Mary Jo Kopechne (July 26, 1940 – July 18, 1969) was an American teacher, secretary and administrator, notable for her death in a car accident on Chappaquiddick Island in a car driven by United States Senator Ted Kennedy.

Kopechne, born in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, was the only child of insurance salesman Joseph Kopechne and his wife, Gwen. After graduation from Caldwell College for women in New Jersey, Kopechne moved to Montgomery, Alabama, to teach at the Montgomery Catholic High School. She then moved to Washington, D.C., to work as secretary to Florida Senator George Smathers before subsequently becoming secretary to New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy following his election in 1964. At the time of her death, she was working for Matt Reese Associates, a Washington, D.C., firm that helped establish campaign headquarters for politicians. She had taken that position in December 1968 after Kennedy's death from an assassin's bullet the previous June.

On July 18, 1969, Kopechne attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island, off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, held in honor of the "Boiler Room Girls." This affectionate name was given to the six young women who had been vital to the late Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign and who had subsequently closed up his files and campaign office after his assassination.

Besides Kopechne, the other women, all single, were Susan Tannenbaum, Maryellen Lyons, Ann Lyons, Rosemary (Cricket) Keough, and Esther Newberg. The men in attendance, all married but present without their wives, were Ted Kennedy, Joe Gargan, U.S. Attorney Paul Markham, Charles Tretter, Raymond La Rosa, and John Crimmins. The festivity was held at Lawrence Cottage, rented for the occasion by Gargan, Kennedy's cousin and lawyer. The 12 attendees gathered at the cottage after two Kennedy boats raced in the Edgartown Regatta earlier in the day.

Kopechne left the party at 11:15 p.m. with Kennedy after he allegedly offered to drive her to catch the last ferry back to the Katama Shores Motor Inn in Edgartown where she was staying. (According to Kennedy, they left the party at 11:15 p.m. to catch the last ferry of the night -- at midnight.) Kennedy stated, on his way to the ferry crossing back to Edgartown, that he accidentally turned right onto Dike Road - a dirt road - instead of bearing sharply left on Main Street (Chappaquiddick Rd), which was a paved road. After proceeding one-half mile, he descended a hill and came upon a narrow bridge set obliquely to the unlit road. Kennedy drove the 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 belonging to him, off the side of Dyke Bridge, and the car overturned into Poucha Pond, a fairly narrow tidal body of water. A Reader's Digest investigation estimated that the car was traveling at about 35 miles per hour when it left the bridge.

Kennedy extricated himself from the submerged car but Kopechne died. Kennedy said that he made several diving attempts to free her and, after exhausting himself, rested for 20 minutes. He then walked some fifteen minutes, past several houses, back to the Lawrence Cottage where the party had been held. When Kennedy arrived back at the cottage, he saw the white Valiant his group had rented parked near the front door. The Senator testified that as he came up to the back of the vehicle, he saw Ray LaRosa. Kennedy made no mention of the accident to LaRosa, however, and instead told him to go get Joe Gargan, Senator Kennedy's cousin and lawyer, and another friend, former U.S. Attorney Paul Markham. Kennedy explained the situation, and although there was a working phone at the cottage, the trio allegedly drove to the scene of the accident to attempt a rescue. The group claimed that the tidal current was too strong and prevented them from reaching Kopechne.

Still, despite their failure to rescue Kopechne, Kennedy, Gargan, and Markham made no attempt to contact authorities. Instead, Kennedy was driven to the Ferry dock where he jumped into the water and swam the distance between Chappaquiddick and Marthas Vineyard Islands, some 500 feet, and returned to his room at the Shiretown Inn, in Edgartown. Gargan and Marken claimed Kennedy said he was heading to contact the authorities, and they returned to the cottage. A night clerk at the Shiretown Inn said he encountered Kennedy on the premises at 2:50 a.m. The next morning, Gargan, Markham, and several female co-workers of Kopechne took the first ferry back to Edgartown. At the Shiretown Inn, Kennedy was seen around the hotel smartly dressed and calmly conversing with other guests. By 9 a.m. Gargan, Markham, and Kennedy were on a ferry back to Chappaquiddick Island, purportedly to return to the cottage.

