Speaker 1: What's funny is I have all these quotes on my mirror,
Speaker 1: things that I try to hold in my heart, But
Speaker 1: every once in a while I'll also write, like a joke, idea,
Speaker 1: Oh cool, So right now my mirror says like what's
Speaker 1: wrong with right now?
Speaker 2: If you don't think about it?
Speaker 1: And then like right beneath it, it says plan B pill.
Speaker 2: But for food they have that it's called xlax. Oh
Speaker 2: my god. Welcome to SNAPO, the podcast about History's greatest
Speaker 2: screw ups. I'm your host at Helms. Each episode, I'm
Speaker 2: joined by a guest and we dive into a wacky
Speaker 2: story from history, and along the way we shoot the
Speaker 2: shit and wonder why humanity keeps keeps fucking up so badly.
Speaker 2: My guest today is stand up comedian, podcast host, and
Speaker 2: voiceover artist, cartoonist. You might know him from his fabulous
Speaker 2: HBO show Crashing, his New Yorker cartoons, his podcast You
Speaker 2: Made It Weird, his book comedy Sex God, or the
Speaker 2: Pete Holmes Show which I just spoiled. Who it is?
Speaker 2: It's the wonderful and the fabulous, dear old friend of mine,
Speaker 2: Pete Holmes. Welcome, Pete.
Speaker 1: Happy to be here. And I don't think you broke
Speaker 1: the rules of an intro. You can do that. You
Speaker 1: can say from the Pete Holmes Show without being like
Speaker 1: website blew it.
Speaker 2: I can't.
Speaker 1: I'm saying I think you can, because what you're touching
Speaker 1: on is performers. Like if you do a gig, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure you do from time to time, NBC calls
Speaker 1: in for a favor. They wanted to give a golden
Speaker 1: chocolate key to Pete and you have to be there.
Speaker 1: The intro is typically awful and they'll be like Ed
Speaker 1: Helms is our esteemed speaker, and it's like there's nowhere
Speaker 1: to go from there.
Speaker 2: All right. You can't say the name first. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: always a corporate mistake. You can't unwrap the present for
Speaker 2: your kid and go and it's a bike. But you're
Speaker 2: telling me I can't. I am allowed to say the
Speaker 2: Pete Holmes Show can. But you did it perfectly because
Speaker 2: you said it at the end. All right, Yeah, there
Speaker 2: you go. Thank there's like a little oh it is him.
Speaker 2: I used to MC a lot when I was first
Speaker 2: starting out and stand up, and I learned that rule
Speaker 2: very quickly, that like the name comes last, always it
Speaker 2: doesn't even matter the context. You can be like giving
Speaker 2: a medical presentation at some the esteemed professor. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: and always well, you know, speaking of MCing and we
Speaker 2: will get to the premise of this show. But as
Speaker 2: a Daily show fella.
Speaker 1: I would be mceing and John Oliver was there, and
Speaker 1: he would say, please, if you say from the Daily Show,
Speaker 1: say my name right away. Don't say John, oh right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you would.
Speaker 2: Go out to a round say my name right right
Speaker 2: right away, say John, and then Paul's because I'll think
Speaker 2: it's Stuart. Yea, oh, that's so great. Here's something that
Speaker 2: I am not familiar with in your background, and I
Speaker 2: don't know how significant it is, but I like it
Speaker 2: a lot. And this is the cartooning, like what is
Speaker 2: what role did that play? And you did have some
Speaker 2: published in The New Yorker. So first of all, kudos,
Speaker 2: that's very very cool, thank you. And second of all,
Speaker 2: I've often wondered this, in what format do you submit?
Speaker 2: It's a great question.
Speaker 1: I think at my level, which was the new guy,
Speaker 1: I would turn in twelve to ten to fifteen finished
Speaker 1: like pieces because they I wasn't Jack Ziegeler.
Speaker 2: I think if you're Jack Ziegler.
Speaker 1: It could be more of a sketch, and it's like,
Speaker 1: this is the gag, but they need to see that
Speaker 1: I could do the art.
Speaker 2: I'd go to the Kandye Nest building. I'd have my roughs.
Speaker 1: Then I would go to the Xerox machine and I
Speaker 1: would photocopy them with the contrast kicked up, so the
Speaker 1: blacks would be really black and the whites would be
Speaker 1: really white, and it would look about a thousand times better.
Speaker 1: And I would print the caption in the same font
Speaker 1: that the magazine used in italics, just.
Speaker 2: To make it look like I'm charm Ledge.
Speaker 1: All of that is unnecessary, And I was just, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm twenty five. I'm looking for like legitimacy. So I
Speaker 1: made them look as much as I could like a
Speaker 1: New Yorker cartoon.
Speaker 2: The New Yorker was had a very sort of like
Speaker 2: meaningful place in my household. This is so cool. My
Speaker 2: grandmother in Nashville, their kitchen was wallpapered with New Yorker
Speaker 2: covers from like the forties and fifties.
Speaker 1: It was like Playboy for culture. Instead of boobs. You
Speaker 1: saw like a story from like a brilliant author. It's
Speaker 1: like New York.
Speaker 2: The city accepted you.
Speaker 1: I had hundreds of cartoons that I had drawn at
Speaker 1: that point, and I was like, I've always wanted to submit.
Speaker 1: I did it for over a year, so that's over
Speaker 1: five hundred submissions, and they hadn't bought one.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And the first time I sold one, the cartoon was
Speaker 1: a guy in therapy and he just has a vacant
Speaker 1: look on his face and the therapist is taking notes
Speaker 1: and he says, I think I accidentally suppressed my good memories,
Speaker 1: which is just so New Yorker.
Speaker 2: Let you laugh a little. It's like a subway.
Speaker 1: Polite laugh and if you're not going to disturb anyone
Speaker 1: on the subway with this leaf, just a chuckle. And
Speaker 1: when I sold my first one, I was living in
Speaker 1: Park Slope. I woke up like super early, it was
Speaker 1: still dark and walked to the newsstand and bought the copy,
Speaker 1: like several copies.
Speaker 2: So cool. It was a thrill, a thrill that's so
Speaker 2: so cool. I'm proud of twenty five year old Pete
Speaker 2: in that moment. That's really sweet. Well, hey, we got
Speaker 2: to get into this, nat Foo. I could talk all
Speaker 2: day about that, I know. And you're amazing your really
Speaker 2: wonderful career and all the cool stuff you've been doing.
Speaker 2: But that's a different podcast. Today's SNAFU is an interesting
Speaker 2: one because I came into it with a little bit
Speaker 2: of a head start, because I start in a freaking
Speaker 2: movie about this SNAPHO in twenty seventeen. Now I know
Speaker 2: you have my entire filmography memorized, So I'm gonna give
Speaker 2: you one guess with do you know any idea what
Speaker 2: movie this is?
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna name Ed Helms movies, theeter Rappaz that's
Speaker 1: like two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2: I was in a movie in twenty seventeen called chap
Speaker 2: Equidic and it is. I didn't know you were in that. Yes,
Speaker 2: Jim Gaffigan and I sort of play Ted Kennedy's or
Speaker 2: sort of like the two guys that are that go
Speaker 2: through this whole thing with him, and it's a tragic,
Speaker 2: it's a messy, deeply controversial incident from nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2: I mentioned Ted Kennedy. Of course, he's played by Jason
Speaker 2: Clark fabulously in the movie. I actually play his cousin,
Speaker 2: Joe Gargan, who we will meet in a bit, And
Speaker 2: like a lot of snapfhoos. This is just a lot
Speaker 2: of bad decisions or may then things went terribly Can I.
Speaker 1: Say I'm thrilled. I'm from Boston, so I'm from New England.
Speaker 1: I don't know this story.
Speaker 2: Oh great, all right, this is perfect and I should
Speaker 2: and you're gonna have like more like probably some better insight,
Speaker 2: especially into the sort of Kennedy context, yah being a
Speaker 2: being a Bostonian. So first, a quick explanation of the
Speaker 2: word chap Equittic. It's the name of a small quiet
Speaker 2: island right off of Martha's Vineyard, which is a large
Speaker 2: island right off of Cape Cod in the great state
Speaker 2: of Massachusetts. Vacation. Yeah, where in Cape con Or.
Speaker 1: We would go to Cape Cod and we would take
Speaker 1: the Island Queen, which was a ferry to Martha's Vineyard.
