Word: inquestion
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Faced with a brutal truth, the mind can rebel and seek escape in fantasy. As Senator Edward Kennedy explained at the January inquest into the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, his mind did just that on the morning following the tragedy at Chappaquiddick last July. It tried to believe that somehow Mary Jo had survived the plunge into Poucha Pond. Said Kennedy: "I willed that she remained alive...
Later in the inquest, Kennedy tried to explain one of the most incomprehensible aspects of the Kopechne case ?why he failed to summon help immediately after he, his cousin Joseph Gargan and friend Paul Markham had failed to rescue Mary Jo. Said the Senator: "I was completely convinced . . . that no further help and assistance would do Mary Jo any more good. I realized that she must be drowned and still in the car at this time, and it appeared the question in my mind was what should be done about the accident." (See pictures of intimate moments with...
Precisely what he did?and did not do ?about the accident might have been cleared up by the long-delayed publication of the inquest record. Instead, the 763-page transcript only rekindled suspicions that have surrounded the case from the outset. The report of Justice James Boyle, the crusty Vineyarder who presided over the inquest, concluded that "negligence" on Kennedy's part "appears" to have contributed to the accident. Kennedy admitted traveling at 20 m.p.h. over treacherous Dike Bridge; Boyle termed that speed excessive. Worse, from Kennedy's viewpoint, was Boyle's official finding challenging Kennedy's story that...
Boyle drew his inferences from several new points established at the inquest. One was that Kennedy visited the island a few hours before the party, which was attended by the six "boiler-room girls" from Bobby Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign and five of Ted's men friends. The testimony made it clear that Kennedy that day crossed Dike Bridge twice and traveled the ferry road three times; the implication was that he was not unfamiliar with the geography...
Time Difference. According to the eleven surviving participants, the party was sedate. They said that there was no heavy drinking, but a good deal of casual ambling around the cottage. Kennedy said that he had two rum and Cokes. Mary Jo consumed a small amount of alcohol. The inquest also confirmed why Rosemary Keough's purse, and not Mary Jo's, was later found in the Senator's submerged car. Miss Keough, it seemed, had accompanied Charles Tretter, one of Kennedy's friends, on a trip back to Edgartown for a radio earlier in the evening, and had left...