May 21, 2025 • 42 mins
In the year before her death, Mary was coming into her own as a painter. She was experimenting with her art and drugs. But what Dovey didn't know at the time of Ray's trial was that Mary was having an affair with a very powerful man: President John F. Kennedy. We've got the love letter to prove it.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
So this is the love letter that JFK wrote to
Mary Meyer in October of nineteen sixty three. Why don't
you leave Suburbia for once? Come and see me either
here or at the Cape next week or in Boston
the nineteenth. I know it's unwise, irrational, and that you
may hate it. On the other hand, you may not,
(00:22):
and I will love it. You say that it's good
for me not to get what I want after all
of these years, you should give me a more loving
answer than that. Why don't you just say yes? One
of my producers, Sharah, was in the studio with me.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Oh my gosh, I'm kind of getting goosebum.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
It's pretty amazing to sort of see him just in
the throes of this love affair.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Now, just take a moment. Think.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
The author of this letter is the President of the
United States, not your average American wishing he could have
something that was just out of reach. Nope, the man
writing this letter was the most powerful man on earth.
But the tone of this letter doesn't sound like that
at all. The desperation in this letter is not is
(01:14):
not what I would have imagined the President of the
United States to be writing, or thinking or doing JFK
spent years keeping tabs on Mary. It's clear he was
smitten and the fact that Mary had clearly so much
of a hold over him. He says, you should give
(01:35):
me a more loving answer. All these years later, like
all these years later, why do you not.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Love me?
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Right?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I mean, there's a certain not just desperation that it's
unclear if she's going to say yes or no.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
And it kind of sounds like she's going to.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Say no being refused told no, that's likely not something
the presidents used to. He's begging, he's grovelings literally, if
you know, if you will, I will love it. And
it might be a rational can't control himself. And this
is nineteen sixty three, this is not long before the
president was assassinated.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yeah, Mary wasn't like his other lovers.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Even if official business was discussed, the President wouldn't ask
Mary to leave.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
He valued her opinion. It was said that she was
almost part of the Oval Office furniture.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
But of course it wasn't just that, and he clearly
obviously was lusting for her, but also intellectually wanted her
in the room when these conversations were happening. That love
letter clearly lust right, he's not begging her to come
to Cape Cod so they can sit down and have
a thoughtful conversation.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
About the Cuban missile crisis.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
And perhaps the most unique part for Kennedy, she's in
the power position and he is not. By this point,
he wasn't really trying to keep this affair under wraps.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
JFK wrote this letter on official White House stationary.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Still, this love letter is a mystery of sorts because
Mary never got it. I mean, he didn't send it
on to her. His receptionist, his assistant, held on to
the letter. He must have decided he didn't want it delivered,
but he didn't destroy it.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
He didn't burn it.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Instead, Kennedy's personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, held onto it.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
His secretary never sent it off. What was going on?
Speaker 1 (03:39):
This letter, laced with desire seemingly disappeared for reasons unknown.
Then fifty three years after Kennedy wrote it, it surfaced again.
Evelyn Lincoln kept it until she died. Then it turned
up at an auction.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
So the thing too, is that this letter, it was
eventually sold for eighty eight almost eighty nine thousand dollars
to an anonymous buyer, who.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Would buy a love letter?
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Is it just a collector who cares about history and
it's going to go into some big collection.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Right, I mean, is it a family member of one
of these people involved? We just don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
The thing I find fascinating and probably adds to the
list of unknown questions or questions we can't answer, is
what was the nature of their relationship?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Ultimately? Was it sex? Was it lust?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Was it just a real meeting of two clearly bright lines.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
What was the implication of this affair?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Was there some kind of correlation between the fact that
she had an affair with the president and then would
be murdered herself a year later? From Luminary Film, Nation
Entertainment and Neon Humm Media, this is Murder on the Towpath,
(05:07):
a story of two incredible women who never met, but
whose lives became forever intertwined by tragedy. I'm your host,
Solidad O'Brien. Near the end of her life, Mary was
a different woman than she had been while.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Married to Cord.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
After her divorce, she was finally free to pursue a
life that she envisioned for herself, but she was also
mourning the death of her son Michael. She needed to heal,
and so during this period she turned again to painting.
But now it meant something more to her than it
ever had before. Her canvasses became her focus. In fact,
(05:50):
the year Mary was murdered, three of her paintings were
shown in an art exhibit in Washington. A month after
she died, her art was part of a show in
Buenos Aire. Yes, and today, one of her paintings belongs
to the Smithsonian. It's called Half Light. It's dated nineteen.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Sixty four, the year she died.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
It's currently being restored by the Smithsonian, but it's easy
to look at online. That's where writer Alena Cohen came
across it one day. She was researching female artists who
didn't get their due in their lifetimes. Mary's life and
her art caught her attention.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
I did start to look into her story more, and
I was so intrigued.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Alena works for an online art gallery called Artsy. It's
also a resource for collectors. She's written about Mary and
Half Light. Here she is describing it.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
There's this circle divided into four quadrants, and the circle's
not quite touching the edges of the painting.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Two sets of colors fill the canvas, moss, green, mud
brown situated diagonally from each other, and a kind of
gray blue and a classic lavender fill in the remaining spaces.
The more you stare at it, the more it changes.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
When you start to look at the painting a little more,
the two darker colors, the brown and the green, seem
to be connected, and the blue and the purple seem
to be connected, and they're kind of popping out and
receding the more you look at it.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
As you keep your eyes on the canvas, the colors
play off of each other in different ways. One set
will come to the foreground while the other falls back,
only to return again. It's subtle, confident, and it sticks
with you.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Right now.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Half Light is the only painting of Mary's in the
public domain, but two art curators are actively on the
hunt for more of Mary's work. Sue Scott is an
independent curator and Helene Posner is the chief curator at
the Newburger muse of Art at Sunny Purchase. Their mission
is to understand Mary's artistic legacy and to make more
(08:06):
of her works available to the public. Half Light shows
unique promise. They think it shows Mary's own voice.
Speaker 6 (08:15):
One of the things that's distinctive about it is the
shape of a canvas that none of the other artists
in that period.
Speaker 7 (08:21):
We're using the circular or tondo form. That was something
that was very much Mary Meyer's contribution and a mode
from what we've read, that she used many many times.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Sue and Helene say this painting reflects Mary's artistic style.
Speaker 8 (08:35):
The colors are also very feminine, and these, to me
are much more almost have sort of a spiritual sense
to them, a peaceful tranquility. I just think it's a
fully realized, mature painting that evokes a serenity and almost
a spirituality.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Shortly after Mary moved to Georgetown, she became part of
a group of artists in Washington, DC known as the Colorists.
If you're wondering what that means, I was too. Basically,
these abstract painters play certain colors off one another to
create visual impact. Colors aren't used to depict something like
a bridge or someone's face. Instead, colors are what matter.
(09:23):
Mary wrote of the method. Someone wanting to paint poppies
in a wheat field is probably wanting to put that
color red against that color brown. So why not head
straight for the real thing? For me, half Light conjures
up that mysterious romantic time when the sun has dipped
just below the horizon, when day bleeds intonight. After she
(09:47):
was murdered, newspapers noted Mary's artistic talent, said it was
clear that she was on the rise.
Speaker 9 (09:56):
She was an artist moving toward, rather than having arrived,
her fullest potential. Recently, Mary Meyer was busy preparing for
a planned show, and it is in the hope of
all who know and appreciate her work that we may
still have the opportunity of seeing the results of her efforts,
through which she will continue to live.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Mary was on the verge of embracing her own artistic voice.
Speaker 8 (10:22):
Well, I think if Half Light is any indication, I
think that that's exactly right, that that was She was
creating a style that was distinctly hers, but it was
built on what was happening, you know, critically at the time,
and it just seemed like she was on the separate trajectory.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Indeed, the month after she died, Halflight was shown in
a group show in Argentina. It was Mary's first international exhibit.
