In Heymann’s candid biography about Robert Kennedy, meaning salacious, Elizabeth Okrun joined Susan Imhoff, Amy Brandon and Jade Stewart; and each appeared, according to Donna Morel, as paramours that Heymann created for Robert Kennedy’s enjoyment. While offering not one direct quotation from Elizabeth, Heymann funneled the story about Elizabeth’s affair with Robert through Langdon P. Marvin, Jr., who, according to his testimony as quoted by Heymann, acted as Robert’s beard one weekend at Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Marvin transformed into a beard during John Kennedy’s 1952 senatorial campaign when Marvin, Robert and Elizabeth, along with an additional guy and gal, spent the weekend together at the Old Saybrook. Even though each member of the group had their own room, Robert and Elizabeth, a beautiful young debutante, according to Marvin, spent their nights together and then separated in the early hours of the morning. There was this perpetual myth about Bobby not being a ladies’ man, reported Marvin. This couldn’t have been further from the truth. While Bobby’s illicit relationships were less frequent than his older brother’s, according to Marvin, the younger brother certainly had his share of extramarital relationships. Marvin testified that he occupied the hotel room adjacent to the room occupied by the vigorous lovers: Robert and Elizabeth had a deep mutual fascination and, from the sound of it […], a passionate sexual attraction. Marvin clarified the situation with Kennedys, at least the Kennedy men, that is: All the Kennedy men were like dogs: whenever they passed a fire hydrant they had to stop and take a leak (Heymann: RFK, 67).

Langdon Marvin also appeared in Clem Heymann’s 1989 publication, A Woman Named Jackie. In that book, Clem included an anecdote involving then Senator John Kennedy with circumstances virtually identical to the one involving Robert Kennedy and Elizabeth Okrun that appeared in RFK: A Candid Biography of Robert Kennedy, published nine years later. The John Kennedy anecdote involved a house party that the Senator asked Langdon to arrange, and Langdon knew exactly what the Senator meant by “house party” […]. The group of seven, including Langdon and some elegantly attractive women, resided on the second floor of the Old Kimball House, located in Northeast Harbor, Maine. The edict was that the group had to move about in odd numbers, three five or seven. That way, according to Marvin, nobody would ever be able to pin anything on Jack, and thus on me (Heymann: Jackie, 144). At the time, Jacqueline Kennedy was visiting Europe; and Robert Kennedy was never mentioned, an absence that leads to an important question. If Heymann knew about—and he must have known about—the Robert Kennedy, Elizabeth Okrun episode, why did the biographer fail to mention that episode in his book about Jackie Kennedy?

According to Donna Morel, Langdon Marvin sat for four separate interviews in 1986. Anthony “Tony” Mazzaschi, a researcher employed by Heymann, conducted and taped each interview, which Heymann then transcribed. During her review of Heymann’s archives, Donna did not find the tapes of the interviews, only the transcriptions; and she informed me in an email that Heymann, in A Woman Named Jackie, believe it or not, accurately quoted Marvin based on Marvin’s interview transcript. However, Marvin mentioned Robert Kennedy only once during those four interviews. According to Donna, The quotes Heymann attributed to Marvin in “RFK” are not found in the four Marvin interview transcripts. Then later in the same email, she noted:

Although he was considered a “loose cannon” by some, it’s important to reiterate that, in his lengthy interviews with Mazzaschi, Marvin never claimed to be involved with RFK. Marvin never mentioned participating in RFK’s senatorial or presidential campaigns in any capacity. Additionally, the quotes Heymann attributed to Marvin appear in no other source published before the release of Heymann’s “RFK.”

It should be evident, then, that the story involving Senator John Kennedy, as reported by Langdon Marvin and repeated by Clem Heymann, possibly described actual events. I say possibly simply because, with C. David Heymann, nothing written can be accepted as factual: transcriptions can also be fabrications. Still and all, the story involving Robert Kennedy and Elizabeth Okrun was most certainly fabricated without any basis in reality or fact. How could the story have been real and factual since the character of Elizabeth Okrun was a figment of C. David Heymann’s imagination, one that could be called prolific if not fecund.

Returning to the anecdotes involving Truman Capote, the transformation of Kennedy men into doglike creatures urinating on fire hydrants, a metaphorical allusion to their uncontrolled, canine randiness, first appeared in Truman Capote’s unfinished novel, Answered Prayers. Originally published in 1987 by Random House, the novel featured Capote’s Swans. Capote credited the observation and judgment that Kennedy men are just urinating dogs to Lady Ida Coolbirth who represented a flesh and blood Slim Keith, one of the beautiful Swans.

Clearly, then, Heymann plagiarized the quotation. And yet, unquestionably, the most remarkable aspect of the preceding plagiarism of Truman Capote is what follows.

