Chappaquiddick & The Real Reason Ted Kennedy Never Became President (with Pete Holmes)

Pete Holmes is Weird. In a good way! He's also a New England native, and perfectly attuned to today's Martha's Vineyard-set SNAFU involving the youngest Kennedy brother, Ted. What happened on the small island of Chappaquiddick, and why did it potentially sink his chances at a future Presidency run? Watch today's episode on our SNAFU YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@SNAFUPod http://www.youtube.com/@SNAFUPod See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  What's funny is I have all these quotes on my mirror, things that I try to hold in my heart. But every once in a while, I'll also write like a joke idea.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  So right now, my mirror says like, what's wrong with right now if you don't think about it? And then like right beneath it, it says, Plan B pill, but for food.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  They have that. It's called Ex-Lax.

• 0:25Speaker 01

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• 2:10Speaker 01

  Welcome to Snafu, the podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. I'm your host, Ed Helms. Each episode, I'm joined by a guest and we dive into a wacky story from history. And along the way, we shoot the shit and wonder why humanity keeps, keeps fucking up so badly. My guest today is stand-up comedian, podcast host, and voice-over artist, cartoonist. You might know him from his fabulous HBO show, Crashing, his New Yorker cartoons, his podcast, You Made It Weird, his book, Comedy Sex God, or The Pete Holmes Show, which I just spoiled who it is. It's, it's, it's the wonderful and the fabulous, dear

• 2:55Speaker 01

  old friend of mine, Pete Holmes. Welcome, Pete.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  Happy to be here. And I don't think you broke the, the rules of an intro. You can do that. You can say, from The Pete Holmes Show, without being like, whoops, I blew it.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  I can?

• 3:08Speaker 00

  You know what I'm saying? I think you can. Because what you're touching on is performers, like, if you do a gig, which I'm sure you do from time to time, NBC calls in for a favor. They want Ed to give a golden chocolate key to PETA, and you have to be there. The intro is typically awful, and they'll be like, Ed Helms is our esteemed speaker. And it's like, there's nowhere to go from there.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, right. You can't say the name first.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  No, and then they go, and here he is.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  That's always a corporate mistake.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  You can't unwrap the present for your kid and go, and it's a bike.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  But you're telling me I can't. I am allowed to say, The Pete Holmes Show.

• 3:44Speaker 00

  You can, but you did it perfectly, because you said it at the end.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  All right. Yeah, there you go. Thank you.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  There's like a little, oh, it is him.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  I used to emcee a lot when I was first starting out in stand-up, and I learned that rule very quickly, that like, the name comes last, always. It doesn't even matter the context. You could be like, giving a medical presentation at some...

• 4:04Speaker 00

  The esteemed professor.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:07Speaker 00

  Stellan Skarsgård. Well, you know, speaking of emceeing, and we will get to the premise of this show, but as a Daily Show fella, I would be emceeing, and John Oliver was there, and he would say, please- If you say from the Daily Show, say my name right away. Don't say John.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he would go out to a round.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Please say my name right away.

• 4:34Speaker 00

  Right away.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Right away. Say my name right away. Don't say John and then pause because they'll think it's Stuart. Yeah, that's so great. Here's something that I am not familiar with in your background, and I don't know how significant it is, but I like it a lot. And this is the cartooning, like, what, what is, what, what role did that play? And you did have some published in the New Yorker. So first of all, kudos. That's very, very cool.

• 5:00Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  And second of all, I've often wondered this, in what format do you submit?

• 5:05Speaker 00

  It's a great question. I think at my level, which was the new guy, I would turn in 12 to 10 to 15 finished, like, pieces because they, I wasn't Jack Ziegler. I think if you're Jack Ziegler, it could be more of a sketch and it's like, this is the gag, but they needed to see that I could do the art. I'd go to the Conde Nast building. I'd have my roughs. Then I would go to the Xerox machine and I would photocopy them with the contrast kicked up. So the blacks would be really black and the whites would be really white and it would look about a thousand times better.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  And I would print the caption in the same font that the magazine use in italics. Just to make it look like I'm legit, I'm legit. All of that is unnecessary. But I was just, you know, I'm 25. I'm looking for like legitimacy. So I made them look as much as I could like a New Yorker cartoon.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  The New Yorker was, had a very sort of like, uh, meaningful place in my household. This is so cool. My grandmother in Nashville, their kitchen was wallpapered with New Yorker covers from like the 40s and 50s.

• 6:19Speaker 00

  It was like Playboy for culture. Like instead of boobs, you saw like a story from, uh, like a brilliant author or whatever. It's like New York, the city.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 00

  Accepted you. I had hundreds of cartoons that I had drawn at that point. And I was like, I've always wanted to submit. I did it for over a year. So that's over 500 submissions and they hadn't bought one.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  And the first time. I sold one. The cartoon was a guy in therapy and he just has a vacant look on his face and the therapist is taking notes and he says, I think I accidentally suppressed my good memories, which is just so New Yorker.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  It's so New Yorker.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  It's so New Yorker.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  It's perfect.

• 6:59Speaker 00

  You laugh a little. It's like a subway polite laugh. You're not going to disturb anyone on the subway with this laugh.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  Just a chuckle. And when I sold my first one, I was living in Park Slope. I woke up, uh, you like super early, it was still dark and walked to the newsstand and bought the cop, like several copies of The New Yorker.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  So cool.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  It was a thrill.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  What a thrill. That's so, so cool. I'm proud of 25 year old Pete in that moment. That's really sweet. Well, hey, we gotta get into this snafu. I could talk all day about this.

• 7:29Speaker 00

  I know.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  And you're amazing. You're really wonderful career and all the cool stuff you've been doing. Um, uh, but that's a different podcast. Today's snafu is an interesting one because, uh, I, I came into it, uh, with a little bit of a head start because I starred in a freaking movie about this snafu in 2017. Now, I know you have my entire filmography memorized, so I'm going to give you one guess. Do you know any idea what movie this is?

• 7:54Speaker 00

  I'm just going to name Ed Helms movies. Cedar Rapids, that's like 2007.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  I was in a movie, uh, in 2017 called Chappaquiddick.

• 8:02Speaker 00

  Chappaquiddick. I didn't know you were in that.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Yes. Jim Gaffigan and I sort of play, um, uh, Ted Kennedy's were sort of like the two guys that are, that go through this whole thing with him.

• 8:13Speaker 00

  Perfect.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  It's a tragic, it's a messy, deeply controversial incident from 1969. Uh, I mentioned Ted Kennedy, of course, he's played by Jason Clark fabulously in the movie. I actually play his cousin Joe Gargan, who we will meet in a bit. And like a lot of snafus, this is just a lot of, lot of bad decisions were made and things went terribly.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  Can I say, Ed, I'm thrilled. I'm from Boston, so I'm from New England. I don't know this story.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Oh, great. All right. This is perfect.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  And I should.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  And you're going to have like more, like probably some better insight, uh, especially into the sort of Kennedy context.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  Yes, okay.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Being a, being a Bostonian. So first a quick explanation of the Word Chappaquiddick, it's the name of a small, quiet island, right off of Martha's Vineyard, which is a large island, right off of Cape Cod, in the great state of Massachusetts.

