Speaker 1: You would sit there with a book or a newspaper
Speaker 1: and just half listen to the police radio, which is
Speaker 1: a constant chatter in your ear. You're listening, but you're
Speaker 1: not listening, but certain cueues will alert you.
Speaker 2: It was October twelfth, nineteen sixty four. Lance Morrow was
Speaker 2: listening to the Metro police scanner. He was fresh out
Speaker 2: of Harvard working as a cub reporter for a DC newspaper.
Speaker 2: He happened to be at police headquarters that day, just
Speaker 2: filling in for a coworker. I know that feeling when
Speaker 2: you're just sitting there waiting for something newsworthy to happen.
Speaker 2: He didn't wait long.
Speaker 1: So I'm sitting there just about getting on toward noon,
Speaker 1: and I heard on the police radio cruiser twenty five,
Speaker 1: Cruiser twenty six, cruiser twenty seven proceed to I believe
Speaker 1: it was the thirty eight hundred block of Canal.
Speaker 2: The cruisers racing to the scene weren't just any police cars.
Speaker 1: Well, the first thing I knew was that that was
Speaker 1: three homicide cruisers being called for some reason, and that's
Speaker 1: extremely unusual.
Speaker 2: They were responding to a murder.
Speaker 1: I'd never run into that. The second thing I knew
Speaker 1: was that was in Georgetown.
Speaker 2: Lance grew up in Georgetown. He knew the streets like
Speaker 2: a local cab driver, and he knew the people just
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: And my parents knew Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon pretty well.
Speaker 2: He was used to living in the background of history.
Speaker 2: Rarely had he been caught in the crossfires of it.
Speaker 2: But a murder in Georgetown at midday, now that was
Speaker 2: unheard of.
Speaker 1: It was just below Georgetown University by the river, and
Speaker 1: as it turned out, it was on the canal. And
Speaker 1: I jumped in a car. I got there an amazingly
Speaker 1: short time.
Speaker 2: Lance parked his car on Canal Road. Just below it,
Speaker 2: there was the canal itself, and running beside that canal
Speaker 2: was a dirt road called a towpath. He spotted two
Speaker 2: African American men fixing a stalled car on the road
Speaker 2: in front of him. The guys were mechanics from the
Speaker 2: local ESO station. They called the police and they told
Speaker 2: Lance they heard the whole thing go down.
Speaker 1: There was a guy shooting a woman across the canal
Speaker 1: from where they stood. They heard shots and ran across
Speaker 1: the road, looked across the canal, saw a guy struggling
Speaker 1: with a woman. I talked to these guys. They were
Speaker 1: still there, and I said, what happened? And they told
Speaker 1: me that one of them pointed to something that looked
Speaker 1: like a laundry bag almost or a bag of clothing,
Speaker 1: and he said, that's her. That's her. And I said,
Speaker 1: who is it. He said, that's the one that was shot.
Speaker 2: This is Murder on the Towpath. And I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Soledad O'Brien. I've been a journalist for over three decades.
Speaker 2: I've covered politics, I've reported on crime, justice and race
Speaker 2: in America, and I'm really interested in the way they
Speaker 2: can all intersect. That's one of the things that drew
Speaker 2: me to this story. It weaves together all those things
Speaker 2: around a single event, a murder, A murder that would
Speaker 2: become emblematic of the nineteen sixties, a time of political
Speaker 2: and cultural upheaval, A story that ruffled feathers even back then.
Speaker 2: A legendary newspaperman, a CIA director, and even JFK himself
Speaker 2: play a part. What's fascinating is that this tale has
Speaker 2: never really gone away. Decades later, people argue about what happened.
Speaker 2: Relatives of the victim hesitate to speak about her publicly.
