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
So Janney and his military researcher put two and two together and came up with a theory that William Mitchell worked for the CIA. When a patchwork of military records and aliases and social security numbers don't tell a rational story, the researcher said, it's a telltale sign that a person works in intelligence. Yep, it still sounds a bit crazy, right?
But Janney takes his theory one step further. Yes, Mitchell did have several aliases and more than one social security number. But Janney then theorized that Mitchell was not only CIA, but also part of the team that took Mary out. He argues Mitchell was part of a large and well-prepared team. They learned Mary's routine and chose the towpath to make her murder look like a random act of violence.
If she'd been murdered in her bed, it would have seemed more personal. Finally, on the day that a believable patsy showed up on the towpath, a patsy who happened to be Raymond Crump there for his affair with Vivian, the operation team would have quickly procured a hitman.
who closely enough resembled Ray, clothes that closely enough matched what Ray was wearing, and then sent the hitman to do the dirty work. There are a lot of jumps here, but the theory goes Mitchell was a CIA operative with one cut-and-dry mission in Mary's death, to put the blame on Ray Crumple.
Some people are more prone to believe conspiracy theories than others. So we really wanted to dig into the psychology behind them. When we spoke with psychology professor Joe Pierre earlier in the episode, he had a lot more to say about that world. And it helped illuminate why so many would feel the allure of a conspiracy with Mary's murder.
So in this case, the conventional narrative is Ray Crump killed Mary and got away with it, or another rogue murderer killed Mary and got away with it. And it's as simple as that, a random act of violence. It's straightforward, it's logical, and it's hard to wrap your head around. So there's another explanation that's a lot more compelling. Very Hollywood even.
Because conspiracy theories make for riveting stories. Watching puzzle pieces come together is satisfying. Understanding why bad things happen by the end of a movie is comforting.
But Mary's story, it also has something else of significant note attached to it that gets people who are prone to conspiracy to pay attention. JFK.
And in the case of Mary's murder, a number of things, other than the popularity of JFK and the tragedy of his death, can account for its persistence. The precise shots to Mary's temple and heart, which made the killing look controlled, almost professional. The fact that no murder weapon was ever found. An odd phone call.
An untraceable military man who claims to have witnessed Crump following Mary on the toe pad.
And for more than 50 years, the case itself has remained unsolved. A killer hasn't been convicted for Mary's murder.
And yet there are plenty of people connected to this case who don't want to talk about Mary's murder at all. And they never have. Mary's family, her friends. For them, Professor Pierre points out, part of the reason that might be true is that conspiracy theories prolong pain.
Meanwhile, many of the journalists who've investigated Mary's murder have a hard time wrapping their heads around a CIA-driven plot. Here's Lance Morrow.
Nina Burley doesn't think Mary was killed because she knew too much either.
As for Dovey, well, Nina Burley also asked about this when she interviewed Dovey.
And finally, the man we spoke to who is perhaps most adamantly against the idea of conspiracy being related to Mary's death, that would be Ron Rosenbaum.
So there you have it. For the most part, all these writers, these individuals surrounding this complex story, they have the same set of facts. Yet their conclusions can be very different. And we haven't even acknowledged the simplest explanation of all. What if Ray did kill Mary?
The pieces of that puzzle aren't all in place either, but that theory requires fewer mental gymnastics than a CIA plot. After all, a witness placed him at the crime scene and he was caught shortly after the murder took place. But in the end, we just don't know. So what does all this mind-bending say about us? What does it say about the way we take in information and process it?
About the way we understand Mary's murder? Why are we all on such different pages? Joe Pierre has a pretty good answer for that.
It's something that has been studied in psychology research, he says. And the results are pretty fascinating.
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