bridge herself, he would have been criticized for sending Mary Jo to her death. Ted didn’t want that kind of story to hit the papers so he made up the story about how he heroically tried to save her life. Funny how when he returned to the party that night, no one noticed his wet hair and clothing. (They weren’t wet!) And no one said he mentioned anything about the accident!
I must be missing something, but in this account Ted was not with Mary Jo during the accident?
He drove for a bit, realised he was to drunk, so got out of the car (leaving Mary Jo to drive alone) headed to an apartment to sleep it off, and was awakened in the morning by friends who then informed him of the accident, and then after hearing of the situation he then decided the best thing to do was to fabricate an account of him actually being present at the accident?
I dont have much use for Ted Kennedy, but this course of action would make him out to be a moron/half wit at best… (in that thinking it would be better to lie and say he was actually involved in this trainwreck, rather than say he felt Mary Jo was the safest, soberest driver in the world, and had no idea that anything was amiss)
Can you elaborate on this theory of yours?
After reading your 1st post I see that this account was something you saw on television-----It still seems (if one accepts that this version of history you watched is truth) that Ted Kennedy is the stupidest man in New England…
If I am missing some nuance that would help me understand this story better, please let me know!
First, it not my theory, its the conclusion that the A&E report came to.
Ted had a very short period of time to consider what to do. When his friends picked him up, they headed right to the police station. He quite possibly would have come up with a better story had he had more time.
If he had told the truth, he would have been criticized for not seeing Mary Jo safely home and , at least indirectly, he would have been blamed for her death.
If he made up a story about driving off the bridge himself and trying to save Mary Jo, people might have said that at least he tried to save her. Granted that he had to admit to leaving the scene of the accident, but this was in his mind the best of two terrible outcomes. And once he had told his story, he had to stick to it.
I was wrong for calling it “your” theory—I was not trying to insult you, and if I did I apologize…
That said, I still think that the account that A&E is presenting is nuts.
To accept it as fact, you would have to conclude that Kennedy (who I think is an entitled, arrogant old SOB) is also an idiot-----I dont believe he could possibly be that clueless.
Letting someone drive off drunk is bad; what he supposedly “claimed” happened makes him look so much worse…
I Beleive Ted was the captain of the submarine Chapaquidick
and he saved half the crew.
What he claimed was that he was in a terrible accident. The word “accident” is key here. No one blames you for an accident. He then claimed he made several attempts to rescue Mary Jo. (Bravo, TED!)
Finally he admitted that he left the scene of the accident, but only after repeated attempts to save Mary Jo.
He thought (rightly or wrongly) that admitting to leaving the scene was better than admitting to allowing her to drive home herself which led to her death.
And this is the story he stuck with and the story that most of the press and public bought and forgave him for.
Maybe in the public’s eye he would’ve been better off telling the truth and admitting to sending Mary Jo home by herself.
Do you think that his story is that much worse than what really happened?
This is the part that makes no sense, because it doesn’t make any sense. Misjudging whether someone is sober enough to drive home isn’t a good thing, but it’s not in the same ballpark as driving the car that went off the bridge. I don’t see how someone, even someone in a panicky mode, would make this argument. There’s no way that making up a lie that puts you in the driver’s seat makes sense.
Exactly. How hard would it have been for Ted Kennedy to simply say something like, “I was going to drive, but had too much to drink, so I suggested she find another way home” - and then claiming not to know that she would just end up trying to drive herself. That certainly would seem more plausible, not to mention forgivable, then the elaborate tale that A&E suggests he spun.
Both Ted and Mary Jo were seen leaving the party together in a vehicle with Ted at the wheel. Somewhere between the party and the bridge, Ted got out of the vehicle and arrived back at the party on foot. (The vehicle they were seen leaving in was under the bridge.)
Ted had been drinking and was in no shape to judge how drunk Mary Jo was and if she was able to drive herself home safely. In the A&E report it was said that Ted spotted a police car behind them and didn’t want to get caught drunk driving with a young girl in the car.
I know it is a hassle to get the tape or DVD of the A&E special on the Chappaquiddick incident and that its not cheap, but I really wish you all could see the show. Its amazing that the show ever saw the light of day. The Kennedy influence isn’t what it used to be.
And that’s all he would have needed to say. This story from A&E (apparently based on the idea that he couldn’t have gotten himself out of the car) isn’t something that someone with at least some idea of how the media works would have ever concocted. It fails to pass the smell test.
I recall seeing a show about this (probably the A&E one) some time ago and remember thinking that it was utter crap! Wild speculation, leaps to conclusion, reconstruction of the scene- despite the bridge being long since gone.
I had read a book about the incident way back in school, and found the book and the show had little in common. I just chalked it up to a Kennedy Approved Whitewashing of History.
I may not be remembering the details, but I read something years ago that said he’d gone home after the accident, not to a friend’s apartment. When the police came to the house later that morning, he was upstairs with a couple of lawyers, and refused to come down for quite some time; several hours, IIRC.
The implication was that they were hashing out a story for him to give the police and the press.