Janney '70 explores the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer

Published in the June 6, 2012, Issue

Peter Janney ’70 (Photo: Courtesy Peter Janney ’70)

New book: Mary’s Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace, by Peter Janney ’70 (Skyhorse Publishing)

The author: A clinical psychologist and consultant in Massachusetts, Peter Janney grew up in Washington, D.C. His father, Wistar Janney ’41, was a senior career CIA official. The Janneys regularly socialized with the Meyer family as well as a number of other Washington dignitaries. Peter Janney had been best friends with Michael Meyer, the son of Mary and Cord Meyer, when Michael was accidentally hit and killed by a car in 1956. Janney spent more than 30 years researching this story.

The book: In this controversial book that explores the life and death of Mary Pinchot Meyer — who had been romantically involved with President Kennedy — the author argues that the CIA masterminded Meyer’s death on Oct. 12, 1964, when she was murdered on the canal towpath adjacent to Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood. Meyer had researched what had taken place on Nov. 22, 1963, Janney writes, and concluded that the CIA had orchestrated Kennedy’s assassination. With the publication of the Warren Commission’s report in late September of 1964, he argues, Meyer realized that a second conspiracy involving a cover-up was taking place, and had decided to go public. Janney also writes that his own father, Wistar Janney ’41, participated in the conspiracy to murder Meyer.

From the book: “So it was in 1964, just before 12:30 p.m. on a crisp, sunny mid-October day in Washington, D.C., that a beautiful, affluent middle-aged white woman was murdered on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath during her accustomed walk after a morning of painting at her nearby Georgetown art studio. For more than five hours, her identity remained unknown to police — but not, I would discover many years later, to an elite high-level group of operatives within the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Review: “Peter Janney lays out a complex web of high society and high crimes that implicates some of the nation’s most respected intelligence agents, journalists, and government officials in what Janney contends was a massive cover-up spanning three decades. At the center is a shadowy, all-too-familiar villain, the Central Intelligence Agency of the early-1960s,” wrote Christina Wilke for The Huffington Post.

1 Response

Lisa Marie Wyatt

2 Days Ago

Laying the Groundwork to Solve a Cold Case

Hats off to Dr. Peter Janney for masterful research and reporting in Mary’s Mosaic. I’ve read the book twice. Coincidently, I worked in the Georgetown Foundry Building where his subject, Mary Meyer, exhibited her art. And later I worked in a building on the C&O Canal in Georgetown where Mary Meyer was murdered. Dr. Janney and famed attorney Dovey Roundtree laid the groundwork to help solve one of Washington’s oldest cold cases. And in solving her murder, Dr. Janney ties together the intelligence connections between her death and that of her lover and our 35th president, John F. Kennedy. It’s too late for justice to be served, but it’s never too late for truth to be told. This Washington cold case and the one in Dallas on 11/22/1963 should be solved. The truth will not be pleasant, but it is our history and Americans have the right to know. This book is part of unfurling those mysteries.