Introducing Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

In 1964, Mary Pinchot Meyer was shot in broad daylight in Georgetown, Washington, DC. Just 45 minutes after Mary’s death, her killer had been arrested. Or, so the police claimed. Only one woman dared to defend him: civil rights lawyer Dovey Johnson Roundtree. Join journalist Soledad O’Brien as she unravels the whole story.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're familiar with Georgetown, right, that posh neighborhood in Washington.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
D C.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
With stately homes and cobblestone streets. Well, just steps away
from all of that, there's a dirt road, a towpath
where you might find locals jogging. Over fifty years ago,
it was the place where two women's stories collided. It
started with a murder October twelfth, nineteen sixty four.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
She had been shot twice in the head and in
the back, behind the heart.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Mary Pinchot Meyer was found dead on that very same towpath.
She was an artist, a woman on the verge of
coming into her own.

Speaker 4 (00:46):
She had everything at her disposal of the elite of
the elite, and she rejected it to become an artist
in a garage.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
And then her life was cut short. But what happened now,
that's why we're here. Just forty five minutes after Mary's death,
her killer had been arrested, or so the police claimed.
But if a black man is in the vicinity of
a crime against a white woman, he is considered guilty
before you know, even formally charged. Only one woman, Dovey

(01:21):
Johnson Rowntree, would defend him.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
I could make things right out thought in some things
I have made right.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Dovey was a lawyer during Jim Crow. She wasn't allowed
to drink from the same water fountains as white people,
yet in court she was the only thing standing between
a man and his execution. This is murder on the Towpath,

(01:48):
and I'm your host, Solidad O'Brien. We're going to take
you back to the nineteen sixties, a time of political
and cultural upheaval, when society felt constantly on the brink
of war, when segregation was the law of the land.

Speaker 5 (02:04):
Some people saw that as a triumph, that this was
the best case scenario because there wasn't a lynching, or
there wasn't some act of racial violence in terms of retaliation.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
This is a story of two women who wanted to
reach their fullest potential, even if society had very different
plans for them.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
There's a strenuous thing with law school. You a imagine
nobody but your law.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
We're going to take you back to that courtroom where
people found themselves asking did this man really kill Mary
Pincho Meyer.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
They didn't find the gun, which was troubling.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
But what most people didn't know and what could have
altered the course of this case was that Mary had
had an affair with a very powerful man.

Speaker 4 (02:56):
I pledge you that we shall now that commit not
provoke aggression.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
That man was John F. Kennedy. Listen and subscribe to
Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O'Brien starting April twenty third,
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.