Henry Rollins: Where’s Mary Jo Kopechne’s eulogy?

The car was in 7′ of water?

How did Ted get out?

toliver on August 27, 2009 at 5:51 PM

The car was in 7′ of water?

How did Ted get out?

toliver on August 27, 2009 at 5:51 PM

Crap floats.

HornetSting on August 27, 2009 at 5:55 PM

No, I’m serious. I’m trying to figure this out. It doesn’t make sense.

Was it a four door or two door? Was the car nose down? Was the car right side up?

toliver on August 27, 2009 at 6:01 PM

I doubt that it was in 7 ft of water, that is when they recovered the car…I believe the tide would have been about 4 ft.
I walked on the “new” bridge, and I can’t see where it would ever be 7 ft., at the time I walked maybe 2 ft.

right2bright on August 27, 2009 at 6:00 PM

This is making even less sense now. Could someone link me to a police report or serious investigative journalism [don't laugh]?

toliver on August 27, 2009 at 6:03 PM

Here’s the car model [1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88]

http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/images/your_garage/cars/4576_1533347379468ace9df0ab3.jpg

I know this it wiki, but it states that the vehicle was upside down:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappaquiddick_incident#Events_of_the_night_of_July_18.2C_1969

Still reading….

toliver on August 27, 2009 at 6:09 PM

Holy shit! This reeks! [I've never really learned about this until now.]

Read this at risk of nausea:

According to his inquest testimony, Kennedy made a wrong turn onto Dike Road, an unlit dirt road that led to Dike Bridge (also spelled Dyke Bridge). Dike Road was unpaved, but Kennedy, driving at “approximately twenty miles an hour”, took “no particular notice” of this fact, and did not realize that he was no longer headed towards the ferry landing.[6] Dike Bridge was a wooden bridge angled obliquely to the road with no guardrail. A fraction of a second before he reached the bridge, Kennedy applied his brakes; he then drove over the side of the bridge. The car plunged into tide-swept Poucha Pond (at that location a channel) and came to rest upside-down underwater. Kennedy later recalled that he was able to swim free of the vehicle, but Kopechne was not. Kennedy claimed at the inquest that he called Kopechne’s name several times from the shore, then tried to swim down to reach her seven or eight times, then rested on the bank for around fifteen minutes before returning on foot to Lawrence Cottage, where the party attended by Kopechne and other “Boiler Room Girls” had occurred. Kennedy denied seeing any house with a light on during his journey back to Lawrence Cottage.[7]

In addition to the working telephone at the Lawrence Cottage, according to one commentator, his route back to the cottage would have taken him past four houses from which he could have telephoned and summoned help; however, he did not do so.[8] The first of those houses, referred to as “Dike House”, was only 150 yards away from the bridge, and was occupied by Sylvia Malm and her family at the time of the incident. Malm later stated that she had left a light on at the residence when she retired for that evening.[9]

According to Kennedy’s testimony, Gargan and party co-host Paul Markham then returned to the pond with Kennedy to try to rescue Kopechne. Both of the other men also tried to dive into the water and rescue Kopechne multiple times.[1] When their efforts to rescue Kopechne failed, Kennedy testified, Gargan and Markham drove with Kennedy to the ferry landing, both insisting multiple times that the accident had to be reported to the authorities.[10] According to Markham’s testimony Kennedy was sobbing and on the verge of breaking down.[11] Kennedy went on to testify that “[I] had full intention of reporting it. And I mentioned to Gargan and Markham something like, ‘You take care of the other girls; I will take care of the accident!’—that is what I said and I dove into the water”.[10] Kennedy had already told Gargan and Markham not to tell the other women anything about the incident “[b]ecause I felt strongly that if these girls were notified that an accident had taken place and Mary Jo had, in fact, drowned, that it would only be a matter of seconds before all of those girls, who were long and dear friends of Mary Jo’s, would go to the scene of the accident and enter the water with, I felt, a good chance that some serious mishap might have occurred to any one of them”.[12] Gargan and Markam would testify that they assumed that Kennedy was going to inform the authorities once he got back to Edgartown, and thus did not do so themselves.[2]

According to his own testimony, Kennedy swam across the 500-foot channel, back to Edgartown and returned to his hotel room, where he removed his clothes and collapsed on his bed.[12] Hearing noises, he later put on dry clothes and asked someone what the time was: it was something like 2:30 a.m., the senator recalled. He testified that, as the night went on, “I almost tossed and turned and walked around that room … I had not given up hope all night long that, by some miracle, Mary Jo would have escaped from the car.”[13]

Back at his hotel, Kennedy complained at 2:55 am to the hotel owner that he had been awoken by a noisy party.[2] By 7:30 am the next morning he was talking “casually” to the winner of the previous day’s sailing race, with no indication that anything was amiss.[2] At 8 a.m., Gargan and Markham joined Kennedy at his hotel where they had a “heated conversation.” According to Kennedy’s testimony, the two men asked why he hadn’t reported the accident. Kennedy responded by telling them “about my own thoughts and feelings as I swam across that channel … that somehow when they arrived in the morning that they were going to say that Mary Jo was still alive”.[13] The three men subsequently crossed back to Chappaquiddick Island on the ferry, where Kennedy made a series of phone calls from a payphone by the crossing to his friends for advice; he again did not report the accident to authorities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappaquiddick_incident#Events_of_the_night_of_July_18.2C_1969

Again, I know it’s only wiki, but are those facts correct?

toliver on August 27, 2009 at 6:18 PM