[Unsolved] Mary Pinchot Meyer: The JFK Mistress Murdered in DC
A Woman of Power and Influence
Mary Pinchot Meyer seemed to have it all. She was intelligent, beautiful, and connected to the most powerful circles in Washington, DC.
She was married to Cord Meyer, a high-ranking CIA official. She was a close friend of Jackie Kennedy. And most controversially, she was rumored to have been having an affair with President John F. Kennedy in the months before his assassination in November 1963.
Mary moved in elite social circles. She knew politicians, celebrities, and socialites. She was an artist, a free spirit, and a woman who lived life on her own terms.
But on the morning of October 12, 1964, Mary's story took a tragic and mysterious turn.
The Murder
On October 12, 1964, Mary Pinchot Meyer was walking along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Towpath in Georgetown, Washington, DC—a popular walking path near the Potomac River.
At around 12:20 PM, in broad daylight, Mary was shot execution-style.
She was shot twice—once in the head and once in the back. She died at the scene.
There was no clear motive. No robbery. No sexual assault. Just a brutal, calculated murder.
The Investigation and Trial
Police quickly identified a suspect: Raymond Crump Jr., a Black man who was seen near the towpath around the time of the murder.
Crump was arrested and charged with Mary's murder. But the case against him was weak. There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime. No murder weapon was ever found. Crump maintained his innocence.
At trial, Crump's defense attorney argued that the prosecution had no evidence. The jury agreed, and Raymond Crump was acquitted.
No one else has ever been charged with Mary Pinchot Meyer's murder.
The Conspiracy Theories
Mary's murder has fueled decades of conspiracy theories, largely because of her connections to JFK and the CIA.
Some theories suggest:
•Mary was killed because of her affair with JFK and what she may have known about his assassination
•The CIA was involved because Mary's ex-husband worked for the agency and she may have had access to sensitive information
•Mary kept a diary detailing her relationship with JFK, and it disappeared after her death
Mary's friend and brother-in-law, Ben Bradlee (the famous Washington Post editor), later revealed that Mary had indeed kept a diary. After her death, the diary was turned over to the CIA and was never seen again.
The Truth May Never Be Known
Mary Pinchot Meyer's murder remains officially unsolved.
Was she killed by a random attacker? Or was she murdered because of her connections to JFK and the CIA?
The truth may never be known. But Mary's death remains one of the most mysterious and controversial unsolved murders in American history.
Mary Pinchot Meyer was a woman of intelligence, beauty, and influence. Her life was cut short in broad daylight, and justice has never been served.
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a True Crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi, Mandy. How are you? I am doing well. I felt like I was gonna say more there, but there's just no, and your face was so just like looking up at the clouds, even though you're inside.
Um, it was a really beautiful moment. I'm sorry everyone didn't get to see that. I am facing the window. Actually. I'm okay. I've moved my whole setup. All my recording equipment is now facing the window, so I. Spa looking out the window, listening to the birds chirping and the sun shining, and it looks like a beautiful day outside.
Perfect. Yeah, no, it is a really pretty day. I know we get into the weather a lot, but come on, give it to us. It it, you know, how long will this last? It's one of the only two things we have. Truly. It's. Might be the only thing we have have here. But Mandy, I know you are [00:01:00] so pumped about this episode and I'm pumped because I know you're pumped.
So this will be a great wild story that I wasn't really aware of, but you know, maybe too much about possibly, maybe. Yes, I have definitely heard the story before and I was really excited when I saw that Hailey wanted to research it for real, and not just like Reddit research. This case because is that it is a real story.
So, um, I'm really excited. But if you have listened to the show for a while, you know, if there's one thing I love, it's a good conspiracy theory. I don't necessarily mean that I love to subscribe to the beliefs of all of them. I, I don't think I would call myself a conspiracy theorist. Melissa, I think you can.
You can speak for me here, right? You can, you can, uh, help me out here and say that I'm not a conspiracy theorist. Um, I'm sorry. Birds aren't real. Um, no, I agree. You're not, but you are very entertained by the idea of them. Yes, and I get that. I am, I am very entertained, uh, by conspiracy theories, but yeah, I love hearing [00:02:00] about them and just.
I love going down rabbit holes. Some things really are too weird to be true. This story to me is just one of those cases you're just like, wow, this is really crazy. So this week we're telling the story of Mary Pinho Meyer, and this is a woman who really seemed to have it all. She was intelligent, beautiful, and she had connections to the most powerful circles in Washington dc.
Her life was intertwined with figures like. John F. Kennedy, who has kind of a significant role in the story, and she was also married to a man who was in the CIA. But on the morning of October 12th, 1964, Mary's story took a tragic and mysterious turn while she was walking along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.