Of course, nothing is guaranteed for anyone who wants to
be an artist. But Mary volunteered at a gallery called
Jefferson Place and that helped her get noticed because it
was a hotbed for Washington colorists. And it was through
(11:05):
this gallery that Mary met the artist Kenneth Noland. He
was erudite, extremely well schooled in art history. He was
just the kind of man, self confident, filled with ideas
that Mary was attracted to. Soon they were a couple.
Here's Alena Cohen again.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
She was painting before she started volunteering at the Jefferson
Place gallery, for sure, but I think that her volunteering
there and meeting Noland really catalyzed a change in her work.
And after that she started painting much more seriously, thinking
about art and new terms, and devoting herself to her
(11:45):
studio in a new way.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
This new devotion to her creative life would also land
Mary in the heart of bohemian Washington.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
D C.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
In the early sixties, there was a jazz club in Washington,
d C. Called chart Early Bird's Showboat Lounge. It was
on Eighteenth Street in Northwest d C. Bird was legendary.
He was one of the first musicians to blend bossa
nova and jazz. He recorded with Stan Getz on the
second floor of his lounge. Late at night on a Saturday,
(12:17):
you might walk upstairs to find a table full of
jazz musicians and artists, and Mary Meyer and Ken Noland
were often there too, drinks in hand and deep in discussion.
After a set, the jazz musicians themselves would join Ken,
Mary and other colorist painters talk art, theory, the music scene.
(12:38):
Some might have joints on them, ready to smoke later,
or maybe they'd smoke one already. This was the heart
of bohemian Washington, d C. And Mary Pinchot Meyer was
right in the middle of it. Now, for anybody who
knows Washington d C. Using the word bohemian to describe
it might make you laugh.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Here's lance.
Speaker 10 (13:00):
Washington d C. Has always been one of the squarest
places on the planet. And so when you're talking about
bohemians in Washington, you're not exactly talking about Greenwich Ville Engine.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
And yet if you were a creative person who found
yourself there, well, you could do worse.
Speaker 8 (13:22):
What was happening in Washington d C in the fifties
was very fertile and very very exciting, and all of
the artists at the time, we're really trying to, you know,
I'm doing quotes here find a way out of Jackson Pollock,
who was so prevalent in the contemporary art world, and
they were trying to figure out, like what comes next.
(13:42):
So many of these artists in Washington were exploring that
as well.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Here's Nina Burley, author of A Very Private Woman.
Speaker 7 (13:52):
Is the social set of Georgetown in the fifties. They're
very international, cosmopolitan people. They're also very provincial. I mean
they're from a small group of uppercross people in New
York and Boston, but they had put in a lot
of time in Europe.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
And these independent thinkers Mary ran with didn't necessarily condemn divorce.
Speaker 7 (14:18):
It was Georgetown and they had pretty relaxed ideas about
moral behavior. I don't think that there was a whole
lot of disapproval, let's say, in her crowd. In fact,
I mean some of them were women, were openly married
to gay men, beards. I mean, it was a very
(14:39):
sophisticated place.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
So Mary she was just in the right place to
claim a life of her own on her own terms.
Here's historian Alexis Co.
Speaker 11 (14:53):
I think Mary started out her adult life doing what
was expected of her. She married, she was a part
of society. She was a perfect, you know, nineteen fifties homemaker.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Then suddenly her world changed.
Speaker 11 (15:09):
She was running with a you know, a fairly fast
crowd of artists. She was painting. She was living a
really full life in a way that women were not
really allowed to at that time.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yet Mary was also deep in mourning over the death
of her son, Michael, so she was still healing in
the aftermath. Here's author Ron Rosenbaum.
Speaker 12 (15:34):
I think any mother would be changed by the sudden
death of a son. It was an important landmark in
her life and perhaps increased her sense of seriousness.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
And her desire to make something of her art. And so,
with her artist friend Anne Truett, she set up her
studio on m Street near the Towpath.
Speaker 12 (15:55):
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 (16:05):
It was an exhilarating time for her. Here's Nina.
Speaker 7 (16:11):
She could hook up with artists if she wanted to,
and she could you know, make herself known in an
artistic community and pursue creativity, which a lot of them did.
You know. Her friends were into you know, other painters.
Cecily Angleton wanted to write poetry, and Truett was actually
(16:34):
a very well known artist her friend. So they had
the leisure with which to pursue activities that were not conventional.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Mary and Anne would go on art field trips together
to New York, seek out exhibits of the envelope, pushing
abstract painters of the day. Mary supported Anne's art, and
Anne was Mary's biggest champion. But there is no escaping
the fact that this is still the late nineteen fifties.
Mary and her friends.
Speaker 7 (17:03):
Weren't conventional, but they weren't feminists. They weren't living like feminists.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
It simply wasn't that time. Men were in charge and
could be awfully dismissive of women. Even Mary's boyfriend.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Kenneth Nolan didn't take her painting seriously. There were inequities
built into the relationship from him. She probably did learn
really important ideas about art and what critics were discussing
at the time, but I'm not sure she ever progressed
in his mind more than amuse for his work.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
In fact, Ken never saw her paintings that was striking
to Nina Burley.
Speaker 7 (17:46):
Yeah, it's incredible that she never showed a painting to
Kenneth Nolan, who was one of the leaders of the
color Field School, in which she was she was so
influenced by in her work. It's sad, you know. Again,
it goes back to the position of post war women
in America and everywhere.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Or as Sue and Helene say, women like Mary, despite
their talents, were more or less afterthoughts compared to their
male counterparts.
Speaker 8 (18:16):
What we believe is a lot of times women have
been sidelined because maybe they're considered just a somebody's girlfriend,
somebody's wife, somebody's student, or somebody's assistant.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Mary was very much her own person and yet very
much confined to the norms of the time. She was
both a mother of three who went to Vasser and
an artist divorcee in Bohemian DC. Like Dovey, she had
a vision of what she wanted her life to look like,
but all women at the time struggled to pursue what
(18:47):
they wanted. Of course, Mary was no exception, and Dovey's
hurdles were monumental. During segregation and after, there were barriers
for both women. It meant that the others would only
think so much of them. Mary was sure of herself,
but even she assumed her boyfriend didn't want to see
(19:08):
her art. Here's Nina Burley again.
Speaker 7 (19:10):
So you know, she had a certain image of herself,
probably as somebody who could do these things, and that
was very confident. The confidence that comes with having been
born to a lot of money and that kind of confidence,
you know, it goes a long way, but it does
not go long enough to take your dabblings and then
(19:32):
put them in front of a Kenneth Noland and say, look,
I'm an artist. I'm as good as you are.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Noland wouldn't see a single painting of Mary's until after
she was murdered. Can you believe the man she considered
her partner didn't even bother to look at her life's work.
But it wasn't through art alone that Mary began her
journey of self exploration.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
During her new.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Life in Georgetown, Mary had started experimenting with LSD, a
hallucingenic drug that alters thoughts and feelings. But it wasn't
all that surprising given the times in the nineteen fifties.
Professionals with day jobs took LSD artists dropped acid. Beat
authors did too. Behind closed doors, the CIA was also
(20:25):
starting to run experiments with these drugs.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
They thought they could be used to.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Control minds, assistant operations that benefited American interests. Eventually, Mary
herself sought out someone at the forefront of psychedelic research
in America, Timothy Leary, himself a psychologist who popularized psychedelic drugs.
Starting in nineteen sixty, Leary and a colleague started the
(20:51):
Harvard Psilocybin Project. The group worked with a synthetic version
of the drug found in mushrooms, which was also legal
at the time.
Speaker 7 (21:00):
She started to hang out with Timothy Leary, at least,
if you believe his account, more than once she dropped
acid with him.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Meanwhile, in the background of it all, the geopolitics of
the time were something of a mess.
