by Peter Janney
Dovey Roundtree never abandoned her belief that Ray had been a scapegoat, a “patsy,” who had been set up to take the fall. “So far as I am concerned,” wrote Roundtree in 2009, “there is in the complex and tangled web of certain truth and unconfirmed rumor, of inference and speculation and intrigue that surrounds the life and death of Mary Pinchot Meyer a single critical fact: Raymond Crump’s innocence in her murder.”94 Roundtree’s initial suspicions about the murder itself were fueled by a number of perplexing events that have never been explained: the menacing phone calls she received after each of her many excursions to the towpath; the mysterious disappearance of the stalled Nash Rambler that had brought Henry Wiggins and Bill Branch to witness the murder scene; the fact that neither a record of a repair order nor the identity of the vehicle’s owner was ever established. Dovey’s radar had been on high alert from the very beginnings of the case in 1964, and the 1976 revelations of Mary’s diary having been sequestered by the CIA all these years, and of Mary’s affair with the assassinated president, further convinced her that something much more sinister had likely taken place—as did three years of interviews with the late author Leo Damore in the 1990s.95
Nearly fifty years after the murder, the most important questions are still unanswered: If Raymond Crump Jr. didn’t murder Mary Pinchot Meyer, who did? And, more important, why? In the absence of such motives as robbery or sexual assault, had there been perhaps some disgruntled, demented jealous lover lurking in the woods waiting to take revenge? That was highly doubtful. In the nearly fifty years of research and reporting on the murder, nothing of the sort has ever been suggested. In her community of friends and acquaintances, Mary had always been highly regarded and respected. She had no known enemies. There was no rancor between friends. “She was best friends to many,” recalled Jim Truitt, and revered as “a Georgetown artist with a hundred thousand friends.”
Who, then, was the man that Henry Wiggins had seen standing over Mary’s corpse less than fifteen seconds after the fatal second shot was fired? His pristine, unstained clothes appeared to closely match the clothes worn by Ray Crump that morning. Was it possible that the man Wiggins had seen was the same “Negro male” that had briefly peeked out from the woods, the one spotted by police officer Roderick Sylvis—well after the time Crump was discovered by Detective John Warner? If so, who was he? And was he even a “Negro male,” or someone purposely disguised to look like one?
The final question still remains: What, then, was the motive behind the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer? The intent was clearly to kill her, but why? Was there something Mary knew, or had discovered, that made her dangerous? If so, what—and to whom? And did that imply some concern about who Mary Meyer was, and what she might be capable of ?
PART TWO
“LOOK WHO’S CALLED to visit us!” said Lady Julia, daughter of Caesar Augustus, First Emperor of Rome. “Gnaeus Domitius.”
“I was on my way to Formiae,” said the Priest Domitius from the College of Augers. “I felt I must call upon you, Lady.”
“Do you know my son, Lucius?” asked Lady Julia.
“An honor, sir.” extending his hand toward Lucius. “I took the auspices for your brother Gaius before he left for Syria. They were most favorable. I’ve never seen the liver of a ewe so clear. One could almost see through it. His death is inexplicable to me.”
“And to us all,” added Lady Julia.
A screeching overhead is then heard, as an approaching group of children that includes Claudius and his sister Livilla grow louder with the awareness of eagles fighting above them.
“Mother, Mother, the eagles are fighting! Look out!” A small animal drops from the claws of one of the fighting eagles and lands in Claudius’s lap.
“What is it, Claudius?” asked Livilla.
“It’s a wolf cub!” said one of the other children.
“Mother, it dropped right from its claws,” exclaimed Livilla excitedly. “Let me have him!”
“Leave it be! It fell to Claudius, leave it be!” said the stunned Antonia, mother of Claudius.
“Look at the blood! Ye Gods, what does it mean?” asked Lady Julia. “Domitius, tell us what it means.”
“Lady, I …”
“You know what it means, I can see. Tell us, I beg you!” demanded Lady Julia. “Children, go into the house…”
“No! Let them stay!” Domitius sternly warned. “The sign was given to you all, and given now, perhaps, because I am here to read it. But they must be sworn to secrecy. Who are the gods that watch over this house?”