Towpath Mary was shot execution style in broad daylight. There was no clear motive for her murder, but of course, her connections to numerous people of status, including politicians, celebrities, and socialites, led to numerous conspiracy theories that suggested her death was not [00:03:00] random. The case remains unsolved to this day, and there are many questions lingering about the life and untimely death of Mary Pincho Meyer.
Mary was born into a life of privilege and her upbringing was really anything but ordinary. She came into the world on October 14th, 1920, and was raised among America's elite in a family known for its power, wealth, and activism. Mary's father Amos was a lawyer and the co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union or ACL U, and her mother Ruth, was a journalist who wrote for magazines such as The Nation and The New Republic.
Mary and her two sisters were raised at Gray Towers, which was the family's estate in Milford, Pennsylvania, and they also spend a lot of time in a luxurious New York City apartment on Park Avenue. She was surrounded by people of influence and would go on to carve out a path of her own. Mary's younger sister Antoinette, who also went by Tony, went on to be a prominent [00:04:00] figure in the DC society and eventually married the editor of the Washington Post, Ben Bradley.
Tony and Ben were in the same influential circles that Mary was. Mary also had a half-sister from her father's first marriage named Rose, who became a socialite and actress who was best known for her beauty and talent. And Mary's Uncle Gifford was known as the father of American conservation. He actually played a key role in shaping the country's approach to natural resource management and conservation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Gifford Pinco was appointed the first head of the US Forest Service in 1905 by President Roosevelt. He promoted the idea that natural resources were good for society, but only if they were used sustainably so they could be replenished. At the time, many people believed that natural resources were limitless, and Gifford was one of the first to say that this was stupidly false.
Under his term, the amount of federally protected land in the US nearly tripled, and [00:05:00] when he left, there were 150 National Forest, totaling 172 million acres. Unfortunately, he was fired from his position by President Taft, but Gifford Pincho went on to serve two terms as the governor of Pennsylvania. As you can see, Mary was exposed to all kinds of things that most of us will never know about or understand.
She grew up in a world of privilege and intellect, and she spent her childhood doing things like riding horses and attending cotillion dances, not to mention engaging with some of the most influential minds of her time. In Mary's biography, she was described as being basically an American princess. Mary was educated in the finest of schools, and eventually she attended the prestigious Vassar College.
She wasn't just another socialite, though. Mary was a woman who was drawn to new ideas, politics, and art. When she was a senior in high school, her sister Rose died by suicide. This [00:06:00] loss devastated their father who spiraled into a depression and began abusing alcohol before his own death in 1944. But despite these losses, Mary remained drawn to the vibrancy of those in power all throughout her life.
She challenged the status quo, and she really dove right in on hot issues like communism, anti-war movements, and progressive causes. At some point, she joined the American Labor Party, which was rumored to be run by Communists at this time, and her involvement in the American Labor Party caught the attention of the FBI and they began monitoring and documenting Mary's political activity.
In 1938, Mary began dating a man named William Atwood, who would later become the US Ambassador to Guinea, and an advisor to the US representative to the United Nations. While she was attending a dance with Atwood, this was the first time that she actually came into contact with JFK, who was [00:07:00] years away from actually becoming the president.
But this was kind of the foreshadowing of their relationship. After graduating from Vassar in 1942, Mary set her sights on New York City where she quickly made a name for herself as a journalist at United Press International, many of her peers were confined to desk jobs, but Mary's natural charisma made her really great for journalism, and she thrived conducting interviews and reporting on her stories firsthand.
Those who worked with her said that she had this boldness about her that just really set her apart. She was somebody who exuded warmth, but yet there was a very mysterious and distant aspect to her as well. During this time, Mary also started taking her own art a lot more seriously. She was taking classes at the Art Students League of New York and making connections with the abstract expressionists working in the city.
Art just became another avenue for Mary to really push boundaries. [00:08:00] In 1944, Mary met Cord Meyer, a decorated marine lieutenant who had sustained severe injuries in combat, including the loss of one of his eyes. Cord was committed to preventing future wars, and he wanted to ensure this through the formation of a unified world government.
Mary actually shared in K's passion for global peace, and so the two of them quickly fell in love. They ended up getting married on April 19th, 1945, and together they worked tirelessly to promote their ideals. Court eventually became the president of the United World Federalist, which advocated for a single global government to maintain world peace.
Meanwhile, Mary supported him in these efforts. While continuing her own work as a journalist and editor, their movement gained traction and drew the support of high profile individuals, including Albert Einstein, who personally raised funds for this cause. Do you ever hear names like Albert Einstein and then also know JFK is [00:09:00] in this timeline?
