Dominique Dunne vs. the Kennedys

Dominique Dunne died on 8/26/09 at the age of 83 but this was overshadowed by the death of Ted Kennedy a day earlier. Both were Irish Catholics from New England (Dunne from Connecticut and Kennedy from Massachusetts). But these guys really disliked each other.

Dunne’s daughter had been murdered in 1982 and since that time he had devoted much of his energy to reporting on crime stories (primarily from the side of the victims). It was probably about the time that Dunne started reporting on the trials of William Kennedy Smith and Michael Skakel (the nephew of Ethel Kennedy) that the Kennedys started hating him.

I wish that Dunne was in the crime reporting business back in 1969 for the Chappaquiddick “accident”. On the night of July 18, 1969, Kennedy was on Martha's Vineyard's Chappaquiddick Island at a party for a group of young women who had worked on his brother Robert's presidential campaign the year before. Kennedy left the party, with one of the women, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne and accidently drove off Dike Bridge into a tidal channel on Chappaquiddick Island. Kennedy escaped the overturned vehicle, swam to safety and left the scene. He did not call authorities until after Kopechne's body was discovered the following day.

On July 25, Kennedy plead guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was given a sentence of two months in jail (suspended). That night, he gave a national broadcast in which he said, "I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the police immediately", but denied driving under the influence of alcohol and denied any immoral conduct between him and Kopechne (did she die before he had the chance?).

Do you believe that alcohol was not a factor? Do you think that Kennedy got special treatment because of his political and family connections? If we had had Dominique on the job we might know the answers today.