Mary's Mosaic

September 3, 2012
Although unlikely to cause any JFK conspiracy theorists or Warren Commission defenders to change camps, Janney's exhaustive look at the 1964 murder of Mary Meyer shines a light on a now obscure crime that could have a connection to the events in Dallas a year earlier. Meyer, rumored to have been the president's mistress shortly before his death, was gunned down on a walk on a towpath in Washington, D.C. The police quickly seized upon Ray Crump Jr., an African-American found in the vicinity, as the shooter, despite his not matching an eyewitness's description of the man he'd seen standing over the corpse. The victim's social status made the murder a high-profile one. Apart from her alleged personal involvement with Kennedy (which Janney takes as established fact), her brother-in-law was now legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. The author is most successful at demonstrating the innocence of Crump (who was acquitted at trial), and pointing out unanswered questions. That Janney was friendly with Meyer, that one of her sons was his best friend growing up, that he accuses his own father (who worked for the CIA) of being complicit in her death, casts doubt on his objectivityâand his ultimate theory that Meyer was eliminated because she was asking too many questions about her lover's murder.