July 8, 2025 • 18 mins
There's no question about it. She was friends with the President, ex-wife to a CIA operative, and she was murdered.
Do you have any comments, or a case you’d like to suggest? You’ll find a comment form and case submission link at LordanArts.com.
Thank you The Daily News, The Post Bulletin, The Standard Star, The Times, People.com, Smithsonian Magazine, All That’s Interesting.com, The Homicide Inc. Podcast, The Facts Verse, Uncovering Hollywood, True Story News Network and Reel Talk with the Hollywood Kid YouTube Channels, and Wikipedia for information contributing to today’s story.
Written by Frederick Crook - check out our other collaboration WRAITHWORKS - Wraithworks at Amazon https://www.amzn.com/dp/B07HXNCW4L (audiobook narrated by John Lordan) Also avaible on iTunes: https://apple.co/2OFXb8L
This is not intended to act as a means of proving or disproving anything related to the investigation or potential charges associated to the investigation. It is a conversation about the current known facts and theories being discussed. Please do not contact people you are suspicious of or attempt to harass, threaten or intimidate them in any way. Do not release information that can be used to do the same, or join in attacks being conducted by others.
Everyone directly or indirectly referred to is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
LordanArts 2025
Do you have any comments, or a case you’d like to suggest? You’ll find a comment form and case submission link at LordanArts.com.
Thank you The Daily News, The Post Bulletin, The Standard Star, The Times, People.com, Smithsonian Magazine, All That’s Interesting.com, The Homicide Inc. Podcast, The Facts Verse, Uncovering Hollywood, True Story News Network and Reel Talk with the Hollywood Kid YouTube Channels, and Wikipedia for information contributing to today’s story.
Written by Frederick Crook - check out our other collaboration WRAITHWORKS - Wraithworks at Amazon https://www.amzn.com/dp/B07HXNCW4L (audiobook narrated by John Lordan) Also avaible on iTunes: https://apple.co/2OFXb8L
This is not intended to act as a means of proving or disproving anything related to the investigation or potential charges associated to the investigation. It is a conversation about the current known facts and theories being discussed. Please do not contact people you are suspicious of or attempt to harass, threaten or intimidate them in any way. Do not release information that can be used to do the same, or join in attacks being conducted by others.
Everyone directly or indirectly referred to is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
LordanArts 2025
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
In the aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Accounts of his adultery with several women eventually came to light.
While one such tryst in particular was hinted at in
the press, namely the actress Marilyn Monroe, there were others
that would become public knowledge in the coming years. Of course,
Monroe's death on August fourth, nineteen sixty two was surrounded
(00:42):
in mystery, with an often debated investigation that many thought
was conducted too hastily, with her death being ruled an
accidental overdose despite several nagging questions. A friend of Monroe's
protested those findings and investigated the death herself. This woman
was Dorothy Kilgollin, columnist and television personality at the time,
(01:02):
who we've discussed on a previous episode. It's been said
that Dorothy claimed to have discovered Monroe's true cause of
death and that she was going to write an article
about it. Unfortunately, she never saw her work published, and
her notes were supposedly destroyed. Kilgoalan was found dead in
her New York apartment under suspicious circumstances, much like her
friend Marilyn. But there was another seriously mysterious death of
(01:25):
a woman, and again it was someone close to one
of the most popular presidents the US has ever had.
I'm John Lorden, and today we're discussing the death of
Mary Pinchot Meyer. Born in nineteen twenty, Mary Pinchot was
the niece of the former head of the US Forest
Service who later became the governor of Pennsylvania, Gifford Pinchot.
(01:48):
She was the daughter of Amos and Ruth Pinchot, two
influential members of the Progressive Party, an offshoot of the
Republican Party which failed in the year of Mary's birth.
Her introduction to John F. Kennedy occurred when she was
only fifteen years old and attending the Choate School, a
prestigious college prep school. Kennedy, who had graduated from the
school three years prior, attended a dance there. He saw
(02:11):
the beautiful, tall, blonde teenager from across the dance floor. There,
Mary was dancing with her date when the future President
of the United States came along and cut in. Mary
was not exactly swept off her feet, but a friendship
between the two of them began. Kennedy was said to
have been attracted to Mary right from the start, but
Mary would stay focused on school and her passion for art.