Speaker 2: Perfect, we would just spend the day there. And which
Speaker 2: town do you remember in Martha's Vineyard? Yeah? Something, Just kidding, Well,
Speaker 2: chep Equitic's interesting because it's not a town that you
Speaker 2: that that most people go to, or it's not a town.
Speaker 2: It's an island and it's and it's it's a little
Speaker 2: bit off the beaten path. It's chappy to the locals.
Speaker 2: It's known for its secluded beaches, happy dirt roads, very
Speaker 2: low key old money summer vibes. It's beautiful and remote
Speaker 2: and about as far from chaos as you can get,
Speaker 2: which makes what happened there in nineteen sixty nine all
Speaker 2: the more unsettling. Martha's Vineyard is a really nice, i think,
Speaker 2: very diverse mix of vacationers from all different backgrounds. There
Speaker 2: are enclaves within Martha's Vineyard that are just real old money,
Speaker 2: like really really wealthy. And then of course chap Equidic
Speaker 2: has so few homes on it, but it does have
Speaker 2: a number of but they're more sort of cottagy, and
Speaker 2: some of that is also very old money, but it's
Speaker 2: sort of like low key old money, do you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. It's like the billionaire who wants kind
Speaker 2: of a wind swept cottage instead of like a mansion.
Speaker 2: Let's pivot to the Kennedy's here. Of course, most folks
Speaker 2: are familiar with John F. Kennedy, a phenomenal career and
Speaker 2: legacy a president, of course, but the youngest brother of
Speaker 2: the Kennedy family was Edward M. Kennedy nicknamed Ted. Born
Speaker 2: February twenty second, nineteen thirty two in Boston, Massachusetts. And uh,
Speaker 2: he was the youngest of nine children. That's right, yes, nine,
Speaker 2: which is a lot. How many in your how many?
Speaker 2: How many subjects? You're you're one of two old fat Protestant. Well,
Speaker 2: it's funny.
Speaker 1: My parents were Catholic. I don't know why they didn't
Speaker 1: have more kids. I guess after they had ud they
Speaker 1: were like, that's enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that'll that'll do. Yeah. But are you the younger?
Speaker 2: Are you the one the younger? Yeah? Same here, I'm
Speaker 2: the youngest of three, and I think both we're both
Speaker 2: both that kid that they're just like, cut it off,
Speaker 2: cut it off, looking at we can't do like this
Speaker 2: kid's paying out. We got enough show, we're out, We're done.
Speaker 2: So the roster of Kennedy kids included Joe Junior, the
Speaker 2: eldest brother of of course, John F. Rose, Kathleen Eunice, Patricia,
Speaker 2: Robert Jean, and then good old Ted. Here's a nice
Speaker 2: vintage photo of Teddy. This is not a childhood photo.
Speaker 2: I just want to be clear. There's gimlets just off camera.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they're trash, pickled onion, Like I don't know
Speaker 1: this story. And I actually don't really follow the Kennedys,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't even making Ted loves to drink.
Speaker 2: I think he's also just of a generation that that's
Speaker 2: sort of where I was going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like pickled onions and little vodka are nearby and cigarettes.
Speaker 2: This was. I have photos of my dad exactly like this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: of course, and he was trashed a lot, which back
Speaker 2: then like you just were like, hello, good to see you, Irene.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean exactly like anybody at that
Speaker 1: level of drunkeness.
Speaker 2: Now you'd be like I shouldn't be here totally. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know how they did it because like the
Speaker 2: hangovers alone or just like I don't know, I don't
Speaker 2: even drink anymore, just because I can't handle it because
Speaker 2: of It's just.
Speaker 1: I have an old joke where I was like in
Speaker 1: the wild West, for example, you know how they're always
Speaker 1: drinking whiskey. I'm like, you're in the desert. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is why you're shooting each other. You're dehydrated, Like, get
Speaker 1: some water. That's how I feel about this time. These
Speaker 1: guys were eating red meat exclusively, maybe a wedge salad
Speaker 1: covered in blue cheese. That was like, what are you
Speaker 1: health nutt Yeah, and like seven vodka gimlets and a
Speaker 1: cigarette before the meal.
Speaker 2: I just imagine how they dissipated. They were all the time.
Speaker 2: Just a lot of fiber in these diets past the
Speaker 2: age of seven. None of them had a glorious BM. No,
Speaker 2: so we gotta keep going. Born February twenty second, nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty two, Ted was bread for American politics and high society.
Speaker 2: Now I'm talking Harvard, then a quick stint in the
Speaker 2: army nineteen fifty one to fifty three, then back to Harvard,
Speaker 2: then University of virgin Law School. Now this resume is
Speaker 2: looking very respectable and on brand for society's upper crust
Speaker 2: at the time. Then in nineteen sixty two, he was
Speaker 2: elected to the US Senate, stepping into the Massachusetts seat
Speaker 2: his older brother, John F. Kennedy had vacated after, you know,
Speaker 2: becoming President of the United States. Did your parents breed
Speaker 2: you for anything or the aspirations they bred you for?
Speaker 2: Should I stop using the word breed? So he bred,
Speaker 2: He was basically bred. He was a third BRANCHI the shadow.
Speaker 2: You're taking a chair that John F. Kennedy. Well, also
Speaker 2: their father, Joe Kennedy, was was just a crazy, intense motherfucker.
Speaker 2: Like there's a there's a great biography on him, but
Speaker 2: he was like he was a Hollywood producer. He was
Speaker 2: in them. He was kind of mafia related. And then
Speaker 2: he became obsessed with sort of raising his children to
Speaker 2: become sort of citizen activists, policy Titians and tiger Woods.
Speaker 1: Like when you breed a child to like do a
Speaker 1: certain thing with the Jackson five or whatever like that.
Speaker 1: It was that level of like you're going to be
Speaker 1: upper crust basically, it was yeah.
Speaker 2: And then and he saw I think he also was
Speaker 2: involved in bootlegging at some time, so he was like
Speaker 2: he was dodgy, but he sort of knew the lane
Speaker 2: that he wanted his family to be. And he became
Speaker 2: an ambassador, I think to the UK. Anyway, his story
Speaker 2: is wild, and he just became this grand puppeteer of
Speaker 2: Massachusetts politics. So Ted certainly made his time in Congress
Speaker 2: count as he backed some genuinely consequential causes. He championed
Speaker 2: the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four, he supported
Speaker 2: the Economic Opportunity Act to fight poverty, and he helped
Speaker 2: usher in a national health center system in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 2: These guys were very progressive, especially at that at the time,
Speaker 2: all the Kennedys were people all over liked Ted. He
Speaker 2: was charming, he was easy to talk to, he was passionate,
Speaker 2: he was able to forge relationships cross party lines to
Speaker 2: get shit done. Eventually died in two thousand and nine
Speaker 2: with a reputation as the Lion of the Senate. That
Speaker 2: was sort of his nickname because he got so much
Speaker 2: legislation done over the course of his career. But being
Speaker 2: a Kennedy, you know, it's a lot of luck, it's
Speaker 2: a lot of privilege, and it's a lot of legacy
Speaker 2: sort of carrying you forward. But also Ted lost three
Speaker 2: of his older brothers, Joe Junior, the oldest, died as
Speaker 2: a pilot in World War Two in nineteen forty four,
Speaker 2: which was that was the first Kennedy death. President John F.
Speaker 2: Kennedy of course, assassinated on November twenty second, nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 2: Then RFK, who really was beloved and really was like
Speaker 2: people were so passionate about him and working hard for him,
Speaker 2: and he's actually his shadows is sort of cast over
Speaker 2: chap equittic in an interesting way that we'll get to
Speaker 2: but he was a former attorney general eventual Democratic presidential candidate,
Speaker 2: and he was gunned down on the campaign trail on
Speaker 2: June fifth, nineteen sixty sixty eight. So Teddy Nity has
Speaker 2: lost three older brothers, all to violence, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: even being downed as a pilot in an a war is
Speaker 2: a violent demise. This of course led to the Kennedy
Speaker 2: curse as a concept. People you know, thought, oh, the Kennedys,
Speaker 2: they're a band named the Dead Kennedy's. Of course, Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: this is a Do you believe in curses, Pete? Are
Speaker 2: you a cursed guy or you? I believe in the
Speaker 2: human mind's obsession with finding patterns. I like that, yeah,
Speaker 2: but also our ability to kind of like manifest things
Speaker 2: that we believe are But yeah, with you, you just
Speaker 2: hit the nail on the head. Really, what we're good at,
Speaker 2: and I think to a fault is pattern recognition, and
Speaker 2: we ascribe patterns to things where they just aren't. That's
Speaker 2: absolutely true, and that could be interpreted as a curse.