“Jupiter and Mars,” Lady Julia answered.
“Then do you swear, all of you, by these your gods that no word of what you are about to hear shall ever pass your lips?”
(ALL) “Yes, we do.”
“The wolf cub is Rome,” began Domitius. “No doubt of it. Romulus was suckled by a wolf as her own cub, and Romulus was Rome. And look at it: All torn about the neck and shivering with fear. A wretched sight. Rome will be wretched one day.” Then looking at Claudius holding the wolf cub in his lap, he pauses. “But he will protect it. He and no other,” said Domitius solemnly.
“Claudius as protector of Rome! I hope I shall be dead by then,” Livilla mockingly laughed out loud.
“Go to your room! You shall have nothing to eat all day!” snapped her mother Antonia angrily. “Children, come in. Come inside.”
“May I k-k-keep the cub, please, mother?” pleaded the stuttering, head-twitching Claudius to his mother Antonia. “Please, may I ?” 1
1 From the 1976 BBC Masterpiece Theatre production of I, Claudius.(Based on: I, Claudius: from the autobiography of Tiberius Claudius born 10 B.C. murdered and deified A.D. 54. and Claudius The God, both authored by Robert Graves. New York: Vintage International Edition, 1989, originally published by Random House, 1935.
6
“Prima Female Assoluta”
We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It’s just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there.
Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
—Ben Okri
There is no such thing as chance; and what seems to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny.
—Friedrich von Schiller
THAT MARY MEYER’S murder would become “officially” regarded as an erratic, random act of savagery, simply another unsolvable crime, ignored the flourishing multidimensional panorama of her life and the particular network of relationships it had engendered. Far from indiscriminate, her murder was deliberate; and, as the reader will eventually come to understand, precisely motivated. For Mary Pinchot Meyer was in no way ordinary—nor easily intimidated—particularly during the years just prior to her murder in the fall of 1964. That left an unsettling question: Who was she, and how was she unique? What accounted for her perseverance, her courage? And, for that matter, what made her dangerous, and to whom?
In order to arrive at some understanding of why, and how, Mary Meyer’s murder was orchestrated, certain details of her extraordinary life warrant deeper exploration. For her life’s mosaic—the events, the people, the choices she made amid life’s vicissitudes and circumstances—only begins to reveal the complexity and uniqueness of a woman who ultimately came to thrive within the Cold War’s hidden history, a defining moment of which was President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, followed by Mary Meyer’s less than a year later. This remarkable odyssey not only reveals a glimpse of a strikingly rare and exceptional woman, but raises another perplexing question: Why was her demise considered necessary at the time, and by whom?
Achieving a new level of understanding requires one to look a number of heretofore unseen details—events, experiences, and people—that formed the tesserae of a rich, complex m
osaic that would finally illuminate Mary’s life and death.
In their seminal 1976 article “The Curious Aftermath of JFK’s Best and Brightest Affair,” Ron Rosenbaum and Phillip Nobile were the first to pay homage to the relatively obscure woman who had made more than a considerable impression in the life of John F. Kennedy. How influential her impact may have been was unknown; but the authors, at the conclusion of their investigation, refer to her as “the secret Lady Ottoline of Camelot.”1 They relied on an unidentified source who, the authors claimed, was “in a unique position to comment authoritatively [about Mary Meyer’s relationship with JFK]” and who, until 1976, had “never before spoken to the press about it.” The unidentified source had “agreed to entertain a limited number of questions about the affair.”
“How could a woman so admired for her integrity as Mary Meyer traduce her friendship with Jackie Kennedy?”
“They weren’t friends,” he [the unidentified source] said curtly.
“Did JFK actually love Mary Meyer?”
“I think so.”
“Then why would he carry on an affair simultaneously with Judy Exner?”
“My friend, there’s a difference between sex and love.”
“But why Mary Meyer over all other women?”
