DC DC - Mary Pinchot Meyer, 43, Washington DC, 12 Oct 1964

I am a bit behind on my Smithsonian magazine issues, so I finally came across this article in the December 2008 issue. I thought that this was a very interesting read. One of several reasons I *heart* Smithsonian magazine. :clap:

I didn't see this case listed on this site and to be honest had never heard of it until I read it in the magazine.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Presence-of-Mind-Mary-Pinchot-Meyer-200812.html

On a perfect October day in 1964, Mary Pinchot Meyer—mistress of John Kennedy, friend of Jackie Kennedy and ex-wife of a top CIA man, Cord Meyer—was murdered in the rarefied Washington precinct of Georgetown.

It was half past noon. I was a cub reporter on the Washington Star. In the classically scruffy pressroom at police headquarters, I heard the radio dispatcher direct Cruisers 25 and 26 (which I recognized as homicide squad cars) to the C&O Canal. I alerted the city desk, drove to Georgetown, ran to the wall overlooking the canal and saw a body curled up in a ball on the towpath. Two men who had been changing a tire nearby told me they had heard a shot...a cry for help...a second shot...and had called the police.

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Fascinating article about an exceptional woman but Morrow doesn't offer a clear theory as to who shot her and why. If it's Crump it would have been a heck of a coincidence that a victim chosen at random because she was white turned out to be a member of the blue-blooded Pennsylvania Pinchots, wife of a high-level spook and former lover of a President to boot.

I don't think it's Crump, I believe he just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Based on the description of the scene by witnesses it sounds like a pro hit but not the mob type, more like a sanctioned hit. Considering her past there is no lack of suspects among government agencies, and no big surprise no one ever got charged. My fist suspicion would be that it had to do with her husband's activities.

ITA KarlK. Although the article was more of a portrait of the woman than an investigation of her death, I was still able to surmise Crump was just a fall guy. I don't buy the race relations murder angle AT ALL. It looks like a hit, and with powerful people behind it no one will bother to investigate.

I hope this isn't against tos, but I thought this was interesting. This is from 'Hardcover Mysteries", which was on A&E a few years ago.

[video=youtube;PZjACabdnlE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZjACabdnlE[/video]

So the consensus here is that the witness to the murder, the car repair guy, was CIA and he helped set up Crump? I always believed Crump to be guilty but not 100% sure. It never occurred to me that the witness could be in on the whole thing. I always felt something was "off" about the case and still can't put my finger on what it is. If it was a political assassination, they covered themselves very well.

Excerpt from the Smithsonian article by Morrow about Ray Crump, Jr.

Quote: The police found a man in the woods down by the river. His name was Ray Crump Jr., and he was black. His clothes were wet. He had cut his hand. He gave the police a couple of stories. He said he had been fishing and had dropped his fishing pole and gone into the river to retrieve it; he said he had been drinking beer and went to sleep and fell in. The two men who had heard the shots told the police they had seen Crump standing over the body. He was booked for homicide. The police found his jacket and cap in the river. His fishing rod was in a closet where he lived, on the other side of the city. The murder weapon was never found. It may still be at the bottom of the river. Crump eventually was acquitted for lack of evidence. Unquote.

Further information provided stated that Crump was from South East Washington (Georgetown is in NW). He had a criminal record both before and after Mary's murder. It was not established why he was on foot in the area or if he had ever previously known Mary.

Several possibilities come to mind:
First is that Crump was drunk, armed, and happened to meet Mary by random circumstance, shot her and disposed of his pistol, hat and coat in the water.
Second is that he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and panicked when he witnessed the murder, falling in the water in his attempt to run away.
Third is that he was in some way set up as a fall guy or patsey by the real murder or murderers.

An interesting and still unsolved/open case.

Given the times, I'm most inclined toward the 2nd. But, she was an important figure in political circles, so a big danger in analyzing this is what I call the 'Kennedy Effect', which is when a prominent figure dies, there's a tendency to attribute the cause to a conspiracy or other nexus that's big enough or important enough to be 'worthy' of it's victim. JM.02.

Mary Pinchot Meyer

Mary Pinchot Meyer at JFK's 46th birthday Party on the presidential yacht Sequoia
Born
Mary Eno Pinchot
October 14, 1920: New York City, New York, U.S.
Died October 12, 1964 (aged 43) Georgetown, Washington D.C.
Cause of death Homicide
Resting place: Milford Cemetery, Pike County, Pennsylvania
Nationality: American
Education Brearley School
Alma mater: Vassar College
Occupation: Painter
Spouse: Cord Meyer (m. 1945; div. 1958)
Children: 3

The Artist—and JFK Mistress—Who May Have Been Murdered by the CIA

The Last Painting of Mary Pinchot Meyer

Mary Pinchot Meyer, at far right, the day that the U.S. Senate ratified the president’s limited nuclear test ban treaty.



The crime scene on the C&O towpath within ninety minutes after the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer - October 12, 1964.

CastlesBurning said:

The Artist—and JFK Mistress—Who May Have Been Murdered by the CIA

The Last Painting of Mary Pinchot Meyer

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From the second link:

Meyer had just entered a dense woods near the Potomac when her assailant seized her from behind and shot her in the head. She called for help and struggled free, leaving blood streaks on a nearby birch, but her attacker dragged her to the edge of the river and shot her again in the chest, killing her. Within ninety minutes, a crew of police had descended to the crime scene. By the end of the day, they had a suspect: a lone black man named Ray Crump, who had been witnessed standing near the body. The arrest and conviction fell into place fast, despite the fact that Crump’s diminutive physique and confused mind didn’t suit a killing so merciless and clean, or that the murder weapon was never found.

