Sharon Tate, we remember the tragic night of his murder 50 years later
- The black legend of the Kennedy is forged based on more or less strange deaths of the members of the clan or, as in the case that occupies the fifth installment of our summer saga, that of Mary Jo Kopechne, former secretary of Bobby , when he was in A car with Ted , who was saved. The moon landing of 'Apollo XI' kept the case in the shade for a few days but, in the long run, ended the marriage of the politician and his aspirations for the presidency.
In the summer of 50 years ago , the Kennedy guardian angel did his work for once and Senator Edward Moore Kennedy , Ted for the whole world, managed to escape the tragic fate of his brothers . Although not quite, because Ted's aspirations to the White House sank in a lagoon of Chappaquiddick .
On the East Coast of the United States , the Chappaquiddick Peninsula becomes a separate island from neighboring Marthas Vineyard when the tide rises. There, at the Lawrence Cottage Steakhouse, on Friday, July 18, 1969 , Ted set up a party for the Boiler Room Girls , the six secretaries who had helped Bobby Kennedy win the primaries the previous year. and become a strong aspiring president. Ted was the last surviving son of Joseph Kennedy and, after Joe's death in the war and the assassinations of Jack and Bobby , he became leader of the dynasty with a staff cane in his backpack.
The senator invited several friends to the Guatemalan, including his cousin Joseph Gargan and Paul Markham , a former Massachusetts prosecutor. Total, a gatuperium of six married men and six single girls, will mean that. What it meant for the senator was a black spot so indelible that he stigmatized him for life and buried his presidential aspirations and those of a race that seemed destined to run his country for decades.
The youngest of the Kennedy brothers professed a canine devotion to his brother Bobby and after his death he no longer looked the same, he had returned to his youthful thug of Cadillac Eddie (his nickname at the university), to go drinking and driving like crazy . It was as if something had broken inside him and he no longer had energy or will, his next ones told him that "we must live"; But in the long run, living can be a problem. His irresponsible behavior was affecting his marriage and crushing his reputation. Edward Muskie , his rival in the leadership of the Democratic Party , was certain that Ted would win the presidential nomination; although he began to doubt it when he transcended his love of pimple and speed, and when his wife, Joan , began to appear in stunned and disoriented political acts.
That spring, on an electoral trip to Alaska , Ted behaved like a badulaque, as if slipping on a vulgar banana skin and, in the background, with the same comic and mocking effects. At Anchorage airport, before boarding the plane back home, he did not stop drinking and his liver continued to be punished during the flight. He kept giving trips to the silver flask that had belonged to his brother Bobby , spoke loudly , roamed the aisle of the plane, threw pillows and muffins at the hostesses and shouted inconsistencies about his dead brothers , as if they were the dark mirror which reflected him as the black sheep of the family. I kept repeating: "They're going to shoot me in the back like they did with Bobby." The passengers hallucinated. A Newsweek reporter sent a chronicle in which he said that Ted had terrible stress and would have an accident any day. The little number had no consequences, it was attributed to everyone having a bad day. But in his case what he had, at the very least, was a bad year, because he did not stop having serious friction with the consequences of his actions. Until July 18, what seemed like he was looking for happened. Ted safe; blonde dies: that was the infamous headline of an agency after Chappaquiddick's misfortune .
Around 11 pm, Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne , 28, left without saying goodbye to the Lawrence Cottage party . She left her bag and hotel key. He asked his chauffeur for the car keys to, he said later, take Mary Jo to the jetty to catch the last ferry to Edgartown , at Martha's Vineyard , where the secretary had her hotel. They got into the senator's Oldsmobile Delmont 88 and walked away under the dark and gentle sky, only the hotbed of the sea broke the silence of the clear and warm night. According to Ted's statement, he was driving on Dike Road , a dirt road that led to the beach crossing the Dike Bridge, a wooden walkway without guardrail that was intended for pedestrians and bicycles although occasionally an emergency vehicle crossed it. He did not notice that to bridge the bridge he had to turn slightly to the left and the car fell down the right edge and flew ten meters before diving upside down three meters deep in the lagoon of Pocha . The senator was able to leave and, according to his story, launched seven or eight times to try to rescue his companion . He did not succeed, but instead of asking for help in any of the two houses a few meters from the bridge, which had the lights on, he returned to the Lawrence Cottage , where the party continued. There he asked Joseph Gargan and Paul Markham to accompany him to the Dike Bridge and together they dived without rescuing Mary Jo . As there was no ferry at that time, they swam across the cove to Edgartown , where Ted had a room at the Shiretown Inn.
