White Noise

Summary

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien: "White Noise" – Detailed Summary

Release Date: June 4, 2025
Host: Soledad O’Brien | Produced by MyCultura and iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction

In the episode titled "White Noise," award-winning journalist Soledad O’Brien delves deep into one of America’s most perplexing unsolved mysteries: the 1964 murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer. This case intertwines elements of race, class, politics, and conspiracy, shedding light on the socio-political climate of the era—a narrative that continues to resonate today.

Background of the Case

Mary Pinchot Meyer, a wealthy socialite and reputed mistress of President John F. Kennedy, was brutally murdered on a towpath in Georgetown, Washington D.C., during her routine midday walk. The case quickly became a national sensation, not only due to Meyer's prominent connections but also because it intersected with the turbulent political landscape of the 1960s, including the Cold War and civil rights movements.

The Day of the Murder

On the day of her murder, Mary was walking her dog when she was shot in broad daylight. The primary suspect was Raymond Crump Jr., a black man from an impoverished background, whose arrest ignited racial tensions and raised questions about the motives behind the crime. Civil rights lawyer Dovey Roundtree took up Crump’s defense, arguing against the prejudiced assumptions that led to his suspicion.

Narrator [05:11]: "To have her die 10 days after this report, which people I think felt was not fully explanatory of what happened, you know, led them to say, the conspiracy theorists would say that she had to be silenced because she knew something that wasn't in there."

Rise of Conspiracy Theories

As the investigation unfolded, numerous inconsistencies and unanswered questions fueled conspiracy theories suggesting Mary Pinchot Meyer's murder was orchestrated by the CIA. A pivotal element in these theories revolves around Meyer's destroyed diary, which purportedly contained sensitive information linking her to JFK and potentially revealing darker political intrigues.

Mary’s Diary: The Missing Piece

Mary maintained a diary documenting her affair with President Kennedy. The diary's disappearance shortly after her murder has been a focal point for conspiracy theorists. Allegedly, the diary fell into the hands of James Angleton, the notoriously secretive CIA counterintelligence chief, raising suspicions about a possible cover-up.

Ron Rosenbaum [26:03]: "I described Mary's diary as kind of a black box, a Rorschach, onto which people could project, however baseless, their theories about the great mysteries of our time."

Various accounts conflict on how the diary was retrieved, with some sources claiming Angleton forcefully took it from Mary’s studio, while others suggest a more clandestine operation coordinated by multiple individuals within the intelligence community.

The Mysterious Phone Call

Adding another layer of intrigue, a CIA officer named Worcester Janney made a phone call to Mary’s close associate, Ben Bradley, shortly after midday on the day of her murder. This communication implied foreknowledge of the crime, leading Peter Janney, son of Worcester Janney and a close friend of Mary’s family, to firmly believe in CIA involvement.

Talina's Friend [34:19]: "I think from the way that the accounts were pieced together, her death was pretty well known by the middle of the afternoon in the top echelons of the national security community because you have accounts of Cordmire and Angleton and other people talking about it."

Expert Insights: The Psychology Behind Conspiracy Beliefs

To understand why Meyer's murder continues to captivate and divide opinion, Soledad O’Brien consults Dr. Joe Pierre, a psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry at UCLA.

Dr. Joe Pierre [10:04]: "There are some, what I call cognitive quirks that are more associated with belief in conspiracy theory than not. Some of them include things like the need for certainty or the need for closure."

Dr. Pierre explains that individuals who crave definitive answers and have difficulty tolerating ambiguity are more prone to embracing conspiracy theories. Meyer's case, with its unresolved questions and ties to a presidential scandal, provides fertile ground for such beliefs.

Diverse Perspectives: Historians and Journalists Weigh In

The episode features insights from various historians and journalists who challenge the conspiracy narrative:

• Lance Morrow questions the plausibility of a CIA-led assassination, arguing that the complexity of such a plot seems unnecessary compared to a straightforward murder.

  Lance Morrow [51:36]: "I don't believe that the CIA was involved. I don't see if it was a conspiracy. It was a fantastically complicated conspiracy."

• Nina Burley expresses skepticism about the CIA's motives, noting the lack of concrete evidence linking them to the murder.

  Nina Burley [52:07]: "I don't really think that there is a lot of plausible evidence that it was a conspiracy that she was killed by the CIA. In fact, I would have preferred it to be a conspiracy. It's a better book. It's a better movie."

• Ron Rosenbaum criticizes conspiracy theorists for exploiting Meyer's death, emphasizing the importance of respecting the victim's privacy.

  Ron Rosenbaum [53:04]: "I find it upsetting."

The William Mitchell Theory

Peter Janney presents a theory involving William Mitchell, a Pentagon employee who claimed to have witnessed aspects of the murder that aligned with the conspiracy narrative. Janney argues that Mitchell's inconsistent military records and multiple aliases suggest he was a CIA operative involved in orchestrating the murder to frame Raymond Crump Jr.

Peter Janney [44:28]: "Mitchell was part of a large and well-prepared team. They learned Mary's routine and chose the tow path to make her murder look like a random act of violence."

However, this theory remains contentious, with significant skepticism from experts who highlight the lack of verifiable evidence supporting Mitchell's involvement in any intelligence activities.

The White Christmas Effect: Misinterpretation of Information

Dr. Joe Pierre introduces the concept of the "White Christmas Effect," where individuals perceive connections and narratives that align with their pre-existing beliefs or desires, even when such connections don't exist.