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It seems a stretch to believe a small, drunken man would continue to chase and accurately shoot their victim, especially when the victim was struggling and calling out for help. Most drunken killers would have taken off once she began calling for help and fighting, right? Especially when this was an attack on a stranger, not some crime of passion where the killer is enraged and driven to kill the victim.

The photo above of the crime scene, with over a dozen officers around, was taken within minutes of her murder. No drunk guy in an area that busy was going to stick around to struggle with and attack a screaming woman. How does a drunk guy manage to get a second shot into a victim's chest while she's fighting and running away from him? Possible, but kind of unlikely.

Here is a report about a new Podcast about this case:

Soledad O’Brien Hosting Podcast About Murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer (EXCLUSIVE)

Soledad O’Brien Hosting Podcast About Murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer (EXCLUSIVE)

People who knew her could never forget her. And people who have read about her since her murder have been haunted by her story, which lies at the heart of America’s ultimate undying narrative of romance and conspiracy.

The death of Mary Pinchot Meyer is linked forever to that of President John F. Kennedy, for whom she was one lover among many, but not like the others. And when she was killed on the towpath of what was then a derelict canal at the edge of the nation’s capital in October 1964—a shot in the head and a shot next to the heart—11 months after Kennedy was murdered, her story quickly folded into his as a tragic subplot...

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The JFK Mistress Gunned Down in Cold Blood

MARY MEYER: A HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS DEATH
Did Camelot Get Away With Murder?
By Zalin Grant

This was Monday October 12, 1964. Mary Pinchot Meyer, who’d had a private relationship with President John F. Kennedy for nearly two years until his murder eleven months earlier, was walking on the 4300 block of the old Chesapeake & Ohio canal towpath in Washington, D.C. The towpath area, which bordered the Potomac River, was used as an unofficial recreation park for fishing and jogging. It was a short distance from the Georgetown section of D.C. where Mary lived at 1523 34th Street NW. She was two days shy of turning 44 years old.

On this clear and chilly October day, someone accosted Mary Meyer on the towpath at about 12:20 p.m. and shot her twice within 10 seconds with a .38 caliber pistol. The first shot was directed at her head, one and a half inches to the front of her left ear. The gun was held no more than six inches away because an autopsy revealed that the entrance point of the bullet was encircled by a dark halo of powder burns.

The first bullet traveled from left to right and struck the right side of the skull, then ricocheted back to where it was found in the brain. The second bullet entered over her right shoulder blade and traveled down through the chest cavity, piercing the right lung and the aorta, the heart’s biggest blood vessel. The second shot also came from no more than six inches away, for it too was encircled by a dark halo of powder burns.

According to Willie J. Wade, a D.C. homicide detective I interviewed, the first shot would have produced blowback and caused blood and brain matter to spew on the shooter. Although Wade did not investigate the Meyer murder, he had plenty of experience with similar killings. He told me she would have gone down immediately and died. The second shot was just to make sure. Such a precision-clocked murder sounded to him, he said, like it was carried out by a professional...

The Presumed Killer
Raymond Crump, Jr, age 25, an African American, was taken by police when he was found in the canal towpath area a few minutes after Mary Meyer was killed. A witness said he saw a black man near the body of Ms. Meyer shortly after he heard the two shots. He identified the man he saw as being five-eight and 185 pounds. Crump was five foot five and a half inches tall and weighed 145 pounds.

The D.C. police took Ray Crump into custody and he was charged with the first degree murder of Mary Meyer. As the trial revealed, there was no physical evidence—no blood, no hairs, no fibers—nothing that linked Crump to her murder. No eyewitness claimed to have seen the killing. The gun was never found.

Alfred Hantman, the assistant U.S. Attorney charged with prosecuting the case, told the judge and jury on the first morning of the trial in July 1965:

“This case in all its aspects is a classic textbook case in circumstantial evidence.”

Actually it was a classic textbook case on how to frame a black man for a murder he didn’t commit—something that had already taken place more than a few times in American history.

And the frame-up would have succeeded had it not been for the presence of an African American lawyer by the name of Dovey Roundtree...

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MARY MEYER: A HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS DEATH

Mary Pinchot Meyer, 43, Murdered 12 October 1964

Ray Crump was innocent. This was a CIA hit. She knew too much. Those of you with an interest in this case should read the book The Devil's Chessboard, by David Talbot. He lays it out clearly.

Mary Pinchot Meyer, murdered 12 October 1964



Ray Crump, Jr. under arrest.

The Patsy-Villain in American Criminology

What do Ray Crump and Lee Oswald have in common? Ray Crump is the poor gentleman police charged with the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer on October 12, 1964. What is the difference between Ray Crump and other patsy-villains in American criminal history? A jury acquitted Crump of the charges against him. A witness saw Meyer’s assassin standing over her body. The man’s build was not at all the same as Ray Crump’s. In addition, Crump had a good lawyer, Dovey Roundtree. He was lucky.

Peter Janney tells Ray Crump’s story in Mary’s Mosaic, a book about the life and death of Mary Meyer. He also records his own memories of childhood, when his family and Meyer’s family were friends. Mary’s son was one of Peter’s closest playmates. Peter says his father, a high official in the CIA, knew about the operation to murder Mary Meyer...

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The Patsy-Villain in American Criminology

Mary Pinchot Meyer at JFK’s 46th birthday party, 1963.

Mary Pinchot Meyer, age 43, shot to death in Washington, DC 12 October 1964

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