“He was an unusual man. He wanted the best.”2
How and why Mary Meyer and Jack Kennedy became intimately involved during the last few years of their lives is only part of the focus of Mary’s mosaic. Both seem to have been deeply affected by their union, sometimes taking enormous risks, in part for the sake of a better, hopefully more peaceful world in the future. How their paths intriguingly—and repeatedly—crossed, suggests some mysterious force at work: perhaps a trail of destiny, a shared fate, or the engagement of the force of redemption entwined in love.
Was it encoded in Mary Meyer’s DNA to be so independent, strong-willed, even courageous? Quite possibly yes. According to folklore, Mary’s French great-grandfather, Cyrille Constantine Désiré Pinchot, as a nineteen-year-old captain in the French army, had set out to rescue his hero, Napoléon, from the island of St. Helena, where he had been exiled following his defeat at Waterloo. But the plan failed, and young Captain Pinchot escaped on a fishing boat to England.3 From there, he and his father, Constantine, and his mother, Maria, made their way to the United States in 1816, hoping that the New World would be a safe haven. Captain Pinchot’s father immediately reestablished his mercantile business in New York, enabling him to purchase four hundred acres of prime farmland outside Milford, Pennsylvania. Constantine and Cyrille, the father-son team, embarked on a series of entrepreneurial projects that over time brought them considerable wealth and standing, using the crossroads of Milford as their hub.
Mary’s great-grandfather Cyrille Pinchot married and had five children.
His second son, James Pinchot, migrated back to New York during the late 1840s and made a fortune in the wallpaper business. In addition to his business acumen, James Pinchot possessed a highly developed social conscience—he created no slums, fouled no rivers, and accepted no deals with corrupt politicians. He never wasted any valuable resources, nor did he enslave any workers. His philosophy and worldview embraced the utilitarian vision of John Stuart Mill, defining social good as “the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.” James Pinchot had such a deep love and respect for the natural world that he became one of its guardians, sponsoring the first real conservation movement in the United States and endowing the School of Forestry at Yale University. James’s oldest son, Gifford, would later refer to him as the “Father of Forestry in America.”4
Wealthy James had married Mary Jane Eno of New York in 1864, and after their son Gifford was born in 1865, they had a daughter, Antoinette, in 1868, and a second son, Amos (named after Mary’s father) in 1873. Retiring at the age of forty-four, James began concentrating his wealth on philanthropy. The family transformed the town of Milford in the early 1870s “from a fading entrepôt to a booming tourist mecca.”5 The Pinchot money also built the family “a country estate.” In the late 1880s, James Pinchot conceived Grey Towers, a Norman-Breton bluestone manor with a fortress-like exterior, “complete with three 60-foot turrets.” The interior consisted of “a medievalized great hall, 23 fireplaces, and 44 rooms,” each filled with luxurious furnishings that matched those “of the old baronial days.” The manor’s panorama captured the entire village of Milford and the Delaware River valley, stunning any onlooker with the sheer size and scale of the mansion. Referred to as a “summer castle,” it “drew all eyes—tourist and local alike—upward. In lifting them up, James Pinchot acknowledged his own elevation.”6
The sons of James Pinchot—Gifford and Amos—were both Yale educated and members of the secret society Skull and Bones. President Theodore Roosevelt eventually named Gifford Pinchot the first chief of the newly created U.S. Forest Service in 1905, in which post he served for five years. Gifford ran for the U.S. Senate in 1914 as a Progressive, vociferously campaigning for reforms considered radical at the time: a woman’s right to vote; a graduated income tax to be determined by the ability to pay; workers’ compensation for injuries on the job; recognition of labor unions for collective bargaining; and prohibition of the sale and use of alcoholic beverages.
Gifford would lose the senate race against Boies Penrose, but would subsequently become the governor of Pennsylvania in 1922 and again in 1930. In between campaigns, he managed to marry Cornelia Bryce, the daughter of a wealthy and prominent family from Newport, Rhode Island. Cornelia, affectionately known within her family and friends as “Lelia,” was an outspoken woman who greatly influenced her niece Mary Pinchot as she grew up. During Gifford’s campaigns, Cornelia had addressed hundreds of housewives, urging them to demand the right to vote. She also marched in picket lines and supported factory workers and miners seeking safety, decent wages, and job protection in their work.
