Mary Pinchot Meyer was a Washington DC socialite in the 1950s and early 60s.
She was married to a high-ranking CIA officer, Cord Meyer.
Among her friends were James Jesus Angleton, head of the CIA, and her brother-in-law Ben Bradlee, a journalist who would much later be known as the Washington Post editor during Watergate.
For a time, the Meyers lived next door to Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy. Mary and Jacqueline became friends.
So did Mary and Jack.
1958: The Meyers divorced after the tragic death of a young son. Mary moved to Georgetown but remained a spirited, single socialite.
She also carried on an affair with Jack Kennedy that continued throughout his presidency.
On some occasions when the First Lady was traveling outside Washington, a private car would drive Mary to the White House for rendezvous with the President. She would be brought in and out secretively, and she avoided being photographed in public.
Mary told friends that she kept a diary.
Rumors swirled about Mary, the divorcee who had powerful connections and who supposedly was a pot smoker.
In the Kennedy years, Timothy Leary was not yet the infamous counterculture figure he would become later in the decade. The Harvard professor was known, however, for experimenting with LSD.
Leary claimed that Mary visited him at his Harvard University office around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. She asked him to conduct LSD treatments on her friends in Washington. She never said who specifically. But she inferred that giving acid to her friends might prevent world catastrophes. Leary declined.
One month before his death, President Kennedy crafted a personal letter to Mary asking her to meet him for a rendezvous. For unknown reasons, the President’s personal secretary never sent it. The note was discovered in 2016 and sold at auction.
November 11, 1963: JFK’s assassination devastated Mary. She went into seclusion in her Georgetown residence and attended no social events.
Eleven months later, in October 1964, she was out for a typical afternoon stroll along a Georgetown canal.
A gunman appeared and shot her in broad daylight at point blank range.
Witnesses saw a black man running from the scene.
Police arrested Ray Crump, a local drifter, who pleaded innocent.
Mary’s sister and brother-in-law Ben Bradlee were stunned. They knew about Mary’s involvement with President Kennedy, and they worried about the diary that she kept hidden at her Georgetown home. Fearful of how Mary might be portrayed if the diary ever became public, they raced to her place to find it.
When they arrived, they discovered James Jesus Angleton, head of the CIA, was already there. He had found the diary and burned it.
If there was any evidence in the diary regarding Mary’s murder or personal notes about her affair with Kennedy, they went up in smoke.
Ray Crump was acquitted at trial, due to the fact that no gun was ever found. No other suspects were questioned or arrested.
The murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer was never solved.
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