Speaker 11 (21:18):
So we have the Cold War, we have communist states.
Speaker 6 (21:22):
We intend to convince the Communists that we cannot be defeated.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
We have Vietnam, and by the time Kennedy was elected
into office, there was also the attempted coup known as
the Bay of Pigs has begun on the.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
Dictatorship of.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
When the CIA went into Cuba to try to oust
Fidel Castro.
Speaker 11 (21:46):
It's a we can say, a fairly tense time in
the United States, particularly when it comes to just the
race with Cuba, the race with Russia. You know, we
have the polspace program, and we also have tensions nationally,
we have the civil rights movement. So there's a lot
going on.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
With so much tension in the world, not to mention
the threat of nuclear annihilation. Mary believed people in power
could benefit from the mind altering perspective of silas cybin.
Studies have shown that hallucigens help people dissociate from the self,
removing their egos and self interests from their person. In
(22:27):
two thousand and nine, NYU conducted a study using sila
cybin on terminally ill cancer patients. They wanted to see
if drugs similar to LSD could allow people to confront
very bleak scenarios with acceptance. Imagine the power of facing
a terminal illness calmly. It's a compelling thought. Mary thought
(22:50):
LSD could be put to use on the men who
ruled the world, helping them remove their ego and personal
interests from their executive decisions. She hoped it could get
them to choose world peace over war. But when Mary
began her own experimenting, she had no idea that she
would soon be in the arms of the most powerful
(23:13):
man in the world. By nineteen fifty nine, Ken Noland
and Mary's affair was winding down. One evening, they ended
up at a cocktail party at the Bradley's House in Georgetown.
In attendance was a young senator from Massachusetts, jfk. That
evening he announced to his friends he'd run for president
(23:36):
early the next year. Ken noticed Mary paying close attention
to Kennedy that night. It was the kind of interest
he remembered Mary showing him at the beginning of their
own affair, only now it was directed toward someone new. Now,
most affairs don't become part of history. Only lovers know
(23:59):
the story of their time together, and the wider world
is none the wiser unless you happen to have an
affair with the President of the United States.
Speaker 7 (24:11):
The logistics of the affair are recorded for posterity in
the White House logs that are kept in the Kennedy Library.
They are handwritten, and you can see the secretary saying
missus Meyer is here, or missus Meyer arrived at a
(24:34):
certain hour of a certain.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Day, neither Kennedy nor Mary bothered to conceal her presence.
Their meetings were almost flagrantly in the open. Here's Ron again.
Speaker 12 (24:45):
JFK was remarkably careless about privacy with women because it
was a totally different media age where half the reporters
in Washington knew about this, but nobody would print it.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
He did make some attempt to hide their meetings from
his wife.
Speaker 7 (25:07):
You can take those logs and you can put those
dates next to what is known about Jackie's whereabouts, also
recorded elsewhere, and you can see that when Jackie was
out of town, she was in the White House.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Officially, Mary Meyer was logged into the White House on
solo visits fifteen times between the fall of nineteen sixty
one and late summer nineteen sixty three, but in reality
she was at the White House much more than that.
Often she'd show up as a plus one of one
of Kennedy's friends. Sometimes Mary would attend private dinners with
(25:46):
just a few close friends and advisors. Other times she'd
be invited to official state affairs dances or dinners for
important White House guests. All in all, Mary spent about
forty evenings at the White House during Kennedy's short presidency,
and given that he was the most powerful and probably
(26:07):
busiest man on earth. JFK was definitely going out of
his way to prioritize Mary Meyer. For years, Mary's relationship
with the president was an open secret among close friends.
Speaker 7 (26:24):
I think it was pretty well known during the affair
by the people who hung around with Kennedy and people
who went to parties in Georgetown and the people who
knew her.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
But the sixties were a time when discretion was king.
Reporters who knew didn't write about it. Here's Ron again.
Speaker 12 (26:44):
It was a big secret in Washington in the sense
that it was never splashed in the papers. There were
those who were in on the secret and were long
after her death, were at last willing to talk about it,
not in complete detail, but in some detail.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
It was simply a very different time.
Speaker 7 (27:10):
They are the opposite of our generation and the younger
generation of sharing and oversharing on social media. They knew
things and they kept their mouths shut. And that's why
you have Ben Bradley knowing that Mary Meyer was having
an affair with the president, and he was a major,
major journalist in Washington, and he never reported on it.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
It wasn't until nineteen seventy six that James Truett first
broke the story. He was married to Mary's close friend,
an artist, and Truett he dished in print about the affair.
Speaker 12 (27:46):
It finally came out years after she died, in the
National Enquirer.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
But not everybody was happy about that. Mary's close friends
they didn't want any of it out in the open, and.
Speaker 12 (28:00):
Bradley, when he was editor of the Washington Post, wrote
a book, a memoir about his days with JFK, and
never mentioned Mary Meyer, although he did write a few
paragraphs that indicated that JFK had an interest in Mary Meyer.
(28:22):
And some of Mary's friends thought this was a betrayal
of trust because he was giving away a secret that they.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Knew, But Truett said in his National Inquirer story that
he had taken notes of the affair as it was happening.
The broad strokes of their relationship came to light from
White House logs and Truitt's timeline. Before his presidency, Kennedy
was accustomed to spending time with a certain group of
Georgetown friends, but when he became president, Georgetown House parties
(28:55):
became logistically a little more difficult. So Kennedy began inviting
his friends to the White House and so in one
sense having Mary Meyer around didn't look odd at all.
But by the time of the White House's first official
dinner in March nineteen sixty one, who was seated directly
at the side of the President, Mary pincho Meyer, but
(29:20):
it's not clear if their sexual relationship had begun at
this point. And then October third, nineteen sixty one, Mary's
first solo visit to the White House. She signed in
at seven forty pm and had a quote unquote appointment
with Evelyn Lincoln, the personal secretary who held on to
(29:41):
Kennedy's love letter to Mary.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
For all those years.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
It's pretty clear Mary was not showing up for a
nighttime tea with Evelyn, but according to Truett's notes, Mary
rebuffed Kennedy's initial advances until well she didn't. By January
nineteen six sixty two, the affair seemed to be in
full motion and the two struck up something of a routine.
(30:07):
Kennedy would have a car pick Mary up at home
in Georgetown sometime after seven pm most nights. Mary entered
the White House around seven point thirty, and then sometimes
she'd dine with Kennedy and his friends. Sometimes she'd dine
with him alone. But it wasn't just in intimate settings that
they'd spend time together.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
In the White House. JFK wouldn't ask.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Mary to leave the room, even during more official conversations.
That's what a Kennedy aide shockingly told Nina Burley. He'd
often see Mary in the Oval Office. Meyer Feldman. The aide,
said that by the end of nineteen sixty two, Mary
was so often in the White House that she had
become quote unquote almost part of the furniture, part of
(30:54):
the furniture. What an unusually specific way to show Mary
was a fixture in the Oval Office. Eventually, Mary and
Kennedy would retire to his private residence, and then around midnight,
the President would call a car and Mary Meyer would
return again to Georgetown. Now we know we're not breaking
(31:20):
any news here when it comes to the fact that
Kennedy cheated on his wife. Kennedy was, as has been
very well documented, an insatiable womanizer.
Speaker 11 (31:30):
Here's Alexis co I think he was happy to pursue
whatever was in front of him. There's this rumor that
he said, you know, I can't like survive a day
without a bit of strange, and so he just needed
another woman at all times.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
That said, Mary Meyer didn't seem like just another affair
for JFK. As so many said of Mary throughout her life,
she stood out from the crowd simply for being herself.
Speaker 12 (31:58):
I think JFK had an eye out for any beautiful woman,
but he realized that there was something different about her.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
JFK's lasting fixation on Mary came from something else.