Dr. Joe Pierre [54:38]: "The way I like to define a conspiracy theory, I like to say that a conspiracy theory rejects the authoritative account of reality in favor of some plot that involves a group of people with a malevolent intent that's deliberately kept secret from the public."

This psychological phenomenon explains how Meyer's murder continues to inspire diverse interpretations and theories, as individuals project their understandings and biases onto the fragmented information available.

Conclusion: An Unresolved Legacy

Despite decades of speculation, Mary Pinchot Meyer's murder remains officially unsolved. The divergent theories surrounding her death reflect broader societal tendencies to seek meaning and narrative cohesion in the face of ambiguity and tragedy. Whether viewed as a single act of violence by Raymond Crump Jr. or as a complex political assassination orchestrated by the CIA, the case of Mary Pinchot Meyer endures as a symbol of enduring mystery and the human penchant for conspiracy.

Dr. Joe Pierre [49:55]: "And so inasmuch as we don't have that piece of information, again, it just invites this flood of counter information."

Mary's legacy, intertwined with JFK's, continues to spark discussions on race, power, and the murky intersections of personal relationships and national politics.

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Selected Quotes from "White Noise"

• Narrator [05:11]: "To have her die 10 days after this report, which people I think felt was not fully explanatory of what happened, you know, led them to say, the conspiracy theorists would say that she had to be silenced because she knew something that wasn't in there."

• Talina's Friend [34:19]: "I think from the way that the accounts were pieced together, her death was pretty well known by the middle of the afternoon in the top echelons of the national security community because you have accounts of Cordmire and Angleton and other people talking about it."

• Dr. Joe Pierre [54:38]: "If you tell people in advance that they're going to hear a recording of something that sounds like white noise but embedded within it, you're going to hear the song the White Christmas."

• Nina Burley [52:07]: "I don't really think that there is a lot of plausible evidence that it was a conspiracy that she was killed by the CIA. In fact, I would have preferred it to be a conspiracy. It's a better book. It's a better movie."

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This episode of "Murder on the Towpath" masterfully navigates the complexities of a historical unsolved crime, blending investigative journalism with psychological insights to explore why certain narratives persist and how they shape our understanding of truth and misinformation.

Transcript

[Host]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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That stays with you. The food here isn't just a meal, it's a legacy. And whether it's the kick of a chiltepin, which is a very hot pepper for those of you who don't know, or enjoying a Sonoran hot dog after a night out on the town, every day dish has a story to tell. And beyond the culinary journey, each neighborhood offers a glimpse into a rich tapestry of cultures blending into the Sonoran Desert. Tucson isn't just a getaway, it's a journey into heritage and a community that feels like home. Learn [e-mail] Viva It's April 2020.

[Host]

A woman announces on Facebook that she has Covid and won't be seeking medical attention.

[Talina's Friend]

I didn't want to be talked out of this plan.

[Host]

Then she disappears.

[Narrator]

Anyone else think this is strange?

[Talina's Friend]

I just had to know.

[Narrator]

How did this happen?

[Host]

Listen to what happened to Talina zar on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Narrator]

Imagine waking up one morning in the spring of 1976. You live in Washington, D.C. so as part of your morning routine, you make coffee, walk outside and grab the morning edition of the Washington Post as you sit and take your first hot sip of caffeine you glance at the day's headlines, one catches your eye. JFK had affair with artists smoked grass. By 1976, the public had already learned about JFK's extramarital proclivities. But this time around, the real news was who this affair was with. Because not only was the President carrying on with a gorgeous artist and socialite, and not only had she done drugs with the President in the private residence of the White House, they smoked three of the joints.

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And then JFK told her, no more.

[Narrator]

Suppose the Russians did something. Now, she said he also told her, this isn't like cocaine.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

I'll get you some of that.

[Narrator]

But this woman, Mary Pinchot Meyer, had been murdered, too, just 11 months after the President's own assassination. And that's the moment you realize this story is a lot more complicated than you initially imagined. It appeared in the National Enquirer, a sensational supermarket tabloid. And next they reported Meyer kept a diary of her romance with Kennedy and that the diary was destroyed after her.

[T-Mobile Advertiser]

Death by James Angleton, a Central Intelligence.

[Narrator]

Agency official and friend of the Meyer family. What? Not only is it odd that this woman had been murdered months after the President himself, but somehow, for some reason, a CIA official had taken her diary and it was never seen again. If you haven't already let out a big old huh? Before seeing this fact, you sure have. Now, the real news wasn't that the President had had another affair. Reading between the lines, it now seemed possible that the murder of his lover wasn't random, because the date Mary Meyer was murdered was also mere weeks after the release of the Warren Commission's official report, a report that doubled down on the official lone gunman narrative of JFK's assassination. People in Mary's inner circle were already wondering what really happened to jfk. So it seemed extra odd that someone so closely connected to him was murdered, too.

[Talina's Friend]

To have her die 10 days after this report, which people I think felt was not fully explanatory of what happened, you know, led them to say, the conspiracy theorists would say that she had to be silenced because she knew something that wasn't in there.

[Narrator]

Now that the affair was newspaper fodder, more conspiracy theories began to crop up in connection to the murder of Mary Meyer.

[Historian]

So the portrait of her developed very slowly, like a bold Polaroid photograph. It coalesced over a period of time. And it got more interesting over a period of time, more interesting and more mysterious. As it became more interesting and mysterious, the conspiracy theories developed and people began conjecturing that it was impossible that she could simply have been the victim of a senseless, random kind of crime. That somebody must have had some reason to want her killer.