• 9:04Speaker 00

  Where I used to vacation.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, where, in Cape Cod?

• 9:07Speaker 00

  We would go to Cape Cod and we would take the island queen, which was a ferry, to Martha's Vineyard and would just spend the day there, yeah.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  And which town, do you remember?

• 9:16Speaker 00

  In Martha's Vineyard?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  Uh, Chappaquiddick, Chappa something.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Chappaquiddick.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  Just kidding.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Well, Chappaquiddick's interesting, because it's not a town that you, that, that most people go to, or it's not a town, it's an island, and it's, and it's, it's a little bit off the beaten path. It's, um, it's chappy to the locals, it's known for its secluded beaches.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Chappy.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Dirt roads, very low-key, old money, summer vibes. It's beautiful and remote, and about as far from chaos as you can get, which makes what happened there in 1969 all the more unsettling. Martha's Vineyard is a really nice, I think, very diverse mix of vacationers from all different backgrounds. There are enclaves within Martha's Vineyard that are just real old money, like, like really, really wealthy, um, and then, of course, Chappaquiddick has so few homes on it, but it does have a number of, but they're more sort of cottagy, and some of that is also very old money, but it's sort of like low-key old money, do you know what I mean? It's that, it's that, it's like, the billionaire who wants kind of a windswept cottage,

• 10:23Speaker 01

  instead of like a mansion.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Let's pivot to the Kennedys here. Of course, most folks are familiar with John F. Kennedy, phenomenal career and legacy, a president, of course, but the youngest brother of the Kennedy family was Edward M. Kennedy, nicknamed Ted, born February 22nd, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, and he was the youngest of nine children. That's right, yes, nine, which is a lot. How many in your, how many, how many siblings? You're, you're one of two?

• 11:01Speaker 00

  Good old fat Protestant. Well, we, it's funny, my parents were Catholic. I don't know why they didn't have more kids. I guess after they had us, they were like, that's enough.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:10Speaker 00

  That'll do.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  But yeah.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Are you the younger?

• 11:13Speaker 00

  I am the younger.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, same here. I'm the youngest of three. And I think we're both, we're both that kid that they're just like, cut it off, cut it off.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  I'm doing like a shakes on the china. This kid's paying out. We got enough show. We're out. We're done.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  So the roster of Kennedy kids included Joe Junior, the eldest brother, of course, John F., Rose, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Robert, Jean, and then good old Ted. Here's a nice vintage photo of Teddy. This is not a childhood photo. I just want to be clear.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  There's gimlets just off camera.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. They're trashed.

• 11:51Speaker 00

  Like, I don't know this story, and I actually don't really follow the Kennedys. So I wasn't even making a Ted Loves to Drink.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  I think he's also just of a generation that, that...

• 12:01Speaker 00

  That's sort of where I was going.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:03Speaker 00

  Like pickled onions and little vodka cups are nearby and cigarettes.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  This was my, I have photos of my dad exactly like this.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  And he was trashed a lot.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  Which, back then, like you just were like, hello? Good to see you, Irene. You know what I mean?

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  Now, like, anybody at that level of drunkenness now, you'd be like, I shouldn't be here.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Totally, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how they did it, because like the hangovers alone are just, like, I don't know. I don't even drink anymore just because I can't handle it. Not because of, it's just...

• 12:40Speaker 00

  I have an old joke where I was like, in the Wild West, for example, you know how they're always drinking whiskey? I'm like, you're in the desert.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:48Speaker 00

  This is why you're shooting each other. You're dehydrated. Like, get some water. That's how I feel about this time. These guys were eating red meat exclusively, maybe a wedge salad covered in blue cheese. That was like, what are you, a health nut?

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  And like seven vodka gimlets and a cigarette before the meal.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just imagine how constipated they were all the time. Just like, not a lot of fiber in these diets.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  Past the age of seven, none of them had a glorious BM. No.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  So, uh, we gotta keep going. Born February 22nd, 1932, Ted was bred for American politics and high society. Now, I'm talking Harvard, then a quick stint in the Army, 1951 to 53, then back to Harvard, then University of Virginia Law School. Now, this resume is looking very respectable and on-brand for society's upper crust at the time. Then in 1962, he was elected to the US Senate, stepping into the Massachusetts seat. His older brother, John F. Kennedy, had vacated after, you know, becoming President of the United States. Um, did your parents breed you for anything? Uh, are any aspirations they bred you for? Should I stop using the word breed?

• 14:01Speaker 00

  That is so funny. He was bred.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  He was basically bred. He was a thoroughbred, yeah.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  Imagine the shadow. You're taking a chair that John F. Kennedy.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Well, also, their father, Joe Kennedy, was, was a, just a crazy intense motherfucker. Like, there's a, there's a great biography on him, but he was like, he was a Hollywood producer, he was in the, he was kind of mafia-related, and, and then he became obsessed with sort of raising his children to become sort of citizen activist politicians and-

• 14:34Speaker 00

  It's like Tiger Woods, like, like when you breed a child to like do a certain thing, or the Jackson 5, or whatever, like, it was that level of like, you're gonna be upper crust?

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Basically. Yeah, and then, and he saw, I think he also was involved in bootlegging at some time, so he was like, he was dodgy, but he sort of knew the lane that he wanted his family to be in. He became an ambassador, I think, to, to the UK. Anyway, his, his story is wild, and, uh, and he just became this grand puppeteer of Massachusetts pop, politics. So Ted certainly made his time in Congress count, as he backed some genuinely consequential causes. He championed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He supported the Economic Opportunity Act to fight poverty, and he helped usher in a National Health Center system in 1966. These guys were very progressive, especially at that, at the time. All the Kennedys were.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  People all over liked Ted. He was charming. He was easy to talk to. He was passionate. He was able to forge relationships across party lines to get shit done. He eventually died in 2009 with a reputation as the lion of the senate. That was sort of his nickname because he got so much legislation done over the course of his career. But being a Kennedy, you know, it's a lot of luck. It's a lot of privilege and it's a lot of legacy sort of carrying you forward. But also Ted lost three of his older brothers. Joe Junior, the oldest, died as a pilot in World War II in 1944, which was, that was the first Kennedy death. President John F. Kennedy, of course, assassinated on November 22nd, 1963. Then

• 16:09Speaker 01

  RFK, who really was beloved and really was like, people were so passionate about him and working hard for him and he's actually, his shadow is sort of cast over Chappaquiddick in an interesting way that we'll get to. But he was the former Attorney General, eventual Democratic Presidential candidate, and he was gunned down on the campaign trail on June 5th, 1968. So Teddy Kennedy has lost three older brothers, all to violence, right? I mean, even being downed as a pilot in a war is a violent demise. This, of course, led to the Kennedy curse as a concept. People, you know, thought, oh, the Kennedys, there's a band named the Dead Kennedys, of course.