Speaker 2: Relatives of the alleged killer do too. It's a story
Speaker 2: so complex and mysterious that conspiracy theorists have come out
Speaker 2: of the woodwork. Even to this day, people still ask
Speaker 2: who killed this woman in broad daylight. Over the next
Speaker 2: eight episodes, I'll introduce you to the two women at
Speaker 2: the heart of the story. Mary Pinchot Meyer was a painter,
Speaker 2: a pacifist, and a woman who grew up rich but
Speaker 2: didn't like to follow rules. Dovey Johnson Rowntree became a
Speaker 2: civil rights lawyer at a time when black people were
Speaker 2: systematically stripped of their rights.
Speaker 3: She was a.
Speaker 2: Minister too, and determined to use the law to defend
Speaker 2: all God's children. The lives of these two women ran
Speaker 2: parallel to one another until one horrible day in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty four. Both were smart and confident, They had brilliant minds,
Speaker 2: and in other worlds, I wonder if they might have
Speaker 2: even met, but they had now her cross paths in
Speaker 2: the district. Except after one of them was killed. At
Speaker 2: that moment in nineteen sixty four, their lives suddenly intersected,
Speaker 2: and now their legacies are forever intertwined. Let's start at
Speaker 2: the moment that would bring them together the day one
Speaker 2: of them was murdered. Her name was Mary Pincho Meyer,
Speaker 2: and her final day started like any other. It was
Speaker 2: two days before her forty fourth birthday, one of those
Speaker 2: crisp days that actually makes you happy. Summer is over,
Speaker 2: cool enough for a sweater, but still bright and sunny,
Speaker 2: with a blue sky streaming above. Mary was painting. She
Speaker 2: loved to paint. It was somewhere between a hobby and
Speaker 2: a job for her. She had spent thirteen years married
Speaker 2: to a cia man named cord Meyer, holding down the
Speaker 2: fort while he traveled and spoke around the country. By
Speaker 2: this time, Mary resented her then husband and what he represented.
Speaker 2: After their divorce, their two sons went away to boarding school,
Speaker 2: Mary suddenly had a lot of time alone and could
Speaker 2: devote it to her craft. On most days, she'd hold
Speaker 2: herself up in her studio and just paint and paint
Speaker 2: and paint. Her studio was how you would imagine an
Speaker 2: artist haven would be. It was a converted garage with
Speaker 2: two skylights, littered with notebooks.
Speaker 3: Artists have things called paint books.
Speaker 1: The pages are quite It's a high quality paper thicker
Speaker 1: and most of the pages had swatches of paint on it,
Speaker 1: and then slight descriptions of how that color was achieved.
Speaker 2: That's Ben Bradley. I remember him from when I was
Speaker 2: a kid. He was a newspaper legend. You might remember
Speaker 2: him too from Watergate. He was editor in chief of
Speaker 2: the Washington Post when they broke the story. He also
Speaker 2: happened to be Mary's sister's husband. Mary was exploring a
Speaker 2: new artistic style. She was painting these concentric, colorful circles
Speaker 2: on round canvases, known in the art world as Tondo's.
Speaker 2: They gave you a window into Mary's art and the
Speaker 2: way her mind worked. Her routine was the same. Every day.
Speaker 2: Mary went into her studio, turned up the electric space heater,
Speaker 2: poured coffee from her thermos, lit up a cigarette, and
Speaker 2: then she would paint for hours on end until that
Speaker 2: time of the day when concentration becomes difficult and the
Speaker 2: mind grows hazy. Like clockwork. Around noon, Mary would go
Speaker 2: for a walk on the towpath just when she was
Speaker 2: losing focus. Mary savored walking on the towpath in the winter.
Speaker 2: She'd even ice skate along the ice that blanketed the canals.