Speaker 2: It is a curse.
Speaker 1: I would actually get incredibly liberal with this, saying it's
Speaker 1: not just that curses ripple out and change the course
Speaker 1: of history. Everything ripples out and changes human history.
Speaker 2: Okay, Pete, that's that's too far. You took it too far. Man,
Speaker 2: Come on, man, what are you talking about? Bro? See
Speaker 2: you saying that I'm more likely to smoke weed later.
Speaker 2: That's uh, that's my favorite character, weed smoking gug. After
Speaker 2: the back to back assassinations of JFK and RFK, Hubert
Speaker 2: Humphrey took the Democratic nomination but lost to Richard Nixon,
Speaker 2: leaving the party scrambling for a new identity, and they
Speaker 2: were ready for another the third Kennedy to step in.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of sort of ground swell and
Speaker 2: momentum to just be like, we love the Kennedy's. Let's
Speaker 2: get Teddy in there. Uh Now, Teddy was He was reluctant,
Speaker 2: He was not sure about taking the baton, and he admitted, uh, quote,
Speaker 2: the disadvantage of my position is being constantly compared with
Speaker 2: two brothers of such superior ability. I love that quot
Speaker 2: because it does so many things. It's simultaneously like reverent
Speaker 2: to his two brothers, who were really amazing in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways, and also it's self deprecating in a
Speaker 2: sort of cheeky way. And then which kind of lowers
Speaker 2: the bar for him, and then it also sort of
Speaker 2: chastises the media for even making the comparisons in the
Speaker 2: first place. Totally, it's such good writing, and the Kennedy's
Speaker 2: had the best writers in political history. Ted Sorenson was
Speaker 2: famously speech writer, wrote a lot of JFK's stuff and
Speaker 2: then rfk's stuff, and will meet some of the people
Speaker 2: that worked in in speech writing for RFK in a minute.
Speaker 2: Take a note, Baldwins. Yeah, there you go, take a
Speaker 2: note exactly. But a lot of John F. Kennedy's speeches
Speaker 2: are so famous for good reason. They're really sort of
Speaker 2: poignant expressions of values and whether you agree with them
Speaker 2: or not.
Speaker 1: And to the nations of the world, ask not what
Speaker 1: the United States can do for you, but ask what we,
Speaker 1: as the world what can do for the betterment of
Speaker 1: human kind?
Speaker 2: And something like that. I fucked it up. It's close,
Speaker 2: it's close enough, and by the way, we al forget that.
Speaker 2: So that was more Mayor Quimby than John F. Kennedy.
Speaker 2: Show a wait. So this is funny to me. Part
Speaker 2: of what makes your podcast so fun to listen to,
Speaker 2: and I think it also makes you such a great guest,
Speaker 2: as on podcasts, is you have an encyclopedic memory for
Speaker 2: quotations and citations? And I wonder, and I have the
Speaker 2: memory of a goldfish, Like I can't remember any I
Speaker 2: can't even remember the podcast I did last week? And
Speaker 2: and so I wonder, is there a process to that?
Speaker 2: Do you take notes? Or is it sort of effortless?
Speaker 2: Like what is the you know what's funny about that?
Speaker 1: You and I have talked about that before, because I
Speaker 1: remember it being meaningful, a meaningful compliment to me the
Speaker 1: last time we spoke about it. It is from effort somewhat.
Speaker 1: I am big highlighter and I write.
Speaker 2: Things on my bathroom mirror.
Speaker 1: You get white chalk markers, and I write, what's funny
Speaker 1: is I have all these quotes on my mirror, things
Speaker 1: that I try to hold in my heart. But every
Speaker 1: once in a while, I'll also write, like a joke, idea,
Speaker 1: Oh cool, So right now my mirror says like what's
Speaker 1: wrong with right now?
Speaker 2: If you don't think about it?
Speaker 1: And then like right beneath it, it says plan B pill.
Speaker 1: But for food.
Speaker 2: They have that it's called xlax. Oh my god, that's
Speaker 2: so I'm now I'm picturing your your home is like
Speaker 2: is very much serial killer vibes with just like writing
Speaker 2: all over the mirrors.
Speaker 1: You just have to own it. You just have to
Speaker 1: own that, like that's that's awesome. I'm a crazy person
Speaker 1: that writes on my mirror.
Speaker 2: But it's not.
Speaker 1: It's me Goodwill hunting Jesse Eisenberg in the social network.
Speaker 2: And the thing we all have in common is we
Speaker 2: remember a lot of quotes. That's awesome. I really envy that.
Speaker 2: Of the two brothers, it seems Robert F. Kennedy had
Speaker 2: the strongest impact on Ted's political identity. A nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: two New York Times piece notes that when Ted entered
Speaker 2: the Senate at thirty in nineteen sixty three, he was
Speaker 2: bright eyed, bushy tailed, and ready to play ball with
Speaker 2: the establishment. But by the time RFK was assassinated in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight, Teddy had veered noticeably left, picking up
Speaker 2: Rfk's anti Vietnam crusade and, as the Times put it,
Speaker 2: quote embodying the Kennedy legacy of concerned activism. Now, despite
Speaker 2: Ted's reluctance at first to be the Democratic Party's poster boy,
Speaker 2: by nineteen sixty nine he was on a fast track
Speaker 2: to political stardom, which was no small feat in a
Speaker 2: year marked by surging counterculture and widespread unrest over the
Speaker 2: Vietnam War. With his eye on the nineteen seventy two
Speaker 2: presidential race, he was poised to make a real impact.
Speaker 2: But first a little vacation. On a hot July weekend
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty nine, Ted headed to Martha's Vineyard, a
Speaker 2: familiar family refuge for the Kennedy's and just a very
Speaker 2: short trip from their fabled compound in Hyannas Port on
Speaker 2: kate Cod. It's Hyanna's Pot, the summer white House, as
Speaker 2: it was called. It was the mar A lago of
Speaker 2: its day. Oh yeah, it really was. It's sort of
Speaker 2: I think I feel like mar A Lago Is is
Speaker 2: sort of a a descendant of Hyanna's Port because you
Speaker 2: have Robert Yeah RFK place. Yeah, John F. John F.
Speaker 2: Kennedy did a lot of presidential work from that compound
Speaker 2: in Hyanna's Port.
Speaker 1: Because what is the one that all the presidents have.
Speaker 1: It's like a for Camp David Camp David. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know only the hacks go to Camp David.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You got to have your own his ranch, your
Speaker 2: own now come you gotta have your own. So this
Speaker 2: particular weekend, Teddy was planning to race in the forty
Speaker 2: third annual edgar Town Yacht Club Regatta aboard the family boat,
Speaker 2: the Victurau. He was joined, these are beautiful old wooden sailboats.
Speaker 2: By the way, we got to we got to do this.
Speaker 2: In the movie, we depicted the regatta and they're just
Speaker 2: these gorgeous old uh one design sail boats that that
Speaker 2: that they had these regattas with. He was joined by
Speaker 2: former US Attorney Paul Markham and his cousin Joe Garden Gargan.
Speaker 2: That's who. Jim Gaffkin played Paul Markham, and I played
Speaker 2: Joe Gargan in the movie. I feel like everything sounds
Speaker 2: like a cheese Gargan zola. Yeah, Victoria, everybody. That's that's
Speaker 2: New England for you. That's like, that's white bread New
Speaker 2: England culture. In just a little background on Joey Gargan,
Speaker 2: he had been orphaned as a young child. Uh and
Speaker 2: was was Rose Kennedy. Was was the Kennedy family matriarch.
Speaker 2: Her sister was Joey's mother, and Joey lost his parents
Speaker 2: when he was young, moved in and basically was raised
Speaker 2: as a sibling, but he was on the outside, it's like,
Speaker 2: and so he became he became a little bit of
Speaker 2: like the fixer. So he was never quite in the family,
Speaker 2: but he was like a first cousin and very much
Speaker 2: in mix. Is very interesting dynamic. So we'll get back
Speaker 2: to Joygargin for now. All you need to know is
Speaker 2: that Ted placed ninth in this regatta in Edgar down
Speaker 2: on Martha's vineyard. This is where things get real interesting.