No. You also know like your parents and grandparents could have been alive during this time and think like, what? Yes. Who is our Albert Einstein? Yeah. When Albert Einstein popped up in the story, I was like. Huh? Hang on. I was like the real Albert Einstein. It tells you how little I know and I reading things like that and being surprised, I'm like, oh yeah, I am an idiot.
I forgot that. Right. So Cord to Mary's lives became even more and more about political activism. In 1945, the couples started their family. They had their first son, Quentin, followed by their second son, Michael, in 1947. Soon after they relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Mary continued to develop her artistic talents at the Cambridge School of Design.
By 1950, Mary and Cord had settled into what seemed like the ideal life. Their third son, mark, was born that year completing their family, but soon things took a dramatic turn. K was approached by Alan D, who at the time was the deputy [00:10:00] director for plans of the CIA. Alan offered court a position with the agency and assured him that the work he was doing would align with his talents and past experience, but he couldn't give any specific details of the job for security reasons.
Melissa, would you take a job if someone was like, I promise that your skills will be useful, but I can't tell you what you'll be doing. No. I love the show Severance. It's on Apple, and that's kind of what it feels like where I'm like, how much money could I take for something like this? And the answer is.
I almost said none. The answer is everything or a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, I'm not the Einstein here. Despite his strong background in world federalism and advocacy for World Peace Court accepted the position with the CIA, and he and Mary relocated with their children to McLean, Virginia, where they became even more embedded in Washington's web of power and secrecy.
Accord's work with the CIA soon made him part of something that actually contradicted the world government ideals [00:11:00] He once fought for. He became a key figure in Operation Mockingbird, which was a convert CIA program designed to manipulate the media. Cord worked under Frank Weisner to shape public perception, sway opinions, and even control major newspapers.
The program was an elaborate effort to extend the CIA's influence over journalists and news outlets to ensure that stories lined up with US intelligence objectives. One author describes it as a grand instrument that was capable of rigging elections and molding public thought. In August of 1953, Joseph McCarthy accused court of being a communist and the FBI refused to give him security clearance.
At this point, Mary was also under suspicion and the FBI had already been looking into her activities as well. They told CORD that she was allegedly a registered member of the American Labor Party of New York in 1944, which was at the time reportedly [00:12:00] under left wing Communist Domination Cord was eventually cleared these allegations and allowed to keep his job.
We have so much more to get into that aren't about people's jobs abilities. And Albert Einstein, after a quick break to hear work from this week's sponsors before the break, we just started to really crack into the story of Mary Pincho Meyer, who was a woman that had connections with some of the most influential people in the United States government at the time.
She and her husband cord just moved to Georgetown. This is now the early 1950s after her husband Cord had joined the CIA and the couple became very prominent figures in society there. They mingled with many others who were connected to the CIA and to US foreign policy during the Cold War era. But the couple's marriage itself began to change because Mary was starting to become more disillusioned with her husband's work.
As we said before, he took this job with the [00:13:00] CIA and pretty much abandoned these ideals that the two of them had really grown in love. Together with Now, the work he was doing for the CIA was really directly in contradiction to everything that she thought they were building together. She was really critical of US militarism and CIA operations.
So her husband's involvement with these things really weighed heavily on her. In the summer of 1954, the Meyers got some very famous new neighbors, John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie. But at this point, of course, it would still be years before JFK would become president. Mary and Jackie became friends and they would take walks together along the tow path that ran parallel to the old Chesapeake and Ohio Barge Canal.
And the Kennedys lived in the neighborhood for nearly seven years until they ended up moving into the White House in 1961. In December of 1956, tragedy struck the Myers when their nine-year-old son [00:14:00] Michael was hit by a car on the curve of highway near their home. Mary heard her oldest son scream and the sound of screeching tires before she realized what happened.
An ambulance arrived, but sadly it was too late. Mary reportedly offered comfort to the driver of the vehicle that hit her child as they were completely hysterical about what had just happened. At first, the loss of their son brought Cord and Mary closer together, but the grief ended up being too much for their struggling marriage to handle.
A year after Michael's death court agreed to move outta the home and to start the separation that was required for a divorce. He moved into an apartment in Georgetown and in 1958 Mary filed for divorce citing extreme cruelty mental in nature, which seriously injured her health, destroyed her happiness, rendered further cohabitation, unendurable, and compelled the parties to separate.