Speaker 2: Her daily walks gave her the time space to think,
Speaker 2: get inspired, and that was what Mary was doing on
Speaker 2: October twelfth, nineteen sixty four. Before heading out, Mary had
Speaker 2: put on her gloves and pedal pushers. She layered herself
Speaker 2: with a cable knit blue Angora sweater. The inside of
Speaker 2: her gloves had a cleaner's mark that said Meyer that
Speaker 2: would later help police identify the body. She slipped her
Speaker 2: red tube of lipstick in her pocket and put on
Speaker 2: her white paint splattered PF flyers. That day, she had
Speaker 2: a chore to do, a fun one.
Speaker 3: She had a cat that had laid some kittens.
Speaker 2: That's Nina Burley. She wrote a biography of Mary, called
Speaker 2: a very private woman.
Speaker 3: She was just about to put a sign out to
Speaker 3: say free kittens, and she headed out of her house
Speaker 3: and walked down the cobblestone streets. She walked down the
Speaker 3: street to the what they call the towpath alongside the canal.
Speaker 2: Mary's converted studio looked like all the other garages on
Speaker 2: the alleyway. Some of her closest friends and family lived nearby.
Speaker 2: Mary's sister Tony lived in the townhouse on one end.
Speaker 2: She was the sister married to Ben Bradley and before
Speaker 2: they moved to the White House, the Kennedys lived nearby.
Speaker 2: In fact, Mary and Jackie Kennedy would sometimes take their
Speaker 2: walks on the towpath together. Mary was of that ilk
Speaker 2: she could ask Jackie to walk with her. We know
Speaker 2: she crossed m Street because that day a long black
Speaker 2: car with official plates slowed and a rear window rolled down.
Speaker 2: It was her friend, Polly Wisner. Polly's husband was the
Speaker 2: head of the CIA's covert operations for many years. He
Speaker 2: worked with Mary's ex husband Cord at the CIA. Polly
Speaker 2: had one of those mid Atlantic accents that old movie
Speaker 2: stars like Catherine Hepburn had. She waved and said goodbye
Speaker 2: Mary with one of those long a's. Polly was the
Speaker 2: last friend to see Mary alive. From the moment Mary
Speaker 2: was shot on the towpath, it would take just forty
Speaker 2: five minutes for them to arrest a suspect. Forty five minutes.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was a very fast moving situation.
Speaker 2: That's Lance Morrow again, the cub reporter who had gotten
Speaker 2: to the scene quickly. He had stopped to talk to
Speaker 2: the car mechanics, then race down to the towpath. He
Speaker 2: knew a secret way.
Speaker 1: I knew that there was a tunnel underneath the canal,
Speaker 1: and I knew it was there, so I ran to
Speaker 1: that tunnel. It was about fifty yards from where I
Speaker 1: was standing. You had to part fines to go into it.
Speaker 1: But I ran through the tunnel, and all the time
Speaker 1: I was fairly frightened because I thought that the killer
Speaker 1: was still loose. So I ran through the tunnel, came
Speaker 1: up into the sunlight through the vines that hung over
Speaker 1: the entrance on the other side, came up onto the towpath,
Speaker 1: and I ran to where the body was, and I
Speaker 1: saw a woman lying crumpled up in the fetal position.
Speaker 2: The woman had been shot twice, a bullet to the
Speaker 2: brain and a bullet to the heart. This is not
Speaker 2: what reporters like us expect to see the actual body
Speaker 2: of the murder victim.
Speaker 1: I saw no blood.
Speaker 2: It was surreal, and so she.
Speaker 1: Looked like she was asleep. She was dressed in an
Speaker 1: angora and pedal pusher pats and what looked like ballet
Speaker 1: slippers to me, but there's something like that slip on things.
Speaker 1: She had an air of money about her, in the
Speaker 1: sense that you could see that her hair was She
Speaker 1: was a very good looking woman. I could see her profile,
Speaker 1: although she was turned away from me sort of, but
Speaker 1: I could see that her her haircut was expensive, if
Speaker 1: that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Lance could tell the victim was a woman of means
Speaker 2: and beauty, but at that point no one knew who
Speaker 2: she was. After seeing her on the ground, one officer said,
Speaker 2: I've seen a lot of dead women, but none who
Speaker 2: looked beautiful when dead. She even looked beautiful with a
Speaker 2: bullet in her head. When I read that line, I
Speaker 2: was kind of horrified. I mean, there's something twisted about
Speaker 2: a woman being judged on her looks even in her death.
