Mary's Mosaic by Peter Janney

Claudius born 10 B.C. murdered and deified A.D. 54 . and Claudius the God , both authored by Robert Graves. New York: Vintage International Edition, 1989, originally published by Random House, 1935.

14
    E PILOGUE
There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: Not going all the way, and not starting.
—The Buddha
The American people live in a country where they can have almost anything they want.
And my regret is that it seems that they don’t want much of anything at all.
—Eugene Debs
    D URING THE JOURNEY of writing this book, many people asked me whether Leo Damore really committed suicide. Of course he did, I told them. He shot himself in the presence of a nurse and a police officer in October 1995. There was no conspiracy here, I maintained; the facts spoke for themselves. But I soon reckoned those weren’t the only “facts” that surrounded Leo’s demise.
    For two years, Leo’s former wife, June Davison, graciously allowed me to read all of Leo’s private diaries. I wanted to know anything that might further offer clues, particularly about the last few years of his life. While Leo purposely never mentioned any of his most secretive research in his journals, he did recount some of his battles with panic attacks, anxiety, and depression—all of which started to emerge several months after his telephone conversation with William L. Mitchell at the end of March 1993. Yet in my own dealings with Leo during 1993, he appeared to be generally optimistic after our visitin April of that year and the subsequent phone contact we shared during that summer. Leo made no secret of the fact that he had met with the person who, he believed, was Mary’s assassin, the same man who had testified at the trial, but I didn’t press him for further details, as I was preoccupied with grief over a broken marital engagement. That fall, however, he was still working on the manuscript for “Burden of Guilt,” though he was increasingly agitated and upset.
    Another of Leo’s closest friends, who asked to remain anonymous, agreed to be interviewed for this book. She and Leo had talked many times after his 1993 telephone interview with Mitchell, as well as after Leo’s subsequent in-person interview with Mitchell. That meeting, the friend said, was even more definitive because Leo had learned, she said, about some of the other people who had assisted in the operation. Some weeks later, however, Leo told his friend he was sure he was being followed, “watched,” and he was growing increasingly alarmed. In early 1994, he believed he’d been “poisoned,” she said. He wasn’t sure how, or when it happened, but he knew something was wrong. He had also taken a number of precautions with his tapes and transcriptions, his manuscript, and what she remembered as “some other material.” It was all well-hidden, the friend said, and couldn’t be found. Leo was becoming more frantic, more anxious, agitated, and unable to focus. Increasingly paranoid, under financial pressure, he apparently consulted not one but two different psychiatrists, both of whom were giving him different psychotropic medications.
    About a month before he shot himself in October 1995, Leo called me, desperately pleading for a place to live, and threatening suicide. Not having heard from him for months, I realized at that point how serious his deterioration had become. I pleaded with him to immediately check into a hospital, even offered to accompany him, should he need assistance. Later on, I would discover his friend Jimmy Smith had received a similar plea, again shortly before Leo took his life. Following his death, Leo’s former wife told me his autopsy had revealed an undiagnosed brain tumor. Had Leo Damore, I wondered, been poisoned in such a way that he was driven to suicide?
    Starting in the 1950s, under the direction of the CIA’s Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the Agency’s MKULTRA program had developed an arsenal of undetectable elixirs for