[Narrator]

And to this day, those theories persist. Here's Nina.

[Talina's Friend]

If you Google Mary Meyer right now, and now we're at 2020, you will still come up with entry after entry about various conspiracy theories that people have come up with about what happened to her. And that's the place that she holds in history to this day.

[Narrator]

From Lucy Luminary, Film Nation Entertainment and Neon Hum Media, this is Murder on the Towpath. I'm Soledad o' Brien. In this episode, we're going to dig into the conspiracy theories behind Mary's murder. Those who believe there was a conspiracy to murder Mary think it stems from one simple fact. Mary, quote, knew too much, specifically, she knew too much about how JFK was really killed.

[Historian]

Did she know something about Kennedy? Did she know something about Kennedy's murder? Did she know information that somebody at the CIA wanted to keep her from revealing? And these over the Internet, over the years, these theories proliferated.

[Narrator]

If the CIA was covering up something about Kennedy's death and Mary knew about it, then presumably she was a threat. And while there are some who might keep quiet about information like that, Mary wasn't known to be one of them. Her friends knew her as outspoken and that was true, especially when it came to her feelings about the CIA. And so the conspiracy goes, she had to be taken out because she knew something about the CIA and Kennedy's assassination. Okay, before we go any further, let's stop here and say something that needs to be said. When we set out to tell the story of Mary's murder, we knew we were going to have to cover some murky ground because to this day, her murder is officially unsolved. Even Washington D.C. police decided long ago to consider the case closed. Or as Bob Bennett explained it, the.

[Historian]

Police don't, usually after an acquittal, go out and investigate to find someone else.

[Narrator]

Unless there's good reason to. And apparently police didn't believe there was any good reason to do so. So when the main question behind a murder is left unanswered, namely, who killed Mary, conspiracies can thrive. But because Mary was tied to jfk, that's not all there is to it. Even to this day, more than 60% of Americans believe Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. Which is to say the majority of Americans don't believe they're getting the full story behind the Dallas shooting of jfk. That fact alone might change some people's Opinions about who conspiracy theorists really are. They're not always fringe loonies in their basements concocting alternative narratives. In fact, it's mainstream to believe some conspiracy theories. We wanted to get a better understanding of why some people gravitate toward conspiracy theories. So we called up someone who studies them.

[Dr. Joe Pierre]

My name is Joe Pierre. I'm a psychiatrist and a professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine.

[Narrator]

Dr. Pierre says research shows why some folks are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories than others.

[Dr. Joe Pierre]

There are some, what I call cognitive quirks that are more associated with belief in conspiracy theory than not. Some of them include things like the need for certainty or the need for closure. The idea that people don't tolerate ambiguity in narratives and they want to really get a more definitive answer, and that that seems to be associated with belief in conspiracy theory.

[Narrator]

Some conspiracy theorists need closure. They crave certainty. So if something doesn't add up, they might keep looking for connections until a story emerges. We'll Hear More from Dr. Pierre later in this episode. But based on that idea alone, you could see why Mary's murder intrigued conspiracy theorists. Her story has lots of unanswered questions. Now one of the most well known conspiracy theories behind Mary's murder is laid out by writer Peter Janney in a book called Mary's Mosaic. Janney has spent years trying to answer what really happened to Mary. Why? Because he grew up down the street from the Myers. Their families were friendly. And Peter's father, like Mary's ex husband, he also worked at the CIA. Peter Janney spent years researching this case, and he uncovered some pretty strange facts about Mary Meyer's death. But what Janney then does is takes those facts and builds a unified theory that argues that the CIA conspired to murder JFK and Mary. That conspiracy has been rejected by many who've reported this story, including Lance Morrow, Nina Burley, and Ron Rosenbaum. And as for Mary's inner circle, her close friends and her sister Tony remained nearly mute on the subject of Mary's murder or any conspiracies connected to it. That said, Janney believes the CIA killed the President because JFK wanted world peace. While the agency had incentives to ramp up the Cold War, only one of them, the President or his military, could prevail in the end. And Mary became collateral damage. Why is it that some people find Janney's conspiracy theories so far fetched? We're going to do our best to answer that question. But before we get into Mary's murder, we're going to give you A Cliff Notes version of the reasons why some believed the CIA killed jfk. It's a story that really begins with a little bit of presidential history, namely JFK's relationship with the CIA and his own military. While Kennedy moved his policy goals in the direction of world peace, the CIA wanted to show the strength of the American military complex, especially as the Cold War was heating up. As a result, Kennedy and the CIA ended up on opposite sides of two big clashes. The first was the Bay of Pigs.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

The assault has begun on the dictatorship of Fidel Castro. Landings were affected by rebels at several places on the Cuban coast and the rebellion against the red tinge dictator was on.

[Narrator]

When the CIA led invasion to remove Fidel Castro from power. Looked like it was going to be a failure. Kennedy refused to send additional backup. This infuriated Allen Dulles, the legendary CIA director. To add insult to injury, Kennedy fired Dulles. The President wanted him to know exactly who was in charge. The second clash, of course, was the Cuban Missile Crisis. He called General Eisenhower to bring him up to speed.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

We got Friday night, got a message from Khrushchev which said that he would withdraw these missiles and technicians and so on, providing we did not plan to invade Cuba.