Speaker 2: But the truth is Mary was striking. She was always
Speaker 2: the prettiest woman in the room. She had that it
Speaker 2: quality that drew people to her, especially men. Mary sported short,
Speaker 2: blonde hair and had piercing blue eyes. She was thin, athletic,
Speaker 2: had an air of grace kelly about her. Mary was
Speaker 2: born into high society, but it was more than that.
Speaker 2: She was inherently regal. Even though Lance had arrived quickly
Speaker 2: to the crime scene, the police had already come and gone.
Speaker 2: If they were going to catch the killer, they needed
Speaker 2: to block off the exits to the towpath as soon
Speaker 2: as possible. Time was running out. They left Mary out
Speaker 2: in the open as they searched. That's how Lance, all
Speaker 2: of twenty five years old, ended up having a moment
Speaker 2: alone with her.
Speaker 1: I mean, here's this woman. She looked very serene, her
Speaker 1: face was very serene, and it was a weird dreamlike
Speaker 1: quality about it.
Speaker 2: Lance is now almost eighty, but he has never forgotten
Speaker 2: that day. Trust me. It's not every day a reporter
Speaker 2: comes across a dead body. I've only ever seen them
Speaker 2: at natural disasters, but a murder in a city park. Never. Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. Has always been a very segregated city. Crimes
Speaker 2: in the city only got the attention of the cops
Speaker 2: in the media if you had the right address. If
Speaker 2: you lived in a black neighborhood, chances were the police
Speaker 2: weren't rushing to the crime scene. Same thing with journalists.
Speaker 1: And from the address you knew perfectly well whether it
Speaker 1: was black or white, and if it was white, it
Speaker 1: was interesting and you would pursue it. If it was black,
Speaker 1: unless there was some unusual circumstance about it. The phrase
Speaker 1: from the city desk was cheap it out. Cheap it out,
Speaker 1: which means give it three paragraphs on the inside. In
Speaker 1: other words, the black life in Washington was not covered.
Speaker 2: Sounds about right. I've spent a lot of time in DC,
Speaker 2: and I can tell you Georgetown is a very swanky place.
Speaker 2: The towpath is filled with joggers, couples holding hands. It's
Speaker 2: one of the wealthiest zip codes in the country. The
Speaker 2: Clintons have a house there, Nancy Pelosi has a condo,
Speaker 2: and you might spot Jill Biden running. But it wasn't
Speaker 2: always like this. Historically, Georgetown had always been a black neighborhood.
Speaker 2: In the early twentieth century, white federal employees trickled into
Speaker 2: the area, and by the fifties Washington's white elites moved in.
Speaker 2: Less than ten percent of the area was black. Here's
Speaker 2: Nina the biographer again.
Speaker 3: Mary Meyer and Ben Bradley and Jackie Kennedy were people
Speaker 3: who had come in and gentrified this area in the fifties.
Speaker 3: In the forties and.
Speaker 2: Fifties, Mary's actual home was near her studio. It was
Speaker 2: a little blue townhouse right in the center of Georgetown.
Speaker 3: So it was, you know, this little community of people
Speaker 3: who lived on the other side of this giant park,
Speaker 3: Rock Creek Park, which separates off Georgetown from the rest
Speaker 3: of Washington, d C. And so they lived in a
Speaker 3: kind of bubble of you know, this is our community,
Speaker 3: and they didn't lock their doors. They definitely felt safe there.