Speaker 7 (32:12):
I mean, she got the joke. She was from his
social class. You know, she was in the club, and
so there was that, And she was very beautiful and
had you know, radiant seductiveness that he noticed, and he
was a superstar to like two beautiful people with lots
(32:36):
of you know, one with lots of power. She was
on the inn, and that he liked that.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Toward the beginning of their affair, JFK had evidently thought
enough about what life would look like with Mary Meyer
that he commented about it to his friend Ben Bradley.
Speaker 12 (32:54):
I think what Bradley said was that at some party
or other he and JFK were standing together gazing at
the women at the party and Mary was one of them,
and JFK said something about she would be difficult to
live with.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
That's Ron Rosenbaum.
Speaker 12 (33:15):
In other words, she was an independent woman and he
knew that, and he couldn't just treat her as some
sex object.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
We will never know the full nature of their relationship,
but what's clear is that Mary put JFK in the
unusual position of not having all the power.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
Here's Alexis Co.
Speaker 11 (33:38):
You know, it's sort of easier to say, oh, he
liked blonde or you know, he was a womanizer. They
went to school together, they were the same age. It's
not like she's, you know, a twenty two year old
woman who's you know, coming through who's caught his eye.
She also exerted quite a bit of control over him.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Mary wasn't simply being pursued. She was also choosing him,
so much so that as November twenty second approached, according
to one account, Mary's hold on the president seemed to
be growing only stronger. In fact, Mary was often with
Kennedy during some of the most fraught geopolitical moments of
(34:16):
his presidency. According to records, Mary logged into the White
House most frequently when nuclear testing had resumed, and relations
with Russia were especially tense. And then came the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
Speaker 13 (34:30):
Each of these missiles in Shaw is capable of striking Washington,
d C. The Panama Canal, Cape Canaveral, Mexico City, or
any other city in the southeastern part of the United States.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Kennedy wanted Mary by his side as he navigated the
possible destruction of the country in October nineteen sixty two
and at home on the especially tense night of the
Mississippi Race riots.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
For any man or group of men, by force or
threat of force, could long deny the commands of our
court and our constitution, then no law would stan freed.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
After Kennedy addressed the nation, there was Mary by his
side again. And then, according to James Truett's account, there
was one night when Mary had a very different kind
of interaction with the President. She got him high. According
to Truett, Mary brought several joints to the White House.
Speaker 12 (35:32):
There are stories that she turned him on to grass
in the White House spare room, and he offered to
get her cocaine. You know, these could be totally apocryphal
and have nothing to do with what emotional relationship they had.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
According to Truett's notes, Kennedy smoked three joints, closed his eyes,
then wondered aloud about a worst case scenario. He's quoted
as saying, suppose the Russians did something now, yep, presidents
have a sense of humor too when they're high. Kennedy
also mentioned the White House was slated to host a
conference on narcotics just weeks later. In one account, Jim
(36:15):
Angleton said the President did take one low dose of
LSD with Mary. You remember Angleton. He was Mary's friend
and a CIA spy. Mary was also friends with Angleton's wife, Cicily.
Angleton claimed that after Mary and the President took the.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Drug, they had sex.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
You might be asking, how the hell would Jim know
about that? Well, he got it from Mary's diary. Later
this season will tell you how he got a hold
of it. Was Kennedy open to the mind altering effects
of psychedelics. Maybe you're thinking, this is the sixties, don't
be naive, everybody did drugs, Or maybe you're thinking, so
(36:57):
you're saying this woman Mary Meyer was trying to coerce
the President of the United States into world peace using psychedelics. Well,
the truth is, we aren't sure what happened. There are
very limited accounts of their time in private when taking
drugs like this would have been possible. But it was
during Kennedy's time in the White House that Mary was
(37:19):
making visits to see Timothy Leary, when she was supposed
to have told Leary that she wanted men in power
to consider peace and thought LSD could help them get there.
Whether or not Kennedy did take any psychedelics with Mary,
he was already on a new path toward the end
of his presidency.
Speaker 14 (37:39):
I have therefore chosen this time and place to discuss
a topic on which ignorance too often abounds, the truth
too rarely perceived, and that is the most important topic
on Earth.
Speaker 9 (37:53):
Peace.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
In June nineteen sixty three, Kennedy made his famous peace
speech at American Unify. By then, Kennedy was fighting for
a world free of war. Mary had once thought that
coord would fight for it. It would be Kennedy, not
coord who would give the world once again hope for peace.
(38:15):
By then, Kennedy had fired the ruthless CIA director Alan Dulles.
Kennedy and Mary stood in direct opposition to Mary's ex husband,
coord and the institution he worked for. As you can imagine,
there are very few pictures of Mary and Kennedy in
(38:36):
public together. There is, however, a trip that was very
much on the record. In September nineteen sixty three, Mary's
family donated the Pinchot family estate in Milford to the
United States government. Mary's grandfather had been a great ecologist.
In fact, he was Teddy Roosevelt's chief Forrester Land Preservation
(38:58):
was a Pinchot family legacy, and now Mary's family was
giving away the land where she had spent summers collecting
butterflies and playing tennis. To mark the event, Kennedy traveled
with Mary and her sister Tony to Gray Towers, where
a ceremony for the donation was held.
Speaker 6 (39:16):
For the beginning a dedication ceremony at Milford, Pennsylvania. The
place is Gray Towers, the ancestral home of Gifford Pinchot.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
A video immortalized the day.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
The President is tanned in a dark blue suit, standing
in front of a podium resurrected at the Pinchot estate.
Just behind him stands Mary, sunglasses on hair quaffed dyed
blonde scarf, around her neck.
Speaker 6 (39:44):
But I am in a forest all the time, and
she'll be to my dying day.
Speaker 14 (39:50):
He was more than a forest.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
As Kennedy addresses the crowd of hundreds who came to
see the president in Milford that day, you can see
on Mary's face a subtle smile. It's a smile that
knows a lot more than it gives away. November twenty second,
nineteen sixty three, a month after Kennedy wrote Mary his
love letter.
Speaker 6 (40:12):
A flash from Dallas. Two priests who were with President Kennedy.
Speaker 4 (40:17):
Say he is dead out of four wounds.
Speaker 6 (40:21):
This is the latest information we have.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
John F.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. The traumatic event set in
motion yet another period of grieving and introspection for Mary.
Speaker 11 (40:33):
Her sister said she didn't really react when he was assassinated.
Whether that's to imply that he didn't actually mean anything
to her, that she was guarding herself, that she somehow
knew that this might happen, we don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Mary continued her daily walks to clear her head and
stoke her creativity. In the months following JFK's assassination, she
reported feeling as if she were being followed Mary's friend
later told Nina Burley that someone had broken into her
Georgetown home. She painted her final painting. Even though the
(41:08):
painting was called half light, that also meant that the
other half was darkness. The Warren Commission came out, Mary
analyzed it zealously, and as the days ticked by Mary
inched closer and closer to her own final day. Next time,
(41:30):
on Murder on the Towpath we learn Ray's fate. Even
though Henry Wiggins had placed Ray at the scene, Dovey
was about to poke a major hole in his testimony, and.
Speaker 8 (41:42):
You hand place him on the scene, you can't convict him.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
But that didn't mean that Dovey had the case in
the bag despite weak circumstantial evidence. Would Ray pay for
this crime with his life, live out his days in prison?
Speaker 3 (41:58):
Or miracle of miracle?
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Would he go free.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
From luminary?
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Murder on the Towpath is a production of Film Nation
Entertainment in association with Neon Humm Media. Our executive producers
are me solidad O'Bryan Alyssa Martino, Milan Papelka, and Jonathan Hirsch.