Speaker 2: Later that evening, a small gathering came together that included
Speaker 2: several of Ted's advisors, along with six women who had
Speaker 2: worked on Robert Kennedy's nineteen sixty eight campaign. These women
Speaker 2: were known as the boiler room Girls. Now here's I
Speaker 2: just want to sort of dispel I think what's a
Speaker 2: very easy assumption here, which is that these are just
Speaker 2: sort of like a gaggle of like wacky secretaries, like
Speaker 2: out to have a great time. These were These women
Speaker 2: were the boiler room Girls, as they were sort of
Speaker 2: affectionately known within the campaign. These were badass young women
Speaker 2: and they were speech writers. They were a tight knit
Speaker 2: team of strategists, staffers right at the heart of rfk's campaign.
Speaker 2: They were very well educated, they were motivated, and many
Speaker 2: of them went on to have like phenomena careers. Part
Speaker 2: of this reframing of this evening is that it's a reunion.
Speaker 2: They had just lost RFK in nineteen sixty eight. He
Speaker 2: had been assassinated, and they were all such passionate hard
Speaker 2: workers on his behalf, and of course it was all
Speaker 2: very traumatizing, and this was a This was a little
Speaker 2: bit of a reunion from that team that had worked
Speaker 2: so closely on his campaign, and a chance to say
Speaker 2: thank you from the Kennedy family. I'm not saying that
Speaker 2: maybe hormones weren't also a part of it, but I
Speaker 2: just I just want to just dispell Yeah, I just
Speaker 2: want to dispel the sort of easy assumption that this
Speaker 2: was like a bunch of like powerful men with like
Speaker 2: a bunch of floozies, kind of like having a crazy party.
Speaker 2: These were all very accomplished people. So the group met
Speaker 2: at a cottage a small ferry ride from Martha's Vineyard
Speaker 2: on chap Equittic Island, a quieter, more secluded spot. It's
Speaker 2: right across a narrow channel from Edgar Town and it's
Speaker 2: accessible only by this very small ferry that the fairy
Speaker 2: holds like two or three cars, like it's a it's
Speaker 2: a tiny little flatbed fairy. The mood relaxed, drinks, a cookout, music, dancing,
Speaker 2: just a summer night with friends and again a chance
Speaker 2: to reconnect after this like very traumatic presidential campaign they'd
Speaker 2: all been through. Are you getting a bad feeling yet? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I was going to say, you're doing a good job.
Speaker 1: And I love my level of knowledge for this because
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going to happen. I just know
Speaker 1: that you're doing something that people who are telling stories
Speaker 1: about bad things do, which is giving me a lot
Speaker 1: of details, a lot of MP And these women weren't
Speaker 1: good women, had working women, and I'm like, what happens
Speaker 1: to those women.
Speaker 2: Let's introduce one of the boiler room girls who will
Speaker 2: become very central to our story, Mary Joe Kopecney. I
Speaker 2: think it's not only important to understand why she was
Speaker 2: at the party, but also to really honor her life
Speaker 2: and work. She Mary Joe was born. That's that's a
Speaker 2: tell right there. But before where are we get there?
Speaker 2: Mary Joe was born in Pennsylvania in nineteen forty. She's
Speaker 2: raised in New Jersey and later spent time in Alabama
Speaker 2: teaching as part of a civil rights project. She volunteered
Speaker 2: for JFK's presidential campaign while in college, then worked for
Speaker 2: Florida Senator George Smathers before joining rfk's Senate office after
Speaker 2: his nineteen sixty four election. Smathers actually recommended her Smathers
Speaker 2: great name. I mean it's like a sitcom name. Yes
Speaker 2: it is. Smathers actually recommended her to RFK, noting her
Speaker 2: strong admiration for the Kennedy family. Ethel Kennedy later recalled
Speaker 2: Mary Joe being the one who stayed up all night
Speaker 2: writing Roberts nineteen sixty six Vietnam speech. Again, these are
Speaker 2: not These are badass young women. Mary Joe went on
Speaker 2: to serve as a speech writer on rfk's nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: eight campaign, and of course became part of the boiler
Speaker 2: Room Girls. Then, in September nineteen sixty eight, Mary Joe
Speaker 2: was hired by Matt Reese Associates affirm that managed democratic
Speaker 2: campaigns nationwide. She was now a political organizer and damn
Speaker 2: proud of it. Those who knew her described her as talented, industrious,
Speaker 2: and wholly devoted to her work. I think it's a
Speaker 2: valuable to reflect on the promise of someone like this,
Speaker 2: like's she's so like to be a speech writer in
Speaker 2: your mid twenties for like a presidential candidate. I think
Speaker 2: in the same way that you and I felt. I
Speaker 2: don't know when I was doing starting out in comedy
Speaker 2: in New York City, I was drunk on this world.
Speaker 2: I just loved. I'm so thrilled to be a part
Speaker 2: of it. It was all the things that I'd seen
Speaker 2: on TV and want And then suddenly I'm in New
Speaker 2: York City and I'm seeing my heroes and I'm on
Speaker 2: stage like in the proximity to them, and it's very
Speaker 2: I think Washington, d C. Is very similar for a
Speaker 2: lot of people, a sense that like, these are very
Speaker 2: aspirational people, the candidates that we admire. And I'm not
Speaker 2: taking a strong stand on the kendidates. I do admire
Speaker 2: the Kennedys, but they are controversial. But someone like Mary
Speaker 2: Joe Kopecne, who very much admired the Kennedys and wanted
Speaker 2: to help their cause, is suddenly not only in the
Speaker 2: trenches with them, but like really having an effect on
Speaker 2: rfk's campaign in such a cool way and in her
Speaker 2: twenty that's amazing, Yeah, in her twenties. But it's to me,
Speaker 2: that's the version of that that I know is like
Speaker 2: SNL writers in their twenty.
Speaker 1: No, you're not wrong. Politics is show business, and I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that. Sometimes people say show business to disregard
Speaker 1: it anything that's about perception and public speaking. It's all performing.
Speaker 1: It's a performance. And she was in a way like
Speaker 1: a writer for S ANDL. She was writing in a
Speaker 1: very powerful public way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So when Mary Joe received an invitation in the
Speaker 2: summer of nineteen sixty nine for this reunion with her
Speaker 2: fellow boiler room girls and a few of the other
Speaker 2: advisors and staffers, she jumped at the chance. Now, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: Pete tragedy awaited. Okay, cut to the next morning, July nineteenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine, two young fishermen discovered an overturned black
Speaker 2: Oldsmobile submerged in poucha pond. Now, I'm gonna say poucha
Speaker 2: pond in the movie, I think we said poucha pond.
Speaker 2: I'm not positive sport. Yeah, this car is submerged and
Speaker 2: it's upside down in the pond. Now this is a
Speaker 2: title pond to be clear. So there's current that goes
Speaker 2: in and out under this really low bridge. These fishermen
Speaker 2: they see this car, they call the police, Chief Dominic
Speaker 2: Jim Arena, who arrived and called in a local diver,
Speaker 2: John Ferrar, to jump in and investigate. Now, inside the
Speaker 2: car they found the body of Mary Joe Kopecney, deceased
Speaker 2: and very likely drowned. No evidence of illegal activity was found,
Speaker 2: but the car was determined to be registered too, and
Speaker 2: he guesses ted Ted Kennedy. The car was registered to Teddy.
Speaker 2: Holy shit, so she drove his car. Well, it's interesting
Speaker 2: you say that. Why was Mary Joe and Ted's car?
Speaker 2: Who was driving? And why the fuck is the car
Speaker 2: flipped over upside down in this pond? Okay, great Gatsby?
Speaker 2: Who was driving? To answer all of these questions, let's
Speaker 2: go back to the night before July eighteenth, nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: nine and walk through what we think happened. Now, the
Speaker 2: timeline we have comes from a mix of sources, police
Speaker 2: reports from that weekend, contemporaneous news coverage, lots of subsequent
Speaker 2: news coverage, and sort of like looks back and reflective reporting.
Speaker 2: Ted Kennedy's own statements in the days that followed, and
Speaker 2: a judicial inquest that was conducted in early nineteen seventy.