Speaker 2: Once the white people moved in, the police and reporters
Speaker 2: took the neighborhood more seriously, which doesn't surprise me. But
Speaker 2: the towpath was still a paradoxical place. You'd find sleeping
Speaker 2: drunks next to a beautiful view of the canal with
Speaker 2: lily pads on it. After Mary waved goodbye to Polly,
Speaker 2: she passed the entryway to Key Bridge, the large concrete
Speaker 2: bridge connecting d Seed to Virginia. Her daily route was straightforward.
Speaker 2: She walked west all the way to Fletcher's boat House,
Speaker 2: a fishing spot since the nineteenth century. Then Mary would
Speaker 2: turn around and make her way back east to her studio. Now,
Speaker 2: the actual details after Mary enters the towpath are a
Speaker 2: bit fuzzy. We don't know exactly how it all went down.
Speaker 2: Sources disagree on the order of events, But here's what
Speaker 2: we've gathered from court documents, eyewitness accounts, and a bunch
Speaker 2: of books that have pieced together Mary's final moments. We
Speaker 2: know she walked along the wooden footbridge to get down
Speaker 2: to the towpath. Once she was on the path itself,
Speaker 2: Mary should have been able to hear the cars humming
Speaker 2: above her. The road was above the canal. If you
Speaker 2: go there, you can hear the occasional traffic sounds or
Speaker 2: see the car roofs floating above the gray stone wall.
Speaker 2: Around twenty minutes or so into her walk, Mary was
Speaker 2: attacked from behind. A man held back her arms, preventing
Speaker 2: her from getting away. Mary squirmed desperately trying to break free.
Speaker 2: She was strong, maybe she thought she could topple her assailant,
Speaker 2: but the man was too much for her. She yelled,
Speaker 2: somebody help me. She hoped someone anyone over the stone
Speaker 2: wall on Canal Road could hear her. The mechanics heard her,
Speaker 2: but it was too late. Then a gunshot. A mechanic
Speaker 2: named Henry Wiggins slowly made his way to a stone
Speaker 2: wall on Canal Road, which overlooked the towpath in the canal.
Speaker 2: He didn't see the murder, but he heard all of it.
Speaker 2: Lance Morrow said he didn't see any blood when he
Speaker 2: arrived on the scene, but there's good reason think Henry
Speaker 2: saw blood. Quite a lot of it.
Speaker 4: She left blood on tree branches where she was trying
Speaker 4: to pull herself up and escape.
Speaker 2: That's Ron Rosenbaum who wrote about Mary in his book
Speaker 2: The Secret Parts of Fortune.
Speaker 4: And then eventually she got back up to the towpath
Speaker 4: in full view of a guy named Henry Wiggins, who
Speaker 4: had parked his car on the other side of the
Speaker 4: Cno Canal near a gas station and was gazing out
Speaker 4: at the towpath and actually saw the struggle in which
Speaker 4: Mary was shot.
Speaker 2: She was on her knees, clinging to a tree, literally
Speaker 2: holding on for dear life. Mary tried to push the
Speaker 2: killer away while protecting her head leaning on the tree.
Speaker 2: The murderer was trying to drag her out of view.
Speaker 2: Then Mary used every ounce of life she had left
Speaker 2: in her She got up and ran toward the canal
Speaker 2: and the wall where Henry was, but with a shot
Speaker 2: to the head, she couldn't make it any further. She
Speaker 2: fell to the ground. That's when the killer insured Mary's fate.
Speaker 2: He shot her once more, this time in her back.
Speaker 2: The bullet hit her shoulder blade and punctured her a
Speaker 2: order her heart stopped. Henry Wiggins, the mechanic.
Speaker 4: Hurt it all sadly, tragically, he uh witnessed a murder.
Speaker 2: He heard the two shots by the time Henry got
Speaker 2: to the stone wall, he peered over and saw a
Speaker 2: black man standing over a woman's body. The man wore
Speaker 2: a light tan jacket with a dark dark cap. Henry
Speaker 2: and the killer locked eyes. Henry quickly hid behind the barrier.