[Narrator]

Kennedy wanted to save the world from nuclear annihilation, something both he and Mary felt strongly about. But when he tried to de escalate the crisis by offering to remove US missiles from Turkey if Russia removed theirs from Cuba, well, the CIA thought the President was making America look weak. By then, Kennedy no longer trusted his men, military or the CIA. And that's when, according to Janney's theory, the CIA decided to assassinate the President From Dallas. Two priests who were with President Kennedy say he is dead. News reports said it was the work of one deranged gunman. But those closest to Kennedy weren't so sure. CIA Director John McCone went to Bobby Kennedy's house that day and the two discussed the assassination. Historian Arthur Schlesinger and Bobby Kennedy's son RFK Jr later reported Bobby suspected a conspiracy behind his brother's murder. Many close to Kennedy thought something smelled fishy. One of the seven members of the Warren Commission charged with investigating the President's death was Was none other than Allen Dulles, the same man Kennedy fired the year before. Apparently he shared a book saying American assassinations, unlike European assassinations, were usually the work of a lone gunman. Ultimately, the Commission argued one man shot JFK.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

The report's 300,000 words trace the facts through questioning of every possible witness. And the Commission reports that the fatal shots that entered President Kennedy's head and throat were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald from the Texas School Book Depository, acting solely by himself, and that there was no conspiracy, either foreign or domestic.

[Narrator]

The official report was given to President Johnson on September 24, 1964. Less than three weeks later, Mary was dead on the towpath.

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We finally switched to T Mobile because with them we can be connected here and there. Dad, the cousins in Mexico have a.

[Narrator]

Surprise for you.

[T-Mobile Advertiser]

And enjoy the gift of staying connected. Switch and start saving today. Get four Samsung Galaxy S25 phones with Galaxy AI on us and four lines for just 25 bucks per line plus nonstop talk, text and data between us and Mexico. Visit a store t mobile.com or call 1-800-T-MOBILE 1-800-T MOBILE. See details@t mobile.com Tucson is a city.

[Tucson Tourism Advertiser]

That stays with you. The food here isn't just a meal, it's a legacy. And whether it's the kick of a chiltepin, which is a very hot pepper for those of you who don't know or enjoying a Sonoran hot dog after a night out on the town, every dish has a story to tell and beyond the culinary journey, each neighborhood offers a glimpse into a rich tapestry of cultures blending into the Sonoran Desert. Tucson isn't just a getaway, it's a journey into heritage and a community that feels like home. Learn [e-mail] Viva.

[Host]

It'S the early days of COVID April 2020. A woman in a small town in Oklahoma was makes a strange post to Facebook and then disappears.

[Talina's Friend]

I'm on day nine of this virus and I am pretty sure it has reached my lungs. I made the decision at the onset that if it got bad enough I.

[Host]

Would not go to the hospital pretty quickly. A ragtag group of women on the Internet start their own investigation.

[Talina's Friend]

It felt like I was living out one of like my fantasy dreams of being a detective.

[Host]

But the world they uncover is beyond their wildest imagination.

[Narrator]

How did this happen?

[Host]

Listen to what happened to Talina zar on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Narrator]

Another conspiracy theorist in the 90s looked into Mary's murder. A man named Leo Demoor. He claims that he learned key information about Mary's death from her diary. The diary that no one else has ever claimed to have seen. After Angleton took it in a 1993 conversation with his lawyer, Damore claims he got his hands on a copy of it. Damore said Angleton had given the diary to someone Damore knew and through that person, Damore read what was inside of it. He claims that Mary confronted her ex husband Cord after the Warren Commission Report came out. She apparently told Cord that more than one gunman was involved, and the CIA too. From there, Cord supposedly told James Angleton about Mary's growing agitation over the commission's findings. Janney seized on this reporting from demore, then argued that Mary was ready to raise a stink publicly about the CIA's involvement in JFK's death. So what could she have known? After JFK's assassination, the Mary allegedly sought answers from two of the president's closest advisors, Dave Powers and Kenny O' Donnell. By then, O' Donnell had told conspiracy theorist Leo D' Amore in an interview that things in Dallas went down differently than the commission reported. And those two presidential advisors told Mary herself that they'd seen two bullets come from in front of JFK's motorcade, meaning at the very least, more than one gunman had been involved in the shooting. Right around this time, Mary told her friends she felt she was being followed. She'd found a garden door and a basement door to her Georgetown home open after she'd been out and told another friend she was scared of finding someone inside. Meanwhile, Angleton bragged that he tapped Mary's phones and her bedroom. The wife of another CIA official confirmed this with biographer Nina Burley. And if you believed Amor and Janney, that was the beginning of the end for Mary. Angleton was a godfather to Mary's children, but more importantly, in this case, he was chief of the CIA's most secretive department. In the far fetched world of conspiracy theories, the CIA had a motive for wanting to kill Mary. But whether you find that to be plausible or not, Whether you believe in this conspiracy or not, two facts from the time of Mary's murder don't really add up. The first is her diary, and the second is a phone call. No one close to Mary agrees on what her diary contained. No one agrees on how it was found. No one agrees where it was found. All anyone seemed to agree on was that Mary's diary eventually ended up in the hands of CIA spy James Angleton. What's even weirder about Mary's diary is that widely respected journalist Ben Bradlee gave it to the CIA agent. That fact first became public knowledge when Bradley's memoir was published in the mid-90s. Here's Nina Burley.

[Talina's Friend]

He admits for the first time that he took this diary and gave it to James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's counterintelligence super spooky. And I thought, what is that all about? I'm from the generation that grew up thinking, you know, I was in grade school when Watergate happened and I revered Ben Bradlee and I thought he was the father of investigative journalism. And what was he doing secretly giving the diary of a murder victim to the CIA and then not telling anyone while a man was on trial for murder and not revealing it for another three decades?