Mary [00:15:00] continued to struggle emotionally in the wake of her son's death, and she started a period of deep introspection and personal transformation while she began searching for her meaning in life again. She focused on her art and began exploring new relationships and new ideas. She and her two surviving sons moved to Georgetown and set up a studio in a garage that was converted for that purpose At her sister Tony's house, she got involved with the Washington Color School, which was known for abstract color field painting.
As part of the movement, Mary shared studio space with some of the other leading artists, including Kenneth Noland, and this is someone that she actually developed a romantic relationship with under his influence. Mary learned new art techniques and her style evolved to include shaped canvases. In late 1963, she held a solo exhibition at the Jefferson Place Gallery in Washington, dc, which received critical acclaim for its luminous use of color.
Sometimes we cover people, [00:16:00] and I think my biography would be so boring, a half a sentence. And even then, edits would need to be made to make me sound better. Right? Like we have to pump this up a little bit somehow. Yeah. Yeah. But in December of 1961, Mary's life took a turn when she found herself entwined in a sexual affair with the most influential person that she knew.
President John F. Kennedy. The affair had been reported as one of the most significant relationships of JFK's life. It went on from 1961 until his assassination in 1963, according to White House logs, Mary signed in to see the president 15 different times between October, 1961 and August of 63, and these were always on occasions when Jackie Kennedy was away.
However, the logs really don't tell the entire story according to JFK's special assistant. The fact that Mary's name was entered in the log so often means that she wasn't hidden [00:17:00] and that she was probably there much more than that. Another White House insider said that Mary was almost a part of the furniture, but this affair was about more than just sex.
Mary was a companion to JFK. He confided in her and he enjoyed her intellect. Mary was said to have encouraged JFK to consider some more progressive policies such as nuclear disarmament and other peace initiatives. Some believe that Mary May have introduced the president to marijuana and possibly LSD as part of her effort to explain her interest in expanding consciousness.
But those who were close to JFK said that his relationship with Mary was quite serious. He was very smitten with her. In October of 1963, he admitted that he was deeply in love with her and envisioned a future with her after he left the White House, and of course his wife Jackie. That month, which was a month before he was assassinated, he wrote Mary a letter, urging her to come visit him in Boston or on the [00:18:00] Cape, the letter read 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 19th. I know it's unwise, irrational, and that you may hate it. On the other hand, you may not, and I'll 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, quote, the letter signed J and it was never sent, but it did go up for auction back in 2016 and it sold for nearly $89,000. Who bought it? I wanna know who bought it. I need to go. I know, but also oddly, I don't think that's as much money as I expected that to go. Yeah, because that's like a very personal Yes.
Letter. Yes. I, not that I think it should have gone for more, but I'm just surprised. When JFK was killed on November 22nd, 1963, Mary was deeply affected and she was convinced that the CIA was involved to the point that she started asking questions around [00:19:00] Washington about what she believed to be a coverup.
Mary believed that Kennedy was killed because he had been moving forward with peace initiatives with the Soviet Union. Which threatened powerful interest within the military, industrial complex, and intelligence community. Mary and those who shared in her mission wanted to use drugs for peace, but she believed that powerful people in Washington wanted to use drugs for nefarious purposes like brainwashing and espionage.
She was very concerned and truly believe that JFK was targeted because they weren't able to control him anymore. On October 12th, 1964, Mary had been painting in her studio when she decided to take her daily walk on the towpath at around noon. Somewhere along the path, Mary was attacked and she screamed for help before being shot in the head, and then once in the shoulder she was killed just two days before her 44th birthday, and almost a year after JFK was assassinated.
An employee from a nearby [00:20:00] gas station, Henry Wiggins heard the commotion coming from the area of the canal, but at first he thought it was just some kids playing or maybe even some drunk people fighting. But then he heard a woman scream, help me, followed by a gunshot. So Henry took off towards the area that the gunshot came from, and that's when he heard a second shot.
When he looked over the retention wall, he saw a man standing over a woman who was lying motionless on the ground. The man looked over at Henry, then stuffed something into his pocket and calmly walked away. Henry went back to the gas station to dial 9 1 1, and the police arrived shortly thereafter. In his statement to police, Henry said The man he saw was a black man with a medium build between five eight and five 10 and weighing about 185 pounds.
He had on a tan jacket, dark slacks, and a golf cap. This description was released and authorities immediately began searching for the [00:21:00] suspect. After about 45 minutes and half a mile of walking, detective John Warner found a black man walking across the railroad tracks that ran parallel to this towpath.
The man was soaking wet and appeared to have a cut on his hand. It was learned that this man was Ray Crump Jr. A 25-year-old day laborer who was married with five kids at home. Ray was a high school dropout and was literally described by his own mother as being the runt of the litter, which is honestly heartbreaking for a mom, yeah, to say about one of her children.
