# Remember Mary Jo

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-mary-jo/837240>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [July 18, 2019, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-mary-jo/837240 "2019-07-18T01:56:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\
**Post date:** [July 23, 2019, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-mary-jo/837240/61 "2019-07-23T09:44:12Z")

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> [@nelliebly](#):
>
> And you’re doing what people do when they’re determined to stick to their unfounded theories and are afraid the facts will prove them wrong: you’re doing no research. You’ve found a simplistic explanation that fits what you’d like to believe, and you’re going to stick with it despite it being unfounded because God forbid you should ever learn something knew and change your mind. I’ve seen this time and again in your posts. You don’t research; you don’t cite sources; you come up with simplistic theories that fit your own prejudices, and you stick to them and refuse to look at the facts.
> 
> I was a kid when Chappaquiddick happened. I had no preconceived ideas when, as an adult, I first started looking into what happened. Had the evidence pointed to Kopechne wanting to have sex with Kennedy, I would have gone with that. But that’s not what the evidence indicates. Go ahead and claim you don’t blame Kopechne while you create a scenario that fits what you want to believe about her. You could just as easily believe Kennedy had plans to have sex with a woman too drunk to consent, but that would require you to consider your theory about Kopechne might be wrong.

You want to insult me and call my belief “unfounded” even though it fits will all of the available evidence and is the simplest and mostly likely explanation believed by most all people who have researched the case. And you come up with a frankly ridiculous wild theory that fits none of the facts and accuse me of having a closed mind about it.

If Mary Jo was asleep in the back seat and he didn’t know she was there, what possible reason would Kennedy have for fabricating a story in which he claimed he knew she was in the car and left her to die? Who would tell a lie to incriminate themselves in that scenario?

Further, his actions after the crash show someone acting odd. He made it a point to get back to the mainland undetected, swimming across the channel to get back to his room. He made it a point to make himself visible during the night, one time asking a man for the time, and going to the front desk to complain about others making too much noise. He was purposefully being seen that night in order to craft an alibi that he was not driving the car and he clearly knew that Mary Jo had died and there would have to be something said.

It seems clear that his initial inclination would be to say that he wasn’t driving, but his handlers talked him out of that because there were obvious holes in that story.

In short, none of the available evidence supports a theory that she was in the back seat sleeping and that Kennedy was unaware of her presence.

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