Speaker 2: He didn't want to be the next victim. When he
Speaker 2: peered over the wall again, he saw the man putting
Speaker 2: a dark object into the pocket of his zipped jacket.
Speaker 2: Henry and the killer looked at each other again. The
Speaker 2: killer wasn't afraid. He didn't rush to leave the scene.
Speaker 2: That's pretty strange. Instead, he walked away slowly into the
Speaker 2: dense screenery next to the Potomac. He was gone. Now
Speaker 2: it was up to the police to find the phantom killer.
Speaker 2: Henry didn't waste any time. He immediately drove his car
Speaker 2: back to the ESSO station and called the police. A
Speaker 2: black man had killed a white woman in broad daylight
Speaker 2: in Georgetown. Within four minutes, the manhunt began. Our reporter
Speaker 2: Lance Morrow was at the crime scene by then. A
Speaker 2: policeman gruffly told him to step aside.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you what, It's a good thing I
Speaker 1: wasn't black, because they had a description of the killer,
Speaker 1: and the killer was a young black man. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the cops knew I was a reporter. I was standing
Speaker 1: there with a notebook in my hand and so on,
Speaker 1: so it was pretty clear who I was, and most
Speaker 1: of them had seen me around.
Speaker 2: The police took over securing the crime scene. There's a
Speaker 2: striking image that later made the rounds. It shows a
Speaker 2: crowd of men around this dead woman. There are may
Speaker 2: be eight of them standing there, and Mary is lying
Speaker 2: lifeless on the ground.
Speaker 1: Guys from the homicide squad, whom I knew, Guys wearing
Speaker 1: white raincoats and black you know, the cops, and then
Speaker 1: a few uniform police the homicide squad guys standing over
Speaker 1: the body, or they was ignoring the body, but they
Speaker 1: were talking among themselves. It's a rather odd effect to
Speaker 1: have the body there and then these guys just standing
Speaker 1: around talking. It's an eerie eurie effect.
Speaker 2: The police sent a dragnet of cars to the area.
Speaker 2: There were very few marked exits to the towpath, and
Speaker 2: police were sent to cover each one of them. They
Speaker 2: figured if they could cover their bases quickly the killer
Speaker 2: would be trapped. That's part of the reason why it
Speaker 2: all happened. Within minutes. Time was running out. Anyone who's
Speaker 2: visited the towpath knows it's outside. Sure, yeah, but there
Speaker 2: are only so many places to get in and to
Speaker 2: get out. I've been there. If you're standing in the
Speaker 2: spot where Mary died, you either need to dive into
Speaker 2: the Potomac and swim away, climb a wall and cross
Speaker 2: canal road, hide in a tunnel, or use the few
Speaker 2: official exits. Mary's body lay near a small tunnel that
Speaker 2: carried water near the canal. It's called Foundry Branch Tunnel. Now,
Speaker 2: if you're looking at a map, this area is where
Speaker 2: the murder happened. There were only a few exits. According
Speaker 2: to the police, the murderer could not escape. Officer John
Speaker 2: Warner was on the ground that day searching for the killer.
Speaker 2: He spotted a culvert which eventually dropped fifty feet into
Speaker 2: the Potomac, and then he emerged into a clearing. He
Speaker 2: found a man standing in front of him. Here's lance again.
Speaker 1: Eventually they came out of the woods leading a rather
Speaker 1: short five five five six, a black man, a young
Speaker 1: black man. He was just my age, WHI just twenty
Speaker 1: five years old and he was wet.
Speaker 2: Raymond Crump Junior. The police asked Ray for his id.