[Narrator]

When you've got an esteemed journalist in cahoots with a spy, it fans the flames. Lance Morrow felt the same way.

[Historian]

Ben Bradlee was, in addition to being her brother in law, was a professional journalist. And it seems to me absolutely incredible and appalling that a professional journalist would just turn over the diary to Angleton and say, well, here you know, how sort of thing, you know, in other words, you know, how to dispose of this kind of thing. That was very, very strange.

[Narrator]

But to this day, the diary is the missing piece of the puzzle that leads so many to believe there's a conspiracy behind Mary's murder.

[Talina's Friend]

I mean, the main evidence that it had to do with the CIA is the fact that they. You have Angleton there at night taking her material. And he's a very malign person in the history of the CIA. He was known to go and get documents immediately after people's deaths to make sure that information was not released.

[Narrator]

So what was in Mary's diary that made it so dangerous? No one really knows.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

I described Mary's diary as kind of a black box, a Rorschach, onto which people could project, however baseless, their theories about the great mysteries of our time. You know, we don't know what was in the diary, so people are free to speculate.

[Narrator]

What adds to the enduring mystery is that no one close to Mary told the same story. They each told different accounts of how Mary's diary was retrieved and. And in some cases, destroyed. Ben Bradley says the day he went to search for Mary's diary, When he.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

Arrived at Mary's studio, Angleton was already there, picking the lock and supposedly to find the diary. Angleton angrily denies this.

[Narrator]

Each story about Mary's diary starts out more or less the same way. On the night of Mary's murder, the story goes, Tony Bradley, Mary's sister, got a call in Georgetown.

[Talina's Friend]

Ann Truitt was living in Japan with her husband, a journalist. And she got wind of Mary's death. And before the day was out, she had phoned up Tony Bradley, Ben Bradley's wife and Mary's sister, and, and said, you need to go over to that studio and get this diary that she kept, because there's a lot in it that people. We don't want people to know. You won't, you know, she wouldn't want people to read it.

[Narrator]

If you think something about this sounds strange, you wouldn't be alone. No one knows how Ann Truitt in Japan learned about Mary's murder. Ann died in 2004, but while she was alive, she remained quite quiet on the matter. And had Mary really told her best friend that she wanted Angleton to have it if she died? This was hard to believe, given Mary's distaste for the CIA. The most fleshed out version of the diary hunt comes from Ron Rosenbaum, who wrote about mary's murder in 1976. According to Rosenbaum's conversations with various sources, the diary hunt turned into a sort of impromptu memorial party for Mary five days after her murder.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

I think there was a sort of tipsy and mournful gathering of Mary's friends. Shortly after her death.

[Narrator]

Several people were at Mary's house, including Mary's sister, Tony Cord, and Angleton and his wife. Angleton showed up with spy gear, White gloves, a drill in his little black spy bag. There was wall tapping. Bricks were turned over in the yard. Rosenbaum reported that everyone drank whiskey, and Mary's ex husband, Cord, lit a smoky fire. Someone else walked out into the yard and called to Mary up above, Mary, where's your damn diary? According to Rosenbaum, Toni located her sister's diary in her painting studio, along with artwork she was preparing for her next show. The diary itself was in a locked steel box, and according to Tony, it was more of a sketchbook with some vague references to an Affair. Angleton is reported to have taken it. Ben Bradley's account, meanwhile, it varies so dramatically from what Angleton said that it caused a rift between the men.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

The two of them have been in a feud ever since the early 60s.

[Narrator]

In his memoir A Good Life, Bradley claimed he first arrived at Mary's studio the following day, just him and Tony. And that's when he found Angleton already presented. C SPAN interviewed Bradley about this episode in 1995 during his publicity tour for his memoir. Here's Bradley himself saying he saw Angleton at Mary's studio, already looking for Mary's diary when he arrived. So Angleton.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

That we, we soon divined that's why he was there.

[Narrator]

But how he got in we didn't.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

Know because it was locked and we found him. We didn't find it in Mary's house. We found it later in a studio, and we found Jim Angleton trying to pick a lock to get his way in.

[Narrator]

Nina Burley fleshes it out a bit more. When Tony and Ben Bradley arrived at Mary's studio, lo and behold, who do.

[Talina's Friend]

They see but James Jesus Angleton, godfather to their children, to Mary's children, one of Cord's best friends, and just happens to be counterintelligence chief of the CIA, One of the most paranoid super spooks in American history, jimmying the lock and trying to get in to this studio. And then the story gets a little murky. Does he get in? Do they go in together? Ben has recorded in his memoir that he went in, found this document, a diary which he described as having lots of color swatches in it, but also some text in her handwriting. And that from his cursory glance at it, he recognized that it was personal and that it was revealing and that it might be revealing things about Kennedy. And so they gave the diary to Angleton.

[Narrator]

You see, pretty different from the impromptu diary searching party that Rosenbaum described.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

So it's hard to know whether what account to trust, whether he was really picking the lock or he had a key.

[Narrator]

Maybe so. But all seemed to be in agreement that Angleton eventually ended up with it. To this day, Peter Janney claims only the CIA knows what's really inside Mary's diary. And he suggests it was much more than just an artist's sketchbook.

[Talina's Friend]

It became clear to me that Mary.