Speaker 2: I just want to be clear, even with all of
Speaker 2: that source material, the full picture of the Night of
Speaker 2: chap equittic and part of the reason it's so locked
Speaker 2: into the American political consciousness is that the full picture
Speaker 2: never really came into perfect focus. There are gaps, there
Speaker 2: are contradictions, there are lingering questions, which some of which
Speaker 2: we'll get into. But I just want to reiterate, even
Speaker 2: though this reconstruction that I'm going to share with you
Speaker 2: is fairly widely accepted and it's what we depicted in
Speaker 2: the movie, it does remain very controversial and there are
Speaker 2: a lot of people. There's a lot of conspiracies around it,
Speaker 2: and there's room. Unfortunately, there's like room for conspiracy because
Speaker 2: there there are open questions. So let's get into it.
Speaker 2: We're at the party in the cottage. Exact times are disputed,
Speaker 2: but sometime between eleven PM and one am, Ted and
Speaker 2: Mary Joe departed the cottage in Ted's car. Kennedy would
Speaker 2: later claim that he was driving Mary Joe back to
Speaker 2: the Edgar Town Ferry, but they were going in the
Speaker 2: opposite direction. So now chap equitic Is is a is
Speaker 2: a rustic We shot there for the movie, and so
Speaker 2: I I this is firsthand. It's a it's a it's
Speaker 2: dirt roads, it's it's it's uh, it's very it's just
Speaker 2: a lot of open space. And so it's easy to
Speaker 2: have made a wrong turn theoretically.
Speaker 1: But what we don't turn was it where they I'm
Speaker 1: picturing it like MAUI like, if you're not going towards
Speaker 1: the airport, you're going the other way?
Speaker 2: Is it like that? It's hard to buy that he
Speaker 2: made a wrong turn.
Speaker 1: Unless this is some unless it's trash disturbed. How quickly
Speaker 1: you can come up with a lie, it's because it's
Speaker 1: like this sniving I would have been a good publicist.
Speaker 2: It's like, maybe.
Speaker 1: He's with this young lady. They're enjoying themselves. Let's take
Speaker 1: the scenic route. Let's go the long way, because if
Speaker 1: you're on an island, there is no wrong turn. There's
Speaker 1: just a longer way to where you're going.
Speaker 2: No, not this way like this, No, not not this
Speaker 2: particular road. The way that they were driving was towards
Speaker 2: a beach. It's a dead end, basically, I mean, it's
Speaker 2: a long road and it goes along, but to get
Speaker 2: to the ferry you have to literally go the opposite direction. Okay,
Speaker 2: so yeah, okay, so he seems to be lying. But
Speaker 2: it's a very rural feeling place, so there's not a
Speaker 2: lot of landmarks and so forth.
Speaker 1: But they're going to the beach to maybe smooch a
Speaker 1: little bit with respect.
Speaker 2: Maybe I don't think that's an unfair assumption, but we
Speaker 2: just we don't know. At some point while they're driving,
Speaker 2: the car veered off of this small dyke bridge and
Speaker 2: the car flipped over and sunk upside down into the
Speaker 2: murky waters of pouch Upon below. To be clear, this
Speaker 2: was a low bridge with absolutely no guardrails of any kinds.
Speaker 2: Here's a photo of it with some spectators after the accident. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't like this bridge. Yeah, that that bridge. Obviously
Speaker 2: it's very easy to veer off of. I don't think
Speaker 2: any of the vehicles we're seeing are the actual vehicle
Speaker 2: that that flipped, that went off the bridge. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: Ted recalled quote struggling as the water flooded the car
Speaker 2: and quickly submerged him in Mary Joe, And the details
Speaker 2: are still unclear on this but ted somehow escaped the car,
Speaker 2: and he claims to have made repeat efforts to rescue
Speaker 2: Mary Joe. In his statement, he basically admits to driving
Speaker 2: the car, but his rescue attempts were unsuccessful. And here's
Speaker 2: where our man Teddy starts to make some really bad decisions.
Speaker 2: Instead of going to the police, ted walked back to
Speaker 2: the cottage. Once there, it is believed that ted told
Speaker 2: Joe Gargan and Paul Markham what had happened. Now. What's
Speaker 2: interesting is that, according to Joe Gargin's later testimony in
Speaker 2: the inquest, Ted only said the car has gone off
Speaker 2: the bridge down by the beach and Mary Joe is
Speaker 2: in it. He did not say I drove a car
Speaker 2: off the bridge passive voice.
Speaker 1: Yes, in American history, the car is in the water.
Speaker 2: Yes. Now this this speaks to a post one one
Speaker 2: theory as to a possible uh like version of the
Speaker 2: story that Teddy might have been trying to start to build,
Speaker 2: which is that he wasn't even in the car. So
Speaker 2: immediately Joe, Paul and Teddy go back to the bridge,
Speaker 2: and Joe and Paul ripped down and they dive in
Speaker 2: and they make multiple attempts to save Mary Joe. Obviously
Speaker 2: they were they were undiscovered her body, right. Yeah, Now
Speaker 2: I can tell you in shooting the movie, we recreated that.
Speaker 2: We we were on a set in a giant water
Speaker 2: tank in Mexico and they built this bridge and they
Speaker 2: submerged a car upside down and Jim Gaffigan and I
Speaker 2: jumped off the bridge and is in the middle of
Speaker 2: the night and swam down to a car. It's like
Speaker 2: three or four feet under the water, but it's upside down,
Speaker 2: and we tried to look in the windows of the
Speaker 2: car and you know, basically perform this what what's happening here?
Speaker 2: And I can tell you it was so terrifying, even
Speaker 2: under the most controlled circumstances like diving into dark water
Speaker 2: and uh and looking into a car expecting to see
Speaker 2: a body. It just is like so unnerving and to
Speaker 2: find your good side and you're like, wait, now, am
Speaker 2: I being framed? Yeah? And uh, and I'm and and
Speaker 2: and by the way, the version I'm doing is fake
Speaker 2: and these guys are doing it for real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but this is interesting because you said rescue, they're
Speaker 1: clearly jumping in.
Speaker 2: They don't know. There may have been an air pocket.
Speaker 2: Pete we'll get there. Yes, hold on, it gets crazy.
Speaker 2: So afterwards, Joe and Paul told Ted that he needed
Speaker 2: to inform the police. Interestingly, Joe first recommended that Ted
Speaker 2: call his administrative assistant, Dave Burke, and also a lawyer
Speaker 2: close to the family, a man by the name of
Speaker 2: Burke Marshall. So a couple of Burks, a couple of Berks. Yep, okay,
Speaker 2: so yes, definitely tell the police that this woman is
Speaker 2: dead in a car acident. Make sure you call your
Speaker 2: lawyer and your assistant first. According to Joe Gargin's testimony,
Speaker 2: Ted told Joe and Paul he would quote take care
Speaker 2: of it, and urged them to go back to the
Speaker 2: cottage and not upset the girls with this terrible news. Yet,
Speaker 2: at this point, it's so late at night, there's no
Speaker 2: ferries running. Kennedy allegedly swam across this narrow channel back
Speaker 2: to edgar Town, and Joe and Paul, of course, are
Speaker 2: believing he's going to the police report this. Who did them? Teddy?
Speaker 2: Teddy swam back to edgar Town? Shut up? Yeah? Yes,
Speaker 2: And so I mean, this is this, This is the
Speaker 2: account that we're going with. It's not that far. It's
Speaker 2: like a couple. It's maybe like a couple hundred yards.
Speaker 2: I'll swim in, yeah, he says, And it is, and
Speaker 2: it's a lot of people do swim it. It's not
Speaker 2: that insane. It's not like rough open water. But he's
Speaker 2: in like a suit. No, he's in beach attire. He
Speaker 2: probably stripped down to his shorts. Who knows, but I
Speaker 2: and he's staying. Remember his hotel is in Edgar Town,
Speaker 2: so that's part of what I mean. He's got clothes
Speaker 2: waiting for him over there. He's headed back to Edgar Town,
Speaker 2: and Joey and Markham believe that he's going to tell
Speaker 2: the police. Now. Back at his hotel, Ted did not
Speaker 2: report the incident. He later claimed in court that he
Speaker 2: was up all night kind of like in this fever state,
Speaker 2: hoping that Mary Joe was somehow still alive, like in denial.
Speaker 2: Hotel staff claimed later that Kennedy, this is very interesting.