But at some point in life, Ray had suffered a head injury during a robbery, and he was known to have issues with alcohol abuse. He had documented offenses of intoxication and petty theft, and his coworker said that he often seemed like he just wasn't all there. It goes without saying that Ray Crump Jr.
Lived a vastly different life than Mary in a vastly different part of town that was plagued with poverty and [00:22:00] crime. Ray had been working at the Brown construction building site at Southeast Hospital. This was really the best paying job that an unskilled worker, such as Ray could get, but it was strenuous and involved heavy lifting and moving of heavy bags of cement and wheelbarrows.
And for Ray, who was actually just five, three and 130 pounds, this was really tough work. He had told his coworkers, he didn't think he could keep up with the demands of the job. When police first spoke to Ray, his statements were inconsistent and he claimed that he had been fishing when he dropped his pole in the water and had to get in to retrieve it.
Then he said he had been drinking beer and went to sleep and fell in the water. Although Ray didn't fit the description given by Henry Wiggins, Ray was about five to seven inches too short and about 50 pounds lighter. He was still placed under arrest. Detective Bernie Crook was instructed to take Ray to the homicide unit and book him for murder.
Interestingly, just a few months [00:23:00] earlier, the Supreme Court had ruled that suspects had a right to have an attorney present during questioning, but Ray was not informed of his right and the Miranda law that would've required the officer to advise him of his rights would not be decided until two years later.
After he was questioned, Ray was put in a lineup that was viewed by the only eyewitness at the time, which was Henry Wiggins. Henry later said that he was told to go right up to Ray Crump and say, this is the guy that's him, but also said that it wasn't really hard to pick him out. Anyway, Wiggins said that the lineup wasn't that close as far as the other guys looking like Ray.
So he really stood out. At first, police didn't know who the murdered woman was because Mary wasn't carrying a purse or any id. An autopsy showed that she had been shot with a 38 caliber pistol with the first bullet entering the left temple about one and a half inches from her left ear. The wound was surrounded by a dark halo of powder burns, indicating the gum was fired at close range.
The [00:24:00] second bullet entered over her right shoulder blade and traveled downward through her chest cavity. It pierced to her right lung and aorta and was also fired at close range. Both of these gunshots were considered fatal, and the precision left the medical examiner to believe that the killer might have been highly trained in the use of firearms.
It was also determined that Mary had been dragged to a more secluded spot and scuffs on the ground, along with Mary's pants being ripped at the knee, suggested that a struggle had occurred. Mary had not been robbed or sexually assaulted. She was simply executed. Four days later, the FBI Crime Lab delivered its forensic report to the chief of the Metropolitan Police Department.
That report stated there was no forensic evidence at all that would connect Ray Crump Jr. To Mary Meyer or to the murder scene. This meant there was no blood, no hair, semens, saliva, urine, or even fibers from Ray found on Mary and none from Mary found on him. [00:25:00] There was also no evidence that Ray had even fired a gun that day.
Considering the amount of blood that was found at the scene and on Mary's body, it seemed highly unlikely that Ray would've managed to avoid getting even a single drop of blood on his skin or his clothing. Furthermore, Ray was much shorter than Mary and not much heavier, so it would have been difficult for him to drag her across the toe path during an intense struggle.
The police had no real evidence against Ray Crump other than him being nearby the scene of the crime. They visited his home and spoke with his wife who said that he had actually skipped work that morning, and she said that she wasn't sure exactly where he was, but she knew that he did not go out fishing.
All race fishing gear was in the closet. And a neighbor also said they saw him leave his house around eight o'clock that morning, but did not see him carrying any fishing gear, though he did look like he was carrying something else. Neighbor clarified though that she didn't think what he was carrying was a gun and said she had never [00:26:00] seen him with a gun or even known him to have one.
There was a huge effort to locate the murder weapon that involved 40 police officers, members of the US Park Police and eight Navy scuba divers. They probed the river with grappling hooks and dragged the bottom with magnets in an area near the site of Ray's capture, and they swept around the forest and in the woods.
But after two days of intent searching, they still never found any weapon. The gun that was used to kill Mary Meyer has never been found to this day. At some time after 6:00 PM on the evening of the murder, Mary's brother-in-law, Ben Bradley, positively identified her body. And we have so much more to get into after one last break to hear a word from this week's sponsors.
So before the break, we were discussing the FBI's interest in Ray Crump Jr. Trying to link him to Mary Meyer's murder. And despite. There not being any physical evidence. They haven't found the [00:27:00] weapon. The investigation lacked really substantial evidence that was against him, but investigators finally got a break in the case the morning after the murder, when a US Army lieutenant named William Mitchell showed up at police headquarters and said that he saw the news of Mary's murder in the paper that morning, and he believed that he had passed her while running on the Towpath the day before.