[Narrator]

Meyer had kept a diary in which she was putting the pieces of the assassination together during 1964. And one of the things that she discovered was not only was there a conspiracy to take out the sitting president in Dallas in 1963, but that there was even bigger conspiracy to cover it up. In all of 1964, as part of his book tour, Janney was interviewed by the Boston Globe about what exactly Mary's diary might have said. He said the diary contained incriminating information about Angleton and the Dallas assassination. That's why he had to take it. But that's just speculation. Meanwhile, Lance Morrow puts it this the.

[Historian]

Diary business is somewhat mysterious. Nobody knows whether there was anything of consequence in it.

[Narrator]

And that brings us to another mystery. An odd phone call placed the afternoon Mary died. As you recall, Mary's body was officially identified the night of her murder. Ben Bradley went to the morgue to vouch that Mary was mary. In his 1965 courtroom testimony, Bradley claimed the first time he realized Mary was dead was at the morgue. Years later, though, it would become clear that both Bradley and the CIA knew about Mary's death well before sunset.

[Talina's Friend]

I think from the way that the accounts were pieced together, her death was pretty well known by the middle of the afternoon in the top echelons of the national security community because you have accounts of Cordmire and Engleton and other people talking about it.

[Narrator]

Why would a couple of top CIA officials know about Mary's death before her identity was confirmed? Cicely Angleton says she just happened to hear a news bulletin that October day. For reasons unknown, Just like Lance Morrow, she heard about the murder of a white woman on the Georgetown towpath shortly afternoon. Cicely angled Angleton knew Mary liked to take walks there around midday. So upon hearing about the murdered woman, she feared the worst and called her husband, James Angleton at the CIA.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

He was in the middle of a meeting at CIA headquarters when he got an urgent call from his wife who apprised him of the fact that that there had been a murder of a woman on the towpath yet to be identified. But she was afraid that it was Mary and she wanted him to get down there, I guess, and find out what happened.

[Narrator]

That account of why the CIA knew of Mary's death early is innocent enough. But another call is far more damning. This call came from within the CIA. It was made by a CIA officer named Worcester Janney. If that name sounds familiar, well, that's because you heard it before. Worcester Janney is Peter Janney's father. And one of the linchpins of Peter Janney's argument that the CIA killed Mary is connected to this phone call his father made that day. In his memoir, Ben Bradley reports that he actually learned of Mary's murder when he received a phone call just after lunch from a friend. That friend was Worcester Janney, also employed by the CIA. Like we mentioned earlier, the Janneys grew up with the Myers. Peter Janney's best friend had been Mary's middle son, Michael, who was tragically hit by a car. And so, years later, when Peter Janney discovered with horror that his father had known about the murder hours before anyone else with that, it dawned on him that his father seemed to know in advance that Mary would be murdered. And so when Peter read his father had made the phone call to Ben Bradley that afternoon, his conviction that the CIA was behind Mary's death and that his own father was in on the plot became more than a conspiracy for Janney, it became a horrifying truth. It tied what he had lived as a child to new information he learned as an adult. For him, it cracked open the case. Listen, we're humans. It's really hard to accept that bad things happen randomly, that Mary could get shot on the towpath for no good reason. It makes sense why Jani would take one new piece of information and derive from it a much bigger meaning. Because, as Dr. Pierre says, people who believe in conspiracy theories also tend to.

[Dr. Joe Pierre]

Believe things do happen for some ultimate reason, whether it's related to supernatural forces or God or something like that, versus more of a belief that things just happen randomly. And so that helps to explain why you might see people looking at the same information, but interpreting them very differently and sort of through the lens of their own psychology or their own personal experience.

[Narrator]

Okay, fine. Outstanding questions about the diary and a mysterious phone call aside, say the CIA did kill Mary. How would it have gone down? You might not be surprised. Janney has a detailed answer for that, too. His theory revolves around another man who claims he was on the towpath the day of Mary's murder. A man named William Mitchell. It would turn out Mitchell was just the kind of character that would make Janney believe Mary's death is tied to a larger web. You see, William Mitchell had gone to the D.C. police the day after Mary's murder to say that he'd been on the towpath that fateful day. Remember the jogger from episode two? Down on the towpath? Dovey and her law partners recreated the scene just before the murder. One of them played Ray, another Mary, and another, this jogger, William Mitchell. Mitchell said he worked at the Pentagon specifically for the Department of Defense, just a few miles down the road from Georgetown. And he told the police at midday, just like Mary, he had Left work for his daily constitutional. Now, we haven't mentioned this yet, but Mitchell also testified at Ray's trial about what he had seen that day. He said in court that on his jog, he'd passed away. Woman whose clothing matched Mary's. And shortly after, he passed a black man following her from behind. He described Mary's clothes precisely. Then he described Raymond Crump's build and clothing. Mitchell helped the prosecution put Ray Crump Jr. On the towpath. He'd done his part to help the prosecution's case. And he was an upstanding army officer. Officer who worked at the Pentagon. So the prosecution couldn't ask for a more credible witness, right? Well, not exactly. Janney and his research team. Yeah. By now, he had a team found that Mitchell's military records didn't make sense. Mitchell's stories about his past, his whereabouts and his official military records contradicted each other time and time again. Fishy. But it wasn't just that. No one could verify Mitchell had even been on the towpath the day of Mary's murder. And Janney and his researchers found that Mitchell had changed his name throughout the years. At some point, he also started using a second Social Security number to Janney. That was extra fishy. Janney even went so far as to serve William Mitchell with a complaint alleging that he had been part of a conspiracy to murder Mary Meyer. It required Mitchell to appear in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. When the two men finally met, Janney reported that William Mitchell answered I don't remember or I don't remember that to nearly every. Every single question he was asked about his past and about the day of Mary's murder. Assuming what Janney says is true, that's a bit odd. I mean, to not remember anything. So Janney and his military researcher put two and two together and came up with a theory that William Mitchell worked for the C. When a patchwork of military records and aliases and Social Security numbers don't tell a rational story, the researcher said it's a telltale sign that a person works in intelligence. Yep. It still sounds a bit crazy. Right? But Janney takes his theory one step further. Yes, Mitchell did have several aliases and more than one Social Security number. But Janney then theorized that Mitchell was not only CIA, but also part of the team that took Mary out. He argues Mitchell was part of a large and well prepared team. They learned Mary's routine and chose the tow path to make her murder look like a random act of violence. If she'd been murdered in her bed, it would have seemed more personal. Finally, on the day that a believable patsy showed up on the towpath, a patsy who happened to be Raymond Crump, there for his affair with Vivian, the operation team would have quickly procured a hitman who closely enough resembled Ray, clothes that closely enough match what Ray was wearing, and then sent the hitman to do the dirty work. There are other a lot of jumps here, but the theory goes Mitchell was a CIA operative with one cut and dry mission in Mary's death to put the blame on Ray Crump.

