WASHINGTON — US senator Edward Kennedy expressed regret over his “inexcusable” behavior in the 1969 car crash that killed a campaign worker in a memoir to be published posthumously, the New York Times reported Thursday.
The crash, in which Mary Jo Kopechne died when Kennedy drove off a bridge on Chappaquiddick island, Massachusetts, and the subsequent scandal, effectively destroyed Kennedy’s presidential hopes. He lost the Democratic nomination to incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980.
In “True Compass,” a memoir that goes on sale on September 14, the last of the four Kennedy brothers admitted he “made terrible decisions” when he left the scene of the accident.
Kennedy, who did not report the accident to police until Kopechne’s body was recovered the following day, said the events may have also shortened the life of his then-ailing father, Joseph Kennedy, according to the Times, which obtained a copy of the memoir published by Twelve.
The Times said the account by Kennedy, who died aged 77 on August 25 after a battle with brain cancer, did not provide new details on the accident but rather reflected on how it impacted him and his family.
The 532-page book also delved into the senator’s drinking and philandering episodes, as well as his relationship with his family, including his decision to not run for the presidency in 1984 after hearing objections from his children.
Kennedy’s children, the book says, feared for his life in the wake of the assassinations of his older brothers — president John F. Kennedy and senator Robert (Bobby) Kennedy. The eldest brother — pilot Joe Kennedy Junior — died during a World War II bombing mission.
Kennedy, the youngest of the nine Kennedy children of whom only one sister, Jean, now survives, said he did not question the official findings of the Warren Commission on JFK’s assassination that gunman Lee Harvey Oswald alone was responsible for the killing.
He also wrote about his “self-destructive drinking,” especially after Bobby’s death. The tragedy, he said, initially left him unable to return to the Senate, where he eventually served a 47-year tenure.