John F. Kennedy’s Letter To Murdered Mistress Up For Auction


An intimate, four-page love letter written by President John F. Kennedy to his mistress and longtime family friend, Mary Pinchot Meyer, is being auctioned off. Daily Times reports that the value of the letter is estimated to be $30,000. An anonymous collector is selling the letter, and it is one of several Kennedy-related items being sold at auction, including a wooden rocking chair used by him. The online auction is being held by RR Auction beginning June 16 through June 23.

In the letter, Kennedy is seeking to hook up with Meyer, who was an artist and former wife of a CIA agent. The letter is believed to have been written in October 1963, about a month before the president’s assassination.

“Why don’t you leave suburbia for once — come and see me — either here — or at the Cape next week or in Boston the 19th,” the letter reads. “I know it is unwise, irrational, and that you may hate it — on the other hand you may not — and I will love it. You say that it is good for me not to get what I want. After all of these years — you should give me a more loving answer than that. Why don’t you just say yes.”

It’s signed simply “J.”

“It’s incredible to see the president writing something so personal,” said Robert Livingston, the executive vice-president of Boston-based RR Auction, which is handling the sale. “We’ve handled a lot of JFK letters here, and he was always very formal.”

The undated letter was written on White House stationery, and the presidential seal watermarks are visible under light. Kennedy never sent the letter to his special lady friend, and it remained in the collection of his longtime personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln. The letter originated from the estate of Robert White, a friend of Lincoln’s and an avid collector of JFK memorabilia. White died more than a decade ago, and according to the National Post, Pinchot Meyer was fatally shot nearly a year after Kennedy’s assassination. The man charged with killing her was found not guilty.

A 2013, NY Post article makes note of President Kennedy’s “obsessive conquesting,” and even quotes him as once saying, “If I don’t have sex every day, I get a headache.” Some of his alleged lovers were German actress Marlene Dietrich, White House intern Mimi Alford, Frank Sinatra’s ex, Judith Campbell Exner, actress Angie Dickinson, Ellen Rometsch, a German Prostitute who was also a Liz Taylor look-alike, and even his wife’s Press Secretary, Pamela Turnure.

Kennedy’s most famous lady love was Marilyn Monore. Biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli’s account of when the actress first caught Kennedy’s eye at a dinner party is as follows, “The President turned around and you could see that he was immediately attracted to her. ‘Finally! You’re here,’ he said, with a big smile.”

To JFK, Monroe was “like a lot of the pretty girls who had fallen very much in love with the Kennedys, just by being around with him a little bit.” Kennedy biographer Robert Dallek describes JFK as a “compulsive womanizer.”

“Kennedy himself, who could not explain his need for sex with so many women, probably rationalized his behavior as a diversion comparable with what British aristocrats did, or with the golf, sailing and fishing presidents traditionally used to ease tensions,” Dallek wrote.

“Jack liked girls,” his friend, Florida Sen. George Smathers, told Dallek. “…He was a great chaser.”

John F. Kennedy’s lovers were “prominent, accomplished women, as well as strippers, airline stewardesses, and secretaries,” according to biographers Meagher and Gragg.

[Photo via Getty Images]

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