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[Host]

It'S the early days of COVID April 2020. A woman in a small town in Oklahoma makes a strange post to Facebook and then disappears.

[Talina's Friend]

I'm on day nine of this virus and I am pretty sure it has reached my last. I made the decision at the onset that if it got bad enough, I would not go to the hospital.

[Host]

Pretty quickly, a ragtag group of women on the Internet start their own investigation.

[Talina's Friend]

It felt like I was living out one of, like, my fantasy dreams of being a detective.

[Host]

But the world they uncover is beyond their wildest imagination.

[Talina's Friend]

How did this happen?

[Host]

Listen to what happened to Talina zar on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Narrator]

Some people are more prone to believe conspiracy theories than others, so we really wanted to dig into the psychology behind them. When we spoke with psychology professor Joe Pierre earlier in the episode, he had a lot more to say about that world. And it helped illuminate why so many would feel the allure of a conspiracy with Mary's murder.

[Dr. Joe Pierre]

The way I like to define a conspiracy theory, I like to say that a conspiracy theory rejects the authoritative account of reality in favor of some plot that involves a group of people with a malevolent intent that's deliberately kept secret from the public. So in that sense, there's really two components. It's the rejection of the conventional wisdom, the conventional version of events, and then there's an embrace of a more shadowy, secret narrative to explain the underlying truth, as it were.

[Narrator]

So in this case, the conventional narrative is, ray Crump killed Mary and got away with it, or another rogue murderer killed Mary and got away with it. And it's as simple as that. A random act of violence. It's straightforward, it's logical, and it's hard to wrap your head around. So there's another explanation that's a lot more compelling, Very Hollywood even. Because conspiracy theories make for real, riveting stories, watching puzzle pieces come together is satisfying. Understanding why bad things happen by the end of a movie is comforting.

[Dr. Joe Pierre]

So I think all of us, to a certain extent, find those kind of narratives appealing. And in some sense, they're often more appealing than the dull narrative that is the real life.

[Narrator]

But Mary's story, it also has something else of significant note attached to it that gets people who are prone to conspiracy to pay attention. Jfk.

[Dr. Joe Pierre]

Big headline news. Major life events are the kind of thing that spawns conspiracy theories, particularly when those events have a kind of traumatic element to them.

[Narrator]

And in the case of Mary's murder, a number of things other than the popularity of JFK and the tragedy of his death can account for its persistence. The precise shots to Mary's temple and hart, which made the killing look controlled, almost professional. The fact that no murder weapon was ever found. An odd phone call. An untraceable military man who claims to have witnessed Crump following Mary on the towpath. And finally, the diary is a kind.

[Dr. Joe Pierre]

Of missing smoking gun. Right? So what we have is this mysterious diary which may or may not contain information beyond documentation of the affair with jfk, but may or may not include other information. And that sort of, to a certain extent, supplies the narrative of why she might have been targeted or why she was important. And so inasmuch as we don't have that piece of information, again, it just invites this flood of counter information.

[Narrator]

And for more than 50 years, the case itself has remained unsolved. A killer hasn't been convicted for Mary's murder.

[Dr. Joe Pierre]

So that's sort of an example where we really just don't have a kind of ironclad narrative. There is a lot of ambiguity even in the real life telling of those events.

[Narrator]

And yet there are plenty of people connected to this case who don't want to talk about Mary's murder at all. And they never have. Mary's family, her friends for them. Professor Pierre points out, part of the reason that might be true is that conspiracy theories prolong pain.

[Dr. Joe Pierre]

They know based on their own experience. They have a sense of what the true narrative is of those events. So to hear people spinning a different tale that contradicts their own experience, that's again upsetting or even insulting in a way.

[Narrator]

Meanwhile, many of the journalists who've investigated Mary's murder have a hard time wrapping their heads around a CIA driven plot. Here's Lance Morrow.

[Historian]

I don't believe that the CIA was involved. I don't if it was a conspiracy. It was a fantastically complicated conspiracy. And I'm at a loss to understand why anybody would arrange it that way when it would have been so much easier to kill her in her house at night in Georgetown and just make it look like a burglary where there would be no witnesses.

[Narrator]

Nina Burley doesn't think Mary was killed because she knew too much either.

[Talina's Friend]

I don't really think that there is a lot of plausible evidence that it was a conspiracy that she was killed by the CIA. In fact, I would have preferred it to be a conspiracy. It's a better book. It's a better. It's a movie.

