Among the “scrambled thoughts” that came to a young Ted Kennedy as he stumbled from the water into which he had crashed his Oldsmobile, killing his passenger and crippling his political career, was a sort of existential question, if not a supernatural one. The 37-year-old U.S. senator from Massachusetts wondered that night in 1969 whether “some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys.” He recalled the thought aloud one week later in a televised speech, after pleading guilty to leaving the scene of the crash and failing to notify police until morning, as Mary Jo Kopechne died in the water off Chappaquiddick Island.