Lead producer is Shara Morris. Associate producers are Natalie Rinn
and Lucy Licht.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
Senior editor is Catherine Saint Louis.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Music and composition by Andrew Eapen, Sound design and mixing
by Scott Sommerville.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Fact checking by Laura Bullard.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Sarah Vacchiano, Rose Arsa, Kate Mishikin,
Tanner Robbins, and Mikayla Celella
So this is the love letter that JFK wrote to
Mary Meyer in October of nineteen sixty three. Why don't
you leave Suburbia for once? Come and see me either
here or at the Cape next week or in Boston
the nineteenth. I know it's unwise, irrational, and that you
may hate it. On the other hand, you may not,
(00:22):
and I will love it. You say that it's good
for me not to get what I want after all
of these years, you should give me a more loving
answer than that. Why don't you just say yes? One
of my producers, Sharah, was in the studio with me.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Oh my gosh, I'm kind of getting goosebum.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
It's pretty amazing to sort of see him just in
the throes of this love affair.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Now, just take a moment. Think.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
The author of this letter is the President of the
United States, not your average American wishing he could have
something that was just out of reach. Nope, the man
writing this letter was the most powerful man on earth.
But the tone of this letter doesn't sound like that
at all. The desperation in this letter is not is
(01:14):
not what I would have imagined the President of the
United States to be writing, or thinking or doing JFK
spent years keeping tabs on Mary. It's clear he was
smitten and the fact that Mary had clearly so much
of a hold over him. He says, you should give
(01:35):
me a more loving answer. All these years later, like
all these years later, why do you not.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Love me?
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Right?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I mean, there's a certain not just desperation that it's
unclear if she's going to say yes or no.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
And it kind of sounds like she's going to.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Say no being refused told no, that's likely not something
the presidents used to. He's begging, he's grovelings literally, if
you know, if you will, I will love it. And
it might be a rational can't control himself. And this
is nineteen sixty three, this is not long before the
president was assassinated.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yeah, Mary wasn't like his other lovers.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Even if official business was discussed, the President wouldn't ask
Mary to leave.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
He valued her opinion. It was said that she was
almost part of the Oval Office furniture.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
But of course it wasn't just that, and he clearly
obviously was lusting for her, but also intellectually wanted her
in the room when these conversations were happening. That love
letter clearly lust right, he's not begging her to come
to Cape Cod so they can sit down and have
a thoughtful conversation.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
About the Cuban missile crisis.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
And perhaps the most unique part for Kennedy, she's in
the power position and he is not. By this point,
he wasn't really trying to keep this affair under wraps.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
JFK wrote this letter on official White House stationary.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Still, this love letter is a mystery of sorts because
Mary never got it. I mean, he didn't send it
on to her. His receptionist, his assistant, held on to
the letter. He must have decided he didn't want it delivered,
but he didn't destroy it.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
He didn't burn it.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Instead, Kennedy's personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, held onto it.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
His secretary never sent it off. What was going on?
Speaker 1 (03:39):
This letter, laced with desire seemingly disappeared for reasons unknown.
Then fifty three years after Kennedy wrote it, it surfaced again.
Evelyn Lincoln kept it until she died. Then it turned
up at an auction.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
So the thing too, is that this letter, it was
eventually sold for eighty eight almost eighty nine thousand dollars
to an anonymous buyer, who.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Would buy a love letter?
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Is it just a collector who cares about history and
it's going to go into some big collection.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Right, I mean, is it a family member of one
of these people involved? We just don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
The thing I find fascinating and probably adds to the
list of unknown questions or questions we can't answer, is
what was the nature of their relationship?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Ultimately? Was it sex? Was it lust?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Was it just a real meeting of two clearly bright lines.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
What was the implication of this affair?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Was there some kind of correlation between the fact that
she had an affair with the president and then would
be murdered herself a year later? From Luminary Film, Nation
Entertainment and Neon Humm Media, this is Murder on the Towpath,
(05:07):
a story of two incredible women who never met, but
whose lives became forever intertwined by tragedy. I'm your host,
Solidad O'Brien. Near the end of her life, Mary was
a different woman than she had been while.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Married to Cord.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
After her divorce, she was finally free to pursue a
life that she envisioned for herself, but she was also
mourning the death of her son Michael. She needed to heal,
and so during this period she turned again to painting.
But now it meant something more to her than it
ever had before. Her canvasses became her focus. In fact,
(05:50):
the year Mary was murdered, three of her paintings were
shown in an art exhibit in Washington. A month after
she died, her art was part of a show in
Buenos Aire. Yes, and today, one of her paintings belongs
to the Smithsonian. It's called Half Light. It's dated nineteen.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Sixty four, the year she died.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
It's currently being restored by the Smithsonian, but it's easy
to look at online. That's where writer Alena Cohen came
across it one day. She was researching female artists who
didn't get their due in their lifetimes. Mary's life and
her art caught her attention.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
I did start to look into her story more, and
I was so intrigued.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Alena works for an online art gallery called Artsy. It's
also a resource for collectors. She's written about Mary and
Half Light. Here she is describing it.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
There's this circle divided into four quadrants, and the circle's
not quite touching the edges of the painting.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Two sets of colors fill the canvas, moss, green, mud
brown situated diagonally from each other, and a kind of
gray blue and a classic lavender fill in the remaining spaces.
The more you stare at it, the more it changes.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
When you start to look at the painting a little more,
the two darker colors, the brown and the green, seem
to be connected, and the blue and the purple seem
to be connected, and they're kind of popping out and
receding the more you look at it.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
As you keep your eyes on the canvas, the colors
play off of each other in different ways. One set
will come to the foreground while the other falls back,
only to return again. It's subtle, confident, and it sticks
with you.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Right now.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Half Light is the only painting of Mary's in the
public domain, but two art curators are actively on the
hunt for more of Mary's work. Sue Scott is an
independent curator and Helene Posner is the chief curator at
the Newburger muse of Art at Sunny Purchase. Their mission
is to understand Mary's artistic legacy and to make more
(08:06):
of her works available to the public. Half Light shows
unique promise. They think it shows Mary's own voice.
Speaker 6 (08:15):
One of the things that's distinctive about it is the
shape of a canvas that none of the other artists
in that period.
Speaker 7 (08:21):
We're using the circular or tondo form. That was something
that was very much Mary Meyer's contribution and a mode
from what we've read, that she used many many times.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Sue and Helene say this painting reflects Mary's artistic style.
Speaker 8 (08:35):
The colors are also very feminine, and these, to me
are much more almost have sort of a spiritual sense
to them, a peaceful tranquility. I just think it's a
fully realized, mature painting that evokes a serenity and almost
a spirituality.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Shortly after Mary moved to Georgetown, she became part of
a group of artists in Washington, DC known as the Colorists.
If you're wondering what that means, I was too. Basically,
these abstract painters play certain colors off one another to
create visual impact. Colors aren't used to depict something like
a bridge or someone's face. Instead, colors are what matter.
(09:23):
Mary wrote of the method. Someone wanting to paint poppies
in a wheat field is probably wanting to put that
color red against that color brown. So why not head
straight for the real thing? For me, half Light conjures
up that mysterious romantic time when the sun has dipped
just below the horizon, when day bleeds intonight. After she
(09:47):
was murdered, newspapers noted Mary's artistic talent, said it was
clear that she was on the rise.
Speaker 9 (09:56):
She was an artist moving toward, rather than having arrived,
her fullest potential. Recently, Mary Meyer was busy preparing for
a planned show, and it is in the hope of
all who know and appreciate her work that we may
still have the opportunity of seeing the results of her efforts,
through which she will continue to live.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Mary was on the verge of embracing her own artistic voice.
Speaker 8 (10:22):
Well, I think if Half Light is any indication, I
think that that's exactly right, that that was She was
creating a style that was distinctly hers, but it was
built on what was happening, you know, critically at the time,
and it just seemed like she was on the separate trajectory.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Indeed, the month after she died, Halflight was shown in
a group show in Argentina. It was Mary's first international exhibit.
