Congratulation Ted Kennedy! Three years of sobriety, and no more women killed because of drunken stupidity.

August 25, 2012
By Koncerned Citizen

Chappaquiddick incidentOn the night of July 18, 1969, Kennedy was on Martha's Vineyard's Chappaquiddick Island at a party he gave for the "Boiler Room Girls", a group of young women who had worked on his brother Robert's presidential campaign the year before.[53] Kennedy left the party, driving a 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 with one of the women, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, and later drove off Dike Bridge into the Poucha Pond inlet, a tidal channel on Chappaquiddick Island. Kennedy escaped the overturned vehicle, and, by his description, dove below the surface seven or eight times, vainly attempting to reach Kopechne. Ultimately, he swam to shore and left the scene. He contacted authorities the next morning, but Kopechne's body had already been discovered.[53]

On July 25, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was given a sentence of two months in jail, suspended.[53] That night, he gave a national broadcast in which he said, "I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the police immediately," but denied driving under the influence of alcohol and denied any immoral conduct between him and Kopechne.[53] Kennedy asked the Massachusetts electorate whether he should stay in office or resign, after getting a favorable response in messages sent to him, announced on July 30 that he would remain in the Senate and run for re-election the next year.[58]

In January 1970, an inquest into Kopechne's death was held in Edgartown, Massachusetts.[53] At the request of Kennedy's lawyers, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ordered the inquest be conducted in secret.[53][59][60] The presiding judge, James A. Boyle, concluded that some aspects of Kennedy's story of that night were not true, and that negligent driving "appears to have contributed to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne".[60] A grand jury on Martha's Vineyard conducted a two-day investigation in April 1970 but issued no indictment, after which Boyle made his inquest report public.[53] Kennedy deemed its conclusions "not justified".[53] Questions about the Chappaquiddick incident generated a large number of articles and books over the next several years.[61]