The Chappaquiddick incident occurred on the island in Massachusetts of the same name sometime around midnight between July 18 and 19, 1969, when Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy negligently drove his car off a narrow bridge, causing it to overturn in a tidal pond. This resulted in the drowning death of his 28-year-old passenger Mary Jo Kopechne, who was trapped inside the vehicle.
Kennedy left a party on Chappaquiddick at 11:15 p.m. Friday. He maintained that his intent was to immediately take Kopechne to a ferry landing and return to Edgartown, but that he accidentally made a wrong turn onto a dirt road leading to a one-lane bridge. After his car skidded off the bridge into Poucha Pond, Kennedy swam free and maintained that he tried to rescue Kopechne from the submerged car, but that he could not. Kopechne's death could have happened any time between about 11:30 p.m. Friday and 1 a.m. Saturday, as an off-duty deputy sheriff stated he saw a car matching Kennedy's license plate at 12:40 a.m. Kennedy left the scene and did not report the accident to police until after 10 a.m. Saturday. Meanwhile, a diver recovered Kopechne's body from Kennedy's car shortly before 9 a.m. Saturday.
At a July 25, 1969, court hearing, Kennedy pled guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident and received a two-month suspended jail sentence. In a televised statement that same evening, he said his conduct immediately after the accident "made no sense to me at all", and that he regarded his failure to report the accident immediately as "indefensible". A January 5, 1970, judicial inquest concluded that Kennedy and Kopechne did not intend to take the ferry and that Kennedy intentionally turned toward the bridge, operating his vehicle negligently, if not recklessly, at too high a speed for the hazard which the bridge posed in the dark. The judge stopped short of recommending charges, and a grand jury convened on April 6, 1970, returning no indictments. On May 27, 1970, a Registry of Motor Vehicles hearing resulted in Kennedy's driver's license being suspended for a total of sixteen months after the accident.
The Chappaquiddick incident became national news that influenced Kennedy's decision not to run for President in 1972 and 1976, and it was said to have undermined his chances of ever becoming President. Kennedy ultimately decided to enter the 1980 Democratic Party presidential primaries, but earned only 37.6% of the vote and lost the nomination to incumbent President Jimmy Carter.
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Background
U.S. Senator Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy, age 37, and his cousin, Joseph Gargan, 39, planned to race Kennedy's sailboat, Victura, in the 1969 Edgartown Yacht Club Regatta on Friday and Saturday, July 18 and 19, 1969, after having forgone the previous year's Regatta because of the assassination of Kennedy's brother, Robert, that June. Gargan rented secluded Lawrence Cottage for the weekend on Chappaquiddick Island, which is a tiny island accessible by ferry from Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard. They hosted a cookout party at the cottage at 8:30 p.m. that evening as a reunion for the "Boiler Room Girls", women who had served on Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign. Six of these attended the party: Mary Jo Kopechne, Rosemary Keough, and Esther Newberg, sisters Nance and Mary Ellen Lyons, and Susan Tannenbaum. All were in their twenties, and single.