Of course, nothing is guaranteed for anyone who wants to
be an artist. But Mary volunteered at a gallery called
Jefferson Place and that helped her get noticed because it
was a hotbed for Washington colorists. And it was through
(11:05):
this gallery that Mary met the artist Kenneth Noland. He
was erudite, extremely well schooled in art history. He was
just the kind of man, self confident, filled with ideas
that Mary was attracted to. Soon they were a couple.
Here's Alena Cohen again.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
She was painting before she started volunteering at the Jefferson
Place gallery, for sure, but I think that her volunteering
there and meeting Noland really catalyzed a change in her work.
And after that she started painting much more seriously, thinking
about art and new terms, and devoting herself to her
(11:45):
studio in a new way.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
This new devotion to her creative life would also land
Mary in the heart of bohemian Washington.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
D C.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
In the early sixties, there was a jazz club in Washington,
d C. Called chart Early Bird's Showboat Lounge. It was
on Eighteenth Street in Northwest d C. Bird was legendary.
He was one of the first musicians to blend bossa
nova and jazz. He recorded with Stan Getz on the
second floor of his lounge. Late at night on a Saturday,
(12:17):
you might walk upstairs to find a table full of
jazz musicians and artists, and Mary Meyer and Ken Noland
were often there too, drinks in hand and deep in discussion.
After a set, the jazz musicians themselves would join Ken,
Mary and other colorist painters talk art, theory, the music scene.
(12:38):
Some might have joints on them, ready to smoke later,
or maybe they'd smoke one already. This was the heart
of bohemian Washington, d C. And Mary Pinchot Meyer was
right in the middle of it. Now, for anybody who
knows Washington d C. Using the word bohemian to describe
it might make you laugh.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Here's lance.
Speaker 10 (13:00):
Washington d C. Has always been one of the squarest
places on the planet. And so when you're talking about
bohemians in Washington, you're not exactly talking about Greenwich Ville Engine.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
And yet if you were a creative person who found
yourself there, well, you could do worse.
Speaker 8 (13:22):
What was happening in Washington d C in the fifties
was very fertile and very very exciting, and all of
the artists at the time, we're really trying to, you know,
I'm doing quotes here find a way out of Jackson Pollock,
who was so prevalent in the contemporary art world, and
they were trying to figure out, like what comes next.
(13:42):
So many of these artists in Washington were exploring that
as well.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Here's Nina Burley, author of A Very Private Woman.
Speaker 7 (13:52):
Is the social set of Georgetown in the fifties. They're
very international, cosmopolitan people. They're also very provincial. I mean
they're from a small group of uppercross people in New
York and Boston, but they had put in a lot
of time in Europe.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
And these independent thinkers Mary ran with didn't necessarily condemn divorce.
Speaker 7 (14:18):
It was Georgetown and they had pretty relaxed ideas about
moral behavior. I don't think that there was a whole
lot of disapproval, let's say, in her crowd. In fact,
I mean some of them were women, were openly married
to gay men, beards. I mean, it was a very
(14:39):
sophisticated place.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
So Mary she was just in the right place to
claim a life of her own on her own terms.
Here's historian Alexis Co.
Speaker 11 (14:53):
I think Mary started out her adult life doing what
was expected of her. She married, she was a part
of society. She was a perfect, you know, nineteen fifties homemaker.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Then suddenly her world changed.
Speaker 11 (15:09):
She was running with a you know, a fairly fast
crowd of artists. She was painting. She was living a
really full life in a way that women were not
really allowed to at that time.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yet Mary was also deep in mourning over the death
of her son, Michael, so she was still healing in
the aftermath. Here's author Ron Rosenbaum.
Speaker 12 (15:34):
I think any mother would be changed by the sudden
death of a son. It was an important landmark in
her life and perhaps increased her sense of seriousness.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
And her desire to make something of her art. And so,
with her artist friend Anne Truett, she set up her
studio on m Street near the Towpath.
Speaker 12 (15:55):
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 (16:05):
It was an exhilarating time for her. Here's Nina.
Speaker 7 (16:11):
She could hook up with artists if she wanted to,
and she could you know, make herself known in an
artistic community and pursue creativity, which a lot of them did.
You know. Her friends were into you know, other painters.
Cecily Angleton wanted to write poetry, and Truett was actually
(16:34):
a very well known artist her friend. So they had
the leisure with which to pursue activities that were not conventional.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Mary and Anne would go on art field trips together
to New York, seek out exhibits of the envelope, pushing
abstract painters of the day. Mary supported Anne's art, and
Anne was Mary's biggest champion. But there is no escaping
the fact that this is still the late nineteen fifties.
Mary and her friends.
Speaker 7 (17:03):
Weren't conventional, but they weren't feminists. They weren't living like feminists.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
It simply wasn't that time. Men were in charge and
could be awfully dismissive of women. Even Mary's boyfriend.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Kenneth Nolan didn't take her painting seriously. There were inequities
built into the relationship from him. She probably did learn
really important ideas about art and what critics were discussing
at the time, but I'm not sure she ever progressed
in his mind more than amuse for his work.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
In fact, Ken never saw her paintings that was striking
to Nina Burley.
Speaker 7 (17:46):
Yeah, it's incredible that she never showed a painting to
Kenneth Nolan, who was one of the leaders of the
color Field School, in which she was she was so
influenced by in her work. It's sad, you know. Again,
it goes back to the position of post war women
in America and everywhere.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Or as Sue and Helene say, women like Mary, despite
their talents, were more or less afterthoughts compared to their
male counterparts.
Speaker 8 (18:16):
What we believe is a lot of times women have
been sidelined because maybe they're considered just a somebody's girlfriend,
somebody's wife, somebody's student, or somebody's assistant.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Mary was very much her own person and yet very
much confined to the norms of the time. She was
both a mother of three who went to Vasser and
an artist divorcee in Bohemian DC. Like Dovey, she had
a vision of what she wanted her life to look like,
but all women at the time struggled to pursue what
(18:47):
they wanted. Of course, Mary was no exception, and Dovey's
hurdles were monumental. During segregation and after, there were barriers
for both women. It meant that the others would only
think so much of them. Mary was sure of herself,
but even she assumed her boyfriend didn't want to see
(19:08):
her art. Here's Nina Burley again.
Speaker 7 (19:10):
So you know, she had a certain image of herself,
probably as somebody who could do these things, and that
was very confident. The confidence that comes with having been
born to a lot of money and that kind of confidence,
you know, it goes a long way, but it does
not go long enough to take your dabblings and then
(19:32):
put them in front of a Kenneth Noland and say, look,
I'm an artist. I'm as good as you are.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Noland wouldn't see a single painting of Mary's until after
she was murdered. Can you believe the man she considered
her partner didn't even bother to look at her life's work.
But it wasn't through art alone that Mary began her
journey of self exploration.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
During her new.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Life in Georgetown, Mary had started experimenting with LSD, a
hallucingenic drug that alters thoughts and feelings. But it wasn't
all that surprising given the times in the nineteen fifties.
Professionals with day jobs took LSD artists dropped acid. Beat
authors did too. Behind closed doors, the CIA was also
(20:25):
starting to run experiments with these drugs.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
They thought they could be used to.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Control minds, assistant operations that benefited American interests. Eventually, Mary
herself sought out someone at the forefront of psychedelic research
in America, Timothy Leary, himself a psychologist who popularized psychedelic drugs.
Starting in nineteen sixty, Leary and a colleague started the
(20:51):
Harvard Psilocybin Project. The group worked with a synthetic version
of the drug found in mushrooms, which was also legal
at the time.
Speaker 7 (21:00):
She started to hang out with Timothy Leary, at least,
if you believe his account, more than once she dropped
acid with him.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Meanwhile, in the background of it all, the geopolitics of
the time were something of a mess.
Speaker 11 (21:18):
So we have the Cold War, we have communist states.