Speaker 2: When he fetched it, water spilled from his wallet. He
Speaker 2: was a short, young, skinny man. Leaves and twigs clung
Speaker 2: to his body, and he was black. Officer Warner asked
Speaker 2: him the obvious question, why was he wet? Ray said
Speaker 2: he was fishing, but fell asleep at the bank of
Speaker 2: the river. He woke up after he had rolled into
Speaker 2: the water. Warner asked Ray to show him the exact
Speaker 2: spot where he was fishing. The two were walking together
Speaker 2: when they heard a shout. That's him. It was Henry
Speaker 2: Wiggins from above, pointing down at Ray.
Speaker 3: Crump.
Speaker 2: He was telling Officer Warner they found their man. Warner
Speaker 2: handcuffed Ray and brought him to his colleague, Officer Bernard Crook. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's really his name. They passed Mary's body. You think
Speaker 2: I did that? Ray asked. Crook brought a soaking wet
Speaker 2: Ray to the station house for an interrogation. Things only
Speaker 2: got worse for Ray. One of Crook's men came to
Speaker 2: the station. He found a light jacket similar to the
Speaker 2: one Henry saw on Mary's Killer. Krook asked Ray to
Speaker 2: try it on. It fit perfectly. Then Ray's story began
Speaker 2: falling apart.
Speaker 1: They never found a fishing pole, he didn't have a
Speaker 1: fishing pole, and it turned out later that his fishing
Speaker 1: pole was at his home out in Anacostia, on the
Speaker 1: other side of the city from Georgetown.
Speaker 2: Krook told Ray he had a stacked deck against him.
Speaker 2: Ray began sobbing. Several days later, the United States charged
Speaker 2: Ray Crump, Junior with first degree murder. He was arraigned
Speaker 2: before the US Commissioner and sent to the DC Jail.
Speaker 2: That meant Ray Crump was immediately locked up. The Washington
Speaker 2: Post snapped a photo of his arrest. He's wearing a
Speaker 2: white shirt with black pants. A white, bald officer with
Speaker 2: glasses trails right behind him. His hands are holding Ray
Speaker 2: from behind, pushing him towards his fate. The forty five
Speaker 2: minutes it would take to find Mary's killer they were up.
Speaker 2: Did it happen quickly because she was white? Because it
Speaker 2: was a slow day, because it was Georgetown and things
Speaker 2: like this weren't supposed to happen here. I don't really know.
Speaker 2: Whatever it was a black man had just been taken
Speaker 2: in for the murder of a white woman, and in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty four, and I think even today that was
Speaker 2: bound to capture everyone's attention. News of a murder in
Speaker 2: Georgetown trickled out to the public slowly. Cecily Angleton was
Speaker 2: an old friend of Mary's. She happened to hear about
Speaker 2: a murder on the towpath and called her husband, James Angleton.
Speaker 2: Here's author Ron Rosenbaum.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 4: He was a well known but not often written about
Speaker 4: figure in Washington, d C. A very powerful one.
Speaker 2: In other words, James Angleton was a spook, and not
Speaker 2: just any spy.
Speaker 4: James Angleton, as most people know, was head of counterintelligence
Speaker 4: spy hunting for the CIA and had been for many years.
Speaker 4: He was in the middle of a meeting at CIA
Speaker 4: headquarters when he got an urgent call from his wife,
Speaker 4: who apprised him of the fact that there had been
Speaker 4: a murder of a woman on the towpath yet to
Speaker 4: be identified. I believe she called up afraid that the
Speaker 4: murder on the towpath had been married. It was about
Speaker 4: the time that Mary would go running. You know. This
Speaker 4: was a very close friend of the fan and they
Speaker 4: were both concerned about it.
Speaker 2: Mary's ex husband, Coord was in a meeting in New
Speaker 2: York when he got a phone call from his friend,
Speaker 2: Wister Janney. He told him that Mary was dead. Coord
Speaker 2: immediately flew down to DC to get all the details
Speaker 2: on the ground. He knew he had to tell his
Speaker 2: sons before they heard it on the news. Since Quentin
Speaker 2: was already eighteen, Kord told him on the phone. In
Speaker 2: his memoir Facing Reality, Chord writes that Quentin handled the
Speaker 2: death with stoic resignation, but Mark was still so young,
Speaker 2: only fourteen. Coord called Milton Academy he would fly to
Speaker 2: break the news to Mark in person the next morning.