(02:34):
At the end of World War II, Mary did meet
and marry a man by the name of Cord Meyer,
a World War Two veteran from a well connected East
Coast family. After losing an eye in the war and
being awarded a Bronze Star, Meyer would become a peace activist,
but that ideal would change dramatically in nineteen fifty one
when he joined the Central Intelligence Agency and worked for
(02:56):
them in many high ranking roles. While the lived in McLean, Virginia,
They had three sons, and Mary would continue her art education,
attending such colleges as Vasser, the Art Students League of
New York, and the American University in Washington, d c.
Her chosen form of painting style was abstract, focusing on
(03:16):
blending colors to form an object, rather than filling in
details with multiple colors, which would add realism. Her work
would be seen in small galleries and local shows, never
gaining major commercial or critical success during her lifetime. However,
the Pinchot family was well known among the elite members
of American society, and Mary rode this notoriety to promote
(03:39):
her art and herself. She would become a socialite, accessible
and highly visible to people of influence. It would be
in nineteen fifty four when she would reconnect with John Kennedy.
He was now married to Jackie, and the Kennedys became
neighbours to Cord and Mary Meyer. The two women quickly
became friends during these four years, and MacLean the Meyers
(04:01):
entertained many fellow CIA operatives in the home, giving Mary
many opportunities to learn about the agency's activities throughout the world.
These activities, which included the manipulation of foreign governments and
covert operations and using propaganda to influence the media, flew
in the face of Mary's propensities for world peace. Soon
(04:22):
her relationship to her CIA operative husband was suffering, But
that wouldn't be the worst of it. The couple faced
a horrifying tragedy in nineteen fifty six, Their nine year
old son, Michael, was struck by a car and killed.
The grief became another considerable catalyst for arguments and angst
in the Meyer marriage, and finally, in nineteen fifty eight,
(04:45):
Mary filed for divorce from court. She and their two
sons would move to Georgetown, Washington, d c. And were
living with her sister Antoinette or Tony Pinchot. She was
married to Ben Bradley, the chief editor of the Washington Post.
According to officially unconfirmed reports, however, backed by some credible
testimony and plenty of circumstantial evidence, it seems that during
(05:09):
John F. Kennedy's election, an affair between himself and Mary began.
It said that she appealed to the man in more
than just a physical manner. The two shared a strong
intellectual connection as well. Mary Pinchot Meyer was deeply interested
in world peace, and apparently Kennedy himself was keen to
follow her influence. This could have even resulted in the
(05:31):
president sharing in Meyer's experimentations. It said that she would
take LSD and other hallucinogens. She believed that these drugs
were the keys to mind expansion, and that belief was
actually gaining some traction during this time, even within the
academic community. It was thought that as long as these
drugs were taken responsibly, one could change their worldview and
(05:54):
see a bigger, more universal point of view. The famous
Harvard psychologist who was a proponent of the use of
LSD Timothy Leary once stated that Mary Pinchot Meyer had
sought him out to be educated on the proper use
of these substances. This relationship was built on many interesting conversations,
but I don't know that Timothy Leary could have ever
(06:16):
expected what he heard from Mary after the assassination of
a US president. Mary and the President's relationship is said
(06:37):
to have lasted until his assassination in November of nineteen
sixty three. After the assassination of the President, Timothy Leary
stated that Mary spoke to him at length in her grief.
She told him that Kennedy had been growing beyond the
control of the other branches of government as well as
other political players, and it was for those reasons that
he was killed. Just who it was that pulled that
(06:59):
trigger was unknown to her, but she was certain that
her former husband's place of employment, the CIA, had something
to do with it. Was she being honest about not
knowing who pulled the trigger or was her vagueness intentional
to camouflage the truth. Mary's sister, Tony, has stated that
Mary didn't seem surprised at the news of Kennedy's shooting,
(07:20):
and that she had actually kept her distance from him.
