Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien
Introducing Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien
Tue, 15 Apr 2025
In 1964, Mary Pinchot Meyer was shot in broad daylight in Georgetown, Washington, DC. Just 45 minutes after Mary’s death, her killer had been arrested. Or, so the police claimed. Only one woman dared to defend him: civil rights lawyer Dovey Johnson Roundtree. Join journalist Soledad O’Brien as she unravels the whole story.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What happened on October 12, 1964?
You're familiar with Georgetown, right? That posh neighborhood in Washington, D.C. with stately homes and cobblestone streets. Well, just steps away from all of that, there's a dirt road, a towpath, where you might find locals jogging. Over 50 years ago, it was the place where two women's stories collided. It started with a murder. October 12, 1964.
She had been shot twice in the head and in the back, behind the heart.
Chapter 2: Who was Mary Pinchot Meyer?
Chapter 3: What were the circumstances of Mary’s death?
She had been shot twice in the head and in the back, behind the heart.
Mary Pinchot Meyer was found dead on that very same towpath. She was an artist, a woman on the verge of coming into her own.
She had everything at her disposal of the elite of the elite, and she rejected it to become an artist in a garage.
And then her life was cut short. But what happened next? That's why we're here. Just 45 minutes after Mary's death, her killer had been arrested. Or so the police claimed.
Chapter 4: Who was arrested after Mary’s murder?
If a black man is in the vicinity of a crime against a white woman, he is considered guilty before, you know, even formally charged.
Chapter 5: What were the implications of race in this case?
Only one woman, Dovey Johnson Roundtree, would defend him. I could make things right, I thought. and some things I had made right. Dovey was a lawyer during Jim Crow. She wasn't allowed to drink from the same water fountains as white people. Yet in court, she was the only thing standing between a man and his execution. This is Murder on the Towpath, and I'm your host, Soledad O'Brien.
We're going to take you back to the 1960s, a time of political and cultural upheaval, when society felt constantly on the brink of war.
when segregation was the law of the land. Some people saw that as a triumph, that this was the best-case scenario because there wasn't a lynching or there wasn't some act of racial violence in terms of retaliation.
This is a story of two women who wanted to reach their fullest potential, even if society had very different plans for them. There's a strenuous thing with law school. You ain't married to nobody but the law. We're going to take you back to that courtroom where people found themselves asking, did this man really kill Mary Pinch O'Meara?
They didn't find the gun, which was troubling.
But what most people didn't know, and what could have altered the course of this case, was that Mary had had an affair with a very powerful man. I pledge you that we shall neither commit nor provoke aggression. That man was John F. Kennedy.
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