• 16:51Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  This is a, do you believe in curses, Pete? Are you a curse guy? Are you?

• 16:57Speaker 00

  I believe in the human mind's obsession with finding patterns and creating meaning.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  I like that, yeah. But also our ability to kind of like manifest things that we believe are, but yeah.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  I'm so with you.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  You just hit the nail on the head. Really, what we're good at, and I think to a fault, is pattern recognition and we ascribe patterns to things where they just aren't all the time.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  That's absolutely true.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  And that, that could be interpreted as a curse.

• 17:24Speaker 00

  It is a curse. I would actually get incredibly liberal with this, saying it's not just that curses ripple out and change the course of, of history. Everything ripples out and changes human history.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Okay, Pete. That's, that's too far.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  It's true, bro.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  You took it too far, man.

• 17:39Speaker 00

  No, bro.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Come on, man. What are you talking about, bro?

• 17:43Speaker 00

  See, you saying that voice, I'm more likely to smoke weed later.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, that's a, that's my favorite character. You see, we'll go, pot weed smoking guy.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  After the back-to-back assassinations of JFK and RFK, Hubert Humphrey took the Democratic nomination but lost to Richard Nixon, leaving the party scrambling for a new identity. And they were ready for another, the third Kennedy to step in. There was a lot of sort of ground swell and momentum to just be like, "We love the Kennedys, let's get Teddy in there." Uh, now Teddy was, he was reluctant. He was not sure about taking the baton and he admitted, uh, quote, "The disadvantage of my position is being constantly compared with two brothers of such superior ability." I love that quote because it is, it does so many things. It's simultaneously like reverent to his two brothers, who were really amazing in a lot of ways.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Um, and also it's self-deprecating in a sort of cheeky way. And, and then, which kind of lowers the bar for him. And then it also sort of chastises the media for even making the comparisons in the first place.

• 18:59Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  It's such good writing. And the Kennedys had the best writers in political history. Ted Sorensen was famously a speechwriter, wrote a lot of JFK's stuff and then RFK's stuff. And we'll meet some of the people that worked in, in speechwriting for RFK in a minute.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  Take a note, Baldwin's.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Yep, there you go.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  Take a note.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Exactly. But, but a lot of John F. Kennedy's speeches are, are so famous for good reason. They're really sort of poignant expressions of values. Uh, and whether you agree with them or not.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  "And to the nations of the world, ask not what the United States can do for you, but ask what we, as the world, what can do for the betterment of humankind." Something like that, I fucked it up.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  It's close, it's close enough. And by the way, also, also that was more Mayor Quimby than, than John F. Kennedy.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  Chow down.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Wait, so, and this is funny to me. Part of what makes your podcast so fun to, to listen to, and I think, and also makes you such a great guest as on podcasts, is, is you have an encyclopedic memory for quotations and citations. And I wonder, and I have the memory of a goldfish. Like, I can't remember any, I can't even remember the podcast I did last week. And- And so I wonder, is there a process to that? Do you take notes? Or is it sort of effortless? Like, what is the?

• 20:22Speaker 00

  You know what's funny about that? You and I have talked about that before because I remember it being a meaningful compliment to me the last time we spoke about it. It is from effort somewhat. I am a big highlighter and I write things on my bathroom mirror. You get white chalk markers and I write. What's funny is I have all these quotes on my mirror, things that I try to hold in my heart. But every once in a while, I'll also write like a joke idea.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  So right now, my mirror says like, what's wrong with right now if you don't think about it? And then like right beneath it, it says, "Plan B pill, but for food."

• 21:00Speaker 01

  They have that. It's called Ex-Lax.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. That's so. Now I'm picturing your home is like, is very much serial killer vibes with just like writing all over the mirrors.

• 21:13Speaker 00

  You just have to own it. You just have to own that like.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 21:16Speaker 00

  I'm a crazy person that writes on my mirror. But it's not, it's me, Good Will Hunting, Jesse Eisenberg in the social network. And the thing we all have in common is we remember a lot of quotes.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  That's awesome. I really envy that. Of the two brothers, it seems, Robert F. Kennedy had the strongest impact on Ted's political identity. A 1972 New York Times piece notes that when Ted entered the Senate at 30 in 1963, he was bright eyed, bushy tailed, and ready to play ball with the establishment. But by the time RFK was assassinated in 1968, Teddy had veered noticeably left, picking up RFK's anti-Vietnam crusade. And as the Times put it, quote, "Embodying the Kennedy legacy of concerned activism." Now, despite Ted's reluctance at first to be the Democratic Party's poster boy by 1969, he was on a fast track to political stardom, which was no small feat in a year marked by surging counterculture

• 22:10Speaker 01

  and widespread unrest over the Vietnam War. With his eye on the 1972 presidential race, he was poised to make a real impact. But first, a little vacation. On a hot July weekend in 1960. Ted headed to Martha's Vineyard, a familiar family refuge for the Kennedys and just a very short trip from their fabled compound in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod.

• 22:35Speaker 00

  Hyannis Port.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  It's Hyannis Port, the, the, the Summer White House, as it was called. It was the Mar-a-Lago of its day.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it really was. It's sort of, I think, I feel like Mar-a-Lago is, is sort of a, a descendant of Hyannis Port, cause.

• 22:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, you want to have your own.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  Like place.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, John F. Kennedy did a lot of presidential work from that compound in Hyannis Port.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  Cause what is the one that all the presidents have? It's like a.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  Camp David.

• 23:02Speaker 00

  Camp David.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:04Speaker 00

  But, you know, only the hacks go to Camp David.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta have your own.

• 23:07Speaker 00

  Like George W. Bush had his ranch.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  You gotta have your own now.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Come on, you gotta have your own. So, this particular weekend, Teddy was planning to race in the 43rd Annual Edgar Town Yacht Club Regatta aboard the family boat, the Victura. He was joined, these are beautiful old wooden sailboats, by the way. We got to, we got to do this in the movie. We depicted the regatta. And they're just these gorgeous old, uh, one design sailboats that, that, that they had these regattas with. He was joined by former US Attorney Paul Markham and his cousin, Joe Garden, Gargan. That's who, uh, Jim Gaffigan played Paul Markham and I played Joe Gargan in the movie.

• 23:48Speaker 00

  I feel like everything sounds like a cheese. Garganzola, Ricotta, the boat.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  Victura.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Victura, the regatta. That's, that's New England for you. That's like, that's white bread New England culture.

