Nightmare at Chappaquiddick

Edgartown, Massachusetts, July 19, 1969. Divers enter the water as they try to raise the car belonging to Senator Edward Kennedy in which he was seriously injured and his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne was killed Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of the accident at Chappaquiddick Bridge

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Sen. Ted Kennedy's car is pulled from the water at Edgartown, Mass., July 19, 1969. Mary Jo Kopechne was killed after Kennedy drove his car off Dyke Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island.

AP Photo

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Sen. Edward Kennedy as he emerged from court in Edgartown, Mass., July 25, 1969 with his wife Joan after pleading guilty to leaving the scene of a fatal auto accident. He was given a two-month jail sentence, suspended on probation.

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Mary Jo Kopechne, shown in this undated photo, was killed after Sen. Edward M. Kennedy drove a car off a bridge on Massachusetts' Chappaquiddick Island on July 18, 1969.

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July 21, 1969: This is the cottage on Chappaquiddick Island, off the east end of Martha's Vineyard Island where Sen. Edward Kennedy attended a party Friday. The senator later left the party to drive a young woman to the ferry but apparently took a wrong road and the car plunged off small bridge killing the woman, a former secretary to late Sen. Robert Kennedy. This cottage was rented from Sidney Lawrence, a New York attorney, by Kennedy friends participating in yacht races at nearby Edgartown.

AP Photo

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Curious onlookers inspect Sen. Ted Kennedy's car in July 1969. Mary Jo Kopechne was killed after Kennedy drove the car off Dyke Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Mass. on July 18, 1969.

AP Photo

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Reporters question American Senator Edward Kennedy (center, with neck brace) and his wife Joan Kennedy (left, in white coat and dark glasses) as they walk across the tarmac after returning from the funeral of Mary Jo Kopechne, Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, July 22, 1969. Kopechne died when a car driven by Kennedy went over the side of a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island four days earlier.

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Nightmare at Chappaquiddick

As a political journalist, Lloyd Grove interviewed Edward Kennedy in the ‘90s—and was on the receiving end of a Bob Dornan rant about Chappaquiddick (within Teddy’s earshot) in the ’80s.