Let me remind you of the timeline...
Think about it...
- Kennedy's actions upon reaching the cottage also raise serious questions about his motives and state of mind.
1) - The first person Kennedy saw when he reached the cottage was Ray LaRosa, but remarkably the Senator made no mention of the accident to him. As a former fireman, LaRosa was experienced in life-saving techniques; and because he had not been drinking at the party, he was clearly the most qualified to deal with the current emergency.
2) - Instead of alerting the first person he saw, Kennedy calmly asked LaRosa to go get Gargan and Markham while he waited outside. By hiding in the Valiant, the Senator eliminated the possibility that he would be noticed by any of the other party guests, a conscious and calculated effort to keep the accident a secret from everyone except his lawyers.
3) - Paul Markham, who injured his leg during the regatta, had been drinking heavily because of the pain. He could be of little assistance in a rescue attempt, but he was a lawyer.
4) - Kennedy would later use lawyer-client privilege to prevent Gargan and Markham from giving any information to authorities. For the next 8 hours, they would be the only people on the island who were even aware of the accident.
- Senator Kennedy's actions do not reflect a state of shock, but instead suggest a deliberate and calculated effort to cover up his involvement in the accident, while at the same time concealing the fate of Mary Jo Kopechne from those who could have saved her.
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Timeline Continued
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Saturday July 19, 1969
1:25 AM
- When the three men reached the bridge, Gargan recalled seeing the Senator's car upside-down in the middle of the pond. Kennedy guessed that it had been at least 45 minutes since the time of the accident. Gargan drove across the bridge and parked the Valiant on the beach side with the headlights shining over the water.
- Both Gargan and Markham stripped naked and dove into the water. "All I was interested in was saving the girl," Gargan said. "I wasn't thinking about anything else."
- A strong current was running through the narrow channel which made swimming difficult. The two men struggled against the current for some time, trying to find a way into the car. Gargan was eventually able to locate a door handle and yanked on it, but the door wouldn't budge. He moved around the car until he found an opening he presumed to be a window. He pushed his body into the car, but was unable to see in the dark water and could only "grope around to see if I could touch anything." Gargan began running out of breath, and in panic he pushed himself out fiercely, cutting his arms and chest as he exited the car.
- Ted Kennedy had observed the rescue attempts from the bridge, calling out, "Can you see her? Is she in there?" In the glow of the Valiant's headlights, Gargan saw the Senator stretched out on his back on the bridge. With his hands clasped behind his head, knees drawn up, Kennedy was looking into the sky, rocking back and forth, repeating, "Oh my God. What am I going to do? What am I going to do?"
- Markham and Gargan made several more attempts to open the doors, but fighting the current had taken it's toll. "The water was bad; it was rough," Gargan recalled. "I almost drowned." Exhausted and out of breath, they gave up.
1:40 AM
- Gargan and Markham climbed out of the water and onto the bridge.
" I just can't believe this happened," Kennedy said.
" Well, what the hell happened?" Gargan said.
" I was driving down the road, and before I knew it, I was on the bridge," Kennedy said. "The car went over the side. I thought for sure I was going to drown. And the next thing I know, I'd come to the top of the water." He said he had tried going back to the car to get Mary Jo out, but he couldn't do it. " I don't believe this could happen to me. I don't understand it. I don't know how it could happen."
" Well, it has happened," Markham said.
" What am I going to do?" Kennedy said. " What can I do?"
" There's nothing you can do," Markham said.
" OK...," Kennedy said, "Take me to Edgartown."
- Gargan recalled that as he got dressed, he "had one thing in mind at the time, and that was to report the accident. I didn't say that when I was dressing, but I was thinking what happened had to be reported immediately."
- The men got into the Valiant, and Gargan drove slowly toward the intersection. He recalled "There was a discussion about what to do now. We were all stunned; we were all horrified. We were discussing the situation, trying to decide what to do; trying to get the story together prior to reporting the accident."
- Gargan's intended destination was the ferry landing, "Because that was the location of safety; that's where we could get help to report this thing."
- In the back seat, Kennedy kept repeating, "Do you believe it, Joe? Do you believe it happened?"
- Three days before the Kennedy accident, The Boston Herald Traveler had run a story about a New Hampshire woman who had spent five hours in a submerged automobile. Amazed to find the driver unconscious but alive, police rushed the victim to a hospital where she was given respiration and treated for immersion. Doctors said an air bubble trapped inside the car had saved her life.
- John Farrar, the rescue diver who examined the Chappaquiddick accident scene, was convinced that Mary Jo Kopechne had not only survived the crash, but had also lived for some time by breathing a pocket of trapped air. Farrar did not believe that she had drowned, but instead had died by asphyxiation as the oxygen in the air she was breathing was used up and replaced with carbon dioxide. "She was alive, easily an hour, maybe two," he said.
In John Farrar's opinion, if the accident had occurred at 12:40 AM, Mary Jo Kopechne could have lived until 2:40 AM - an hour after Kennedy, Gargan, and Markham left the scene and headed for the ferry landing.
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