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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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
You can't tell the design, she said. No, he knew the shoe was black, but he couldn't tell the style. Henry was contradicting himself. He had just said he was positive that the killer wore the same black shoes Ray wore when arrested. But now, he was saying, it's too hard to decipher shoe details from a distance. His fragile argument was resembling Ray's dark, frayed corduroy pants.
Dovey merely tugged one of its loose threads, and Henry's testimony slowly unraveled before the courtroom. She went in for the kill. Dovey asked Henry if he remembered testifying earlier that Ray was 5'8 and weighed 185 pounds. Sure, of course he did. The whole courtroom had just heard him testify that to Hantman. It was really a bit of a trap.
She asked Henry to look at Ray now. Ray was the thin, small man sitting at the defense table. Henry admitted it. He wouldn't describe Ray as he had described the killer. Here's Bob Bennett.
If it wasn't an accurate statement, did Henry lie in the court of law? He said he tried as best he could to remember. Debbie thought he had a clear view of the killing. She asked Henry what Ray was wearing that day. He responded, I didn't look at him that hard. The courtroom went still. She held the room, and then she asked Henry one final question.
She asked him if he had ever looked at the murderer hard. Just like that, the star witness flopped. His certainty, it all sort of fell apart on the stand. Pantman's last hope was to dispute Ray's height. He said there was a reason that Ray appeared taller that day. His shoes had an unusually tall heel. That gave him a good two inches more to his 5'5".
In court, Hantman brought out these, quote, built-up shoes. They're a vanity thing some short men use to bolster their height. He waved them in front of the jury, pointing to the heels. There are two inches of heel on these shoes, he declared. If Ray was 5'5", and he had some help from these shoes, that would get him to 5'7".
This is what gave Wiggins the idea he saw a man five feet, eight inches tall. This was his last chance. Hantman was exasperated. He asked the jury if this would really come down to a back and forth over a half inch or so. It was a good question. Only time would tell whether Dovey had sown enough doubt into his star witness's testimony.
Dovey had her ways of decompressing after a stressful day in court. Each evening, she ventured outside to her back porch. She sipped on some lemonade in the hot, muggy D.C. air, and she took notes on the day's proceedings in her legal pad. Dovey still had to present her own evidence and witnesses to the court. That particular evening, she was wondering if she should put Ray on the bench.
If she put him on the stand, it would become clear that he wasn't calculating enough to pull off a murder in broad daylight.
They thought the prosecution would decimate him. Dovey believed Ray had intellectual disabilities. She worried he couldn't go toe-to-toe with someone like Hantman. It was during these nights, sometime after midnight, that Dovey's phone would ring. When she answered it, she could hear someone on the other end, but they were silent. She just heard breathing.
That's Patricia Bradford, a congregant from Dovey's church. These lingering calls happened multiple times throughout Ray's trial. Dovey had the sinking suspicion some people didn't want her to win this case. The next day, Dovey took the elevator up to the fourth floor of the courthouse. A Black woman was operating the elevator.
As the floors ticked up, she told Dovey something that would alter her entire defense strategy. The prosecution is delighted at the chance to cross-examine him. The Black elevator attendant overheard Hantman and his colleague talking about wanting the opportunity to question Ray.
The attendant told Dovey people say things in front of certain people, Black people, that they wouldn't say in front of others. Call it arrogance or just a big mistake, but Hantman had clearly underestimated this elevator attendant. It was the kind of break Dovey needed. She entered the courtroom and started her defense as she would with any other case. Evidence.
Her exhibit A was Ray Crump himself. She told the jury this was not the man Hantman's witnesses described. Just look at him. Here he was, all but 5'5", a small, slender man sitting before them. Then she brought on three character witnesses for Ray. A member of Ray's family, a member of his church, and a neighbor. They all said that Ray was known as a peaceful man in his community.
Hantman cross-examined each character witness. He tried to show the jury that they barely knew Ray, that they couldn't attest to his character. But the witnesses stood firm that they did know Ray and had grown up with him even. According to them, he was no killer. and she has to make a game-time decision. After hearing what went on inside the elevator, Dovey had to decide.
Was she going to have Ray testify?
Handman even admitted so. He approached the bench and said he was caught flat-footed. He never anticipated in his wildest dreams that Dubby would rest her case. He was sure that Ray would be called to testify. But this? This was the worst-case scenario for the prosecutors.
The courtroom was stunned, too. The decision to not put Ray on the stand sped things up dramatically.
In his closing statements, Hantman made one final plea to the jury. He told them Mary was shot to death by Ray after a struggle in which she, quote, "...tried to preserve her very existence." This was a crime of, quote, malicious mischief. He closed by asking the jury to find Ray guilty of first-degree murder. He sat back down. The court went into recess.
Ray Crump's future was now in the hands of the jury. The 12 jurors deliberated through the evening for more than seven hours. Did Ray Crump kill Mary Pinchot Meyer? A fervent pacifist? A painter coming into her own? Someone had to be held responsible for her nonsensical death? But would that person be Ray? There was a strong debate in the room.
Showing 161–180 of 904 · page 9 of 46
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