Speaker 6 (21:22):
We intend to convince the Communists that we cannot be defeated.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
We have Vietnam, and by the time Kennedy was elected
into office, there was also the attempted coup known as
the Bay of Pigs has begun on the.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
Dictatorship of.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
When the CIA went into Cuba to try to oust
Fidel Castro.
Speaker 11 (21:46):
It's a we can say, a fairly tense time in
the United States, particularly when it comes to just the
race with Cuba, the race with Russia. You know, we
have the polspace program, and we also have tensions nationally,
we have the civil rights movement. So there's a lot
going on.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
With so much tension in the world, not to mention
the threat of nuclear annihilation. Mary believed people in power
could benefit from the mind altering perspective of silas cybin.
Studies have shown that hallucigens help people dissociate from the self,
removing their egos and self interests from their person. In
(22:27):
two thousand and nine, NYU conducted a study using sila
cybin on terminally ill cancer patients. They wanted to see
if drugs similar to LSD could allow people to confront
very bleak scenarios with acceptance. Imagine the power of facing
a terminal illness calmly. It's a compelling thought. Mary thought
(22:50):
LSD could be put to use on the men who
ruled the world, helping them remove their ego and personal
interests from their executive decisions. She hoped it could get
them to choose world peace over war. But when Mary
began her own experimenting, she had no idea that she
would soon be in the arms of the most powerful
(23:13):
man in the world. By nineteen fifty nine, Ken Noland
and Mary's affair was winding down. One evening, they ended
up at a cocktail party at the Bradley's House in Georgetown.
In attendance was a young senator from Massachusetts, jfk. That
evening he announced to his friends he'd run for president
(23:36):
early the next year. Ken noticed Mary paying close attention
to Kennedy that night. It was the kind of interest
he remembered Mary showing him at the beginning of their
own affair, only now it was directed toward someone new. Now,
most affairs don't become part of history. Only lovers know
(23:59):
the story of their time together, and the wider world
is none the wiser unless you happen to have an
affair with the President of the United States.
Speaker 7 (24:11):
The logistics of the affair are recorded for posterity in
the White House logs that are kept in the Kennedy Library.
They are handwritten, and you can see the secretary saying
missus Meyer is here, or missus Meyer arrived at a
(24:34):
certain hour of a certain.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Day, neither Kennedy nor Mary bothered to conceal her presence.
Their meetings were almost flagrantly in the open. Here's Ron again.
Speaker 12 (24:45):
JFK was remarkably careless about privacy with women because it
was a totally different media age where half the reporters
in Washington knew about this, but nobody would print it.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
He did make some attempt to hide their meetings from
his wife.
Speaker 7 (25:07):
You can take those logs and you can put those
dates next to what is known about Jackie's whereabouts, also
recorded elsewhere, and you can see that when Jackie was
out of town, she was in the White House.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Officially, Mary Meyer was logged into the White House on
solo visits fifteen times between the fall of nineteen sixty
one and late summer nineteen sixty three, but in reality
she was at the White House much more than that.
Often she'd show up as a plus one of one
of Kennedy's friends. Sometimes Mary would attend private dinners with
(25:46):
just a few close friends and advisors. Other times she'd
be invited to official state affairs dances or dinners for
important White House guests. All in all, Mary spent about
forty evenings at the White House during Kennedy's short presidency,
and given that he was the most powerful and probably
(26:07):
busiest man on earth. JFK was definitely going out of
his way to prioritize Mary Meyer. For years, Mary's relationship
with the president was an open secret among close friends.
Speaker 7 (26:24):
I think it was pretty well known during the affair
by the people who hung around with Kennedy and people
who went to parties in Georgetown and the people who
knew her.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
But the sixties were a time when discretion was king.
Reporters who knew didn't write about it. Here's Ron again.
Speaker 12 (26:44):
It was a big secret in Washington in the sense
that it was never splashed in the papers. There were
those who were in on the secret and were long
after her death, were at last willing to talk about it,
not in complete detail, but in some detail.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
It was simply a very different time.
Speaker 7 (27:10):
They are the opposite of our generation and the younger
generation of sharing and oversharing on social media. They knew
things and they kept their mouths shut. And that's why
you have Ben Bradley knowing that Mary Meyer was having
an affair with the president, and he was a major,
major journalist in Washington, and he never reported on it.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
It wasn't until nineteen seventy six that James Truett first
broke the story. He was married to Mary's close friend,
an artist, and Truett he dished in print about the affair.
Speaker 12 (27:46):
It finally came out years after she died, in the
National Enquirer.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
But not everybody was happy about that. Mary's close friends
they didn't want any of it out in the open, and.
Speaker 12 (28:00):
Bradley, when he was editor of the Washington Post, wrote
a book, a memoir about his days with JFK, and
never mentioned Mary Meyer, although he did write a few
paragraphs that indicated that JFK had an interest in Mary Meyer.
(28:22):
And some of Mary's friends thought this was a betrayal
of trust because he was giving away a secret that they.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Knew, But Truett said in his National Inquirer story that
he had taken notes of the affair as it was happening.
The broad strokes of their relationship came to light from
White House logs and Truitt's timeline. Before his presidency, Kennedy
was accustomed to spending time with a certain group of
Georgetown friends, but when he became president, Georgetown House parties
(28:55):
became logistically a little more difficult. So Kennedy began inviting
his friends to the White House and so in one
sense having Mary Meyer around didn't look odd at all.
But by the time of the White House's first official
dinner in March nineteen sixty one, who was seated directly
at the side of the President, Mary pincho Meyer, but
(29:20):
it's not clear if their sexual relationship had begun at
this point. And then October third, nineteen sixty one, Mary's
first solo visit to the White House. She signed in
at seven forty pm and had a quote unquote appointment
with Evelyn Lincoln, the personal secretary who held on to
(29:41):
Kennedy's love letter to Mary.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
For all those years.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
It's pretty clear Mary was not showing up for a
nighttime tea with Evelyn, but according to Truett's notes, Mary
rebuffed Kennedy's initial advances until well she didn't. By January
nineteen six sixty two, the affair seemed to be in
full motion and the two struck up something of a routine.
(30:07):
Kennedy would have a car pick Mary up at home
in Georgetown sometime after seven pm most nights. Mary entered
the White House around seven point thirty, and then sometimes
she'd dine with Kennedy and his friends. Sometimes she'd dine
with him alone. But it wasn't just in intimate settings that
they'd spend time together.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
In the White House. JFK wouldn't ask.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Mary to leave the room, even during more official conversations.
That's what a Kennedy aide shockingly told Nina Burley. He'd
often see Mary in the Oval Office. Meyer Feldman. The aide,
said that by the end of nineteen sixty two, Mary
was so often in the White House that she had
become quote unquote almost part of the furniture, part of
(30:54):
the furniture. What an unusually specific way to show Mary
was a fixture in the Oval Office. Eventually, Mary and
Kennedy would retire to his private residence, and then around midnight,
the President would call a car and Mary Meyer would
return again to Georgetown. Now we know we're not breaking
(31:20):
any news here when it comes to the fact that
Kennedy cheated on his wife. Kennedy was, as has been
very well documented, an insatiable womanizer.
Speaker 11 (31:30):
Here's Alexis co I think he was happy to pursue
whatever was in front of him. There's this rumor that
he said, you know, I can't like survive a day
without a bit of strange, and so he just needed
another woman at all times.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
That said, Mary Meyer didn't seem like just another affair
for JFK. As so many said of Mary throughout her life,
she stood out from the crowd simply for being herself.
Speaker 12 (31:58):
I think JFK had an eye out for any beautiful woman,
but he realized that there was something different about her.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
JFK's lasting fixation on Mary came from something else.
Speaker 7 (32:12):
I mean, she got the joke. She was from his
social class. You know, she was in the club, and
so there was that, And she was very beautiful and
had you know, radiant seductiveness that he noticed, and he
was a superstar to like two beautiful people with lots
(32:36):
of you know, one with lots of power. She was
on the inn, and that he liked that.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Toward the beginning of their affair, JFK had evidently thought
enough about what life would look like with Mary Meyer
that he commented about it to his friend Ben Bradley.
