Mary Jo Kopechne

Case background and investigation

Mary Jo Kopechne was born on July 26, 1940, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. According to her Wikipedia biography, she worked as a secretary and political campaign specialist and was one of the so-called Boiler Room Girls, a group of staff members on Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign who tracked how Democratic delegates intended to vote. She was 28 years old, a little more than a week short of her 29th birthday, when she died.

On July 18, 1969, Kopechne attended a gathering at a rented cottage on Chappaquiddick Island, off Martha's Vineyard, that History.com describes as a reunion for women who had worked on the 1968 campaign. She left in an Oldsmobile driven by Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. The car went off the wooden Dike Bridge, which had no guard rails, and came to rest submerged in Poucha Pond. Kennedy got out of the car; Kopechne did not. Kennedy said he left the party at about 11:15 p.m. and took a wrong turn, according to ABC News. Kopechne's Wikipedia biography notes that a deputy sheriff, Christopher Look, testified that he saw a car he believed to be Kennedy's at about 12:40 a.m. on July 19.

Kennedy said he tried to reach Kopechne, returned to the cottage, and went back to the bridge with friends for another attempt, according to History.com. He did not report the crash to police until the following morning, roughly ten hours later. By then the car had been noticed and her body recovered shortly before 9 a.m. on July 19. The medical examiner, Dr. Donald Mills, concluded that she drowned, the Martha's Vineyard Times reported. The diver who recovered her body, John Farrar, disputed that view and testified that he believed she had survived for a time in an air pocket and suffocated. No autopsy was performed before burial.

On July 25, 1969, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident causing bodily injury. He received a two-month suspended jail sentence, and History.com reports that his license was suspended for a year. Massachusetts authorities petitioned to exhume Kopechne's body for an autopsy, but a Pennsylvania judge denied the request in December 1969, siding with her parents, who opposed it.

An inquest was held in Edgartown in January 1970 before Judge James A. Boyle. According to the Wikipedia account of the incident, Boyle found probable cause to believe that Kennedy had operated the vehicle negligently and that this appeared to have contributed to Kopechne's death, but no arrest warrant was issued. A grand jury that examined the case returned no indictments on April 6, 1970. Kennedy was never charged with any offense beyond leaving the scene.

Kopechne is buried in Larksville, Pennsylvania. Kennedy remained in the United States Senate until his death in 2009. The exact timing of the crash and the question of how long Kopechne survived in the car were disputed in testimony and were never settled by a court.