In the weeks prior when the Warren commissioned report on
the assassination was released, Mary became highly upset. In her view,
it was not a truthful report and that deeply unnerved her.
It said that Mary even went to her former husband,
Court Meyer, as well as the CIA's chief of counterintelligence,
(07:41):
Jim Angleton, and told them that if they did not
publicly dispute the report and come out with the true story,
that she would spill everything she knew to the newspapers.
On Monday, October twelfth, nineteen sixty four, Mary headed out
on her usual walk along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal,
a route that she took almost every day. It was
(08:02):
something she had done with her friend Jackie Kennedy countless
times before. However, this walk would turn out very differently.
As Mary strode along the sidewalk towards the path entrance,
a black car came up alongside her and stopped. Some
sources claimed that inside that car were two people that
Mary knew well, Polly Wisner and her husband. One can
(08:23):
only speculate on the exact words, but Polly indicated that
she and her husband, who was also a CIA operative,
were on the way to London for an assignment. The
chat ended and Mary continued on her way, walking along
the path beyond the canal and on the street, two
men were attending to a stalled vehicle. They heard a
woman's scream and two loud pops. Looking down towards the
(08:47):
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal path, they witnessed a woman on
the ground with a man standing over her. That man
had just shot Mary once in the head and once
in the back, killing her and leaving her body lying
just off the path. One of the witnesses, a man
named Henry Wiggins, jumped in his tow truck and drove
to a phone to report the murder. When he was interviewed,
(09:08):
Wiggins and the man with him, William Branch, said that
they heard the shots and saw a black man standing
over the woman's body before he ran off. When police
arrived on scene, they came upon a man who revealed
his identity as Lance Marrow, a reporter. Homicide detectives recognized
Marrow and told him to stay back from the crime scene.
In an article Marrow wrote about the incident for the
(09:30):
Smithsonian magazine, he stated she lay on her side as
if sleeping. She was dressed in a light blue, fluffy
angora sweater, petal pushers and sneakers. I saw a neat
and almost bloodless bullet hole in her head. She looked
entirely peaceful, vaguely patrician. Initially, police could not identify the victim.
(09:52):
No purse was found near the body, and no identification
was on her person. Detectives assumed that it had been stolen.
She had been show at such close range that there
were powder burns on her clothes and skin. They searched
the canal path and the waters of the Potomac, but
nothing was found, no purse, no gun. The woman was
wearing gloves, and police found the name Meyer had been
(10:14):
written on a tag inside. Mary's brother in law, Ben Bradley,
would later be responsible for identifying her body. Making the
events un unfolded that day even more surreal was a
man named William Mitchell. He said to have been jogging
through the park at the time of the shooting and
may have seen the man that did it, but his
back story about being a twenty three year old lieutenant
(10:36):
on active duty with the U. S. Army who was
stationed at the Pentagon was impossible to verify. Years later,
when writer Peter Janney was working on his book Mary's Mosaic,
The CIA Conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer,
and their vision for world peace, he reported that the
name William Mitchell was actually an alias and the backstory
(10:57):
fake to cover up what was actually a sad CIA agent. However,
police at the time didn't know this. They only had
his description of a black man who appeared to be
following Mary. Police discovered a man by the name of
Ray Crump Junior near the scene. The man was wet
and told police that he was fishing, but his rod
fell in the water. His jacket and hat were recovered
(11:19):
from the water, but an intensive search still failed to
locate any gun. They interrogated the twenty five year old Crump,
a father of five and a repeat offender of petty
larceny and other small time offenses, but he insisted that
he had nothing to do with the killing. The case
against the men went all the way to trial, where
witnesses claimed that the shooter was actually far bigger and
(11:41):
taller than Crump, who was thin and stood all of
five foot two inches tall. Crump was represented by a
civil rights attorney Dovey Johnson Rowntree, who insisted that her
client had been charged as a matter of convenience and
drove home the point that there was a complete lack
of evidence. Unfortunately, because law enforcement was so satisfied that
(12:01):
Crump was their man, no other possibilities were really considered.