Speaker 2: The school assured him Mark wouldn't see any newspapers. That night,
Speaker 2: Ben Bradley, Mary's brother in law, went down to the
Speaker 2: morgue to identify the body.
Speaker 1: It was her.
Speaker 2: He saw Mary for the last time. The next morning,
Speaker 2: Kord met with Mark at Milton. In his memoir, Chord
Speaker 2: writes his son was so excited to see him he
Speaker 2: saw it as a pleasant surprise, and then Chord gave
Speaker 2: him the terrible news. He wrapped his arm around Mark,
Speaker 2: consoling him as his son cried so deeply from such
Speaker 2: a profound loss. It was good the school took pains
Speaker 2: to hide the news from Mark. Multiple papers wrote that
Speaker 2: Mary Pinchot Meyer was dead. The Washington Post said Mary
Speaker 2: was a Georgetown artist with a hundred thousand friends. Friends
Speaker 2: described her as fearless and elegant, one of the most
Speaker 2: beautiful people they had ever known. At first, reporters described
Speaker 2: the murder as a robbery gone wrong, but Mary wasn't
Speaker 2: caring a purse. She left it at home that day.
Speaker 2: Others suggested sexualvi islence had occurred, but there was no
Speaker 2: physical evidence of rape. The New York Times headline read
Speaker 2: woman painter shot and killed on canal towpath in Capitol
Speaker 2: They ran a photo of her next to the article,
Speaker 2: one of the few that exists of Mary in the
Speaker 2: public domain. She has short, blonde hair, less Doris Day
Speaker 2: Bob and more Princess Diana. She's staring to the right
Speaker 2: of her into the distance, almost looking horrified at the
Speaker 2: headline of her own death. In the week after Mary's murder,
Speaker 2: someone scrawled a phrase on the key bridge in white paint.
Speaker 2: It said move coup Mary. The phrase is a French idiom.
Speaker 2: It roughly translates to bad luck. Mary, But the phrase
Speaker 2: can also mean foul play. Foul play, so maybe it
Speaker 2: wasn't bad luck at all. Next time on Murder on
Speaker 2: the Towpath, Ray Crump needed a lawyer, and there was
Speaker 2: only one woman who dared defend him. I could make
Speaker 2: things right, I thought, and some things I have made right.
Speaker 2: She was black herself. Her name was Dobby Rountree. Next episode,
Speaker 2: I'm going to dig into her remarkable life and introduce
Speaker 2: you to a woman whose legal mind would forever change
Speaker 2: the course of Mary's case, a case which only gets
Speaker 2: more shocking and more complicated with time. That's because what
Speaker 2: Dovey couldn't have known, what most people didn't know, was
Speaker 2: that Mary had had an affair with a very powerful man.
Speaker 1: I pledge you that we shall neither commit nor provoke aggression.
Speaker 2: That man was John F. Kennedy. I'll unravel the whole
Speaker 2: story starting next week. Murder on the Towpath is a
Speaker 2: production of Film Nation Entertainment and Luminary Media and association
Speaker 2: with Neon Humm Media. Our executive producers are me Solidad O'Brien,
Speaker 2: Alyssa Martino, Milan Papelka, and Jonathan Hirsch. Lead producer is
Speaker 2: Shara Morris. Associate producers are Natalie Rinn and Lucy Licht.
Speaker 2: Senior editor is Katherine Saint Louis. Music and composition by
Speaker 2: Andrew Eapen, Sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville. Special
Speaker 2: thanks to Alison Cohen, Sarah Bacchiano, Rose Arsa, Kate Michigan,
Speaker 2: and MICHAELA Celeela