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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Just two years earlier, their golden retriever had been killed on the road, right in front of their house. The route wasn't well lit. And on this fateful December day, sunlight had already given way to nightfall.
On TV, as the good guys were battling the bad guys, Quentin and Michael knew dinner time was fast approaching. They had promised to be home for supper. So, they headed home. The older boy, Quentin, dashed across the road first and reached his family's lawn. Michael followed close behind. At home, Mary was likely preparing the final touches on dinner when she heard a horrible noise.
One of Mary's biographers, Nina Burley, told us more about that moment.
Perhaps Mary was in shock, or maybe she didn't want to give in to the horror of that moment, so she kept her composure. But the accident was kind of a catalyst. It changed her, changed her priorities. After that horrible evening, she chose a new course. Mary didn't want to be married anymore. She didn't want to live in the suburbs.
She'd get a painting studio in Georgetown and start to take a daily walk on the towpath. From Luminary, Film Nation Entertainment, in association with Neon Hum Media, I'm Soledad O'Brien, and this is Murder on the Towpath, a story of two incredible women who never met, but whose lives became forever intertwined by tragedy.
By the time of Mary's murder, Dovey Roundtree knew she had come from a prominent family, but she didn't have the full story. Had she known what kind of powerful people Mary had known her entire life, maybe Dovey would have felt less optimistic about her case defending Ray. Here's historian Alexis Coe.
She lived on Park Avenue in Manhattan. and went to the Brearley School on the Upper East Side. Brearley was academically rigorous and, of course, exclusive. Girls with last names like Matisse, Roosevelt, and Graham attended. Mary studied math, history, Greek, Latin, and French. She played basketball and smoked cigarettes.
In between classes, she'd duck into a smoking room at Brearley that was for seniors only. Mary would continue to smoke socially for the rest of her life. She first crossed paths with JFK long before he was president. It was a winter formal in 1936. Mary was just 15. Among the New England prep school set, winter was the season of the formal dance.
Bill Atwood, a future ambassador to the UN, invited Mary to a weekend of festivities at Choate Rosemary Hall. In the dance hall, there were tuxedos with coattails and intricate formal dresses. John F. Kennedy had graduated from Choate the year before and was already a freshman at Princeton. But he turned up that night on the Choate dance floor alone.
He was confident, not embarrassed to return to a high school dance, not embarrassed to go stag. As Bill and Mary danced, JFK's eyes rested on her. He tapped Bill on the shoulder and cut in. According to Bill's memoir, Kennedy cut in on his dances with Mary again and again that night. Mary had an effect on the future president. He wouldn't soon forget her.
But it wasn't just wealth and beauty that made Mary Pinchot stand out. Her family was also liberal and unconventional. Here's Nina again.
There was plenty of space to frolic at Gray Towers. That's what they called the family estate outside Milford, Pennsylvania. Mary and her father Amos played tennis together. Growing up, he was the parent she looked to please.
Mary's mother, Ruth, spent hours behind closed doors writing her stories and was much more hands-off when it came to parenting. Her father had left his first wife to marry her. Divorce was generally unheard of in the early 1900s. Mary's father knew his choice would open him up to scrutiny, but he took the risk anyway. In that way, Mary took after her father.
But when it came time for college, Mary did follow in her mother's footsteps and went to Vassar. She daydreamed about studying to become a doctor. But the truth is, that's not really why Mary went to college. Here's historian Alexis Coe.
Vassar women were divided into two camps, career types and those who got hitched and had children. But Mary was also hard to categorize. One famous classmate, Scotty Fitzgerald, daughter to F. Scott, called her an independent soul and even compared her to a fawn. Maybe the best way to put it was she was one of a kind, not one to care what other people thought.
Vassar classmate Frances Field told Nina Burley as much. She remembers an incident during finals time their senior year. The study room was dead quiet. Stress was high. Mary got up to use the bathroom. But before she left, she paused by a vase, bent down, and took a bite out of a tulip. Mary chewed her mouthful without saying a thing.
Like her mother, Mary was also a writer. She published a short story in the Vassar Review in 1941. It was called Futility. And the window it provides into Mary's mind?
That's author Ron Rosenbaum. Mary's story revolves around a young woman named Ruth, who's something of an outsider.
Ruth is at a cocktail party, and the room is almost grotesquely decorated. Expensive but gauche, silver wallpaper, a shiny mantle with a fish tank above it. Inside are overfed goldfish. Here's an excerpt from Mary's story.
Ruth isn't impressed by any of these trappings. She tells the host she's leaving. She can't make her excuses quickly enough.
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