William Mitchell would even testify at Crump's trial, but with
no solid evidence, conflicting witness accounts, and no murder weapon,
Crump was eventually acquitted. The search for Mary Pinchot Meyer's
killer was back at square one, with many believing that
it was just never truly investigated to start with. However,
(12:26):
her death has been scrutinized by multiple journalists since, notably
in nineteen seventy six, when former executive for The Washington
Post James Truett let the story of Mary Meyer's diary break.
He stated that her studio was ransacked after her murder
and that a diary belonging to Mary was taken. He
went on to say that his then wife, Anne, a sculptor,
(12:47):
was a close friend of Mary's, and that she spoke
to Ben Bradley on the day of Mary's death and
told him about the book's existence and advised Bradley that
he should find it before it fell into the wrong hands.
Maryett seems had confided in her friend Anne, telling her
about the affair with JFK, and she had written all
about the experimentation in drugs, the policies that the two
(13:11):
of them discussed, and possibly other secrets that may be
a threat to national security in that diary. Another theory
states that the CIA's Jim Angleton himself broke into Mary's
studio on the night following her murder, a room adjacent
to Bradley's garage, and stole the diary. The CIA break
in story is refuted by Ben Bradley, who claimed that
(13:33):
it was his wife Tony who surrendered her sister's diary
to Angleton of the CIA, and that the book was
destroyed from there. Stories arose from multiple sources, many contradicting
one another. Some say it was JFK who invited Mary
into the White House and introduced marijuana to her. Most
have it the other way around. Some presidential aides, notably
(13:56):
won by the name of Timothy Reardon Junior, have denied
that any one visited JFK in the White House late
at night. And certainly not a woman that was not
the president's wife. Author Leo de Moore wrote Senatorial Privilege,
a book focused on Senator Ted Kennedy's scandal. This incident
occurred on the night of July eighteenth, nineteen sixty nine,
(14:18):
and became a national news story when it was reported
that the senator drove off a bridge and crashed into
the water, resulting in the death of married Joe Kopecney.
The problem was that Ted was married at the time,
and he didn't report the incident for some ten hours
after the fact. The Kennedy family was so influential that
the senator received a slap on the wrist and was
(14:40):
even allowed to continue being a senator well. Reportedly, Leo
de Moore was writing an investigative tale about Mary's murder
as well when he was discovered dead in nineteen ninety five.
His death ruled a suicide. Demour's son has come forward
to say that his father told him that if anything
happened to him, that he was to re trieve a
(15:00):
box from under his father's bed. After Leo Demor's passing,
the box disappeared, and with it the manuscript he was
working on in June of twenty sixteen, the appearance of
what may be a love letter from JFK to Mary
surfaced and sold at auction for eighty eight thousand, seven
hundred and ninety dollars. It's believed the letter was written
(15:23):
one month before his assassination, and it seemed to prove
the affair between them. But could it have been a
simple invitation for a weekend getaway. It seems unlikely. Quote,
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
(15:47):
that you may hate it. On the other hand, you
may not, and I will love it. You say that
it's good for me not to get what I want.
After all these years, you should give me a more
loving answer than that. Why don't you just say yes?
The letter, written on white House letterhead, was never mailed,
(16:07):
and JFK's secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, kept it in her possession
for all those years. So just what exactly was in
Mary pinchel Meyer's diary? How much did she know about
her ex husband's activities within the CIA? Were their top
secret details about John F. Kennedy's political activities or even
details about his assassination. In the years following his trial
(16:31):
for Meyer's murder, Ray Crump Junior led a life of crime.
Could it be that he was wrongfully acquitted and that
he was indeed the shooter? Was it simply a robbery
gone wrong? Or is Mary's murder, like the suspicious deaths
of Dorothy Cogollan and Marilyn Monroe, are thought to be
yet another sign of loose ends being taken care of.
(16:53):
Unless the missing weapon turns up or someone decides to
break decades of silence, the truth behind Mary henschel Meyer's
death and what she may have known, will remain seriously mysterious.