He changed his clothes and appeared in the lobby of the hostel at 2.30 a.m., the night porter Russell Peachey was told that he had revealed himself, it seemed that he was looking for an alibi. He returned to the room and made seventeen calls, none to the police . At breakfast he talked with the guests about the regattas that were to be held that same day. Around 8.20 a.m. two fishermen called the police to report a sunken car in the lagoon of Pocha . It was 8.45 am when John Farrar , captain of the Edgartown firefighters, found the body of Mary Jo on the first dive. Rescuing him didn't cost him ten minutes. When Ted found out he went to testify before Edgartown police chief Dominick Arena and admitted that he was driving the car . It was 9:45 and it had been at least ten hours since the accident.
The best jurists in Massachusetts and nine counselors from the Kennedy clan arrived at the Hyannis Port mansion where the family took refuge on days of glory and pain. The question was what had to be said. Some were in favor of recognizing the facts frankly; others argued that would ruin the political aspirations of the senator. Finally an extravagant statement was made: Ted "had plunged into the stormy and dark current to try to rescue the girl." I mean, a hero. That could only happen to the egg heads who write the communiqués of the politicians. The country and the press were focused on the Apollo XI moon landing and Ted's team had time to control the damage and smoke a smoke over the circumstances of the accident. But once the Apollo withdrew from the breaking news, the story of Kennedy and Kopechne exploded.
What happened on the Dike bridge? Was Ted driving drunk? Why did he say he was taking the secretary to the ferry when it was not working at that time, nor was the Dike bridge in the direction of the jetty but just the opposite, next to the beach? The accident took place sometime between 11.30 and one in the morning: just leave the party or almost two hours later. In the latter case, what had the couple been doing during those almost two hours? The rumors soared; but the details were then scarce, as they are now.
The strangest thing is that it took Ted at least ten hours to report the accident , why? There was an answer: fear has paralyzing effects . What was said later is that he was suffering from a physical and emotional shock, and that he did not think clearly. Mary Jo's own mother , Gwen Kopechne , told McCall's Magazine that she believed Kennedy had behaved erratically after the accident due to a mild concussion. What the poor woman did not understand was how Gargan and Markham , the friends Kennedy used to try to rescue Mary Jo , did not report the accident or force Ted to do so. No one ever responded to Gwen Kopechne . Fifty years later, the event remains shrouded in mystery and the two people who really know what happened that night - Ted and Mary Jo - are dead.
Four days after the accident, Kennedy , with a collar that looked more like an image plan than an optional prescription, went to Mary Jo's funeral with his wife Joan , who ended up losing the baby he was expecting and having problems with alcohol. When it became clear that Ted had lost any chance of arriving at the White House , they divorced.
A week after the accident, before Judge James Boyle, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of the accident , denied driving under the influence of alcohol and said there had been no sex between him and Miss Kopechne . The judges are like rugby balls, you never know for sure which side they are going to throw, but this time it was not difficult to guess. Judge Boyle sentenced him to a two-month prison sentence and suspended the execution of the sentence: "It has already been and will continue to be punished well beyond what this court may impose," he said. Kennedy was almost innocent because the opposite had not been proven . That is a principle of civilization, but no one struggled to investigate whether he was drunk or to show that if he had asked for help Mary Jo would still be alive . In 1970 John Farrar , the diver who rescued the body, declared that the girl did not die from drowning but from suffocation in the air bell that had formed in the car : "It took three to four hours to die. I could have rescued her in less than twenty-five minutes after a call. " But, as the teletype that gave the scoop of the event suggested, the important thing was that Ted had saved his life. The least was how and why the blonde had died.
On July 30, Kennedy announced that he would stand for re-election to the Senate. He remained in his seat until the day of his death, now ten years ago, after eight terms that totaled 47 years and 292 days . Only three other senators exceeded that mark . He even introduced himself to the Democratic Party primaries in 1979 . His defeat against Carter was overwhelming , "where is Mary Jo?" They yelled at him. In his memoirs, the senator admitted that his behavior had been "inexcusable" and suggested that the accident had accelerated his father's illness , that he would die ten days after Mary Jo .
The Kennedy dynasty came into the world to sing a song with two versions, one bright and one dark . The first draws Patriarch Joseph as an eminent citizen, an example of the American dream; the second, which was a bandit enriched with mafia methods. The first proclaims that his son JFK was the triumph of willpower in the face of pain and disease; the somber version tombs the myth of the Kennedy Camelot and tells that he was a rake who ascended buying charges. The flattering face says that Bobby was the moral passion and the struggle for civil rights; the gloomy one, that relentless ambition was the only engine of his sinister life. The dark back of the official history of the Kennedy maintains that they became so because of their disregard for the rules, which forced only others. The Dike bridge accident seemed to confirm it.
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