President John F. Kennedy was notorious for being a bit of a philanderer, most famously
with Marilyn Monroe. In 2016 a letter supposedly written by the former President went up for
auction. It was addressed to the artist Mary Pinchot Meyer, a family friend with whom Kennedy
may have been having an affair. Kennedy wrote the letter, which was never sent, in 1963,
just before he was shot and killed while riding in a presidential motorcade in Dallas, Texas.
Meyer and Kennedy reportedly met when Kennedy's brother Robert sold his house to a friend
of Meyers'.
Meyer was murdered in 1964, at which point her brother-in-law, Washington Post editor
Benjamin Bradlee, became aware of his sister-in-law's diary, which apparently contained details
about her affair with the president. When he went to Meyer's house to retrieve the diary,
CIA director James Angleton was already sawing off the door's locks to get inside. Meyer's
ex-husband, Cord Meyer, was also a CIA official. The diary was taken and its contents were
never made public; it's thought that it was ultimately destroyed. Meyer herself was shot
twice while walking in Georgetown, and her death remains a mystery. A man named Ray Crump,
Jr. was found in the woods shortly after the killing, with wet clothes and an injured hand.
He was arrested for the murder, but was eventually acquitted due to lack of evidence.
Neither the murder weapon nor the murderer ever came to light. At the time of her death,
it wasn't common knowledge that Meyer was having an affair with Kennedy, nor that her
ex-husband was in the CIA. Writer C. David Heymann later claimed that while Meyers’
ex-husband was dying he'd said that the same people who killed Kennedy had killed Mary.
Another writer, Leo Danmore, claimed that the suspect Ray Crump Jr., who was Black,
could have easily been blamed for the murder and that Meyer was really killed by a professional
hitman, possibly someone connected to the CIA.
Another interesting theory was described by Robert Greenfield, biographer of psychologist
and LSD guru Timothy Leary. Leary is said to have met Meyer multiple times and to have
supplied her with psychedelic drugs. Greenfield says that Meyer wanted Leary to show her how
to lead a LSD therapy session, so that she could, quote, “turn on a close friend".
This friend was said to be, quote, "a very important man as well as a public figure."
Upon hearing about her death, the psychologist jumped to the conclusion that, quote, "she
had been killed for giving LSD to the president and then recording this information in her
diary." However, Greenfield is quick to admit that there is no proof that Meyer and the
President used LSD together. .
Kennedy's letter to Meyer was sold by R.R. Auction of Boston, Massachusetts. R.R. Auction
executive vice-president Robert Livingston noted that Kennedy's secretary, Evelyn Lincoln,
had identified Meyer as the intended recipient. The letter came to R.R. Auction from the estate
of Bob White, a man who had bought several Kennedy papers and artifacts from Lincoln.
The handwritten letter read, in part,
"Why don't you leave suburbia for once — come and see me — either here — or at the Cape
next week or in Boston the 19th. I know it is unwise, irrational, and that you may hate
it — on the other hand, you may not — and I will love it."
R.R. Auction expected the letter to sell for at least $30,000. As reported by the Boston
Globe, it went for much more: $88,970, to an anonymous buyer.
According to Just Collecting, Kennedy's letters to Meyers are among the most valuable Kennedy
memorabilia ever sold. Kennedy was apparently an avid writer of love letters; among his
other personal items that sold for a great deal are his love letters to Swedish aristocrat
Gunilla von Post, whom he met just before marrying Jacqueline Bouvier and whom kept
seeing until he and Jackie were expecting their first child. These letters sold in 2010
for $115,537. During World War II, Kennedy met the married Danish journalist Inga Arvad
when she shared an apartment with his sister Katherine.
“I borrowed him for a week. A beautiful week that no one can take away from me.”
Arvad was a suspected Nazi spy and was under surveillance by the U.S. government during
their affair. Kennedy's letters to Arvad sold for $144,000 in 2007.
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