• 24:02Speaker 00

  Bring in the cheese.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Just a little background on Joey Gargan. He had been orphaned as a young child, uh, and was, was, Rose Kennedy was, was the Kennedy family matriarch. Her sister, uh, was Joey's mother and Joey lost his parents when he was young, moved in and basically was raised as a sibling, but he was on the outside. It's like, and so he became, he became a little bit of like the, the fixer. So he was never quite in the family, but he was like a first cousin and very much in the mix. It's very interesting dynamic. So we'll get back to Joey Gargan. For now, all you need to know is that Ted placed ninth in this regatta in Edgertown on Martha's Vineyard. This is where things get real interesting.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Later that evening, a small gathering came together that included several of Ted's advisers, along with six women who had worked on Robert Kennedy's 1968 campaign. These women were known as the Boiler Room Girls. Now, here's, I just want to sort of dispel, I think, what's a very easy assumption here, which is that these are just sort of like a gaggle of like wacky secretaries like out to have a great time. These were, these women were the Boiler Room Girls, as they were sort of affectionately known within the campaign. These were badass young women, and they were speechwriters, they were a tight-knit team of strategists, staffers, right at the heart of RFK's campaign.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  They were very well-educated, they were motivated, and many of them went on to have like phenomenal careers. Part of the sort of framing of this evening is that it's a reunion. They had just lost RFK in 1968, he'd been assassinated, and they were all such passionate hard workers on his behalf, and of course, it was all very traumatizing, and this was a little bit of a reunion from that team that had worked so closely on his campaign, and a chance to say thank you from the Kennedy family. I'm not saying that maybe hormones weren't also a part of it, but I just, I just wanted to dispel- You don't want to cheapen it, yeah. Yeah, I just wanted to dispel the sort of easy assumption that this was like a bunch

• 26:10Speaker 01

  of like powerful men with like a bunch of floozies, kind of like having a crazy party night. These were all very accomplished people. So the group met at a cottage, a small ferry ride from Martha's Vineyard on Chappaquiddick Island, a quieter, more secluded spot. It's right across a narrow channel from Edgertown, and it's accessible only by this very small ferry. The ferry holds like two or three cars, like it's a tiny little flatbed ferry. The mood, relaxed, drinks, a cookout, music, dancing, just a summer night with friends, and again, a chance- To reconnect after this like very traumatic presidential campaign they'd all been through. Are you getting a bad feeling yet?

• 26:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was gonna say you're doing a good job. And I love my level of knowledge for this because I don't know what's gonna happen. I just know that you're doing something that people who are telling stories about bad things do. Yeah. Which is giving me a lot of details.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  A lot of ramp up.

• 27:06Speaker 00

  And these women weren't just floozies.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:08Speaker 00

  These were good women. Hardworking women. And I'm like, what happens to these women?

• 27:14Speaker 03

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• 29:15Speaker 02

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• 29:46Speaker 01

  Let's introduce one of the Boiler Room Girls who will become very central to our story, Mary Jo Kopecky. I think it's not only important to understand why she was at the party, but also to really honor her life and work. She, Mary Jo was born-

• 30:02Speaker 00

  That's a, that's a tell right there.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  But let's, but before we get there, Mary Jo was born in Pennsylvania in 1940. She was raised in New Jersey and later spent time in Alabama, teaching as part of a civil rights project. She volunteered for JFK's presidential campaign while in college, then worked for Florida Senator George Smathers before joining RFK's Senate office after his 1964 election. Smathers actually recommended her-

• 30:27Speaker 00

  Smathers.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Smathers, great name. I mean, it's like a sitcom name.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  Yes, it is.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Smathers actually recommended her to RFK, noting her strong admiration for the Kennedy family. Ethel Kennedy later recalled Mary Jo being "the one who stayed up all night writing Robert's 1966 Vietnam speech." Again, these are not, these are badass young women. Mary Jo went on to serve as a speechwriter on RFK's 1968 campaign and of course became part of the Boiler Room Girls. Then in September 1968, Mary Jo was- Hired by Matt Reese Associates, a firm that managed Democratic campaigns nationwide. She was now a political organizer and damn proud of it. Those who knew her described her as talented, industrious, and wholly devoted to her work. I think it's just valuable to reflect on the promise of someone like this.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Like, she's, she's so, like, to be a speechwriter in your mid twenties for, for like, a presidential candidate. I think in the same way that you and I felt, I don't know, I, when I was doing, starting out in comedy in New York City, I was drunk on, on this world. I just loved, I was so thrilled to be a part of it. It was all the things that I'd seen on TV and, and want, and then suddenly I'm in New York City and I'm seeing these, my heroes and I'm onstage, like, in the proximity to them and, and it's, I think Washington DC is very similar for a lot of people. A sense that, like, like, these are very aspirational people, the, the candidates that we admire. And I'm not taking a strong stand on the Kennedys.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  I, I do admire the Kennedys, but, but they are controversial. Uh, but, but someone like Mary Jo Kopecky, um, who very much admired the Kennedys and wanted to, to help their, their cause, is, is suddenly not only in the trenches with them, but like, really having an effect on RFK's campaign in such a cool way.

• 32:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Um, and-

• 32:20Speaker 00

  In her twenties. That's amazing.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, in her twenties. But it's, to me, that's, the version of that that I know is like, SNL writers in their twenties.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  No, you're, you're not wrong. Uh, politics is show business. And I'm not saying that, sometimes people say show business to disregard it. Anything that's about perception and public speaking, it's all performing. It's a performance. And she was, in a way, like a writer for SNL. She was writing in a very powerful, public way.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, when Mary Jo received an invitation in the summer of 1969 for this reunion with her fellow boiler room girls, uh, and a few of the other advisors and staffers, she jumped at the chance. Now, unfortunately- Pete, tragedy awaited. Okay, cut to the next morning, July 19th, 1969. Two young fishermen discovered and overturned black Oldsmobile submerged in Poucha Pond. Now, I'm gonna say Poucha Pond. In the movie, I think we said Poochah Pond. I'm not positive of that.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  Poucha Pond.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, Poucha Pond. This car is submerged, and it's upside down in the pond. Now, this is a tidal pond, to be clear. So, there's current that goes in and out under this really low bridge. These fishermen, they see this car. They call the police chief, Dominic Jim Arena, who arrived and called in a local diver, John Farrar, to jump in and investigate. Now, inside the car, they found the body of Mary Jo Kapekne, deceased and very likely drowned. No evidence of illegal activity was found, but the car was determined to be registered to... Any guesses?

• 33:55Speaker 00

  Ted.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Ted Kennedy. The car was registered to Teddy. Holy shit.

• 34:00Speaker 00

  So, she drove his car.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Well, it's interesting you say that. Why was Mary Jo in Ted's car? Who was driving? And why the fuck is the car flipped over upside down in this pond?

• 34:11Speaker 00

  This is the Great Gatsby.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  This is...

• 34:14Speaker 00

  Who was driving?

