Air Force Lieutenant William Mitchell passed two people walking west as he was running east along the towpath that day. The first person he claims to have seen was a woman whose description closely matches that of Mary, and the second was a man walking in the same direction, about 200 yards behind her. Mitchell described the man as being about the same height as him, and “wearing a light colored wind breaker, dark slacks, and a peaked golf hat” (Nobilem and Rosenbaum 22).
Henry Wiggins, who worked at the M Street Esso station, was called to the area of the towpath that day in order to jump start a gray Rambler with a dead battery. As he got to the vehicle on Canal Road, he heard a woman yell, “Someone help me, someone help me,” from the towpath down below (Nobilem and Rosenbaum 22). He then heard two gunshots and ran to the edge of the wall overlooking the towpath. He “saw a black man in a light jacket, dark slacks, and a dark cap standing over the body of a white woman…” (Nobilem and Rosenbaum 22). According to Wiggins, the man then placed a dark object in the pocket of his windbreaker and disappeared into the wooded embankment leading down to the Potomac.
Officer escorting Ray Crump Jr.
Wiggins jumped in his truck, sped back to the Esso station, and called the police department. Within five minutes of the phone call, police converged on the towpath and sealed off all of the five well-marked exits. Convinced they had the murderer trapped, police began to scour the towpath area.
Officer Warner came across the only live person on the towpath: a black man named Raymond Crump Jr. who was dripping wet. He was wearing dark slacks and a peaked golf cap. Even though it was a brisk day, he had no jacket with him and his pants zipper was open. Crump said he had gotten wet when he lost his fishing pole and went into the river to try and retrieve it. Moments later, when Crump was showing Officer Warner where he claimed to be fishing, Henry Wiggins saw the two of them down by the river and started yelling to police that that was the man he saw kill Mary Meyer. Raymond Crump Jr. was then arrested. When asked why his fly was down, he said the police did it.
Ben Hayes, macadams.posc.mu.edu, posting date unknown
This post from a serious, Marquette University faculty blog on mystery analysis, hints at the complex semi-urban, but semi-rural scene. Were the exits really sealed off, did law enforcement have their perpetrator trapped? At this distance of years, and lacking firm documentation, we consider that an open question.
There’s a score or more of IF this, THEN that turning points in the Meyer story.
IF there really were “help me” screams for several moments from Meyer, that does lead away from the theory of a contract-type hit. Professionals usually shoot quickly, silently, and then leave immediately. But IF the remarks were only the squeak of a second when Mary quickly perceived violent intent, they could be consistent with a professional, who knew how to place shots to kill.
IF Raymond Crump really had no alibi for why he was wandering around wet, far from his home turf, lots of circumstances look bad for him. IF he choose the remote spot for clandestine, illicit sex, and the shy woman took off at the first sign of trouble, that could make some sense. We are carrying the weight of much speculation, many an IF…
IF Crump met a woman for an escapade that day, how likely is it that a rape attempt would be on his mind, either before, or after? A rape gone wrong merits frequent mention as the panicky motive for Crump’s supposed crime. Or was he not bright enough to see that a woman walking in her neighborhood with no pocketbook really offered nothing to steal, so he attempted a botch robbery? That also doesn’t seem quite right.
And normally we reject thinking that assumes too much brilliant planning on the part of nefarious conspirators. But IF Crump was somehow set up, he would be the perfect fall-guy– black, poor, confused, vulnerable to pressures.
We can swim in IF’s in these cases for a long, long time.
Mary and her sister, Tony Bradlee, had been good friends of John and Jackie Kennedy. Before John became President, they all lived in the same neighborhood in Georgetown, taking many walks together on the towpath. Bill Bradlee, Mary’s brother-in-law, gives an account of the events that followed Mary’s death in his book A Good Life:
“Two telephone calls that night from overseas added new dimensions to Mary’s death. The first came from President Kennedy’s press secretary, Pierre Salinger, in Paris. He expressed his particular sorrow and condolences, and it was only after that conversation was over that we realized that we hadn’t known that Pierre had been a friend of Mary’s. The second, from Anne Truitt, an artist/sculptor living in Tokyo, was completely understandable. She had been perhaps Mary’s closest friend, and after she and Tony had grieved together, she told us that Mary had asked her to take possession of a private diary ‘if anything ever happened to me.’ Anne asked if we had found any such diary, and we told her we hadn’t looked for anything, much less a diary. We didn’t start looking until the next morning, when Tony and I walked around the corner a few blocks to Mary’s house. It was locked, as we had expected, but when we got inside, we found Jim Angleton, and to our complete surprise he told us he, too, was looking for Mary’s diary”.
Ben Hayes, macadams.posc.mu.edu, posting date unknown
So, What does this tell us? Mary had lots of connections, which could mean a lot, and could mean nothing.
And that “diary,” as it kept being called? We know at least that Mary considered it somewhere on the scale of very private, to absolutely explosive. Where on that range, we don’t know. But we do know that absence makes the curiosity grow fonder, if not the heart. Those papers are long gone, it seems.
Were there explicit revelations of her affair with President Kennedy? Which would now, after all these years and other revelations about his appetites, seem rather tame.
Or did her speculation, even knowledge, of government affairs go well beyond the bedroom? IF we knew, we’d know where to go with that part of the puzzle.