Speaker 2: Kennedy made a noise complaint at three am about like
Speaker 2: some revelry going on in another room, and that the
Speaker 2: following morning he was seen very casually having breakfast with
Speaker 2: some people in the hotel restaurant. Now, this is all
Speaker 2: very interesting because it sort of it starts to feed
Speaker 2: this idea that perhaps Teddy was trying to establish that
Speaker 2: he was yeah, that he was like that he never
Speaker 2: was even there, and that he was actually an Edgar
Speaker 2: town and so like, now he's on the record at
Speaker 2: three am making a noise complaint. You can see how
Speaker 2: this this kind of starts to feel like he's building
Speaker 2: an alibi, but it's also sort of like the worst
Speaker 2: possible post incident like way to handle this. So then
Speaker 2: Joe and Paul show up at Ted's hotel at eight thirty.
Speaker 2: They find him at breakfast, fresh as a daisy, like
Speaker 2: you know, showered and like all wearing nice clothes, having
Speaker 2: just a chipper breakfast with some other people. They asked
Speaker 2: if he'd reported the incident. He had not, so they
Speaker 2: drove him back to Chapiquittic. You know, this took the
Speaker 2: ferry and now at this point the car has been
Speaker 2: discovered by the police. After trying and failing to reach
Speaker 2: Brooke Marshall, ted quote fully realized what had happened and
Speaker 2: he came clean to the police around ten am. That
Speaker 2: was Kennedy's language in his police statement that he quote
Speaker 2: fully realized what had happened. Over ten hours later and
Speaker 2: a big breakfast. Sometimes you're just not yourself until you
Speaker 2: have your coffee. I guess, I guess.
Speaker 1: So this seems like an open and closed like he
Speaker 1: did this. He's in a very powerful family, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people are going like, maybe this didn't happen.
Speaker 1: We're in this island, maybe we can clean it up.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably what makes this story so compelling.
Speaker 1: Is we all have this like devilish instinct where we're like,
Speaker 1: or maybe I just keep driving, you know, like that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. These things happen all the time, hitting
Speaker 1: runs and all that.
Speaker 2: Sort of stuff. So we had a guy going, oh, no,
Speaker 2: I was driving.
Speaker 1: I was drunk. Maybe we were going to the beach
Speaker 1: to fool around. There's lots of bad things happening. We
Speaker 1: don't know any of that. But she dies, and then
Speaker 1: he spent a good while talking to everybody except the police.
Speaker 2: Can I get out of this?
Speaker 1: Which I think again is what makes us a good
Speaker 1: It's not a ghost story, but like a ghostly kind
Speaker 1: of story is.
Speaker 2: You're like, wait, would I do that?
Speaker 1: Would I also try to cover my own ass, Like
Speaker 1: we go very quickly to like this person is dead.
Speaker 1: Nothing is going to bring them back, ted, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, like so we can protect you.
Speaker 2: Like it's like I'm not saying that is wrong. And
Speaker 2: that's that old adage that like this was clearly an accident, right,
Speaker 2: and had he come clean immediately and like gone straight
Speaker 2: to the police and and and respond, stuff didn't happen
Speaker 2: until way later. They would have tested him for alcohol.
Speaker 1: But back then it was like send Yankee, doodle dandy, Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: smoke this cigarette.
Speaker 2: Now, tell me your mother's name. He's so good, he's
Speaker 2: got coffee on his breath. He's so here's the thing.
Speaker 2: Police flagged a number of his inconsistencies in Kennedy's account.
Speaker 2: Deputy Sheriff Christopher S. Huck Look Junior reported seeing a dark,
Speaker 2: seemingly lost car the night before, only to later realize
Speaker 2: it was the same vehicle involved in the accident. He
Speaker 2: placed that siting around twelve forty five am, which is
Speaker 2: ninety minutes after the time Kennedy said the incident occurred. Notably,
Speaker 2: this was long after the last fairy stopped running. So
Speaker 2: I guess the implication is that maybe Kennedy changed the
Speaker 2: timeline to make his Oh we were driving to the
Speaker 2: Edgar Town Ferry story like more plausible because because in
Speaker 2: real life the time they were driving, the fairy had
Speaker 2: long stopped running. So interesting details to mention here. The
Speaker 2: New York Times report confirmed credit card records tied to
Speaker 2: that night showed calls from the cottage and hotel to
Speaker 2: Kennedy's family, lawyers, and staff. Other reports indicate that seventeen
Speaker 2: total phone calls were charged to his credit card that night.
Speaker 2: In addition, the purse of one of the other boiler
Speaker 2: room girls, Rosemary Keyo, was in the car for some reason.
Speaker 2: And here's a really interesting detail, no autopsy was ever
Speaker 2: performed on Mary. Joe Kennedy's team. Kennedy had called this guy,
Speaker 2: Dunn Gifford came and basically took the body right away,
Speaker 2: flown to Pennsylvania for burial, just almost immediately before local
Speaker 2: officials could really even request an official examination. So unsurprised.
Speaker 2: And there's you'll hear why that's even more controversial than
Speaker 2: it sounds. It seems like cut and dry how she died,
Speaker 2: it's not so unsurprisingly the news of the incident took
Speaker 2: America by storm. Would Kennedy be held responsible and would
Speaker 2: the real truths ever come out. On July twentieth, nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty nine, just a day after Mary Joe Copeckney was
Speaker 2: discovered in Ted Kennedy's oldsmobile, two gentlemen by the names
Speaker 2: of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the lunar
Speaker 2: surface of our very own moon. Have you ever ever
Speaker 2: heard of those guys? Yes? Yes, so with those steps,
Speaker 2: so too did they absorb most, if not all, of
Speaker 2: the news coverage about what happened to chap Equittick. Serendipitous
Speaker 2: timing for Ted and his team, of course, but that
Speaker 2: only lasted for a short while. After the moon landing
Speaker 2: coverage subsided, chap Equittic became front and center in the media.
Speaker 2: On July twenty fifth, Ted Kennedy pled guilty to leaving
Speaker 2: the scene of the accident that was his only charge,
Speaker 2: and received a two month suspended jail sentence and the
Speaker 2: loss of his driver's license for one year. That's it.
Speaker 2: That's it. The same day, he delivered a statement on
Speaker 2: TV to his constituents, and interestingly, the author of this statement,
Speaker 2: Joe Gargin, presumed we had was trying to have strong
Speaker 2: influence on it in a way that would sound like
Speaker 2: he was taking more responsibility. But most of what Teddy
Speaker 2: said in this statement was actually written by Ted Sorenson,
Speaker 2: the same speech writer that wrote so many of JFK's
Speaker 2: incredible speeches. So listen to this. Listen to this quote
Speaker 2: from Teddy's TV statement. I remember thinking, as the cold
Speaker 2: water rushed in around my head that I was for
Speaker 2: certain drowning. Then water entered my lungs and I felt
Speaker 2: the sensation of drowning, but somehow I struggled to the
Speaker 2: surface alive. I made immediate and repeated efforts to save
Speaker 2: Mary Joe by diving into the strong and murky current,
Speaker 2: but succeeded only in increasing my state of utter exhaustion
Speaker 2: and alarm. My conduct and conversations during the next several hours,
Speaker 2: to the extent that I can remember them make no
Speaker 2: sense to me at all. Wow, it's so that's another
Speaker 2: Just conceit. Just be like, yeah, makes no sense. I
Speaker 2: don't get it either, guys, I don't get it.
Speaker 1: But you know again, maybe I would have been good
Speaker 1: in like a crisis management team, because that is valid.
Speaker 1: It's like, concede the point. All of my behavior after
Speaker 1: that fact is completely irrational. I was in an a
Speaker 1: rational state. Oh that's what I could have been a lawyer.
Speaker 1: That's what a lawyer would say. He was completely in shock.
Speaker 1: His friend had just died, he tried to save them,
Speaker 1: and then from that state of confusion, he's swimming back
Speaker 1: to his hotel.
Speaker 2: This guy is not okay. Obviously that statement is very
Speaker 2: kind of obtuse, and the question remains, did he take
Speaker 2: responsibility at all for his actions. Here's another quote I
Speaker 2: believe from later in the same TV address. Although my
Speaker 2: doctors informed me that I suffered a cerebral concussion as
Speaker 2: well as shock, I do not seek to escape responsibility
Speaker 2: for my actions by placing the blame either on the
Speaker 2: physical and emotional trauma brought on by the accident or
Speaker 2: on anyone else, so he said, which is a way
Speaker 2: of saying yes, I am yes, right, But it's a
Speaker 2: way of saying I'm not avoiding. It's like sort of
Speaker 2: stating the negative without stating the positive. Which is another
Speaker 2: like very savvy bit of like linguistic. It's like linguistic
Speaker 2: jiu jitsu.
