Forty years ago on a dark night on a quiet island off Massachusetts, Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car off a bridge after leaving a party with a young woman, killing her and forever marring his legacy.
The tragedy on Chappaquiddick Island, in which 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne was trapped under the car in a tidal pool and died, led to accusations that Kennedy used his name and influence to escape justice. With its whiff of sex, alcohol and privileged self-indulgence, the incident plagued Kennedy for decades.
Forty years on, historians and political analysts remain divided over whether Kennedy effectively dropped the keys to the White House that terrible night. His only run for the presidency in 1980 fizzled. But American political life is replete with second acts of contrite politicians who recover from scandal, and American voters have long shown a remarkable capacity for forgiveness. After Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts voters re-elected Kennedy to the US Senate seven times.
On 18 July 1969, 37-year-old Kennedy attended a private party at a cottage on Chappaquiddick Island off Martha's Vineyard. It had been a tough decade for the Kennedy family's youngest son – he had seen two brothers felled by assassins' bullets, and in 1964 was in a place crash in which the pilot was killed.
Just after 11pm he and Kopechne, a former campaign aide to Robert Kennedy, left the party. Kennedy told friends he was tired and would drive himself and Kopechne back to their respective motels and wanted to catch the last ferry off the island. But Kopechne left her purse and motel key at the cottage, and Kennedy turned away from the ferry terminal toward a secluded beach, in what he later said was a mistake caused by the dark and by exhaustion.
As they approached the beach, Kennedy drove his car off the Dike bridge into a tidal pool. He escaped, but Kopechne was trapped under the car.
Panicked, terrified and dazed from a concussion, Kennedy stumbled back to the cottage, which did not have a phone. He and two friends rushed back to the scene but were again unable to free Kopechne.
Kennedy did not report the accident until about 10 hours later, provoking enduring speculation that he was busy orchestrating a cover-up.
Kennedy was ultimately found guilty of leaving the scene of an accident and sentenced to two months in jail, suspended. A judge who led an inquest found probable cause that Kennedy was negligent and contributed to Kopechne's death, and found that he had lied when he said he drove toward the bridge instead of the ferry by mistake. Authorities never prosecuted.
In a televised statement, Kennedy denied "immoral conduct" and said he had not been drunk.
The Chappaquiddick incident derailed any chance of Kennedy taking on Richard Nixon in 1972, when he otherwise would have ridden a wave of enthusiasm for his popular late brothers. After years of vacillation, Kennedy made what historians say was a half-hearted effort to beat Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980. His lack of focus, along with a disastrous television interview with journalist Roger Mudd, doomed his bid as much Chappaquiddick, historians say.
"He seemed to be doing it because he was expected to, not because he had anything he wanted to achieve," Columbia University historian Alan Brinkley said.
But Victor Navasky, chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review and author of Kennedy Justice, on Robert Kennedy's term as attorney general, said that in any national race, opponents would have bludgeoned him with Chappaquiddick.
"It represented not just a public relations problem but a real character flaw problem," he said.