By this time, however, fisherman had happened upon Kennedy's submerged vehicle and pulled it ashore, rushing to a house a few yards away to notify the authorities at around 8 a.m. Police arrived by 8:20, and a diver was on the scene by 8:30, discovering Kopechne by 8:45. By this time, the car was identified as Senator Kennedy's. Those at the scene feared another Kennedy tragedy might have occurred, and a search for other possible victims ensued; however, at 9:30 Kennedy was spotted on a phone at the Chappaquiddick side of the ferry, where he was asked by authorities if he knew that a dead woman's body had been retrieved from his car. Kennedy initially denied any knowledge of this, but later acknowledged his involvement during questioning at the Edgartown police station, which he documented through a short, written statement about the previous night's trip to the ferry with Miss Kopechne. When questioned about the details, Kennedy refused to answer without his attorney being present.

Kennedy's statement already had problems, however. The previous evening, Deputy Sheriff Christopher Look, on returning from duty in Edgartown, had seen what he believed to be Kennedy's black sedan driving erratically with a male and female passenger sometime around 12:40 a.m. The sedan failed to negotiate a sharp left turn on paved Chappaquiddick Road leading toward the ferry, the direction from which Deputy Look was returning home. Instead, the sedan continued straight and came to a dusty, sudden stop on the dirt cemetery driveway then locally called Cemetery Road (today Willet Lane). The deputy came to a stop and in his rear-view mirror noticed the sedan backing up, leading him to believe the driver needed directions. Look exited his vehicle and walked toward the sedan, and the sedan's reverse-taillights more closely illuminated him as it emerged from the dirt driveway. However, no sooner was Look's deputy uniform lit, according to Look, the sedan quickly turned to its right -- the opposite direction from the Ferry -- and sped down Dike road, which is dirt. Dike is the road leading to the beach, and the intersection where this occurred was about a half mile from Dike Bridge, where the accident was later discovered. Deputy Look caught an L and two 7s bracketing the Massachusetts license plate number, which would closely match Kennedy's L-78207 Oldsmobile plate.

Kennedy avoided the press gathering outside the police station, quietly exiting to an unmarked car that took him to a privately hired plane at the airport nearby, which took him back to the Kennedy compound at Hyannisport. Likewise, guests of the party also quickly left for the mainland via Ferry long before the authorities concluded there had been a party at the Lawrence Cottage.

The incident carries a controversial dark-cloud for Kennedy because John Farrar, the diver who retrieved Kopechne's body early the following morning, stated Kopechne was in a position suggesting she had been breathing from a pocket of air trapped in the back-seat wheel well and had suffocated and not drowned, which implied that had Kennedy contacted authorities immediately, rescuers may have saved her life. However, since Kopechne's parents' lawyer, Joseph Flanagan, filed a petition barring an autopsy, the cause of death was never medically confirmed. When the car was recovered, all the doors were locked and three of the windows were either open or smashed in.

Kopechne's parents also claim that they learned of their daughter's death from Ted Kennedy before he reported his involvement to the authorities, and that they only learned he had been the driver through wire press releases some time later.

Kennedy ultimately received a deferred six-month sentence for leaving the scene of an accident. Kennedy defenders claim the legal case proved Kennedy was clear of guilt, whereas critics of the incident assert Kennedy got off lightly because of his family and political connections, and that many details were swept under the rug only to emerge later through journalistic efforts that suggested little effort was made to gather information detrimental to Kennedy.

Mary Jo Kopechne (July 26, 1940 – July 18, 1969) was an American teacher, secretary and administrator, notable for her death in a car accident on Chappaquiddick Island in a car driven by United States Senator Ted Kennedy.