Do you have any comments or a case you'd like
to suggest? You'll find a comment form and case submission
link at Lordenarts dot com. Thank You, The Daily News,
(17:16):
The Post Bulletin, The Standard Star, The Times, People dot com,
Smithsonian Magazine, All That's Interesting dot com, The Homicide Inc. Podcast,
The Facts Verse, Uncovering Hollywood True Story News Network, and
Real Talk with the Hollywood Kid YouTube channels and Wikipedia
for information contributing to today's story. This episode was written
(17:37):
by Frederick Crook. Is edited by John Lorden and produced
by Lorden Arts. If you appreciated today's episode, please check
out the novel Wraithworks, another collaboration between Frederick Crook and myself.
It's available in hard copy or audiobook formats. You can
find more information about Wraithworks at Lordenarts dot com or
by searching for it on Amazon. Thank you to our
(17:58):
audience here for the live recording session host did on
the YouTube channel lord and Arts Studio two special thanks
to seriously mysterious financial supporters Robert Martin, Candy Bishop and Fanasas.
Most of all, thank you for listening. I'm John Lorden.
Please join me again next week for another story I
know you'll find seriously mysterious
In the aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Accounts of his adultery with several women eventually came to light.
While one such tryst in particular was hinted at in
the press, namely the actress Marilyn Monroe, there were others
that would become public knowledge in the coming years. Of course,
Monroe's death on August fourth, nineteen sixty two was surrounded
(00:42):
in mystery, with an often debated investigation that many thought
was conducted too hastily, with her death being ruled an
accidental overdose despite several nagging questions. A friend of Monroe's
protested those findings and investigated the death herself. This woman
was Dorothy Kilgollin, columnist and television personality at the time,
(01:02):
who we've discussed on a previous episode. It's been said
that Dorothy claimed to have discovered Monroe's true cause of
death and that she was going to write an article
about it. Unfortunately, she never saw her work published, and
her notes were supposedly destroyed. Kilgoalan was found dead in
her New York apartment under suspicious circumstances, much like her
friend Marilyn. But there was another seriously mysterious death of
(01:25):
a woman, and again it was someone close to one
of the most popular presidents the US has ever had.
I'm John Lorden, and today we're discussing the death of
Mary Pinchot Meyer. Born in nineteen twenty, Mary Pinchot was
the niece of the former head of the US Forest
Service who later became the governor of Pennsylvania, Gifford Pinchot.
(01:48):
She was the daughter of Amos and Ruth Pinchot, two
influential members of the Progressive Party, an offshoot of the
Republican Party which failed in the year of Mary's birth.
Her introduction to John F. Kennedy occurred when she was
only fifteen years old and attending the Choate School, a
prestigious college prep school. Kennedy, who had graduated from the
school three years prior, attended a dance there. He saw
(02:11):
the beautiful, tall, blonde teenager from across the dance floor. There,
Mary was dancing with her date when the future President
of the United States came along and cut in. Mary
was not exactly swept off her feet, but a friendship
between the two of them began. Kennedy was said to
have been attracted to Mary right from the start, but
Mary would stay focused on school and her passion for art.
(02:34):
At the end of World War II, Mary did meet
and marry a man by the name of Cord Meyer,
a World War Two veteran from a well connected East
Coast family. After losing an eye in the war and
being awarded a Bronze Star, Meyer would become a peace activist,
but that ideal would change dramatically in nineteen fifty one
when he joined the Central Intelligence Agency and worked for
(02:56):
them in many high ranking roles. While the lived in McLean, Virginia,
They had three sons, and Mary would continue her art education,
attending such colleges as Vasser, the Art Students League of
New York, and the American University in Washington, d c.
Her chosen form of painting style was abstract, focusing on
(03:16):
blending colors to form an object, rather than filling in
details with multiple colors, which would add realism. Her work
would be seen in small galleries and local shows, never
gaining major commercial or critical success during her lifetime. However,
the Pinchot family was well known among the elite members
of American society, and Mary rode this notoriety to promote
(03:39):
her art and herself. She would become a socialite, accessible
and highly visible to people of influence. It would be
in nineteen fifty four when she would reconnect with John Kennedy.