Speaker 1: That's like textbook how to say the opposite of what
Speaker 1: you're saying.
Speaker 2: You have lots of these kinds of incidents in your past.
Speaker 2: This is why you're such an expert on this is
Speaker 2: why you had me on. Just can't stop whoopside doodling.
Speaker 2: So this is interesting. There was a lot of pressure
Speaker 2: on Teddy Kennedy after this incident to resign from Congress,
Speaker 2: as we've seen so often with these kinds of scandals,
Speaker 2: like there's always a big outcry, especially from the opposition,
Speaker 2: but even from within his own party. A lot of
Speaker 2: people thought, like, this is insurmountable. You really fucked up.
Speaker 2: It's time to like resign. But here's how he handled that.
Speaker 2: He ended this statement with a very curious appeal to
Speaker 2: his Massachusetts constituents. While considering whether to resign from Congress
Speaker 2: over the accident, he asked them to quote, think this
Speaker 2: through with them. Though he acknowledged that the decision was
Speaker 2: ultimately his, he asked whether they believed he should remain
Speaker 2: in the Senate. So he sort of kicked it, he
Speaker 2: punted it to the constituents, and it turns out his
Speaker 2: strategy was successful. His constituents did want him to stay,
Speaker 2: and he kept his seat in Congress. He did announced
Speaker 2: later that he would not run for president, as had
Speaker 2: been the plan in seventy two. Well, that's a little suspicion,
Speaker 2: which part I guess.
Speaker 1: What I'm looking for is what is the alternate narrative,
Speaker 1: Like if he said, Okay, I'm not going to run
Speaker 1: for president, that sounds like somebody that's like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to drudge that up, right, I don't want you
Speaker 1: to look at that more closely. I don't want you
Speaker 1: to throw that in my face. Maybe investigate more that
Speaker 1: that makes it seem like there might have been foul play,
Speaker 1: but I still don't see.
Speaker 2: I think what the sort of like Kennedy Inner Circle
Speaker 2: or Camelot as it was known, like what I think
Speaker 2: what they were afraid of? That scrutiny would bring a
Speaker 2: lot of clarity to just how terrible this was handled.
Speaker 2: I see, this is my take on it. I just
Speaker 2: like Teddy was was very selfish and very irrational and
Speaker 2: was clearly avoidant. And that's I think a generous takeaway
Speaker 2: like if not, if not, you know, because there's a
Speaker 2: version of this where he's fully guilty of manslaughter, right,
Speaker 2: the unintentional killing of Mary Joe, especially if he had
Speaker 2: been drinking and all sorts of things. So had he
Speaker 2: run for president, there would have been even more scrutiny.
Speaker 2: There just wasn't the support for him to do that.
Speaker 2: But he's not quite out of the limelight yet. District
Speaker 2: Attorney Edmund Denise requested a judicial inquest into Mary Joe's death,
Speaker 2: which occurred in January nineteen seventy. The testimony in this
Speaker 2: judicial inquest is a lot of what gives us the
Speaker 2: ability to construct a narrative here. They spoke to hotel staff,
Speaker 2: they spoke to obviously Joe Gargin and Paul Markham. Kennedy
Speaker 2: gave a statement. It's almost three hundred pages of testimony,
Speaker 2: and they spoke to the police and all the local folks,
Speaker 2: the diver. The judge wound up determining that the likely
Speaker 2: cause of Mary Joe's death was simply negligent driving, which
Speaker 2: a lot of people think that this judge was just
Speaker 2: participating in the institutional urge to sweep this under the carpet. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Numerous theories have floated around over the years about possible
Speaker 2: other explanations for what happened that night and why Kennedy
Speaker 2: waited a full ten hours to report the fact that
Speaker 2: Rosemary Keyo's purse was inside the car made some wonder
Speaker 2: if Rosemary and Ted were in the car together on
Speaker 2: their way to do some canoodling, perhaps, and that they
Speaker 2: didn't realize that Mary Joe was asleep in the back seat.
Speaker 2: In this version, of course, the car would have crashed,
Speaker 2: both Rosemary and Ted would have escaped, and then Mary
Speaker 2: Joe would have passed away. I don't think a lot
Speaker 2: of people believe this, but there are the owl theory
Speaker 2: in the staircase. Yeah, there's just all of the evidence
Speaker 2: for this is simply that Rosemary's purse was in the
Speaker 2: seat of the car. Another version of the incident, pitched
Speaker 2: in the book chap Equittic Revealed What Really Happened by
Speaker 2: Kenneth Keppel, claims that Ted accidentally rammed the car into
Speaker 2: a tree while he was intoxicated and thinking that Mary
Speaker 2: Joe had been killed, submerged the car in the pond
Speaker 2: with the help of Joe Gargan and Paul Markham to
Speaker 2: avoid prosecution. I think this theory is insane because it's
Speaker 2: it'd be virtually impossible to flip the car into the
Speaker 2: pond on purpose. There's even speculation in Leo Demo's best
Speaker 2: selling book Senatorial Privilege, which is a very exhaustive account
Speaker 2: of all of this. That speculation is that Ted tried
Speaker 2: to loop Joe Gargan into a plot to tell everyone
Speaker 2: that Mary Joe was just the driver of the car
Speaker 2: alone and that Ted wasn't even in the car. And
Speaker 2: this one, this version, I think has some like there
Speaker 2: are some things that lend a little credence to this version.
Speaker 2: For example, Teddy going back to the hotel and trying
Speaker 2: to establish that he was at the hotel by calling
Speaker 2: and making a complaint about noise and that sort, and
Speaker 2: then like pretending the next morning like everything's fine, right,
Speaker 2: and basically like establishing witnesses to say, like, what Teddy
Speaker 2: was at the hotel the whole night. So this is
Speaker 2: an interesting one.
Speaker 1: And what they do in succession is they say the
Speaker 1: remember Kendall killed.
Speaker 2: Oh of course, yes, if you weren't driving, he was driving, Like, yes, exactly,
Speaker 2: weren't even there? Yeah, So I think this is an
Speaker 2: interesting theory. A reporter Jack Anderson also claimed that Ted
Speaker 2: actually asked Joe at one point to take the fall,
Speaker 2: which Joe Gargin emphatically denied. None of these theories are
Speaker 2: provable right there. We just don't know what really happened
Speaker 2: outside of the testimonies of the people involved. All these
Speaker 2: rumors aside, was there any justice served well, The Kopechne
Speaker 2: family did receive approximately hundred forty thousand dollars in settlements.
Speaker 2: According to some reports in nineteen seventy four, it was
Speaker 2: paid in full by Kennedy's auto insurance. Other sources claim
Speaker 2: it was paid perhaps in part by Kennedy himself. Of course,
Speaker 2: there's no amount of financial settlement to a family that
Speaker 2: can right this kind of wrong. Ted would try to
Speaker 2: run for president one time, only in nineteen eighty when
Speaker 2: he bid for the Democratic nominee against Jimmy Carter, but
Speaker 2: he lost. What's complicated here is that Ted would go
Speaker 2: on to live a long and very productive life. As
Speaker 2: a Massachusetts Senator, he helped usher in countless pieces of
Speaker 2: vital and substance of legislation. He played a major role
Speaker 2: in advocating for reforms across healthcare and education, civil rights,
Speaker 2: and immigration. According to the United States Senate website, he
Speaker 2: authored over two five hundred bills, several hundred of which
Speaker 2: became law. That's insane, I mean, that's just an epic
Speaker 2: political legacy. After he passed in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: President Obama said of Ted's legacy, quote, for five decades,
Speaker 2: virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health,
Speaker 2: and economic well being of the American people bore his
Speaker 2: name and resulted from his efforts. That same year that
Speaker 2: he died, Ted released an autobiography where he confirmed the
Speaker 2: incident remained a burden through his whole life. He wrote,
Speaker 2: and this is a quote, and that this is wild
Speaker 2: to me. This quote is really interesting. He says, that
Speaker 2: night on chap Equittic Island ended in a horrible tragedy
Speaker 2: that haunts me every day of my life. I had
Speaker 2: suffered sudden and violent loss far too many times, but
Speaker 2: this night was different. This night, I was responsible. It
Speaker 2: was an accident, but I was responsible. Wow. Does that
Speaker 2: feel like he took responsibility? I mean it's he's literally
Speaker 2: saying I was responsible? Is it too little, too late?