Kopechne, born in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, was the only child of insurance salesman Joseph Kopechne and his wife, Gwen. After graduation from Caldwell College for women in New Jersey, Kopechne moved to Montgomery, Alabama, to teach at the Montgomery Catholic High School. She then moved to Washington, D.C., to work as secretary to Florida Senator George Smathers before subsequently becoming secretary to New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy following his election in 1964. At the time of her death, she was working for Matt Reese Associates, a Washington, D.C., firm that helped establish campaign headquarters for politicians. She had taken that position in December 1968 after Kennedy's death from an assassin's bullet the previous June.

On July 18, 1969, Kopechne attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island, off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, held in honor of the "Boiler Room Girls." This affectionate name was given to the six young women who had been vital to the late Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign and who had subsequently closed up his files and campaign office after his assassination.

Besides Kopechne, the other women, all single, were Susan Tannenbaum, Maryellen Lyons, Ann Lyons, Rosemary (Cricket) Keough, and Esther Newberg. The men in attendance, all married but present without their wives, were Ted Kennedy, Joe Gargan, U.S. Attorney Paul Markham, Charles Tretter, Raymond La Rosa, and John Crimmins. The festivity was held at Lawrence Cottage, rented for the occasion by Gargan, Kennedy's cousin and lawyer. The 12 attendees gathered at the cottage after two Kennedy boats raced in the Edgartown Regatta earlier in the day.

Kopechne left the party at 11:15 p.m. with Kennedy after he allegedly offered to drive her to catch the last ferry back to the Katama Shores Motor Inn in Edgartown where she was staying. (According to Kennedy, they left the party at 11:15 p.m. to catch the last ferry of the night -- at midnight.) Kennedy stated, on his way to the ferry crossing back to Edgartown, that he accidentally turned right onto Dike Road - a dirt road - instead of bearing sharply left on Main Street (Chappaquiddick Rd), which was a paved road. After proceeding one-half mile, he descended a hill and came upon a narrow bridge set obliquely to the unlit road. Kennedy drove the 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 belonging to him, off the side of Dyke Bridge, and the car overturned into Poucha Pond, a fairly narrow tidal body of water. A Reader's Digest investigation estimated that the car was traveling at about 35 miles per hour when it left the bridge.

Kennedy extricated himself from the submerged car but Kopechne died. Kennedy said that he made several diving attempts to free her and, after exhausting himself, rested for 20 minutes. He then walked some fifteen minutes, past several houses, back to the Lawrence Cottage where the party had been held. When Kennedy arrived back at the cottage, he saw the white Valiant his group had rented parked near the front door. The Senator testified that as he came up to the back of the vehicle, he saw Ray LaRosa. Kennedy made no mention of the accident to LaRosa, however, and instead told him to go get Joe Gargan, Senator Kennedy's cousin and lawyer, and another friend, former U.S. Attorney Paul Markham. Kennedy explained the situation, and although there was a working phone at the cottage, the trio allegedly drove to the scene of the accident to attempt a rescue. The group claimed that the tidal current was too strong and prevented them from reaching Kopechne.

Still, despite their failure to rescue Kopechne, Kennedy, Gargan, and Markham made no attempt to contact authorities. Instead, Kennedy was driven to the Ferry dock where he jumped into the water and swam the distance between Chappaquiddick and Marthas Vineyard Islands, some 500 feet, and returned to his room at the Shiretown Inn, in Edgartown. Gargan and Marken claimed Kennedy said he was heading to contact the authorities, and they returned to the cottage. A night clerk at the Shiretown Inn said he encountered Kennedy on the premises at 2:50 a.m. The next morning, Gargan, Markham, and several female co-workers of Kopechne took the first ferry back to Edgartown. At the Shiretown Inn, Kennedy was seen around the hotel smartly dressed and calmly conversing with other guests. By 9 a.m. Gargan, Markham, and Kennedy were on a ferry back to Chappaquiddick Island, purportedly to return to the cottage.