He was now married to Jackie, and the Kennedys became
neighbours to Cord and Mary Meyer. The two women quickly
became friends during these four years, and MacLean the Meyers
(04:01):
entertained many fellow CIA operatives in the home, giving Mary
many opportunities to learn about the agency's activities throughout the world.
These activities, which included the manipulation of foreign governments and
covert operations and using propaganda to influence the media, flew
in the face of Mary's propensities for world peace. Soon
(04:22):
her relationship to her CIA operative husband was suffering, But
that wouldn't be the worst of it. The couple faced
a horrifying tragedy in nineteen fifty six, Their nine year
old son, Michael, was struck by a car and killed.
The grief became another considerable catalyst for arguments and angst
in the Meyer marriage, and finally, in nineteen fifty eight,
(04:45):
Mary filed for divorce from court. She and their two
sons would move to Georgetown, Washington, d c. And were
living with her sister Antoinette or Tony Pinchot. She was
married to Ben Bradley, the chief editor of the Washington Post.
According to officially unconfirmed reports, however, backed by some credible
testimony and plenty of circumstantial evidence, it seems that during
(05:09):
John F. Kennedy's election, an affair between himself and Mary began.
It said that she appealed to the man in more
than just a physical manner. The two shared a strong
intellectual connection as well. Mary Pinchot Meyer was deeply interested
in world peace, and apparently Kennedy himself was keen to
follow her influence. This could have even resulted in the
(05:31):
president sharing in Meyer's experimentations. It said that she would
take LSD and other hallucinogens. She believed that these drugs
were the keys to mind expansion, and that belief was
actually gaining some traction during this time, even within the
academic community. It was thought that as long as these
drugs were taken responsibly, one could change their worldview and
(05:54):
see a bigger, more universal point of view. The famous
Harvard psychologist who was a proponent of the use of
LSD Timothy Leary once stated that Mary Pinchot Meyer had
sought him out to be educated on the proper use
of these substances. This relationship was built on many interesting conversations,
but I don't know that Timothy Leary could have ever
(06:16):
expected what he heard from Mary after the assassination of
a US president. Mary and the President's relationship is said
(06:37):
to have lasted until his assassination in November of nineteen
sixty three. After the assassination of the President, Timothy Leary
stated that Mary spoke to him at length in her grief.
She told him that Kennedy had been growing beyond the
control of the other branches of government as well as
other political players, and it was for those reasons that
he was killed. Just who it was that pulled that
(06:59):
trigger was unknown to her, but she was certain that
her former husband's place of employment, the CIA, had something
to do with it. Was she being honest about not
knowing who pulled the trigger or was her vagueness intentional
to camouflage the truth. Mary's sister, Tony, has stated that
Mary didn't seem surprised at the news of Kennedy's shooting,
(07:20):
and that she had actually kept her distance from him.
In the weeks prior when the Warren commissioned report on
the assassination was released, Mary became highly upset. In her view,
it was not a truthful report and that deeply unnerved her.
It said that Mary even went to her former husband,
Court Meyer, as well as the CIA's chief of counterintelligence,
(07:41):
Jim Angleton, and told them that if they did not
publicly dispute the report and come out with the true story,
that she would spill everything she knew to the newspapers.
On Monday, October twelfth, nineteen sixty four, Mary headed out
on her usual walk along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal,
a route that she took almost every day. It was
(08:02):
something she had done with her friend Jackie Kennedy countless
times before. However, this walk would turn out very differently.
