Soledad O'Brien
speaker
904 appearances
45 recordings
7 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard 28 Feb
Soledad O'Brien’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Listen to Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O'Brien on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Earlier this year, my producer Natalie and I went to the place where all of this began. So this towpath is, it's very pretty. It runs right along a wall. That's about, what, 20 feet high? Maybe that's a guess. And between the towpath and the wall is a marsh. And it's, I guess the time of year, it's sort of got a low level of water in it.
To the left of the towpath as we're walking, and of course you see the skyline right on the other side of that. It's so pretty. I mean, it really is very beautiful.
We wanted to see for ourselves where Mary Meyer and Dovey Roundtree intersected. Mary Meyer walked here. Dovey Roundtree hunted for clues here. This might be the only place where the two of them cross paths. Literally, Georgetown overlooks this path.
I mean, if you looked out the window of a Georgetown dorm, you would see the path. I had this idea of what the towpath would be like. Actually, when I first heard the word towpath, I wasn't even sure what one was. I guess I assumed the towpath was heavily wooded, like in a movie. You know, the slightly ominous scene. It's typically at the beginning of a film noir.
Within five minutes of watching, you know, from the pacing and the moody lighting, that she's not going to make it to the end of the film. just like Mary, who was killed too soon, before her life had run its course. But here's the thing. The place Mary was murdered is actually an open public park. It's amazing how crowded it is. And obviously, we're talking many decades ago.
But still, like, you're not alone and secluded. There's a lot happening. You don't feel alone. It doesn't feel scary. It doesn't feel quiet.
It feels busy.
Right, you see the joggers kind of above your head on the bridge, and you even see the homeless people's little encampments because the trees don't even hide those at all. But I thought, having not seen it before, that it would be much more secluded and much, you know, more places where you could hide and not, I mean, really, you can see everything.
And these days, planes constantly pass overhead. The towpath has long been in the flight path of Reagan. Of course, back then it was just called National Airport. The path itself is also wider than I thought it would be. We passed people walking their dogs, soccer players and cyclists were whizzing past us. That afternoon, Natalie and I retraced Mary's steps on her final day.
We started at M and 34th Street, passed Key Bridge and walked west toward Fletcher's Boathouse, crossed the wooden footbridge, and even walked past the tunnel that journalist Lance Morrow would have taken to reach Mary. We used several sources about the crime to figure out where Mary died, but our best guess is roughly 4300 Canal Road. Natalie pinned it on her phone and we headed that way.
At this point in our walk, the canal was on the right. The Potomac was on the left, down a slope filled with brush and trees. And that's the spot where she was first shot? Yes. Even in the Potomac kayaks. Like, you're really not alone.
Well, it's almost right here like being on a beach, right? The water is to our left, the Potomac. The path has gotten very flat and open. Not too much brush. And the highway is to our right. And it's kind of just... Exposed. Over these last few months, I've read so much about Mary's final walk, the horror and the history of it.
She was just doing what she did every day to take a moment for herself. Remember, she'd been going through a lot, getting divorced, grieving Michael's death. And yet, when it came down to it, this act of violence happened in a public park that people pass every day, not far away from posh Georgetown stores. You'd think there'd be a plaque or something commemorating this death.
But it's business as usual on M Street. You can see people deciding which cupcake flavor to get as a treat as pop music blares from the speakers. It's all a bit jarring. Even if we don't know it, the shadow of history is always following us. I don't think there's anybody walking on those streets 15 minutes away who realized that a murder occurred.
I don't think there's anybody who's thinking, oh my gosh, this is a site of a murder. They just don't think that way. Partly because I think we forget so quickly and partly because I think it just looks so regular. It doesn't look like a thing at all. It's just a dirt path.
And yet, this is where a woman's life ended, and where Dovey returned to again and again in the months following Mary's murder to unlock clues that might save Ray Crump's life. In July of 1965, the time had come for Dovey to give everything she had to convince the jury that Ray was innocent.
From Luminary, Film Nation Entertainment, and Neon Hum Media, this is Murder on the Towpath, a story of two incredible women who never met, but whose lives became forever intertwined by tragedy. I'm your host, Soledad O'Brien. This episode, we take you to the courtroom, where we finally hear about Ray's trial.
Those major victories were exciting.
It would take longer for white people to consider black people their equals. Many people still don't. Dovey felt the weight of all of this. It was the weight of defending Ray in a society that devalued Black men. But it was also the weight that she felt whenever she entered a courtroom.
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