By this time, however, fisherman had happened upon Kennedy's submerged vehicle and pulled it ashore, rushing to a house a few yards away to notify the authorities at around 8 a.m. Police arrived by 8:20, and a diver was on the scene by 8:30, discovering Kopechne by 8:45. By this time, the car was identified as Senator Kennedy's. Those at the scene feared another Kennedy tragedy might have occurred, and a search for other possible victims ensued; however, at 9:30 Kennedy was spotted on a phone at the Chappaquiddick side of the ferry, where he was asked by authorities if he knew that a dead woman's body had been retrieved from his car. Kennedy initially denied any knowledge of this, but later acknowledged his involvement during questioning at the Edgartown police station, which he documented through a short, written statement about the previous night's trip to the ferry with Miss Kopechne. When questioned about the details, Kennedy refused to answer without his attorney being present.

Kennedy's statement already had problems, however. The previous evening, Deputy Sheriff Christopher Look, on returning from duty in Edgartown, had seen what he believed to be Kennedy's black sedan driving erratically with a male and female passenger sometime around 12:40 a.m. The sedan failed to negotiate a sharp left turn on paved Chappaquiddick Road leading toward the ferry, the direction from which Deputy Look was returning home. Instead, the sedan continued straight and came to a dusty, sudden stop on the dirt cemetery driveway then locally called Cemetery Road (today Willet Lane). The deputy came to a stop and in his rear-view mirror noticed the sedan backing up, leading him to believe the driver needed directions. Look exited his vehicle and walked toward the sedan, and the sedan's reverse-taillights more closely illuminated him as it emerged from the dirt driveway. However, no sooner was Look's deputy uniform lit, according to Look, the sedan quickly turned to its right -- the opposite direction from the Ferry -- and sped down Dike road, which is dirt. Dike is the road leading to the beach, and the intersection where this occurred was about a half mile from Dike Bridge, where the accident was later discovered. Deputy Look caught an L and two 7s bracketing the Massachusetts license plate number, which would closely match Kennedy's L-78207 Oldsmobile plate.

Kennedy avoided the press gathering outside the police station, quietly exiting to an unmarked car that took him to a privately hired plane at the airport nearby, which took him back to the Kennedy compound at Hyannisport. Likewise, guests of the party also quickly left for the mainland via Ferry long before the authorities concluded there had been a party at the Lawrence Cottage.

The incident carries a controversial dark-cloud for Kennedy because John Farrar, the diver who retrieved Kopechne's body early the following morning, stated Kopechne was in a position suggesting she had been breathing from a pocket of air trapped in the back-seat wheel well and had suffocated and not drowned, which implied that had Kennedy contacted authorities immediately, rescuers may have saved her life. However, since Kopechne's parents' lawyer, Joseph Flanagan, filed a petition barring an autopsy, the cause of death was never medically confirmed. When the car was recovered, all the doors were locked and three of the windows were either open or smashed in.

Kopechne's parents also claim that they learned of their daughter's death from Ted Kennedy before he reported his involvement to the authorities, and that they only learned he had been the driver through wire press releases some time later.

Kennedy ultimately received a deferred six-month sentence for leaving the scene of an accident. Kennedy defenders claim the legal case proved Kennedy was clear of guilt, whereas critics of the incident assert Kennedy got off lightly because of his family and political connections, and that many details were swept under the rug only to emerge later through journalistic efforts that suggested little effort was made to gather information detrimental to Kennedy.

Will anyone from the Kopeckne family be speaking?

Yes James, that demonstrates clearly what the Republican base is really all about.

Pretty disgusting. I do hope ABC deletes your garbage.

I’m only a lukewarm Obama supporter. But as immature as Hillary Clinton’s antics during and since the primaries have been, the behavior of her ardent supporters strikes me as even worse. I suppose one can understand how amoral egomaniacs like the Clintons might embrace deeply divisive (OK, downright evil!) tactics for purely short-term political gain when driven by ambition as they are. But her continuingly ardent supporters? I can only suppose that they are motivated by the same sort of mindlessly arbitrary partisanship as European soccer hooligans. I fear that McCain (who admits, at least halfway, that he cares only about his ambition) will win and drive this country the rest of the way into the ground, and it will be only Hillary and her supporters who are to blame.

