Chappaquiddick: Suspicions Renewed

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He was even more specific on what happened after he surfaced and caught his breath some 30 feet downstream from the car. According to his account, he dived down to the car seven or eight times during a 15-to 20-minute period, trying to reach Mary Jo, then spent another 15 or 20 minutes resting on the bank before starting down the road to the cottage.

Kennedy's companions placed his return to the cottage at 12:15 a.m. Gargan and Markham told almost identical stories of their return to the bridge with Kennedy, and their attempts to bring up Mary Jo. Gargan and Markham insisted that they advised Kennedy repeatedly to report the accident and summon help. By the time the trio reached the Chappaquiddick ferry landing, Kennedy seemed to agree. Believing somehow that a full explanation would send Mary Jo's girl friends down to the bridge in a fruitless—and dangerous —attempt to dive for her themselves, Kennedy instructed Markham and Gargan not to alarm them, said that he would take care of reporting the accident, then plunged alone into the channel and swam across to Edgartown. This despite the fact that the ferry could have been summoned by telephone. Gargan acknowledged that earlier in the day he had discussed post-midnight ferry service with the boat operators. Also, a sign giving instructions about the service was at the landing.

"Moral Strength." Kennedy did not report the accident on reaching Edgartown. Instead, he returned to his hotel, changed his clothes and, after a brief conversation with Innkeeper Russell Peachey in which he pointedly asked the time (2:25 a.m.), paced the floor of his room until daylight. Then occurred one of the more bizarre events in an already fantastic case. Rhode Island Businessman Ross Richards, who had won the previous day's sailing race, testified that he ran into Kennedy outside the hotel around 7:30 a.m. Giving no indication in manner or appearance that anything out of the ordinary had happened, Kennedy calmly discussed boating, even said that he might accept Richards' invitation to join him and his friends for breakfast.

He was still chatting with Richards and others when Gargan and Markham arrived at the hotel and asked him what he had done about the accident. He had done nothing. As Kennedy explained at the inquest: "I just couldn't gain the strength within me, the moral strength, to call Mrs. Kopechne at 2 in the morning and tell her that her daughter was dead." It was 9 before Kennedy notified the police. It was still later—around 11 a.m.—that Gargan told the five women who had been at the party that Mary Jo was dead.