He said he was stationed at the Pentagon and ran on the towpath most days during lunchtime. William was able to describe Mary's clothing in great detail and said that she was crossing a narrow wooden footbridge when he stopped to allow her to cross before him. About 200 yards later, William passed a black man wearing clothing, almost identical to the description that Henry Wiggins gave of the man he saw at the murder scene.
Despite having no evidence against Ray Crump Jr. The government seemed eager to get his murder trial underway, and he was indicted on October 19th, just one week after the crime and without a preliminary hearing, and he was arraigned on [00:28:00] October 30th. His trial date was set for January 11th, 1965. The murder of a prominent socialite in a racially charged atmosphere was a huge story in the media, and there was a public outcry for justice to be served swiftly.
David Atchison, who was a family friend of the Myers and the lead of the US Attorney's Office, prioritized this case and assigned an experienced prosecutor to it. The judge also ruled that Mary's life would not be allowed to be paraded in the courtroom. Basically, meaning no jabs about her affair with JFK.
But in his turn of events, Ray's trial was postponed until July of 1965 because his new lawyer, Debbie Johnson Roundtree was able to obtain a postponement to conduct her own investigation. And this attorney wasn't just any attorney. In 1942, Debbie Roundtree became the first black woman and one of the first women period to break racial and gender barriers in the US military.
When she joined the [00:29:00] Women's Army Auxiliary Corps during World War ii, she went on to become one of the first women to be commissioned an army officer. She earned the rank of captain and personally recruited dozens of black women for wartime army service. After the war, Debbie went to Howard Law School and she graduated in 1950.
At that time, there were only 83 black women lawyers in the US compared to over 6,000 white women. After law school. Debbie established a law firm in northwest Washington, DC In 1995, she was co-counsel in a landmark civil rights case that challenged racial segregation in interstate bus travel. The case involved a 22-year-old private in the Women's Army Corps who refused to give her seat up to a white passenger on an interstate bus traveling from New Jersey to North Carolina.
She was arrested for disorderly conduct and she and her family pursued legal action. After three years of legal battles, the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled that segregation on interstate buses violated the [00:30:00] Interstate Commerce Act. This was a significant milestone in dismantling segregation and public transportation, and laid the groundwork for future civil rights actions.
Though this ruling is often overshadowed by later events such as Rosa Parks Defiance and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the first time Dovey Roundtree met Ray Crump Jr. She knew that he was an innocent man. When she started looking into the case, she discovered that the government had no physical evidence against him whatsoever.
There was no murder weapon, no hair, no blood, no fiber, no anything to show that Ray had any contact with Mary or the crime scene, and there was also no evidence that he fired a gun. The police had arrested Ray based only on the fact that he was in the area, and because Henry Wiggins claimed to have seen specifically a black man standing over Mary's body.
When Dovey looked into the police file, she found that the man that had even been described by Henry Wiggins and by William Mitchell was five inches taller than Ray and outweighed him [00:31:00] by 50 pounds. The two witnesses almost certainly described the same person, but that person was not Ray Crump Jr. The trial commenced on July 19th, 1965 at the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington, DC.
Since the crime occurred in the nation's capitol, the trial was held in federal court. The jury was made up of eight black jurors and four white jurors, and seven out of 12 were women. Prosecutors presented a circumstantial case in their attempt to prove that Ray shot Mary Meyer. Their case included 27 witnesses and over 50 exhibits.
The lead prosecutor went so far as to try introducing a large tree branch into court as evidence, and claimed that the location of the bloodstains on this branch would support his reconstruction of Mary's struggle before her death. He argued that Ray attacked Mary with the intent to rape her, and when he [00:32:00] failed, he shot her twice with a pistol.
Henry Wiggins testified that he heard screams and saw a black man standing over Mary. Shortly after the shots were fired. He testified that the man he saw was about five foot eight and weighed about 185 pounds. Lieutenant William Mitchell testified that he saw a man matching Ray's description following Mary shortly before her death.
They also presented evidence that they found rain near the crime scene shortly after the murder, and that he was wet and disheveled and claimed to have been fishing despite having no fishing gear with him. When it was the defense's turn, dovey Roundtree presented three witnesses and one single exhibit to the jury.
First, she emphasized the lack of physical evidence and pointed out how weak the prosecution's case really was. She also challenged the witness descriptions of the alleged attacker. Then Ray himself was presented as Exhibit A. He stood before the jury [00:33:00] and dovey asked them if Ray who was five, three and 130 pounds matched the description of the person described by the two witnesses.
