The Bridge at Chappaquiddick
On the night of July 18-19, 1969, a black Oldsmobile sedan plunged over the edge of a narrow bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Martha's Vineyard. The overturned car, submerged in the swirling waters beside the bridge, was not discovered until morning. Inside the car was the body of Mary Jo Kopechne. A short while after the discovery -- though many hours after the time of the accident – Edward Moore Kennedy, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and a potential leading candidate for the Presidency of the United States, walked into the Edgartown police station on Martha's Vineyard and said that he had been the driver of the car. Thus began yet another tragic ordeal involving a Kennedy, an ordeal fraught with confusion, mysterious discrepancies and unforeseeable political consequences for both Senator Kennedy and the nation. In the weeks that followed, the accident and the events surrounding it, as they were explained and rumored and theorized upon, became, for many, only more mysterious, more suspect, more impenetrable.