Speaker 2: I don't know where, do you? Yeah? It's look I
Speaker 2: like it.
Speaker 1: I like that there's some ownership there and given the time,
Speaker 1: Like that's pretty good.
Speaker 2: Right, It's so heavy, it's hard to joke about.
Speaker 1: But there is something about saying something just as you're leaving.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, yeah, Yeah, it's there's something the part that's
Speaker 2: the part that feels like he's not responsible, that he
Speaker 2: didn't take responsibility. He said the words right and and
Speaker 2: but you know he was on the way out. It's
Speaker 2: a schedule's email from a dead person. Right. Oh wow.
Speaker 1: Clearly he was haunted by it, I believe when he's like,
Speaker 1: I was haunted by it, and it seems really I
Speaker 1: think the I'm going to say it again, the fascination
Speaker 1: with this story is because we all know we have
Speaker 1: the capacity to be so self centered and so self serving.
Speaker 2: Yeah that you would.
Speaker 1: Who wouldn't use their money and their power and their
Speaker 1: influence to get away with something that's again what they
Speaker 1: did on succession.
Speaker 2: We love stories like this. Yeah, yeah, I just want
Speaker 2: to just tell our listeners if you're interested in the story,
Speaker 2: there's some really great resources out there. One is a
Speaker 2: podcast called cover Up that People Magazine did with Cadence thirteen.
Speaker 2: It's hosted by Liz McNeil, and it's a really deep,
Speaker 2: like multi episode dive into this. She talks to a
Speaker 2: lot of people who were there. Yes, she talks to
Speaker 2: a lot of primary sources if you will, like people
Speaker 2: who were actually there or involved and uh, and it's
Speaker 2: fascinating and and it doesn't necessarily clarify a lot, but
Speaker 2: it does give you a much deeper set of uh
Speaker 2: uh of information. I'm not I'm not trying to make
Speaker 2: uh but the but the podcast does make a splash
Speaker 2: on how no, but that's great. And then of course
Speaker 2: the movie Chap Quick rock Bottom really come on. So
Speaker 2: uh and the movie is good. The movie, I'm very
Speaker 2: very proud of it, and it's very good. And uh, I
Speaker 2: don't even think I mentioned uh Kate Mara yet. She
Speaker 2: plays Mary Joe Kopecney beautifully and very movingly. I think
Speaker 2: it's a very strong depiction that's rooted in a lot
Speaker 2: of what is sort of more consensus take on this narrative.
Speaker 2: But again, it is all very controversial. Now here's the
Speaker 2: last bit of controversy. I'm at least a diver. Yes, So,
Speaker 2: John Ferrar, the diver who recovered Mary Joe's body, testified
Speaker 2: in court and maintains to this day that he believed
Speaker 2: Mary Joe survived in an air pocket within the car,
Speaker 2: possibly for as long as thirty minutes before suffocating. In
Speaker 2: other words, had authorities been notified immediately, she may have
Speaker 2: been saved. This is so so grim. The idea that
Speaker 2: Kennedy's delay may have been the reason Mary Joe didn't survive.
Speaker 1: Look that that very well, I sound like a Laurier.
Speaker 1: That very well may be true, But what is he
Speaker 1: basing that on.
Speaker 2: He based it on the position of her body in
Speaker 2: the car that she had and that she had found
Speaker 2: an air pocket in the footwell of the car, and.
Speaker 1: Again that he was right there. And how do you
Speaker 1: know that wasn't thirty seconds of air?
Speaker 2: I mean, these are knowable things, like the volume of air.
Speaker 2: But then the other thing is that the I mean,
Speaker 2: this is really dark, but there was like scratching on
Speaker 2: the inside the footwell. And he believes that she had
Speaker 2: that she had positioned her body in such a way
Speaker 2: as to like swim upwards and had accidentally found this
Speaker 2: air pocket, which then kind of like disoriented her and
Speaker 2: prevented her from actually swimming out of an open window.
Speaker 2: And this is why the lack of autopsy is so critical,
Speaker 2: because the autopsy would would have told a lot more
Speaker 2: detail about how she died, whether it was this lack
Speaker 2: of oxygen from like you know, the air pocket running out,
Speaker 2: or drowning, both of which have different effects. On your lungs. Anyway,
Speaker 2: that's the story. It's obviously very insane. It's been really
Speaker 2: fun to have you on this podcast.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I always embarrassing you, even if it's I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a dark this is a dark one.
Speaker 2: I took you down a dark road. No, I know
Speaker 2: it's good.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting I can see why it resonates and
Speaker 1: has echoed into the public psyche because it really is.
Speaker 1: It's like a telltale heart kind of story. It's a
Speaker 1: story about like guilt, shame, privilege, power and what you
Speaker 1: would do to save your own ass, which is always
Speaker 1: always interesting, and then the ramifications of that. So it's
Speaker 1: really interesting. I do think that Diver couldn't have possibly
Speaker 1: known that she was a life for thirty minutes. That's
Speaker 1: just something you say to Getting People magazine.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say it. Shots fired and thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Ma man.
Speaker 1: I really love doing this. And you're far more handsome
Speaker 1: than I even remember, and you're always as funny as
Speaker 1: I recall. This is snafu where I take the get.
Speaker 2: I don't know why I'm doing that, Pete. Tell us
Speaker 2: something where we can see you or what's happening with
Speaker 2: you right now.
Speaker 1: Well, it's funny. This is not a plan I have it.
Speaker 1: This is my first kid's book right here, spells to
Speaker 1: cast on your parents. Unfortunately it's not in here. This
Speaker 1: is my daughter drew in here. But I made so
Speaker 1: I still do art. I did the art and the
Speaker 1: words for this. It's a book that obviously the kid
Speaker 1: gets to cast spells on you grown up that's reading it.
Speaker 2: So it's a funny book and a silly book. We
Speaker 2: know it was all chat GBT, but but keep going.
Speaker 2: This is one hundred percent human made. In fact.
Speaker 1: You know how in kids book they kids books, they
Speaker 1: say the medium do you ever like look like it'll
Speaker 1: say in the fine print the medium that they made.
Speaker 2: The art in. I've never noticed that, and I've rendered that.
Speaker 2: I've looked through books and like wonder, like oh, this
Speaker 2: is clearly just or like yes, look on the copyright page.
Speaker 2: It'll be at the bottom and ours.
Speaker 1: I did the art in my book in tape, in
Speaker 1: masking tape, different colored tape and sharpie and uh and
Speaker 1: I wrote at the bottom of it. And this book
Speaker 1: is one hundred percent human made.
Speaker 2: Isn't that weird? That's very very cool?
Speaker 1: Oh my oh, I got my light. My special is
Speaker 1: on YouTube. All you have to do is type Pete
Speaker 1: Holmes into YouTube. It's a website and the special is
Speaker 1: called Silly Silly fun Boy. It's my newest hour and
Speaker 1: I'm very, very proud of it, and I'm so happy
Speaker 1: people are finding it for free. Tell watch on YouTube.
Speaker 2: That's so badass. Congrats and I can't wait to see it.
Speaker 2: I hope you like it. Thank you for having me,
Speaker 2: but thank you, pet It's been a goddamn delight to
Speaker 2: have you. Snafu is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 2: Snapfo Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific
Speaker 2: Electric Picture Company. Post production and creative support from good
Speaker 2: Egg Audio. Our executive producers are me Ed Helms, Mike Falbo,
Speaker 2: Glenn Basner, Andy Kim, and Dylan Fagan. This episode was
Speaker 2: produced by Alyssa Martino and Tory Smith. Our managing producer
Speaker 2: is Carl Nellis. Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical
Speaker 2: direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Additional story editing from
Speaker 2: Carl Nellis. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo and
Speaker 2: branding by Matt Gosson and The Collected Works. Legal review
Speaker 2: from Dan Welsh, Meghan Halson, and Caroline Johnson. Special thanks
Speaker 2: to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at
Speaker 2: iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Kerry Lieberman and Nikki Atoor.
Speaker 2: While I have you, don't forget to pick up a
Speaker 2: copy of my book, Snaffoo, The Definitive Guide to History's
Speaker 2: Greatest screw Ups. It's available now from any book retailer.
Speaker 2: Just go to Snaffoo dashbook dot com. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 2: and see you next week.