It's actually unclear whether the prosecution was even aware of the size discrepancy between Ray and the alleged suspect. They never even addressed this themselves in the trial or offered any explanation for why Ray was such a different size than the man the witnesses described. On July 30th, 1965, after 11 hours of deliberation, the jury returned with a verdict.
Ray Crump Jr. Was found not guilty of the murder of Mary Meyer. Her murder still remains unsolved to this day, but boy oh boy, are their theories. Yes, there are. There are some people though, who believe that Ray was the actual perpetrator. Journalist, Nina Burley said that Ray lied about what he was doing on the Towpath that day, claiming to have been fishing, but not being able to prove it, and that the evidence against him may have been circumstantial.[00:34:00]
That it was strong. She said that her investigation led her to conclude that Ray was capable of violent behavior. Nina had met Ray's former wife who was apparently in hiding from him, and she described Ray's violent side and showed Nina a scar on her neck from a knife attack. Ray did serve time in prison after his acquittal for repeat arsons and sexual assault.
Another theory is that Mary's death was simply a random act of violence that was unrelated to her political connections or personal life, and that her connections in Washington were just a tragic coincidence. Ensure that. Happens, but how much do we emphasize when that happens? Like this is so rare, right?
That someone just randomly, you know, kills somebody for no reason. It's very, very rare. Very rare. Yeah. A popular theory though is that Mary was killed by the CIA or some other government power. Those who believe this theory say that Mary's connection to the CIA, the FBI and numerous prominent figures in government and politics.
[00:35:00] Cannot be overlooked. Furthermore, supporters of this theory point to another mystery, this one I'm fascinated by, and this is the mystery of Mary's personal diary. So according to Ben Bradley, who again was Mary's brother-in-law, he and his wife Tony, who was Mary's sister, learned about Mary's diary from Anne Truitt, who was a friend of Mary's who actually called them from Japan on the night of the murder, and she urged them to find and secure Mary's diary right away.
So when Bradley and Tony went to Mary's studio to look for the diary, they found James Angleton, the CIA's head of counterintelligence, and a family friend attempting to break in and also was looking for her diary. Wow. When the diary was found, Bradley claimed that he and Tony decided to burn it after reading its contents, which included details about Mary's relationship with Kennedy.
But there are many conflicting accounts about the diary. For example, the New York Times reported in 1974 that before Mary died, she confided in her friends [00:36:00] James Nan Truitt about her affair with Kennedy and also about her diary. Which of course outlined details about some of her evenings with the President.
Mary asked them to, in the event of her death, keep the diary and to show it to her son Quentin, when he turned 21. And so on. The night that Mary was murdered, the Truitt were in Tokyo, and so that's when they contacted James Angleton to go find the diary. So it sounds like they may have just tried to get like anyone over there, anyone to go find the diary and that, I guess they contacted the people that they trusted to get that done.
Uh, yeah. Really interesting. So according to this account from the New York Times, Mary's sister, Tony and her husband Ben, as well as James Angleton and his wife Sicily, along with Mary's husband Cord and her former roommate, Ann Chamberlain, all apparently gathered at Mary's on the Saturday after her death and tore the place apart looking for the diary.
But after searching for hours, they came up empty [00:37:00] handed. Tony later ended up finding the diary in Mary's studio, and it was locked in a steel box filled with hundreds of letters. Naturally, the fact that this diary has vanished has led to even more speculation about Mary's death. Multiple sources claim the diary contained details about the two year affair Mary had with JFK, including their intimate relationship and private discussions.
It also reflected Mary's thoughts about JFK's evolving political views, namely his push for peace initiatives, uh, nuclear disarmament, and his alleged conflict with the CIA. Some believe the diary may have had insight into JFK's assassination as Mary was known to be very open about her suspicions that the CIA was involved in his death.
Supporters of this theory believe that this is why Cord Meyer and James Angleton were so determined to find the diary. So this author Peter Janney, he wrote, Mary's Mosaic also claims that his father, a man named [00:38:00] Wistar Janney. This was a senior CIA official was part of some conspiracy to silence Mary Meyer, and he argues that her murder was orchestrated to prevent her from going public with information about Kennedy's assassination and about government corruption.
Mary's murder, he says, had all the characteristics of a highly professional hit job as well as the framing of an innocent man. The diary may have also had details about Mary's experimentation with LSD and her efforts to introduce consciousness, expanding ideas to powerful figures in Washington, including the president and her.