• 34:20Speaker 01

  To answer all of these questions, let's go back to the night before, July 18th, 1969, and walk through what we think happened. Now, the timeline we have comes from a mix of sources. Police reports from that weekend, contemporaneous news coverage, lots of subsequent news coverage, and sort of like looks back and reflective reporting, Ted Kennedy's own statements in the days that followed, and a judicial inquest that was conducted in early 1970. I just want to be clear, even with all of that source material, the full picture of the night of Chappaquiddick, and part of the reason it's so locked into the American political consciousness, is that the full picture never really came into perfect focus.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  There are gaps, there are contradictions, there are lingering questions, some of which we'll get into. But I just want to reiterate, even though this reconstruction that I'm gonna share with you is fairly widely accepted, and it's what we depicted in the movie, it does remain very controversial. And there are a lot of people, there's a lot of conspiracies around it, and there's room, unfortunately, there's like room for conspiracy, because there are open questions. So let's get into it. We're at the party, in the cottage. Exact times are disputed, but sometime between 11:00 PM and 1:00 AM, Ted and Mary Jo departed the cottage in Ted's car. Kennedy would later claim that he was driving Mary Jo back to the Edgartown ferry, but

• 35:47Speaker 01

  they were going in the opposite direction. So, now, Chappaquiddick is a rustic, we shot there for the movie, and so I, this is firsthand. It's dirt roads, it's very, it's just a lot of open space, and so it's easy to have made a wrong turn theoretically, but we don't-

• 36:13Speaker 00

  Wait, which turn was it? Were they, I'm picturing it like Maui, like if you're not going towards the airport, you're going the other way? Is it like that?

• 36:21Speaker 01

  It's hard to buy that he made a wrong turn.

• 36:23Speaker 00

  Unless, this is-

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Unless he's trashed.

• 36:25Speaker 00

  You ever get disturbed how quickly you can come up with a lie? It's like this conniving, I would have been a good publicist. It's like, maybe, he's with this young lady, they're enjoying themselves, let's take the scenic route, let's go the long way. Because if you're on an island, there is no wrong turn, there's just a longer way to where you're going.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  No, not this way.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  Not like this?

• 36:46Speaker 01

  No, not this particular road. The way that they were driving was towards a beach, it's a dead end, basically. I mean, it's a long road, and it goes along, but to get to the ferry, you have to literally go the opposite direction.

• 36:59Speaker 00

  Okay, so-

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  So he seems to be lying.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  But it's a very rural feeling place, so there's not a lot of landmarks and so forth, but-

• 37:10Speaker 00

  They're going to the beach to maybe smooch a little bit, with respect.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Maybe. I don't think that's an unfair assumption, but we just, we don't know. At some point, while they're driving, the car veered off of this small dike bridge, and the car flipped over and sunk upside down into the murky waters of Poucha Pond below. To be clear, this was a low bridge with absolutely no guardrails of any kind. Here's a photo of it with some spectators after the accident.

• 37:37Speaker 00

  Okay, yep. I don't like this bridge.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that that bridge, obviously, is very easy to to veer off of. I don't think any of the vehicles we're seeing are the actual vehicle that that flipped that went off the bridge.

• 37:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  So Ted recalled, quote, "struggling as the water flooded the car and quickly submerged him and Mary Jo." And the details are still unclear on this, but Ted somehow escaped the car. And he claims to have made repeated efforts to rescue Mary Jo. In his statement, he basically, he admits to driving the car. But his rescue attempts were unsuccessful. And here's where our man Teddy starts to make some really bad decisions. Instead of going to the police, Ted walked back to the cottage. Once there, it is believed that Ted told Joe Gargan and Paul Markham what had happened. Now, what's interesting is that according to Joe Gargan's later testimony in the inquest, Ted only said, "The car has gone off the bridge down by the beach and Mary Jo is in it."

• 38:36Speaker 01

  He did not say, "I drove a car off the bridge down by the beach."

• 38:41Speaker 00

  The most famous use of passive voice in American history. "The car is in the water."

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Yes. Now, this this speaks to a poss- one one theory as to a possible like, version of the story that Teddy might have been trying to start to build, which is that he wasn't even in the car. So immediately, Joe, Paul, and Teddy go back to the bridge. And Joe and Paul strip down and they dive in and they make multiple attempts to save Mary Jo. Obviously, they were unsuccessful.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  Recover her body, right?

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now, I can tell you, in shooting the movie, we recreated with it. We were on a set in a giant water tank in Mexico, and they built this bridge. And they submerged a car upside down. And Jim Gaffigan and I jumped off the bridge in the mid- this is in the middle of the night, and swam down to a car that's like, three or four feet under the water, but it's upside down. And we tried to look in the windows of the car and, you know, basically perform this, what's happening here. And I can tell you, it was so terrifying, even under the most controlled circumstances, like diving into dark water and and looking into a car, expecting to see a body. It just is like, so unnerving.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  And to find your good side. And you're like, wait, how am I being framed?

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm, and by the way, the version I'm doing is fake. And these guys are doing it for real.

• 40:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, but this is interesting because you said rescue. They're clearly jumping in.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  They don't know. There may have been an air pocket, Pete. We'll get there.

• 40:15Speaker 00

  What?

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Yes, hold on. It gets crazy. So afterwards, Joe and Paul told Ted that he needed to inform the police. Interestingly, Joe first recommended that Ted call his administrative assistant, Dave Burke, and also a lawyer close to the family, a man by the name of Burke Marshall. So a couple of Burks.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  Couple of Burks.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Yep. Okay, so yes, definitely tell the police that this woman is dead in a car accident. Make sure you call your lawyer and your assistant first. According to Joe Gargan's testimony, Ted told Joe and Paul he would, quote, "take care of it," and urged them to go back to the cottage and not upset the girls with this terrible news yet. At this point, it's so late at night, there's no ferries running. Kennedy allegedly swam across this narrow channel back to Edgartown. And Joe and Paul, of course, are believing he's going to the police to report this.

• 41:05Speaker 00

  Who did this?

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Teddy swam back to Edgartown.

• 41:10Speaker 00

  Shut up.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yes. And so, I mean, this is the account that we're going with. It's not that far. It's like a couple, it's maybe like a couple hundred yards.

• 41:21Speaker 00

  I'll swim it.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  He says.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  And it is, it's, a lot of people do swim it. It's not that insane. It's not like rough, open water.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  But he's in like a suit.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  No, he's in beach attire. He probably stripped down to his shorts. Who knows? But, and he's staying, remember, his hotel is in Edgartown. So that's part of what, I mean, he's got clothes waiting for him over there. He's headed back to Edgartown and Joey and Markham believe that he's going to tell the police. Now, back at his hotel, Ted did not report the incident. He later claimed in court that he was up all night, kind of like... In this fever state, hoping that Mary Jo was somehow still alive, like in denial. Hotel staff claimed later that Kennedy, this is very interesting. Kennedy made a noise complaint at 3 a.m. about like some revelry going on in another room.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  And, uh, and that the following morning, he was, he was seen very casually having breakfast with some people in the hotel restaurant. Now, this is all very interesting because it's sort of, it starts to feed this idea that perhaps Teddy was trying to establish that he was, yeah, that he was like, that he never was even there and that he was actually in Edgar Town. And so like now he's on the record at 3 a.m. making a noise complaint. You can see how this, this kind of starts to feel like he's building an alibi.