Speaker 12 (32:54):
I think what Bradley said was that at some party
or other he and JFK were standing together gazing at
the women at the party and Mary was one of them,
and JFK said something about she would be difficult to
live with.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
That's Ron Rosenbaum.
Speaker 12 (33:15):
In other words, she was an independent woman and he
knew that, and he couldn't just treat her as some
sex object.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
We will never know the full nature of their relationship,
but what's clear is that Mary put JFK in the
unusual position of not having all the power.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
Here's Alexis Co.
Speaker 11 (33:38):
You know, it's sort of easier to say, oh, he
liked blonde or you know, he was a womanizer. They
went to school together, they were the same age. It's
not like she's, you know, a twenty two year old
woman who's you know, coming through who's caught his eye.
She also exerted quite a bit of control over him.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Mary wasn't simply being pursued. She was also choosing him,
so much so that as November twenty second approached, according
to one account, Mary's hold on the president seemed to
be growing only stronger. In fact, Mary was often with
Kennedy during some of the most fraught geopolitical moments of
(34:16):
his presidency. According to records, Mary logged into the White
House most frequently when nuclear testing had resumed, and relations
with Russia were especially tense. And then came the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
Speaker 13 (34:30):
Each of these missiles in Shaw is capable of striking Washington,
d C. The Panama Canal, Cape Canaveral, Mexico City, or
any other city in the southeastern part of the United States.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Kennedy wanted Mary by his side as he navigated the
possible destruction of the country in October nineteen sixty two
and at home on the especially tense night of the
Mississippi Race riots.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
For any man or group of men, by force or
threat of force, could long deny the commands of our
court and our constitution, then no law would stan freed.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
After Kennedy addressed the nation, there was Mary by his
side again. And then, according to James Truett's account, there
was one night when Mary had a very different kind
of interaction with the President. She got him high. According
to Truett, Mary brought several joints to the White House.
Speaker 12 (35:32):
There are stories that she turned him on to grass
in the White House spare room, and he offered to
get her cocaine. You know, these could be totally apocryphal
and have nothing to do with what emotional relationship they had.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
According to Truett's notes, Kennedy smoked three joints, closed his eyes,
then wondered aloud about a worst case scenario. He's quoted
as saying, suppose the Russians did something now, yep, presidents
have a sense of humor too when they're high. Kennedy
also mentioned the White House was slated to host a
conference on narcotics just weeks later. In one account, Jim
(36:15):
Angleton said the President did take one low dose of
LSD with Mary. You remember Angleton. He was Mary's friend
and a CIA spy. Mary was also friends with Angleton's wife, Cicily.
Angleton claimed that after Mary and the President took the.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Drug, they had sex.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
You might be asking, how the hell would Jim know
about that? Well, he got it from Mary's diary. Later
this season will tell you how he got a hold
of it. Was Kennedy open to the mind altering effects
of psychedelics. Maybe you're thinking, this is the sixties, don't
be naive, everybody did drugs, Or maybe you're thinking, so
(36:57):
you're saying this woman Mary Meyer was trying to coerce
the President of the United States into world peace using psychedelics. Well,
the truth is, we aren't sure what happened. There are
very limited accounts of their time in private when taking
drugs like this would have been possible. But it was
during Kennedy's time in the White House that Mary was
(37:19):
making visits to see Timothy Leary, when she was supposed
to have told Leary that she wanted men in power
to consider peace and thought LSD could help them get there.
Whether or not Kennedy did take any psychedelics with Mary,
he was already on a new path toward the end
of his presidency.
Speaker 14 (37:39):
I have therefore chosen this time and place to discuss
a topic on which ignorance too often abounds, the truth
too rarely perceived, and that is the most important topic
on Earth.
Speaker 9 (37:53):
Peace.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
In June nineteen sixty three, Kennedy made his famous peace
speech at American Unify. By then, Kennedy was fighting for
a world free of war. Mary had once thought that
coord would fight for it. It would be Kennedy, not
coord who would give the world once again hope for peace.
(38:15):
By then, Kennedy had fired the ruthless CIA director Alan Dulles.
Kennedy and Mary stood in direct opposition to Mary's ex husband,
coord and the institution he worked for. As you can imagine,
there are very few pictures of Mary and Kennedy in
(38:36):
public together. There is, however, a trip that was very
much on the record. In September nineteen sixty three, Mary's
family donated the Pinchot family estate in Milford to the
United States government. Mary's grandfather had been a great ecologist.
In fact, he was Teddy Roosevelt's chief Forrester Land Preservation
(38:58):
was a Pinchot family legacy, and now Mary's family was
giving away the land where she had spent summers collecting
butterflies and playing tennis. To mark the event, Kennedy traveled
with Mary and her sister Tony to Gray Towers, where
a ceremony for the donation was held.
Speaker 6 (39:16):
For the beginning a dedication ceremony at Milford, Pennsylvania. The
place is Gray Towers, the ancestral home of Gifford Pinchot.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
A video immortalized the day.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
The President is tanned in a dark blue suit, standing
in front of a podium resurrected at the Pinchot estate.
Just behind him stands Mary, sunglasses on hair quaffed dyed
blonde scarf, around her neck.
Speaker 6 (39:44):
But I am in a forest all the time, and
she'll be to my dying day.
Speaker 14 (39:50):
He was more than a forest.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
As Kennedy addresses the crowd of hundreds who came to
see the president in Milford that day, you can see
on Mary's face a subtle smile. It's a smile that
knows a lot more than it gives away. November twenty second,
nineteen sixty three, a month after Kennedy wrote Mary his
love letter.
Speaker 6 (40:12):
A flash from Dallas. Two priests who were with President Kennedy.
Speaker 4 (40:17):
Say he is dead out of four wounds.
Speaker 6 (40:21):
This is the latest information we have.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
John F.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. The traumatic event set in
motion yet another period of grieving and introspection for Mary.
Speaker 11 (40:33):
Her sister said she didn't really react when he was assassinated.
Whether that's to imply that he didn't actually mean anything
to her, that she was guarding herself, that she somehow
knew that this might happen, we don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Mary continued her daily walks to clear her head and
stoke her creativity. In the months following JFK's assassination, she
reported feeling as if she were being followed Mary's friend
later told Nina Burley that someone had broken into her
Georgetown home. She painted her final painting. Even though the
(41:08):
painting was called half light, that also meant that the
other half was darkness. The Warren Commission came out, Mary
analyzed it zealously, and as the days ticked by Mary
inched closer and closer to her own final day. Next time,
(41:30):
on Murder on the Towpath we learn Ray's fate. Even
though Henry Wiggins had placed Ray at the scene, Dovey
was about to poke a major hole in his testimony, and.
Speaker 8 (41:42):
You hand place him on the scene, you can't convict him.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
But that didn't mean that Dovey had the case in
the bag despite weak circumstantial evidence. Would Ray pay for
this crime with his life, live out his days in prison?
Speaker 3 (41:58):
Or miracle of miracle?
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Would he go free.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
From luminary?
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Murder on the Towpath is a production of Film Nation
Entertainment in association with Neon Humm Media. Our executive producers
are me solidad O'Bryan Alyssa Martino, Milan Papelka, and Jonathan Hirsch.
Lead producer is Shara Morris. Associate producers are Natalie Rinn
and Lucy Licht.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
Senior editor is Catherine Saint Louis.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Music and composition by Andrew Eapen, Sound design and mixing
by Scott Sommerville.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Fact checking by Laura Bullard.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Sarah Vacchiano, Rose Arsa, Kate Mishikin,
Tanner Robbins, and Mikayla Celella
Popular Podcasts
Boysober
Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com