The driver of the car that hit Romney, according to an account in a local newspaper at the time, was a 46-year-old man, Albert Marie, from Sireuil. Marie, according to French Mormons who responded to the accident, was a Catholic priest; in an interview this spring, a priest at the parish in Sireuil confirmed that the church's former pastor, now deceased, was Albert Marie. Many of the Mormons familiar with the accident say they believe that the priest was inebriated at the time of the crash but that assertion could not be confirmed. The priest was traveling with his mother, Marie-Antoinette Marie, and a 48-year-old woman, Marguerite Longué, neither of whom could be located.

Anderson's driver, a 21-year-old missionary named Mitt Romney, is now a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president of the United States, with the June 16, 1968, accident one of his rare dark moments.

There were six people in a car that would comfortably seat five, but otherwise it was an ordinary drive that happened to turn tragic.

A dispute had developed in the small Mormon congregation in Pau , in southern France, and Anderson thought he should pay a call. So he took his wife and two missionaries along, and on the way they picked up a French Mormon couple in Bordeaux.

The president of the Mormon mission to France, H. Duane Anderson, was eager to get out to visit congregations after a difficult May in which travel in France had been severely limited because a general strike had caused a gasoline shortage.

On the drive south from Bordeaux to Pau , Suzanne Farel rode in the middle of the front seat; passengers have conflicting recollections about whether the car had a bench seat or a console between two bucket seats. On the drive back north, the two women in the car switched positions; Leola Anderson was sitting up front between Romney and Duane Anderson, with the Farels and Wood in the back.

The Paris foursome stopped in Bordeaux on the way south to pick up a French Mormon couple, Bertin and Suzanne Farel. Bertin Farel was the president of the Bordeaux district for the Mormon church, with oversight responsibility for a variety of church branches in the region.

The couple had Romney, who had just moved into the grand manse in Paris that served as the mission headquarters and was Duane Anderson's junior assistant, serve as their driver. They also brought a second staffer, David L. Wood, a 21-year-old from Salt Lake City who was serving as mission coordinator.

The trip to Pau began in Paris, where the Andersons, known to Mormons by the titles "president" and "sister,'' got into the Citroen DS, the best of several cars owned by the French mission. Some of the missionaries, including Romney, had thought Anderson should drive a Mercedes, which was considered a better car, but Anderson had wanted to use a car made in the country of the mission, and the DS was the best French car on the market at the time.

In one of three recent interviews about the accident, Romney said he believes there was a criminal proceeding against Marie, and that he recalls filling out an affidavit about the accident. His spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, said in an e-mail, "the governor does not have any records from the court case against the driver who caused the accident in France." At the local police station in Bazas, officials said they do not have any records because they routinely destroy all documents after 10 years.

"Duane Anderson refused to press charges because he didn't want there to be difficulties between the two churches,'' said Andre Salarnier, a French Mormon who now lives in the village of St. Pierre de Plesguen, Brittany, but who in 1968 was living in Bordeaux and rushed to the hospital after the accident to help. The Romney party had dined at the Salarnier home the evening before the accident.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as Mormonism is formally known, had had a variety of run-ins with the French government over the previous century, and did not pursue any civil action after the accident, fearful of a confrontation with either the Catholic Church or the French government.

As they passed through the village of Bernos-Beaulac, in the midst of a verdant landscape known for its fine vineyards, they happened upon a car accident, with police still at the scene, in which a 34-year-old man had lost control of his vehicle and smashed into a tree, according to an article at the time in a regional newspaper, Sud-Ouest. The Romney party pulled over to remove a roof rack from the highway, and then resumed its journey.

"We were all talking about how dangerous how the highways were and the French highways, as you know, have the trees that line the road, and we were all talking about how dangerous that was,'' Romney said. "And literally as we were having that conversation, boom, we were hit.''

The accident, according to the Sud-Ouest article, took place in front of the post office on the north side of the village, which is sometimes referred to as Beaulac.

"We were driving, as I recall, through a curvy section of road where the speed limit is very low - I can't remember what it is, but a very low speed limit - and suddenly there was a car in my lane that appeared so quickly around the corner or over the hill, I just don't recall the topography terribly well at this stage, but it happened so quickly that, as I recall, there was no braking and no honking - it was like immediate,'' Romney said. "My understanding was he ... had been passing a truck and the truck driver said he estimated his speed at about 120 kilometers, which is about 70 miles per hour. And so we had an immediate head-to-head kind of collision.''

The road has been significantly improved since the accident, but it still curves in front of the post office; it is lined with large trees and one can see that it would be possible for a southbound driver to miss the curve and cross into the northbound lane.

Of the six people in Romney's car, three are still alive - Romney, Wood, and Suzanne Farel. The three said they have not communicated over the last four decades, but in separate interviews, all three offered similar accounts of the crash.