[Narrator]

As for Dovey, well, Nina Burley also asked about this when she interviewed Dovey.

[Talina's Friend]

She definitely didn't say, I believe this was a conspiracy by the CIA. You know, the thing that struck me more was the whole conversation about forgiveness. But I do think that she alluded to, you know, there were certainly were other possibilities for what happened here.

[Narrator]

And finally, the man we spoke to who is perhaps most adamantly against the idea of conspiracy being related to Mary's death, that would Be Ron Rosenbaum.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

There are people, conspiracy theorists, who exploit her death. Still to this day, I'm just tired of having to refute and debunk the baseless, evidenceless conspiracy theories that I think exploit this woman and commodify her privacy and intimacy in a shameless way I find upsetting.

[Narrator]

So there you have it. For the most part, all these writers, these individuals surrounding this complex story, they have the same set of facts, yet their conclusions can be very different. And we haven't even acknowledged the simplest explanation of all. What if Ray did kill Mary? The pieces of that puzzle aren't all in place either. But that theory requires fewer mental gymnastics than a CIA plot. After all, a witness placed him at the crime scene, and he was caught shortly after the murder took place. But in the end, we just don't know. So what does all this mind bending say about us? What does it say about the way we take in information and process it? About the way we understand Mary's murder? Why are we all on such different pages? Joe Pierre has a pretty good answer for that.

[Dr. Joe Pierre]

There's something called the White Christmas Effect.

[Narrator]

It's something that has been studied in psychology research, he says, and the results are pretty fascinating.

[Dr. Joe Pierre]

If you tell people in advance that they're going to hear a recording of something that sounds like white noise but embedded within it, you're going to hear the song the White Christmas. And then we play that white noise, and we ask you to press a button to identify when you're hearing the song. People will listen to the white noise. They'll press the button saying that they've heard it, even when the song was not actually embedded into that white noise. It's like if I am someone who is interested in conspiracy theories, who's interested in true crime, and if you asked me to take a look at this case, well, then, yeah, I could sift through all the materials that I've read and say, yes, absolutely, there's evidence here, here, here, here. Because if my brain is looking for that information, we know that human brains are very good at finding it. And so that's where I think we have to be skeptical when we hear about conspiracy theories.

[Narrator]

For each one of us, it seems the story of Mary's murder, if there's a conspiracy behind it or not, might be the perfect test case for the White Christmas Effect. But like the movie where the songs performed all the snow that made Christmas in Vermont white, it was produced on a California soundstage. It merely gave the illusion that the whole thing took place in Vermont. But my friends, it did not. And in the case of Mary's murder, the CIA's involvement is no more believable than all that fake snow. At least for a slew of reporters who know the story best. As questions surrounding Mary Meyer's death remain unanswered through the decades, the legacy of each woman would start to be written. Dovey Rountree would go on to write a book about her amazing life. Friends and family would remember her, even if public discourse didn't, for the improbable strides she made in her professional and spiritual pursuits. But Mary, there are those who to this day are struggling to bring her life's work and true legacy into light. But the forces they're working against remain mysterious.

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It's this sort of search for truth.

[Narrator]

Like who does have it? The paintings? Who doesn't have them?

[Host]

If they have it and they don't want to share it, why?

[Narrator]

Next time on the final episode of Murder on the Towpath From Luminary Murder on the Towpath is a production of Film Nation Entertainment in association with Neon Hum Media. Our executive producers are me, Soledad o' Brien, Alyssa Lisa Martino, Milan Papelka and Jonathan Hirsch. Lead producer is Shara Morris. Associate producers are Daddalie Ryn and Lucy Licht. Senior editor is Catherine St. Louis. Music and composition by Andrew Epin. Sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville. Fact checking by Laura Bullard. Special thanks to Allison Cohen, Sarah Bacchiano, Rose Arce, Kate Mishkin, Tanner, Rum Robbins and Michaela Salella. Thanks also to British Pathe for providing some of the archival audio you heard in this episode.

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Nmlsconsumeraccess.org number 3030 it's April 2020.

[Host]

A woman announces on Facebook that she has Covid and won't be seeking medical attention.

[Talina's Friend]

I didn't want to be talked out of this plan.

[Host]

Then she disappears.

[Narrator]

Anyone else think this is strange?

[Talina's Friend]

I just had to know.

[Narrator]

How did this happen?

[Host]

Listen to what happened to Talina czar on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Narrator]

Are you.

[Host]

Obsessed with true crime? Then you're gonna love True Crime Tonight. I'm Bodymovin.

[Narrator]

I'm Courtney Armstrong. And I'm Stephanie Lydecker.

[Host]

We've all worked together for years, and.

[Narrator]

Now we're trying something brand new. We're unpacking all the latest true crime headlines. We'll be covering all the major trials.

[Host]

That are heating up this summer.

[Narrator]

And yes, we'll also be covering scandals that we're all obsessed with.

[Host]

He pulls out of his backpack, syringes.

[Narrator]

What?

[Talina's Friend]

Wow.

[Host]

Completely bizarre.

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Listen to True Crime Tonight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get True Crime Tonight completely ad free. That's with an I Heart True Crime plus subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So open your Apple podcast app, search.

[Narrator]

For I Heart True Crime plus and subscribe. Today, something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in in Bone Valley season one. Every time I hear about my dad is, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil. I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known. At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.

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Listen to new episodes of bone Valley.

[Dr. Joe Pierre]

Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple.

[Narrator]

Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Host]

This is an iHeart podcast.