On 18 December 1956, Meyer's nine-year-old son, Michael, was hit by a car and killed. Meyer and his wife Mary divorced in 1958. On 12 October 1964, his former wife Mary was shot dead by an unknown assailant alongside the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Her sister and brother-in-law Benjamin C. Bradlee, later the executive editor of "The Washington Post", caught Angleton breaking into Pinchot's residence. Angleton apparently was looking for Mary Meyer's diary that allegedly contained details of a love affair with John F. Kennedy, the recently assassinated U.S. President.