Wow. Yeah, and basically, you know, her connection with this guy, Timothy Leary, who was doing all this research at the time on psychedelics, kind of adds weight to this theory that Mary was involved in these types of things. So even though Tony and James claim to have destroyed the diary, there are people who believe that there are still portions of it out there, or copies of it out there [00:39:00] somewhere.
Neither the prosecution nor the defense in Ray Crump's trial had any idea about the diary until long after the trial was over. But once it came to light that this diary had once existed, it was realized that Ben Bradley actually lied on the stand because he was asked specifically what articles of Mary's property he had found, and Bradley never mentioned finding this diary.
The prosecutor later said that he had been totally unaware of Mary's connections, and if he even knew about the diary, it would've changed everything. When Dovey Roundtree learned about this diary years later, she actually found out about it through Bradley's autobiography. She said she was completely shocked and it, it would've changed everything.
Her line of questioning would've been much different if she were aware of the story that Bradley had told in his autobiography 30 years later. Doy said she was deeply unsettled when she learned about James Angleton's awareness of the Diary's existence and his interest in [00:40:00] finding it, reading it, and destroying it.
And if she had known about all this back then, she would've pursued, you know, answers as to what was going on. Interestingly, aside from the people involved or those who were close to them, nobody really knew about the diary or about Mary's affair with President Kennedy until 1976 when the National Enquirer published an article about it.
One person said it was a bombshell, not because it happened, but because nobody I know ever heard a whisper. Wow. In a deathbed interview in February of 2001, Mary's husband Meyer was asked who he believed had murdered his ex-wife and contradicting an earlier statement he had made that pointed to a sexually motivated assault by a single individual on his deathbed cord.
Responded to that question that he thought the same sobs that killed John F. Kennedy, killed his wife. Mic drop. Yeah. [00:41:00] So I don't know what that means. Yeah. This is super fascinating because. Well, actually, I'm actually very surprised that Ray Crump Jr. Wasn't found guilty. Me too. Because it just seems like if there's this much government involvement behind it, like, and especially at the time, 'cause they really had nothing on him.
Like legitimately they didn't have anything. I don't think he was out fishing. His wife seems to think he wasn't out fishing. No one knows what he was really doing, but I don't think that he was killing anyone. To me, it sounds more likely somebody that has a problem with alcohol should be at work, right?
Isn't at work. He says, I'm out fishing, right? Like, basically don't tell my wife that sort of a thing. So yeah, I, I totally agree with what you're saying there, but also I find it so interesting how far off he was from the description, right? If you're one or two inches off or 10 pounds off, that's one thing, but 50 inches.
I'm sorry, 50 pounds and five inches. It's a totally different person like you. It's very hard to Right. Get that. And they didn't [00:42:00] have any, um, I didn't see any information in the research about what Ray was wearing when they picked him up, but they had the description of the suspect wearing a tan colored coat, a cap and everything.
Mm-hmm. I'm assuming that Ray was not wearing clothes that matched that description because there was nothing about that in there, which. It would make sense that they wouldn't document things if it wasn't lining up necessarily with what was, you know, being reported or what, you know, the witnesses were saying.
So, uh, but I thought that was interesting too, that they did have a description of what clothing the suspect was wearing, but then there was no mention of whether or not Ray was actually dressed like that. Yeah, it's, and then of course the diary of it all about, you know, them being so quick to say you gotta get it.
Obviously there was something in there she didn't want people to know. Right. Which I feel like if you had an affair with the president of the United States Sure. Anything in your diary you would not want to, um, to be become public college. Absolutely. So you can understand that. But also at the [00:43:00] same time, you understand why people have questions about like what exactly was in there.
Of course, because people obviously have questions about JFK's assassination, so it makes sense naturally that they would be like, well, I wish I could see what was in that lady's diary. Right? Yeah, it's, yeah, that is a very fascinating story and yeah, even if her ex-husband's going to his grave of saying, right.
I know who did it and that, that guy, right. Who was killed, who happened to be the president. Yeah. Those people. Very, very interesting story for sure. And I feel like there is still more, um, that I wanna look into, like from this story and now I wanna go and like, there's specific details I'm like curious about.
I'm like, I wanna go find out more. That, so yeah. Fascinating, fascinating story. I loved this one. Absolutely. Yeah, this was super interesting. Um, before we go, just a reminder, we have bonus episodes up on Patreon and Apple Podcast, plus I think it's called, um, bonus episodes up there. If you want more interactive and extra extra stuff there at [00:44:00] patreon.com/moms and Mysteries podcast.
Otherwise, on the Apple podcast, uh, app, you can find lots of our extra stuff. We have more stuff coming up very, very soon. Alright guys, thank you for listening this week. We will be back next week, same time. Same place. News story. Have a great week. Bye.
