Was JFK’S true love murdered to protect his killers?
utes apart in Washington, DC, and when JFK became president Meyer was a frequent visitor to the White House – mostly when Jackie was out of town.
“This was a dangerous relationship,” said Kennedy’s close friend, journalist Charles Bartlett.
“Jack was in love with Mary Meyer. He was heavily smitten. He was very frank with me about it.”
A free spirit, Meyer went through Reichian therapy that embraced sexual openness to shed inhibitions, and was a friend of LSD guru Timothy Leary, leading many to suspect she tripped on acid with JFK.
Meyer often stepped away from her artist’s studio in Washington to walk along the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, a derelict waterpossibly way where she could escape with her thoughts. She was strolling the towpath at lunchtime in October 1964, when a neighbour heard shouting, and then Meyer scream: “Somebody help me!”
Meyer was shot in the head by a snub-nose Smith & Wesson .38. As she lay dying a second shot ripped through her aorta. She was 43.
“She even looked beautiful with a bullet in her head,” said an eyewitness.
African American labourer Raymond Crump, aged 25, was found by police only 500ft from Meyer’s body and arrested, but was acquitted at trial when no murder weapon was found and no physical evidence linked him to the killing.
Her death came three weeks after the Warren Commission reported JFK had been killed by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald – a finding that shocked many, and likely ignited Meyer’s ire.
Meyer’s missing diary may have been the repository of many of JFK’S darkest thoughts, holding the secret to her death and even Kennedy’s assassination, claim experts.
Historians and conspiracy theorists alike have accused the CIA of masterminding Kennedy’s murder as he undermined the agency’s foreign policy, and insiders believe that avowed pacifist Meyer may have been instrumental in persuading the president to question the Cold War’s military build-up. Others have suggested the Mafia killed Kennedy to end his war on organised crime.
After Kennedy’s death Meyer began investigating his assassination, claimed Peter Janney is his 2012 book Mary’s Mosaic, which suggests that the CIA killed Meyer.
“The lingering question was how far Mary had gone in her investigation, and what impact it might have had,” said the author. A suspected CIA hit man allegedly admitted that Meyer’s murder was “standard CIA procedure”.
Insiders assert that the CIA has a copy of Meyer’s lost diary and investigative journalist Leo Damore claimed he had seen the diary while researching his own book on Meyer.
Her sister Antoinette was married to journalist Ben Bradlee, who went on to become the Washington Post editor during the Watergate scandal, and after Meyer’s death he went to her home searching for the diary.
But Bradlee found the CIA’S head of counterintelligence, James Angleton, already breaking in to her home. Bradlee gave the diary to the CIA, which later returned it to Meyer’s sister, who dubiously claimed to have burned it.
Its contents have never been revealed, but insiders suspect the CIA made copies, which even today remain a political powder keg.
Until her diary is unearthed, Meyer’s murder is likely to remain a tantalising mystery in the mythology surrounding the playboy president.
● JFK And Mary Meyer: A Love Story, by Jesse Kornbluth. Skyhorse Publishing, £19.21. The Lost Diary Of M: A Novel, by Paul Wolfe. Published by Harper, February 25. £20