• 42:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  But it's also sort of like the worst possible post incident.

• 42:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Like way to handle this.

• 42:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  So then Joe and Paul show up at Ted's hotel at 8:30. They find him at breakfast, fresh as a daisy, like, you know, showered and like all wearing nice clothes, having just a chipper breakfast with some other people. They asked if he'd reported the incident. He had not. So they drove him back to Chappaquiddick, uh, to, you know, took the ferry. And now at this point, the car has been discovered by the police. After trying and failing to reach Burke Marshall, Ted quote, "Fully realized what had happened." And he came clean to the police around 10 a.m. That was Kennedy's language in his police statement that he quote, "Fully realized what had happened over 10 hours later."

• 43:37Speaker 00

  And a big breakfast. Sometimes you're just not yourself until you have your coffee.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  I guess, I guess so.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  This seems like an open and closed, like he did this. Uh, he's in a very powerful family. And a lot of people are going like, maybe this didn't happen. We're in this island. Maybe we can clean it up. I think that's probably what makes this story so compelling is we all have this like devilish instinct where we're like, or maybe I just keep driving, you know, like that sort of thing. These things happen all the time. Hit and runs and all that sort of stuff. So we had a guy going, oh no, I was driving. I was drunk. Maybe we were going to the beach to fool around. There's lots of bad things happening. We don't know any of that. But she dies. And then he spent a good while talking to everybody except the

• 44:25Speaker 00

  police. Can I get out of this? Yeah. Which I think again, is what makes this a good, it's not a ghost story, but like a ghostly kind of story is you're like, wait, would I do that? Would I also try to cover my own ass? Like it's, we go very quickly to like, this person is dead. Nothing is gonna bring them back, Ted. You know what I mean? Like, so we can protect you. Like, it's like, I'm not saying that's right.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  It's that old adage that like, this was clearly an accident, right?

• 44:56Speaker 00

  Right.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  And had he come clean immediately and like gone straight to the police and, and, and

• 45:01Speaker 00

  Cause drunk driving stuff didn't happen until way later.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  They would have tested him for alcohol.

• 45:06Speaker 00

  But back then it was like, sing Yankee Doodle Dandy.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 45:10Speaker 00

  Smoke this cigarette. Now tell me your mother's name. He's sober.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  He's got coffee on his breath. He's sober.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Here's the thing. Police flagged a number of his inconsistencies in Kennedy's account. Deputy Sheriff Christopher S. Huck Look Jr. Reported seeing a dark, seemingly lost car the night before, only to later realize it was the same vehicle involved in the accident. He placed that sighting around 12:45 a.m., which is 90 minutes after the time Kennedy said the incident occurred. Notably, this was long after the last ferry stopped running. So I guess the implication is that maybe Kennedy changed the timeline to make his, oh, we were driving to the Edgar Town ferry story like more plausible because, because in real life, the time they were driving, the ferry had long stopped running. So. Interesting details to mention here.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  The New York Times report confirmed credit card records tied to that night showed calls from the cottage and hotel to Kennedy's family, lawyers, and staff. Other reports indicate that 17 total phone calls were charged to his credit card that night. In addition, the purse of one of the other boiler room girls, Rosemary Keough, was in the car for some reason. And here's a really interesting detail. No autopsy was ever performed on Mary Jo. Kennedy's team, Kennedy had called this guy Dunn Gifford, who came and basically took the body right away, flown to Pennsylvania for burial, just almost immediately, before local officials could really even request an official examination.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  So unsurpris-- and there's a-- you'll hear why that's even more controversial than it sounds. It seems like cut and dry how she died. It's not. So unsurprisingly, the news of the incident took America by storm. Would Kennedy be held responsible? And would the real truth ever come out?

• 47:00Speaker 03

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• 49:29Speaker 07

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• 49:36Speaker 01

  On July 20, 1969, just a day after Mary Jo Kopecky was discovered in Ted Kennedy's Oldsmobile, two gentlemen by the names of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the lunar surface of our very own moon. Have you ever heard of those guys? Ever snored of it, yes. Yes. So with those steps, so too did they absorb most, if not all, of the news coverage about what happened at Chappaquiddick. Serendipitous timing for Ted and his team, of course, but that only lasted for a short while. After the moon landing coverage subsided, Chappaquiddick became front and center in the media. On July 25, Ted Kennedy pled guilty to leaving the scene of the accident. That was his only charge, and received a two-month suspended jail sentence and the loss of his driver's license for one year. That's it. That's it.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  The same day, he delivered a statement on TV to his constituents. And interestingly, the author of this statement, Joe Gargan presumably had, was trying to have strong influence on it in a way that would sound like he was taking more responsibility. But, but most of what Teddy said in this statement was actually written by Ted Sorensen, the same speechwriter that wrote so many of JFK's incredible speeches. So, listen to this, listen to this quote from Teddy's TV statement. "I remember thinking, as the cold water rushed in around my head, that I was for certain drowning. Then, water entered my lungs and I felt the sensation of drowning. But somehow, I struggled to the surface alive.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  I made immediate and repeated efforts to save Mary Jo by diving into the strong and murky current, but succeeded only in increasing my state of utter exhaustion and alarm. My conduct and conversations during the next several hours, to the extent that I can remember them, make no sense to me at all." Wow. I, it's so-

• 51:24Speaker 00

  That's another, just concede. Just be like, "Yeah, makes no sense."

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't get it either, guys.

• 51:30Speaker 00

  I don't get it.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:32Speaker 00

  You know, again, maybe I would have been good in like a crisis management team, because that is valid. It's like concede the point. All of my behavior after that fact is completely irrational. I was in an irrational state. Oh, that's what I could have been, a lawyer. That's what a lawyer would say. He was completely in shock. His friend had just died. He tried to save them. And then, from that state of confusion, he's swimming back to his hotel. This guy is not okay.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Obviously, that statement is, is very kind of obtuse. And, and the question remains, did he take responsibility at all for his actions? Here's another quote, I believe from later in the same TV address. "Although my doctors informed me that I suffered a cerebral concussion as well as shock, I do not seek to escape responsibility for my actions by placing the blame either on the physical and emotional trauma brought on by the accident, or on anyone else." So he said-

• 52:31Speaker 00

  Which is a way of saying, "Yes, I am."

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Yes, but it's a way of saying, "I'm not avoiding." It's like sort of stating the negative without stating the positive, which is another like very savvy bit of like linguistic-

• 52:44Speaker 00

  Brilliant.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  It's like linguistic jujitsu.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  That's like textbook how to say the opposite of what you're saying.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  You have lots of these kinds of incidents in your past. This is why you're such an expert on this.