As Mary strode along the sidewalk towards the path entrance,
a black car came up alongside her and stopped. Some
sources claimed that inside that car were two people that
Mary knew well, Polly Wisner and her husband. One can
(08:23):
only speculate on the exact words, but Polly indicated that
she and her husband, who was also a CIA operative,
were on the way to London for an assignment. The
chat ended and Mary continued on her way, walking along
the path beyond the canal and on the street, two
men were attending to a stalled vehicle. They heard a
woman's scream and two loud pops. Looking down towards the
(08:47):
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal path, they witnessed a woman on
the ground with a man standing over her. That man
had just shot Mary once in the head and once
in the back, killing her and leaving her body lying
just off the path. One of the witnesses, a man
named Henry Wiggins, jumped in his tow truck and drove
to a phone to report the murder. When he was interviewed,
(09:08):
Wiggins and the man with him, William Branch, said that
they heard the shots and saw a black man standing
over the woman's body before he ran off. When police
arrived on scene, they came upon a man who revealed
his identity as Lance Marrow, a reporter. Homicide detectives recognized
Marrow and told him to stay back from the crime scene.
In an article Marrow wrote about the incident for the
(09:30):
Smithsonian magazine, he stated she lay on her side as
if sleeping. She was dressed in a light blue, fluffy
angora sweater, petal pushers and sneakers. I saw a neat
and almost bloodless bullet hole in her head. She looked
entirely peaceful, vaguely patrician. Initially, police could not identify the victim.
(09:52):
No purse was found near the body, and no identification
was on her person. Detectives assumed that it had been stolen.
She had been show at such close range that there
were powder burns on her clothes and skin. They searched
the canal path and the waters of the Potomac, but
nothing was found, no purse, no gun. The woman was
wearing gloves, and police found the name Meyer had been
(10:14):
written on a tag inside. Mary's brother in law, Ben Bradley,
would later be responsible for identifying her body. Making the
events un unfolded that day even more surreal was a
man named William Mitchell. He said to have been jogging
through the park at the time of the shooting and
may have seen the man that did it, but his
back story about being a twenty three year old lieutenant
(10:36):
on active duty with the U. S. Army who was
stationed at the Pentagon was impossible to verify. Years later,
when writer Peter Janney was working on his book Mary's Mosaic,
The CIA Conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer,
and their vision for world peace, he reported that the
name William Mitchell was actually an alias and the backstory
(10:57):
fake to cover up what was actually a sad CIA agent. However,
police at the time didn't know this. They only had
his description of a black man who appeared to be
following Mary. Police discovered a man by the name of
Ray Crump Junior near the scene. The man was wet
and told police that he was fishing, but his rod
fell in the water. His jacket and hat were recovered
(11:19):
from the water, but an intensive search still failed to
locate any gun. They interrogated the twenty five year old Crump,
a father of five and a repeat offender of petty
larceny and other small time offenses, but he insisted that
he had nothing to do with the killing. The case
against the men went all the way to trial, where
witnesses claimed that the shooter was actually far bigger and
(11:41):
taller than Crump, who was thin and stood all of
five foot two inches tall. Crump was represented by a
civil rights attorney Dovey Johnson Rowntree, who insisted that her
client had been charged as a matter of convenience and
drove home the point that there was a complete lack
of evidence. Unfortunately, because law enforcement was so satisfied that
(12:01):
Crump was their man, no other possibilities were really considered.
William Mitchell would even testify at Crump's trial, but with
no solid evidence, conflicting witness accounts, and no murder weapon,
Crump was eventually acquitted. The search for Mary Pinchot Meyer's
killer was back at square one, with many believing that
it was just never truly investigated to start with. However,
(12:26):
her death has been scrutinized by multiple journalists since, notably
in nineteen seventy six, when former executive for The Washington
Post James Truett let the story of Mary Meyer's diary break.
He stated that her studio was ransacked after her murder
and that a diary belonging to Mary was taken. He
went on to say that his then wife, Anne, a sculptor,
(12:47):
was a close friend of Mary's, and that she spoke
to Ben Bradley on the day of Mary's death and
told him about the book's existence and advised Bradley that
he should find it before it fell into the wrong hands.