I am so sick of the Kennedys. All of them, vertical or horizontal.

Obama is a clown. Vote for me.

Larry, Just how do I "vote BIG'? Would that be to vote several times, LBJ style? The little O boy doesn't need my help unless it is to remove his head from his a**.

Yeah "Teddy". Do you really want to go there? I can post a few hundred items on how McCain has used the C word towards his current wife, how he was doing Cindy while his then current wife was in a hospital recuperating from a life threatening car accident, and on and on.

Ever hear about people in glass houses not throwing stones? Be careful about what you post, it just might fly back in your face. Kind of like spitting in the wind.

Larry, if you believe for one second that Hitlary wants Barry to win you know nothing about what makes the Clintons tick. They are power hungry and will stop at nothing to get it, even by using racist comments. They may say to vote for Barry but they will be working hard to undermine his election so she can win in 2012. How are Vince, Ron, the babe Bill molested and her dead husband doing?

Would someone PLEASE remember that this SOB drove a car off a bridge with a 20 something woman inside, left her to drown, and left to go to a motel to cook up a story. These Kennedy's are trash, period, and nothing else, from Joe Sr. on down!

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=4569

James, as a loyal Republican you should know something about vote fixing--remember the "hanging chads" in Florida when Bush the little's brother was governor? Remember how Rove, Harriet Miers and the rest of Bushes thugs won't answer Justice Department subpoenas? Even when they are no longer working in the executive branch? Your own little gestapo at work.

Hey Larry, Cindy was and is hot. Rich too. Atta boy Johnny!

neil1785, must be a little hard to see through those little holes in your Klan hood, isn't it?

Yeah we need guys like you voting. In Russia maybe...

Latest Update !!!! Doctors now admit that a mistake was made during the surgery. It has become apparent that Kennedy's Brain was removed in error and the tumor was left untouched. Doctor's have no explaination for the sudden increase in IQ.

Larry, are you guys STILL whining about Florida 2000? If Algore had just won his measley home state of Tennessee (11 electoral votes) he would have been President. HE LOST HIS OWN STATE! WAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAW. THANK YOU, TENNESSEE!

Liberals are always wrong about everything. Always.

What do people know about this? Lawsuit filed today against Obama and DNC. Obama not U.S. Citizen- Lawsuit filed- Enjoin DNC

Killerbee,

You mean the same Al Gore that won the popular election, that guy? And you repeating the Algore garbage that that druggie El Rushbo pumps out doesn't make you too bright either. Another Ditto for Brains head.

Larry, Really hate to disappoint you old buddy but I am not a repub, much less a "loyal" repub. It is just that I am not blinded by the glittering halo of your black Messiah. I see him for what he truly is, an empty suit that can read a teleprompter. At least that is not above his paygrade.

This convention is taking on carnival qualities. It will be entertaining, but there are a lot of very pissed off people getting together in a town that does serve alcohol. The problem is, they are mad at each other. Can you imagine the magic of Michelle and Hillary standing together? Bill and Barack? Bill and Michelle embracing? This with 20,000 anguished and motivated Hillary supporters seething on the convention floor. The Schizocratic Party begins Monday. Neither Shakespeare nor Hollywood could have scripted a more intriguing or volatile affair. Into the mix walks the elder surviving Kennedy, taking us back to the days of sadness and denial. A man who should have been prosecuted for negligent homicide, walks forth, while fighting a brain tumor, in itself a courageous effort. I am happy this will be on TV. The convention will have moments of brilliance, but I am afraid, too many moments where the DNC would prefer there were no cameras in the room

Sure let's get Jabba the Kennedy who killed Mary Jo up there with the three Clintons. It's a regular love fest of self glorification going on.

Does anyone know if Obama will be there?

And how is your pay grade James? Is El Rushbo financing your tirades here? I'm sure you'd love to lynch all the African Americans, but thank God you are in the distinct minority.

Animals like you should burn your voter ID cards, that is if you can find them.

Larry, you need to lay off of the Klan.