Writing in the Nation, Cornelia Bryce Pinchot defined herself as a woman who essentially knew no boundaries: “My feminism tells me that a woman can bear children, charm her lovers, boss a business, swim the [English] Channel, stand at Armageddon and battle for the Lord—all in a day’s work!”7 Cornelia was yet another female role model for Mary and her sister, Tony.
Mary Pinchot Meyer’s mother was the journalist Ruth Pickering. Born in New York in 1893, she attended Vassar College and Columbia University, before becoming a journalist in New York, and working mostly for left-wing publications. An ardent, self-styled feminist who wrote for the Masses, the New Republic, and the Nation, she became the associate editor of Arts and Decoration. Ruth, too, came from a family of courageous liberal thinkers. Her paternal grandfather, whom she referred to as Grandfather Haynes, reportedly lost his life in an underground railway while freeing slaves.8
Ruth’s commitment to feminism entailed a rejection of the traditional female culture of the day. She was the kind of rare woman who dared to define herself, resisting the prescribed roles that most women found themselves playing. She became very active in the women’s suffrage movement, and for many years shared a house with political socialist activist Max Eastman, his sister, Crystal Eastman, and Eugen Boissevain, who later married poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.
In 1919, Ruth married Amos Pinchot. She was twenty-six; he was twenty years her senior. Amos was by then a wealthy lawyer who supported a number of liberal left-wing causes. It was Amos’s second marriage; he had divorced his first wife of nineteen years, Gertrude Minturn, who was from a prominent New York family. Whatever the cost to him socially, Amos was apparently willing to bear it in order to be with Ruth. An ardent pacifist, Amos exerted considerable influence in reformist circles and did much to keep Progressive ideas alive in the 1920s. A member of Teddy Roosevelt’s inner circle during the Bull Moose Party campaign of 1912, Amos sometimes exasperated the former president with his moralistic criticism and views on the role of big business in America. He believed that World War I had, in fact, been caused by American an
d European imperialists, many of whom were bankers.
As a leader of the Progressive wing of the Republican Party, Amos always worked toward industrial and labor reform. He would become one of the founders, along with Norman Thomas and Roger Baldwin, of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1920. Always outspoken, Amos was a champion of causes, no matter what it might cost him politically or socially. That year, he and Ruth welcomed their first child. Her full birth name was Mary Eno Pinchot; she was born in New York City on October 14, 1920.
The 1920s were a heightened, progressive era for feminism and a wide spectrum of progressive causes. With the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in August 1920, women were granted the right to vote in all United States elections. Ruth Pickering Pinchot and Cornelia Bryce Pinchot became the grand dames of the Pinchot clan they had married into, shaping their family’s values and mores. In 1926, the Nation invited Ruth, Cornelia, and fifteen other women to explore and comment on the nature of their personal feminism. Cornelia considered herself a “public feminist,” committed to women’s issues from a political and civic perspective. Ruth called herself a “new-style” feminist of the 1920s, though she spoke out when she felt that it was warranted.9
Many of the Nation women, including Ruth and Cornelia, emphasized their privileged status by membership in an organization called the Heterodoxy Club of Greenwich Village, a New York feminist society organized in 1912 by the Unitarian minister Marie Jenny Howe. Virtually every prominent suffragist, activist, and woman professional in New York attended its meetings, including such notables as Agnes de Mille, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Emma Goldman, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Mary McLeod Bethune (mentor to Dovey Roundtree). The Heterodoxy Club’s biweekly lunch meetings became a model for the Women’s Liberation Movement of the late 1960s. At early meetings of Heterodoxy, members would openly risk revealing their deepest feelings about their experiences growing up. Personal sharing and mutual support prevailed, and the resulting gatherings set the standard for the women’s movement’s consciousness-raising sessions of the 1960s and 1970s.10