Maryett seems had confided in her friend Anne, telling her
about the affair with JFK, and she had written all
about the experimentation in drugs, the policies that the two
(13:11):
of them discussed, and possibly other secrets that may be
a threat to national security in that diary. Another theory
states that the CIA's Jim Angleton himself broke into Mary's
studio on the night following her murder, a room adjacent
to Bradley's garage, and stole the diary. The CIA break
in story is refuted by Ben Bradley, who claimed that
(13:33):
it was his wife Tony who surrendered her sister's diary
to Angleton of the CIA, and that the book was
destroyed from there. Stories arose from multiple sources, many contradicting
one another. Some say it was JFK who invited Mary
into the White House and introduced marijuana to her. Most
have it the other way around. Some presidential aides, notably
(13:56):
won by the name of Timothy Reardon Junior, have denied
that any one visited JFK in the White House late
at night. And certainly not a woman that was not
the president's wife. Author Leo de Moore wrote Senatorial Privilege,
a book focused on Senator Ted Kennedy's scandal. This incident
occurred on the night of July eighteenth, nineteen sixty nine,
(14:18):
and became a national news story when it was reported
that the senator drove off a bridge and crashed into
the water, resulting in the death of married Joe Kopecney.
The problem was that Ted was married at the time,
and he didn't report the incident for some ten hours
after the fact. The Kennedy family was so influential that
the senator received a slap on the wrist and was
(14:40):
even allowed to continue being a senator well. Reportedly, Leo
de Moore was writing an investigative tale about Mary's murder
as well when he was discovered dead in nineteen ninety five.
His death ruled a suicide. Demour's son has come forward
to say that his father told him that if anything
happened to him, that he was to re trieve a
(15:00):
box from under his father's bed. After Leo Demor's passing,
the box disappeared, and with it the manuscript he was
working on in June of twenty sixteen, the appearance of
what may be a love letter from JFK to Mary
surfaced and sold at auction for eighty eight thousand, seven
hundred and ninety dollars. It's believed the letter was written
(15:23):
one month before his assassination, and it seemed to prove
the affair between them. But could it have been a
simple invitation for a weekend getaway. It seems unlikely. Quote,
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
(15:47):
that you may hate it. On the other hand, you
may not, and I will love it. You say that
it's good for me not to get what I want.
After all these years, you should give me a more
loving answer than that. Why don't you just say yes?
The letter, written on white House letterhead, was never mailed,
(16:07):
and JFK's secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, kept it in her possession
for all those years. So just what exactly was in
Mary pinchel Meyer's diary? How much did she know about
her ex husband's activities within the CIA? Were their top
secret details about John F. Kennedy's political activities or even
details about his assassination. In the years following his trial
(16:31):
for Meyer's murder, Ray Crump Junior led a life of crime.
Could it be that he was wrongfully acquitted and that
he was indeed the shooter? Was it simply a robbery
gone wrong? Or is Mary's murder, like the suspicious deaths
of Dorothy Cogollan and Marilyn Monroe, are thought to be
yet another sign of loose ends being taken care of.
(16:53):
Unless the missing weapon turns up or someone decides to
break decades of silence, the truth behind Mary henschel Meyer's
death and what she may have known, will remain seriously mysterious.
Do you have any comments or a case you'd like
to suggest? You'll find a comment form and case submission
link at Lordenarts dot com. Thank You, The Daily News,
(17:16):
The Post Bulletin, The Standard Star, The Times, People dot com,
Smithsonian Magazine, All That's Interesting dot com, The Homicide Inc. Podcast,
The Facts Verse, Uncovering Hollywood True Story News Network, and
Real Talk with the Hollywood Kid YouTube channels and Wikipedia
for information contributing to today's story. This episode was written
(17:37):
by Frederick Crook. Is edited by John Lorden and produced
by Lorden Arts. If you appreciated today's episode, please check
out the novel Wraithworks, another collaboration between Frederick Crook and myself.
It's available in hard copy or audiobook formats. You can
find more information about Wraithworks at Lordenarts dot com or
by searching for it on Amazon. Thank you to our
(17:58):
audience here for the live recording session host did on
the YouTube channel lord and Arts Studio two special thanks
to seriously mysterious financial supporters Robert Martin, Candy Bishop and Fanasas.
Most of all, thank you for listening. I'm John Lorden.
Please join me again next week for another story I
know you'll find seriously mysterious
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