In 2009, eleven years after Clem published his candid biography of Robert Kennedy, and twenty-five years after Capote’s death, Clem published Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story. In relation to a story that involved Ted Kennedy, Clem used the Truman Capote quotation as follows: Those Kennedy men are like dogs. They have to stop and piss at every fire hydrant (Heymann: Bobby and Jackie, 30). In that publication, remarkably, Clem actually credited the words to Truman Capote.

So, in 1998, in his Robert Kennedy book, Heymann credited the dog-like urinating Kennedys observation to Langdon P. Marvin, Jr.; and then in 2009, in his book about Robert and Jacqueline Kennedy’s romance, the dubious biographer credited Truman Capote. Even so, neither quotation perfectly matched the actual statement made by Lady Ida Coolbirth.

Of course, a biographer who was dishonest enough to fabricate characters, and fabricate testimony from them, was certainly capable of plagiarism and misquoting to advance his own warped and poison agenda. But then, perhaps Heymann was simply chasing after money.

According to a 2016 New York Post article, written by Maureen Callahan, the Lady Ida Coolbirth/Slim Keith episode unfolded at La Côte Basque, an actual restaurant located in Manhattan.1La Côte Basque operated in Manhattan from the late 1950s until the Spring of 2004.An inebriated Lady Ida began to spill venomous gossip and bash everyone present:

Over at another table are Jackie (Kennedy) and Lee (Radziwill),  who get off easy—“a pair of Western geisha girls.” But Capote uses them as a way into true scandal: Coolbirth’s tale of having been raped, as a teenager, by (the senior) Joe Kennedy. (It’s unclear if this was based on something Slim told Capote or if it was made up.) She was a guest of (the senior Joe) Kennedy’s daughter Kick […].

The complete quotation from Capote follows hereafter:

 … the old bugger slipped into my bedroom. It was about six o’clock in the morning, the ideal hour if you want to catch someone really slugged out, really by complete surprise, and when I woke up he was already between the sheets with one hand over my mouth and the other all over the place. The sheer ballsy gall of it—right there in his own house with the whole family sleeping all around us. But all those Kennedy men are the same; they’re like dogs, they have to pee on every fire hydrant. Still, you had to give the old guy credit, and when he saw I wasn’t going to scream he was so grateful … (Capote 153).

Considering Langdon Marvin’s prime role in the preceding Heymann saga, I attempted to determine what I could about his life. Marvin was briefly John Kennedy’s roommate at Harvard, and thus Marvin was associated more with John Kennedy, mostly during John’s Senate tenure, than he was ever associated with Robert. I found no indications at all that Marvin was associated with John Kennedy’s senate campaign; but evidently, he arrived in Washington ahead of John as a senate counsel and a shill, lobbyist for the small airlines. Additionally, during a telephone conversation, John Seigenthaler, Robert Kennedy’s administrative assistant and admittedly his friend for most of his political life,2“Fiction, Falsehood about the Kennedys” by John Seigenthaler. The Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY. Sunday. 8 August 1993.informed Donna Morel, adamantly, that Robert Kennedy would never have associated with Langdon Marvin.

Langdon endured his share of controversy, from using a Library of Congress study room as a rent-free office with free telephone service, arranged by his former Harvard roommate, which landed them both in Dutch with various congressmen, to a conviction for drunk driving, to accusations of hotel room abuse and accusations of kidnapping a Minneapolis heiress in 1949 to forestall her marriage to another man. I must be truthful, however, those accusations were later resolved in Langdon’s favor.

Even though Marvin campaigned for John Kennedy in 1960, an article by Jack Anderson, published in The Winona Daily News, Winona, Minnesota, on August the 19th in 1963, loudly announced: JFK’s Ex-Roommate on White House Blacklist. After John’s presidential election, Anderson noted: Marvin’s foes in the airline industry wrote to Robert Kennedy in alarm, warning against the appointment of Marvin to high office. Robert Kennedy responded promptly to the warning:

I assure you that Langdon Marvin will not be a part of the administration. He will not have a job of any kind and will play no role, directly or indirectly, in the policies of the administration. Your sentiments regarding Mr. Marvin are exactly in accord with mine, and I assure you that, when I say Langdon will have nothing to do with the government for the next four years, I mean what I say.

The White House guards were thereafter instructed to preclude Langdon from entering the White House grounds under any circumstances. The White House provided the guards with a photograph of the man who they labeled an undesirable; but here is the important fact: Langdon P. Marvin, Jr. died in 1987, two years before C. David Heymann published his Jackie book, and twelve years before he published his candid Robert Kennedy biography; and both featured a considerable amount of testimony from Marvin. And yet again, Heymann quoted a deceased source. Even though Langdon P. Marvin, Jr. was a real, flesh and blood person, every word that Clem placed in Langdon’s mouth should not be accepted as the truth, should not be accepted as fact, should not be accepted as his actual spoken words.