Burleigh, Nina. A Very Private Woman: The Life and Unsolved Murder of
Presidential Mistress Mary Meyer. New York: Bantam Books, 1999. 356 pages.
Mary Pinchot Meyer (1920-1964) was from a well-connected family.
After Vassar she married Cord Meyer, Jr., who became a top CIA official.
Mary's sister married Ben Bradlee in 1955; another classmate from Vassar was
Cicely d'Autremont, who married James Angleton. An attractive, free-spirited
artist, Mary Meyer was sampling mushrooms with Timothy Leary at Harvard by
1962, and told him that the CIA was interested in the potential of LSD for
mind control. That year Mary smoked pot with JFK. Then in 1964, she was
murdered while walking along the Georgetown towpath. The evidence against
the accused was circumstantial, and attorney Dovey Roundtree got Ray Crump
acquitted. After the murder, Bradlee and Angleton found Mary's diary in
her house, whereupon Angleton slithered off into the night with it.
The White House mind-control connection, the unsolved murder, and the
diary caper have earned Mary Meyer a solid place in conspiracy folklore.
Some aspects of the murder suggest that Crump may have been a fall guy,
although this in turn suggests a plot that would have been both elaborate
and risky. Crump was involved in a few violent incidents in the years after
his acquittal, but knowing this isn't particularly helpful either. In 1997
he wrote the author that he remembered nothing of that day on the towpath,
and didn't want to talk about it.
ISBN 0-553-38051-6
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