Posted on 06/02/2003 7:57:28 PM PDT by 7 x 77
A Maryland woman and her grown son recently approached GLOBE with a story as bizarre as it is compelling. The man, who turns 39 next month, put forth the startling claim that he is the illegitimate son of President John F. Kennedy and was put up for adoption shortly after his birth. His 71-year-old adoptive mother backs his story and offered documentation to support her claim. When questioned why they waited so long to tell their story, the two said that over the years they considered various book deals but now, with the mother ailing, they decided to go public and set straight what they believe to be the truth . Here is their story as told to GLOBE.
"I am John F. Kennedy's son," states the 6-foot-3,180-pound man fiddling with a lawn mower on the porch of a small Victorian home on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.
Now known as Richard Kirk Crummitt, the technician for a local radio station, who clebrates his 39th birthday in July, drops his bombshell on a rainy May morning to a GLOBE reporter who is invited in to listen to the intriguiing tale of muddled birth and baptismal records, a kidnap attempt and strange encounters that brought Richard Crummitt from Camelot to Cambridge, Md.
His shocking claim to being JFK"s secret son comes just days after revelations that the womanizing president had carried on an affair with a teenage intern named Mimi in the White House.
Richard's resemblance to JFK is startling. Lean and muscular, he has the stature and build of the late president. JFK was 6-foot-1 and 172 pounds. And the similarities around the eyes and chin are unmistakable.
Richard's claim is supportd and corroborated by his 71-year-old adoptive mother Jennifer Crummitt and his 44-year-old sister Lisa, inside the house where they live in the company of four dogs and a cat.
They also claim that his birth mother is Mary Meyer, a socialite and mistress of the late president. One of the "golden girls of Washington society," Mary had known JFK from his days at the Choate school and later Harvard. The mother of three sons from her first marriage, she was around 42 years old when she began an affair with JFK in Jjanuary 1962 and it was still flourishing up to the day of his assassination in November 1963.
Richard was born eight months later. But his connection with JFK begins with his adoptive father, Raymond Kirk Crummitt, who died May 6, 1987.
"Raymond was the chief engineer for the phone company," says Jennifer, who changed her name from Florence. "He worked in the Eisenhower White House where he installed the fabled hotline in the Oval Office and also wired the communication system for JFK's Lincoln limousine 'Lancer' in which the president was assassinated.
"I know Raymond and Jack knew each other well."
* * * *
The adoption story begins in 1955. After Raymond and Jennifer married that year, they found they could not conceive children, so they applied to Catholic Charities to adopt a baby. When Jennifer surprisingly became pregnant and gave birth to Lisa in 1958, it made them ineligible to adopt because the charity only wanted to place babies with childless couples.
"I thought that was the end of that," says Jennifer. "Then one Saturday morning in 1964, a woman who said her name was Mrs. Reilly called from Catholic Charities. She wanted to know if I would be interested in adopting a baby.
"I said I'd have to discuss it with my husband. She just said, 'I'm sure it will be all right,' and said she'd call back at 10 a.m. the next day. "I told my husbannd and he said, 'Of course, we'll take the baby.'
"They made arrangements for me to go down to Catholic Charities in the District [of Columbia]. Outside the building, I met a woman wearing a blue polka-dot dress, who looked to be in her early 40s.
"She looked very pregnant. As she passed me, I said to her, 'Mary, is that you?' I recognized the woman as Mary Meyer, who had been in the society pages of the newspaper.
"She said to me, 'You won't say anything to anyone that you saw me?' And I said, 'Of course not.'"
To Jennifer, it seemed just a coincidence and was soon forgotten -- for a time.
The Crummitts welcomed new son Richard into their house in September 1964, less than a year after JFK's assassination. Shortly after the adoption, a woman came out to the house.
"She was tall, slender, with shoulder-length brown hair with some blond mixed in and beautiful brown eyes, "says Jennifer.
"She was driving a station wagon and told me she'd come from Catholic Charities and wanted to see Johnny.
"I said there was no one here by that name, and she said, 'Oh, yes there is. His name is John and you've had him for about three weeks now.'
"She said that was the name he was given and said his grandparents had left him money to go to college.
"She said, 'Would you turn your nose up at a quarter of a million dollars?'
"I was shocked and said, 'If they have a quarter of a million to leave this child, why would they put him up for adoption?'
"She said, 'It's a different type of adoption.' When I looked at her funny, she just said, 'I think I've said too much already. I can't say anymore.'"
But Jennifer never received the money.
"I called Catholic Charities the next morning and they said they'd never heard of the woman," explains Jennifer.
Then on Oct. 12, 1964, Kennedy's lover Mary Meter was brutally murdered by an unnbown gunman on her daily walk along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal path.
Her diary was found and burned by CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton.
Around the time of Mary's death, the Crummitts were returning from a day out and found a woman dressed in black waiting in front.
"She said she was from Catholic Charities sent to check on Johnny," says Jennifer.
