US Politics
Long lost ‘Chappaquiddick’ tapes found by son of reporter investigating Ted Kennedy crash
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The son of the investigative journalist who literally wrote the book on Senator Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick car crash scandal has discovered his father’s long-lost investigation audiotapes, according to a report in PEOPLE.
Nick Damore, the son of investigative journalist Leo Damore, has been searching for his father’s audiotapes for years. His father, Leo Damore, is the author of the 1988 blockbuster book Senatorial Privilege, which explored Kennedy’s 1969 car accident in Martha’s Vineyard that resulted in the death of his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne.
Kennedy waited 10 hours before alerting the police about his crash and the death of his passenger. Why he did so is still unknown.
‘Leo Damore’s book went on to sell more than a million copies. It took him eight years to produce the book and required more than 200 interviews, many of which were recorded on audiotapes.
In 1995, Leo Damore died by suicide, and many of his documents and tapes disappeared in the aftermath.
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Among the Chappaquiddick tapes that disappeared were interview recordings of Joe Gargan, Kennedy’s cousin, who was at a reunion party with the senator on the night Kopechne died.
Nick Damore, who teaches middle school in Connecticut, was only 10 when his father died, and has spent years trying to track down his father’s tapes.
In 2021, he received a call from an attorney telling him that one of his father’s lawyers, Harold Fields, had found a briefcase belonging to his father.
“They’d been cleaning out his house,” Nick told PEOPLE, “and they found a briefcase under a bed that said ‘Leo Damore vs. Ted Kennedy’ and that had all the tapes.”
The case contained nine bundles of tapes that included interviews with attorneys, investigators, and other figures closely associated with the case.
“It’s fascinating to hear Leo in his element,” Nick said of his father. “It’s like you’re watching a master at work.”
The Gargan interviews are among the tapes located in the briefcase.
At the time of the incident, Gargan claimed that he, attorney Paul Markham, and his cousin, Kennedy, had traveled to the bridge where Kennedy’s car had gone off the road and into the water below in an attempt to rescue Kopechne.
Gargan later changed his story and claimed that Kennedy had instructed him to lie about the events of the night and to claim that Kopechne was driving at the time of the crash. He said he refused to blame the woman.
“They were interested in protecting the senator, there’s no question about that,” Gargan told Leo Damore in one of the interviews. “And they let us fend for ourselves. As well as everybody else.”
Most of what’s contained on the tapes never made it into Leo Damore’s book, so his son is doing his best to listen to all of the newly discovered audio logs and make sense of the story his father spent so many years working to tell.
“I’m just scratching the surface,” Nick Damore said.
