Words Failed Kennedy on Chappaquiddick

Though he longed to tell Mary Jo Kopechne’s parents about the 1969 accident that killed their daughter, Ted Kennedy couldn’t find the words on two occasions when he invited them into his home, a new book on the senator says. “When the time came, after plenty of small talk, he said he just couldn’t talk about it,” Gwen Kopechne told the author, the New York Daily News reports.

“The burden of guilt sat on Ted’s chest like an anvil,” Edward Klein writes of the tragedy on Chappaquiddick Island in Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died. “He desperately wanted to relieve himself of the guilt, but in the end, he couldn’t find the words to express his feelings. And, in fact, he would never find expiation for his guilt.” (More Ted Kennedy stories.)