The House of Kennedy(61)
Diaries kept by White House chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, reveal that Nixon becomes obsessed with the Chappaquiddick incident, ordering aide John Ehrlichman to get investigators “working on what really happened.”
According to the Boston Globe’s Robert Healy, “He had a fixation, Nixon did, on the Kennedys. Of course, what the hell? He was looking down the barrel of a gun at Bobby and Jack, and the guy was paranoid anyway and the Kennedys just wiped him out…[A]ll he wanted to talk about was Ted Kennedy.”
The Boston-area papers, led by the Globe, are in the incredible situation of having to decide whether to “lead with the moonwalk or Chappaquiddick.” Robert Healy describes the front-page layout: “We did a dual job that [Saturday] night”—in advance of the Sunday, July 20, paper. “Split right in half.”
“It was the greatest moment in John F. Kennedy’s presidential [legacy] happening at the worst possible moment for Ted Kennedy—the senator’s personal legacy,” Taylor Allen, screenwriter of the 2017 film Chappaquiddick, opines.
But attempts at in-depth reporting on the story prove frustrating. In terms of first-person fact-finding, Adam Clymer of the New York Times, who later becomes Ted’s biographer, is completely shut out. “I tried to interview people about it. Not only Kennedy, but I knew a couple of the women who were there. They wouldn’t discuss it with me.”
“You knew you weren’t going to get anything from the Kennedys,” Robert Healy says of the Globe’s strategy on reporting the case. They tried to get info out of Police Chief Arena, but even though “he wasn’t a pal [of the Kennedys]…I think he was being careful about dealing with the United States Senator from Massachusetts.”
“I was the driver,” Ted admits to Chief Arena, though he doesn’t say as much when he calls Mary Jo’s mother, Gwen Kopechne, on Saturday morning. By noon, he has boarded a short flight to Hyannis Port, where he must face his father.
In the presence of Rita Dallas, Ted begins his awful story. “Dad,” he says, “I’m in some trouble. There’s been an accident, and you’re going to hear all sorts of things about me from now on. Terrible things. But, Dad, I want you to know they’re not true. It was an accident. I’m telling you the truth, Dad; it was an accident.”
Jackie has her own opinion, and it implicates Joe and the ethos he created in the House of Kennedy. “I believe Ted has an unconscious drive to self-destruct,” Jackie tells Kennedy biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli. “I think it comes from the fact that he knows he’ll never live up to what people expect of him. He’s not Jack. He’s not Bobby. And he believes that what he is, is just not enough.”
Rita Dallas recalls Ted undergoing a medical examination by a doctor in Hyannis Port, who “recommended that Teddy’s spine be tapped. This was done at Teddy’s house on Squaw Island. The diagnosis was ‘wear your neck brace,’ but Teddy shook his head saying, ‘No, I can’t do it. I can’t let people think I’d be trying to get their sympathy. I can’t.’” The doctor also detects a mild concussion, similar to the one Ted sustained in the 1964 plane crash he also survived.
In the aftermath of Chappaquiddick, Joan (then thirty-two years old and four months pregnant) hears of the scandal directly from her husband’s mouth—though he’s not talking to her. According to Joan’s secretary, Marcia Chellis, Joan picks up a phone extension only to overhear a conversation between Ted and Helga Wagner.
“Ted called his girlfriend, Helga, before he or anyone else told me what was going on,” Joan tells Chellis. “I couldn’t talk to anyone about it, I had to stay upstairs.”
Three days after the incident, on July 22, Ted and Joan, along with Ethel, travel from Hyannis Port to attend Mary Jo’s funeral at St. Vincent’s Roman Catholic Church in Plymouth, Pennsylvania. The congregation of five hundred buzzes when the Kennedy party enters, observing, “The senator, wearing a heavy neck brace, seemed to have trouble kneeling after they entered the front pew.” The three highly visible mourners then travel to the cemetery in Larksville by chauffeured limousine.
That same day, the Boston Globe reports on the findings of Edgartown’s associate medical examiner, Dr. Mills. Mary Jo’s blood tests showed “a degree of alcohol, but it was very well down. She was not drunk at the time this happened. She was not drinking immoderately,” he said. (In 1969, the Massachusetts blood alcohol concentration [BAC] limit was .15 percent; in 2000, the national limit dropped to .08 percent; Mary Jo’s blood tested for .09.)
Chief Arena didn’t test Ted’s blood alcohol levels, explaining, “If a man comes into my station clear-eyed and walking steadily on his feet with no semblance of alcohol on his breath,” he explains, “I have no business in giving a Breathalyzer.”
On Friday, July 25, Ted, Joan, and Stephen Smith cross Nantucket Sound by Kennedy yacht for a hearing at the Edgartown courthouse presided over by Judge James Boyle. Ted pleads a barely audible “Guilty” to a misdemeanor charge (lacking evidence of criminal negligence, the most serious possible charge) of leaving the scene of an accident.
After handing down a suspended two-month sentence, Judge Boyle says, “It is my understanding that he [Ted] has already been and will continue to be punished far beyond anything this court can impose.”