The Chappaquiddick scandal, July 18, 1969
Senator Edward Kennedy leaves a party on Chappaquiddick Island, near Martha’s Vineyard, with a campaign worker, Mary Jo Kopechne. Kennedy had been drinking, but drives off with the twenty-eight-year-old woman. Their car slides off a bridge into the water. Kennedy gets free and swims to the surface. He does not see or hear Kopechne. He flees the scene and does not inform authorities for nine hours. Though given a suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident, unanswered questions and innuendo will cling to Kennedy’s name and sabotage his efforts to run for President.