• 52:56Speaker 00

  This is why you had me on, just can't stop whoops-a-doodling.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  So this is interesting. There was a lot of pressure on Teddy Kennedy after this incident to resign from Congress, as we've seen so often with these kinds of scandals. Like, there's always a big outcry, especially from the opposition. But even from within his own party, a lot of people thought like, "This is insurmountable. You really fucked up. It's time to like resign." But here's how he handled that. He ended the statement with a very curious appeal to his Massachusetts constituents. While considering whether to resign from Congress over the accident, he asked them to, quote, "Think this through with them." Though he acknowledged the decision was ultimately his, he asked whether they believed he should remain in the Senate. So he sort of kicked it. He punted it to the constituents. And it turns out his strategy was successful.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  His constituents did want him to stay, and he kept his seat in Congress. He did announce later that he would not run for president, as had been the plan in 72.

• 53:55Speaker 00

  Well, that's a little suspicious.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Which part?

• 53:58Speaker 00

  I guess what I'm looking for is, what is the alternate narrative? Like, if he said, "Okay, I'm not gonna run for president," that sounds like somebody that's like, "I don't wanna dredge that up, right? I don't want you to look at that more closely. I don't want you to throw that in my face, maybe investigate more." That makes it seem like there might have been foul play, but I still don't see-

• 54:16Speaker 01

  I think what the sort of like Kennedy inner circle, or Camelot as it was known, like what I think what they were afraid of, that scrutiny would bring- A lot of clarity to just how terrible this was handled.

• 54:31Speaker 00

  I see.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  This is my take on it.

• 54:33Speaker 00

  I get it.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  That like Teddy was, was very selfish and very irrational and, um, and was clearly avoidant.

• 54:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Uh, and, and that's, that's, I think a generous takeaway. Like if, if not, if not, you know, cause there's a version of this where he's fully guilty of manslaughter. Right. Um, the unintentional killing of Mary Jo, um, especially if he had been drinking and all sorts of things. So had he run for president, there would have been even more scrutiny. Um, there just wasn't the support, uh, for him to do that. But he's not quite out of the limelight yet. District Attorney Edmund Denise, uh, requested a judicial inquest into Mary Jo's death, which occurred in January, 1970. The testimony in this judicial inquest is, is a lot of what gives us the ability to construct a narrative here. They spoke to hotel staff. They spoke to obviously Joe Gargan and Paul Markham.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Uh, Kennedy gave a statement. It's almost 300 pages of, of testimony and they spoke to the, the police and all the local folks. Uh, the diver, uh, the, the judge wound up determining that the likely cause of Mary Jo's death was simply negligent driving, which a lot of people think that this judge was just participating in the institutional urge to sweep this under the carpet.

• 55:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  Numerous theories have floated around over the years about, about possible other explanations for what happened that night and why Kennedy waited a full 10 hours to report. The fact that Rosemary Keough's purse was inside the car made some wonder if Rosemary and Ted were in the car together on their way to do some canoodling perhaps. And that they didn't realize that Mary Jo was asleep in the backseat. Uh, in this version, of course, the car would have crashed. Both Rosemary and Ted would have escaped and then Mary Jo would have passed away. I don't think a lot of people believe this, but there are-

• 56:31Speaker 00

  The owl theory in the staircase.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. There's just, uh, it, the, all of the evidence- For this is simply that Rosemary's purse was in the seat of the car. Another version of the incident pitched in the book Chappaquiddick Revealed What Really Happened by Kenneth Keppel claims that Ted accidentally rammed the car into a tree while he was intoxicated and thinking that Mary Jo had been killed submerged the car in the pond with the help of Joe Gargan and Paul Markham to avoid prosecution. I think this theory is insane because it'd be virtually impossible to flip the car into the pond on purpose. There's even speculation in Leo Demore's bestselling book Senatorial Privilege, which is a very exhaustive account of all of this.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  That speculation is that Ted tried to loop Joe Gargan into a plot to tell everyone that Mary Jo was just the driver of the car alone and that Ted wasn't even in the car. And this one, this version, I think, has some, like, there are some things that lend a little credence to this version. For example, Teddy going back to the hotel and trying to establish that he was at the hotel by calling and making a complaint about noise and that sort of, and then like pretending the next morning like everything's fine.

• 57:47Speaker 00

  Right.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  And basically like establishing witnesses to say like, what, Teddy was at the hotel the whole night? So, this is an interesting one.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  That's what they do in Succession, is they say, remember Kendall kills-

• 57:59Speaker 01

  Oh, of course, yes.

• 58:01Speaker 00

  And they're like, you weren't driving, he was driving, like-

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 58:05Speaker 00

  You weren't even there.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think this is an interesting theory. Reporter Jack Anderson also claimed that Ted actually asked Jo at one point to take the fall, which Joe Gargan emphatically denied. None of these theories are provable, right? We just don't know what really happened outside of the testimonies of the people involved. All these rumors aside, was there any justice served? Well, the Kopecky family did receive approximately $140,000 in settlements. According to some reports in 1974, it was paid in full by Kennedy's auto insurance. Other sources claim it was paid perhaps in part by Kennedy himself. Of course, there's no amount of- Financial settlement to a family that can right this kind of wrong.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  Ted would try to run for president one time only in 1980 when he bid for the Democratic nominee against Jimmy Carter, but he lost. What's complicated here is that Ted would go on to live a long and very productive life as a Massachusetts senator. He helped usher in countless pieces of vital and substantive legislation. He played a major role in advocating for reforms across healthcare and education, civil rights, and immigration. According to the United States Senate website, he authored over 2,500 bills, several hundred of which became law. That's insane. I mean, that's just an epic political legacy.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  After he passed in 2009, President Obama said of Ted's legacy, quote, "For five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health, and economic well-being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts." That same year that he died, Ted released an autobiography where he confirmed the incident remained a burden through his whole life. He wrote, and this is a quote, and this is wild to me. This quote is really interesting. He says, "That night on Chappaquiddick Island ended in a horrible tragedy that haunts me every day of my life. I had suffered sudden and violent loss far too many times, but this night was different. This night, I was responsible. It was an accident, but I was responsible."

• 1:00:17Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Does that feel like he took responsibility? I mean, he's literally saying, "I was responsible." Is it too little, too late? I don't know. Where do you?

• 1:00:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, look, I like it. I like that there's some ownership there, and given the time, like, that's pretty good, right? It's so heavy, it's hard to joke about, but there is something about saying something just as you're leaving.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, right? Yeah, yeah. It's, that's the part, that's the part that feels like he's not responsible. That he didn't take responsibility. He said the words, but, and, and, but, you know, he was on the way out.

