Mary Jo Kopechne
Mary Jo Kopechne (/koʊˈpɛkni/; July 26, 1940 – July 18 or 19, 1969) was an American secretary, and one of the campaign workers for U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign, a close team known as the "Boiler Room Girls". In 1969, she asphyxiated when a car driven by U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy left a narrow road on Chappaquiddick Island and overturned into Poucha Pond after leaving a party. According to reports, Kennedy left the party at 11:15 p.m. Kopechne's body and the car were not reported until the next morning, approximately nine to ten hours later.
Mary Jo Kopechne
July 26, 1940
July 18 or 19, 1969 (aged 28)
American
Victim of Chappaquiddick incident
Joseph and Gwen Kopechne
Early life and education[edit]
Kopechne was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania,[3] although she is sometimes described as being from nearby Forty Fort, Pennsylvania.[4][5] She was the only child of homemaker Gwen (née Jennings) and insurance salesman Joseph Kopechne.[3][6][4] Kopechne was of part Polish heritage through her father.[7] Her grandfathers both worked as coal miners in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Her family history in the Wyoming Valley area of northeastern Pennsylvania traces back 250 years on her maternal side.[5]
When Kopechne was an infant, her family moved to Berkeley Heights, New Jersey.[3][8] She was raised Catholic and attended parochial schools,[9] graduating in 1958 from Our Lady of the Valley High School in Orange, New Jersey.[10] She graduated with a degree in business administration from Caldwell College for Women in 1962.[3][11]
On July 18, 1969, Kopechne attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island, off the east coast of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. The celebration was in honor of the dedicated work of the Boiler Room Girls, and was the fourth such reunion of Robert Kennedy campaign workers.[23] Robert's surviving brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, was there.[17] Kopechne reportedly left the party with Kennedy at 11:15 p.m.; according to his account, he had offered to drive her to catch the last ferry back to Edgartown, where she was staying.[15] She did not tell her close friends at the party that she was leaving, and she left her purse and keys behind.[15] Kennedy drove the 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88[24] off a narrow, unlit bridge, which lacked guardrails and was not on the route to Edgartown.[15] The vehicle landed on its roof in Poucha Pond. Kennedy extricated himself from the vehicle and survived, but neglected to inform authorities of the accident until the next day.
Assistant Medical examiner Donald Mills signed a death certificate, listing cause of death as accidental drowning. A private funeral for Kopechne was held at St. Vincent's Roman Catholic Church in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, on July 22, 1969.[25][26] The service was attended by Kennedy, his wife Joan, his sister-in-law Ethel, and hundreds of onlookers.[25] Kopechne was buried in St. Vincent's Cemetery in Larksville, Pennsylvania,[1] in the parish cemetery on the side of Larksville Mountain.[5] She was among the fifth generation of her family interred in that cemetery.[5]
The exact time and cause of Kopechne's death is not positively known, due to conflicting witness testimony at the January 1970 inquest, and lack of an autopsy.
Kennedy failed to report the incident to the authorities until the car and Kopechne's body were discovered the next morning.[15] Kopechne's parents said that they learned of their daughter's death from Kennedy,[3] before he informed authorities of his involvement.[11] They learned that Kennedy had been the driver from wire press releases some time later.[11]
Aftermath[edit]
A week after the incident, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury. He received a two-month suspended sentence.[15] On a national television broadcast that night, Kennedy said that he had not been driving "under the influence of liquor", nor had he ever had a "private relationship" with Kopechne.[27] Massachusetts officials pressed for weeks to have Kopechne's body exhumed for an autopsy,[28] but in December 1969, a Pennsylvania judge sided with the parents' request not to disturb her burial site.[1]
The Chappaquiddick incident and Kopechne's death became the topic of at least 15 non-fiction books, as well as a novella by Joyce Carol Oates.[29] Even otherwise sympathetic, mainstream biographers believed there were outstanding serious questions about Kennedy's timeline of events that night, specifically his actions following the incident.[30][29] The quality of the investigation has been scrutinized, particularly whether official deference was given to a powerful and influential politician and his family.[30] The events surrounding Kopechne's death damaged Kennedy's reputation, and are regarded as a major reason why he was never able to mount a successful campaign for President of the United States and essentially chose not to pursue the office.[31]
Kennedy would eventually overcome this and some lesser personal scandals to have a very long career as a Senator and to achieve a lengthy list of major legislative accomplishments.[29]
Kennedy expressed his remorse over his role in Kopechne's death in his posthumously published memoir, True Compass (2009).[32] But the disparity of the outcomes remained; Kennedy biographer Peter Canellos has written of the aftermath: "Every day that he lived was one that Kopechne – a talented woman with political interests of her own – would not. It seemed cosmically unfair that he should have a second act when she couldn't even complete her first."[29]
Kopechne's parents received a $141,000 settlement from Kennedy's insurance company.[4] They subsequently moved to Swiftwater, Pennsylvania.[4] On the 25th anniversary of her death, in 1994, they said that Kennedy had never apologized directly to them over his role in it, but that other members of the Kennedy family had written letters to them.[4] With their only child gone, they never felt that justice had really been done in the case.[5]
Kopechne's father died in a nursing home in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, in 2003.[4] Her mother died in a nursing home in Plains Township, Pennsylvania, in 2007.[4]