Mary Pinchot Meyer

On October 12, 1964, forty-three-year-old Mary Pinchot Meyer, a Washington socialite, artist, and former wife of CIA official Cord Meyer, was shot twice—once in the head and once in the back—while walking along the C&O Canal towpath in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., in broad daylight.

Raymond Crump Jr., a local laborer, was arrested near the scene shortly after the shooting. He was charged with murder but acquitted at trial due to lack of physical evidence linking him to the crime. The murder weapon was never found.

What made the case extraordinary was Meyer's personal life. She had been having an affair with President John F. Kennedy, and after his assassination in 1963, she reportedly kept a diary documenting their relationship. After her death, CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton allegedly attempted to retrieve the diary from her home.

Meyer's friend, journalist Ben Bradlee (later editor of the Washington Post), and his wife also searched for the diary. The diary was reportedly destroyed, though accounts conflict. The intersection of Meyer's murder with the CIA, the Kennedy assassination, and Cold War espionage has fueled decades of conspiracy theories. Her killing remains officially unsolved.