• 1:00:53Speaker 00

  It's like a scheduled email from a dead person.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:57Speaker 00

  Like, oh, wow. Clearly, he was haunted by it. I believe when he's like, I was haunted by it. And it seems really, I think the, I'm gonna say it again, the fascination with this story is because we all know, we have the capacity to be so self-centered and so self-serving.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:12Speaker 00

  That you would, who wouldn't use their money and their power and their influence to get away with something? That's, again, what they did on Succession. We love stories like this.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I just want to just tell our listeners, if you're interested in the story, there's some really great resources out there. One is a podcast called Cover Up that People Magazine did with Cadence 13. It's hosted by Liz McNeil, and it's a really deep, like, multi-episode dive into this. She talks to a lot of people who were there. She talks to a lot of primary sources, if you will, like, people who were actually there or involved. And it's fascinating. And it doesn't necessarily clarify a lot, but it does give you a much deeper set of, uh, of information.

• 1:01:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  I'm not, I'm not trying to make, uh,

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  It's in our language.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  But the, but the podcast does make a splash on how, um, no, but that's great. And then, of course, the movie, Chappaquiddick.

• 1:02:09Speaker 00

  We've hit rock bottom here.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Rock bottom? Really? Come on. So, uh,

• 1:02:15Speaker 00

  And the movie is good?

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  The movie, I'm very, very proud of, and it's very good. And I don't even think I mentioned Kate Mara yet. She plays Mary Jo Kopecky beautifully and very movingly. I think it's a very strong depiction that's rooted in a lot of what is sort of more consensus take on this narrative. But, but again, it is all very controversial. Now, here's the last bit of controversy I'm gonna leave you with.

• 1:02:40Speaker 00

  Is this the diver?

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  Yes. So John Farrar, the diver who recovered Mary Jo's body, testified in court and maintains to this day that he believed Mary Jo survived in an air pocket within the car, possibly for as long as 30 minutes before suffocating. In other words, had authorities been notified immediately, she may have been saved. This is so, so grim. The idea that Kennedy's delay may have been the reason Mary Jo didn't survive.

• 1:03:07Speaker 00

  I'm, look, that, that very well, I sound like a lawyer. That very well may be true. But what is he basing that on?

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  He based it on the position of her body in the car, that she had, and that she had found an air pocket in the footwell of the car.

• 1:03:20Speaker 00

  And that's fine. Again, I sound like a lawyer.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  And then her head was up there.

• 1:03:23Speaker 00

  And how do you know that wasn't 30 seconds of, of air?

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  Uh, I mean, these are knowable things, like the volume of air and, but then the other thing is that the, I mean, this is really dark, but there was like scratching on the, uh, in, inside the footwell and, and he believes that she had, that, that she had positioned her body in such a way as to like swim upwards and, and, and had accidentally found this air pocket, which then kind of like disoriented her and prevented her from actually swimming out of an open window. Um, and this is why the lack of autopsy is so critical because the autopsy would, would have told a lot more detail about how she died, whether it was, uh, this lack of oxygen from, from like, you know, the air pocket running out or drowning,

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  both of which have different effects on, on your lungs. Anyway, that's the story. It's obviously very insane. It's been really fun to have you on this podcast and

• 1:04:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I always enjoy seeing you, even if it's, I mean, this is a dark, this is a dark one.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  I took you down a dark road.

• 1:04:25Speaker 00

  No, I know. It's good. It's an interesting, I, I can see why it resonates and has echoed into the public psyche because it really is, it's like a telltale heart kind of story. It's a story about like, uh, guilt, shame, privilege, power, like, and, and what you would do to save your own ass, which is always, always interesting. And then the, the ramifications of that. So it's, it's really interesting. I, I do think that diver couldn't have possibly known that she was alive for 30 minutes. That's just something you say to get in People Magazine.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 1:04:56Speaker 00

  I'm gonna say it. Shots fired. Ed, thank you so much, my man. I really love doing this and you're far more handsome than I even remember and you're always as funny as I recall. This is Snafu, where I take the ga-

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  I'm wrapping it up.

• 1:05:09Speaker 00

  You're wrapping it up.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  I'm wrapping it up. I don't know why I'm doing that. Pete, tell us something, where, where we can see you or what's happening with you right now.

• 1:05:16Speaker 00

  Well, it's funny, I'm, uh, this is not a plan. I have it. This is my first kid's book right here, Spells to Cast on Your Parents. Unfortunately, it's not in here. This is my daughter Drew in here. But I made, so I still do art. I did the art and the words for this. It's a book that obviously the kid gets to cast spells on you, the grown up that's reading it. So it's a funny book and a silly book.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  We know it was all chat GPT, but, but keep going.

• 1:05:40Speaker 00

  This is a hundred percent human made. In fact, you know how in kids book, they, kids books, they say the medium? Do you ever like, look like it'll say in the fine print, the medium that they made the art in?

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  I've never noticed that. And I've wondered that. I've looked through books and like, wondered like, oh, this is clearly collage or like.

• 1:05:58Speaker 00

  Yes. Look on the copyright page. It'll be at the bottom.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:06:01Speaker 00

  And ours, I did the art in my book in tape, in masking tape, different colored tape, uh, and Sharpie and, uh, and I wrote at the bottom of it. And this book is a hundred percent human made. Isn't that weird?

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  That's very, very cool.

• 1:06:16Speaker 00

  Oh, my, oh, I got my light. My special is on YouTube. All you have to do is type Pete Holmes into YouTube. It's a website and, uh, the special is called Silly, Silly, Fun Boy. It's my newest hour and I'm very, very proud of it. And I'm so happy people are finding it for free.

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  Hell, yes. That's so badass. Congrats. And I can't wait to see it.

• 1:06:33Speaker 00

  I hope you like it. Thank you for having me.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  Thank you, Pete. It's been a goddamn delight to have you. Snafu is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snafu Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Post-production and creative support from Good Egg Audio. Our executive producers are me, Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Bazner, Andy Kim, and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino and Tori Smith. Our managing producer is Carl Nellis. Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Additional story editing from Carl Nellis. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo and branding by Matt Gosson and The Collected Works. Legal

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  review from Dan Welsh, Megan Halson, and Caroline Johnson. Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman, and Nikki Ator. While I have you, don't forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snafu, The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screwups. It's available now from any book retailer. Just go to snafu-book.com. Thanks for listening and see you next week.

• 1:07:57Speaker 03

  Pumpkin carving sounds fun, until you're elbow-deep in pumpkin guts. There's an easier pumpkin tradition: Reese's Pumpkins. No seeds, no giant kitchen knife, no pressure to create a masterpiece that's just gonna shrivel up on the front porch three days later. And if something goes wrong, just eat it. Every mistake is still pretty delicious. So this Halloween, skip the mess of pumpkin carving and stock up on Reese's Pumpkins.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Halloween's almost here, and I've got plans. My first stop is Total Wine & More for cold beer, ready-to-drink cocktails, and a bottle of wine to share. And I know I'm getting the lowest prices. Get the fun started at Total Wine & More. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. Be 21. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.