6. Kennedy Went Back to Chappaquiddick the Next Morning as Though Nothing Happened
Senator Kennedy did not report the accident to police on the night of July 18th, as he had promised Joe Gargan and Paul F. Markham he would. He did have time, around 2:45 that morning, to complain to the hotel front desk about a loud party, however. Ted Kennedy reportedly engaged in casual banter about a sailing race in the hotel the next morning. When Gargan and Markham arrived and discovered that he had not called the authorities, there was a loud enough conversation in his hotel room that other guests reported it as “heated.” Kennedy reportedly told the two men that, during the night, he believed they would arrive in the morning to say that Kopechne had miraculously escaped and survived.
The three men embarked back across the ferry to Chappaquiddick Island, where Kennedy made multiple phone calls, none of which were to the authorities. Instead, he called lawyers and friends for advice, including his long-term girlfriend whom he asked for the number of a favored family attorney. Kennedy was still at the payphone when a local confronted him and asked him if he knew they’d found a dead girl in his car. Kennedy also saw a tow truck and chain for retrieval of the vehicle, along with diving equipment, being ferried to the island. His friends reported that Kennedy still didn’t seem to understand the severity of the incident.