MURDER WATCH: The unsolved murder of JFK's mistress Mary Pinchot Meyer
MURDER WATCH is a weekly special feature that focuses on unsolved crimes that have rocked the nation, and in many cases, the world. We look at the crime itself, the investigation, the suspects, and of course the current status of the case. Readers can reach out to our writer if they have know of unsolved cases they would like more information on.
WASHINGTON, DC: Mary Pinchot Meyer, a socialite, and painter from Washington, DC, was shot and killed in broad daylight in October 1964 while on a stroll in Georgetown. The murder still remains unsolved to this day, and as a result, many people are still fascinated by it. Several memoirs, books, and a TV show were released on the mysterious death of JFK's alleged mistress.
Meyer was 43 when she was brutally murdered, and some conspiracy theorists have suggested that the CIA was involved in her murder as she was very close to then-American president John F Kennedy. Let us look at this case to know who Mary Pinchot Meyer was and how she was killed. There are several conspiracy theories about her death. Read on to find out more about them and the current status of the case.
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Who was Mary Pinchot Meyer?
According to New York Times, Mary Pinchot was born in 1920 to rich parents Amos and Ruth Pinchot. Her father was a well-known lawyer and her mother was a journalist. Meyer’s uncle Gifford Pinchot was also the two-time governor of Pennsylvania. Mary received her education at the esteemed Brearley School in Manhattan, continued her education at Vassar, and then married Cord Meyer, a senior CIA official, whom she divorced in 1958.
Meyer relocated to Georgetown with her two sons following her divorce and established herself as an artist and spent the majority of her time working in her studio. At the time of her death, Mary had two sons, Quentin and Mark.
How did Mary Pinchot Meyer meet JFK?
In 1937, Mary Pinchot was at a school dance with her date when John Kennedy, who was very young at that time, kept interrupting them. It was hard for people to not know who JFK was since his father was multimillionaire businessman and Hollywood producer Joseph P Kennedy, who was even appointed the US Ambassador to the UK the following year. However, Mary was upset by the young man's behavior and ostensibly lost touch with him for several years.
The Kennedys moved in next door to the Meyers in 1954, and JFK's wife Jacqeuline Kennedy reportedly became one of her best friends and often went for walks together, sometimes on the same path where Meyer was eventually assassinated. Following Mary’s divorce from Cord Meyer, she started dating JFK in secret. Whenever Jackie left town, she would go see JFK at the White House.
The then-president requested Meyer to visit him in Boston or on the Cape in a letter he sent to her in October 1963, one month before he was killed. It read, "Why don't you just say yes." The never-sent letter, which was kept by JFK's personal secretary Evelyn Lincoln, was auctioned off in 2016 and brought close to $89,000.
How Mary Pinchot Meyer was killed?
Mary went out for her daily stroll along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath at around noon on October 12, 1964, was she was reportedly shot twice and killed. Police arrested one suspect from near the crime scene. A 25-year-old laborer, Raymond Crump Jr was arrested by the police in less than 45 minutes after he was discovered nearby with his clothes wet.
He was charged by the Metropolitan police with the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer. The motive behind the murder was revealed as robbery or assault by the police. However, Crump was later represented by renowned civil rights lawyer Dovey Johnson Roundtree, and in July 1965, the charges against him were dropped. As a result, the mystery of the tragic killing of Mary Pinchot Meyer has remained a mystery ever since. If Crump Jr didn't kill Mary, who did?
Some conspiracy theories
Due to her marriage to Cord Meyer, a high-ranking CIA official, which ended in divorce in 1958, her death has been linked to the CIA. Mary was extremely critical of the organization after the marriage ended and publicly contested the Warren Commission's finding that JFK was slain by a lone shooter. This report was published just weeks before she passed away. In addition, a CIA operative was discovered attempting to break into her residence and her phone was also being wiretapped.
According to Nina Burleigh, the author of Pinchot Meyer's biography ‘A Very Private Woman’, told PEOPLE magazine, “The theory is that she had to die because she knew too much. Her murder just ten days after the Warren Commission report was released made a lot of people suspicious that she had to be silenced. She lived in a world of secrets … the secrets of spies running complicated international plots, trying to control a dangerous world at the dawn of the nuclear age.”
James Jesus Angleton, a CIA counterintelligence expert, allegedly broke into Mary's house the day she was killed and stole her journal, claims Burleigh. The diary was never found even though so many years have passed since Meyer's death. In his book 'Mary's Mosaic,' the son of a CIA operative asserted that his father was responsible for her demise. According to Peter Janney, his father Frederick Wistar Morris Janney was a CIA agent at the time of Pinchot Meyer's death and was reportedly involved in the plot to murder her. Whatever the truth may be, the case still remains a mystery and is one of the still unsolved cases in American history with only Crump Jr reported as the original suspect in the case so far with no other leads or suspects.