"After, she walked to the corner where a car stopped and picked her up. The next mroning, I called Catholic Charities again, and again they said they had no knowledge of her." And when Jennifer tried to get Richard's birth documents for his baptism, she says she was stunned when a nun told her the papers were filed under the name "Meyer," not Crummitt. The nun refused to send her the original birth certificate.
Years later, when Richard researched his origins, he says the muddle of information in the various medical records, baptismal records and birth documents indicated either "utter incompetence or a gigantic coverup."
According to Crummitt, a record from the St. Ann's home, where the Crummitts picked up baby Richard, bears the name John Fitzgerald and states that he was born a Providence Hospital in Washington, D.C. The paper also bears the handwritten words "John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr." and the notation "delete."
"I was confused," Jennifer says. "I knew there already was a John Jr. and I wondered if it was a joke. The only thing I can fathom is that the mother wanted someone to know -- and the record was sent along with some other paperwork because someone wanted me to know."
* * * *
In January 1970, Jenifer and her father-in-law took Richard to the Kennedy Institute in Northeastern D.C. for IQ testing.
"Inside was a portrait of Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. in his uniform." says Jennifer.
"As I stood looking at it, I felt a hand on my shoulder.
"'Handsome man, was he not, Mrs. Crummitt?" said this pleasant voice. 'So shall your son grow to be.'
"I turned around and it was a nun in a habit who introduced herself as Sister Mary.
Then Richard and his father-in-law were whisked away for testing while Jennifer waited outside.
When they emerged Richard's father-in-law was clearly shaken.
On the way home Jennifer said to her father-in-law, "Richard is a Kennedy, isn't he?" He replied, "Don't ever say that to anyone."
* * * *
The day Richard, himself, came to really believe he was JFK's son was the day Jennifer almost lost him. She explains:
"It was in August 1970, Richard was playing on the elevator in our building at the Presidential Park Apartments in Adelphi, Md.," she says. "When he didn't come back, we looked for him and he wasn't anywhere."
Lisa says Richard was missing for nine hours.
"There were two men in the car," Richard recalls. "They told me I was JFK Jr. over and over and were talking about how they would get a lot of money for me.
"'You're beg bucks,' they said and mentioned something about being able to prove who I really was. They told me that if I ever told anyone about them they would kill my family."
But Richard managed to escape his abductors.
"When they stopped the car at a traffic light. I jumped out. The tried to stop me, grabbing my feet, and my shoes came off."
* * * *
Shorly before his death in 1987, Jennifer's husband, who left the family in 1968, contacted her and said, "I've go to explain everying to you. I want everything out in the open." But Raymond died before they could speak, she says.
Amazingly, Richard says Kathleen Kennedy Townsend -- the daughter of Jack's brother Bobby and his wife Ethel -- remarked on their resemblance a year ago, when as the state's lieutenant governor, she appointed Richard to a post aas a Democratic committeeman.
Staring at a photo of them standing together, Richard says she told him, "Look at that. We look so much alike, we could be brother and sister."
Today, Richard is convinced he's JFK's son. Now, he'd like to know for sure. he says he's not interested in the vast Kennedy fortune but wants to find out for certain for himself and for history.
"I would be interested in DNA testing with Caroline (JFK's daughter) for posterity's sake," he says.
"I thought of living in the Kennedy's world at one point a lot -- what having a lot of money could mean.
"In fact, I thought about it so much, I turned it completely around in my mind to the thought: What if I never got to know the mother and sister I have now? I love them very much.
* * * *
THE DAY HE PLAYED WITH THE OTHER JFK JR. AT RFK's HOUSE
Richard Kirk Crummitt says he onece met his half brother John F. Kennedy Jr. and his aunt Ethel Kennedy during a mysterious outing when he was just 6 years old.
It was 1970 and Richard says a man, who turned out to be Ethel's driver, came to his school at lunchtime and took him in a car. "I knew the man," says Richard. "He lived near us in Adelphi and was very friendly with all the kids. He wanted to take me for a ride but told me not to tell anyone at the school.
"We had an hour and I went. He took me to what I called the 'park of stones.' Now I know it is Arlington National Cemetery.
"There were two women, a blonde and a dark-haired one with another boy. Now I know it was Ethel, Jackie Kennedy and her son John Jr." The driver introduced Richard to John. "We played together, laughing and just horsing around," says Richard. " remember at one point the women were crying. But they didn't say a word to me."
Richard says they stayed at the "park" less than half an hour and then drove to a house, a house he now knows as Hictory Hill.
"It had a white picket fence in the front and a dog was in the driveway," he recalls. "We went through a side door into the kitchen. I remember a lot of kids and commotion going on. We were given milk and cookies.
"The women still didn't talk to me. They looked at me. I didn't know what to think."
Richard says they stayed a short time, about 20 minutes, and the driver took him back.
"We go back to the school just under the bell," he says. "I've never been back to the house. It's kind of haunting."
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