Dorothy Hunt died in a plane crash in 1972, and some believe that she was killed because of what she knew about the growing Watergate scandal.
KEZIDorothy Hunt, the wife of E. Howard Hunt, with one of their children.
On a cold December day in 1972, United Airlines Flight 553 crashed in a Chicago neighborhood while trying to land at Midway Airport. As the wreckage smoldered, word began to spread that the flight had had a somewhat famous passenger on board: Dorothy Hunt. She was the wife of E. Howard Hunt, a key figure in the growing Watergate scandal.
Howard, alongside G. Gordon Liddy, had helped orchestrate the Watergate break-in. As of December 1972, he and the other Watergate burglars had been indicted by a federal grand jury, and storm clouds were growing around the Nixon White House. As it came out later, Howard and Dorothy Hunt had expressed displeasure with the slow rate of “hush money” paid out from the White House, and Howard had warned one Nixon aide in a recorded conversation that “this thing must not break apart for foolish reasons.”
Just weeks after that conversation, Dorothy Hunt was found dead. What’s more, investigators found that she’d been carrying $10,000 with her.
Her shocking death left many questions unanswered. Was Dorothy Hunt carrying Watergate hush money? Was she killed as a warning to her husband? Or was Dorothy about to blow the whistle on the scandal?
The Hunts And The Watergate Break-in
E. Howard and Dorothy Hunt met while they were both working for the CIA. Garrett Graff, who wrote Watergate: A New History told USA Today that they crossed paths in China, where Howard was an intelligence officer, and Dorothy was agency staff.
The Hunts got married and, by the 1970s, were living in the Washington D.C. area. In 1971, Howard was hired by President Richard Nixon aide Charles Colson to work with the White House Special Investigations Unit, better known as the White House “Plumbers” because of how they “fixed” leaks.
Then, in June 1972, Howard and G. Gordon Liddy orchestrated the break-in of the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. But the break-in on June 17, 1972 didn’t go as planned. A security guard discovered the burglars, and investigators were soon able to link the break-in to Howard Hunt.
National Archives and Records AdministrationThe discovery of Howard Hunt’s (“HH”) White House phone number in an address book belonging to a Watergate burglar linked the break-in to the White House.
Dorothy Hunt was her husband’s active partner in the legal challenges that followed. Howard Hunt was indicted for his role in the Watergate break-in three months later, and, according to Hunt’s 1974 memoir, Dorothy took aggressive action to obtain financial assistance for her husband and the other burglars to help cover their legal fees.
“She had been unable to reach Liddy. Confronted with this situation, and not knowing where I was or what faced me, she went to [Committee to Reelect The President] headquarters and demanded to see the general counsel,” Howard wrote. He added that Dorothy Hunt then spoke to a man called Mr. Rivers who told her to “obtain from the arrested men, Liddy and myself, an estimate of monthly living costs and attorneys’ fees.”
Mr. Rivers provided money for the Watergate burglars’ legal fees but, to Howard and Dorothy Hunt’s chagrin, it was far less than they had asked for.
Dorothy Hunt, Watergate Paymistress
As time went on, Howard and Dorothy Hunt increasingly pressured the White House for money, which came in erratic spurts, if it came at all. In October 1972, Dorothy Hunt reached out to Colson. Though he allegedly refused to speak to her, The New York Times reported in June 1973 that “Mrs. Hunt was upset about an interruption in the payments from Nixon associates to the Watergate defendants.”
Then, when Nixon won reelection in November 1972, Dorothy Hunt expressed worry to her husband that the payments would dry up entirely.
“She felt that with the election won, the White House would be less inclined to live up to its assurances,” Hunt recalled in his memoir.
KEZIHoward and Dorothy Hunt, pictured with their children, transferred tens of thousands of dollars from the Nixon campaign to the Watergate burglars.
Shortly after Nixon’s reelection, Howard Hunt also called Colson to ask about financial payments from the White House.
“The reason I called you was… because of commitments that were made to all of us at onset [which] have not been kept,” Howard Hunt said during their conversation, which Colson recorded. “[T]here’s a great deal of unease and concern on the part of seven defendants… there’s a great deal of financial expense here that is not been covered.”
Howard added: “The stakes are very, very high, and this thing must not break apart for foolish reasons.”
Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Stock PhotoE. Howard Hunt in the 1970s.
Dorothy Hunt allegedly went even further. In 2022, her son Saint John Hunt, who was 18 during the Watergate scandal, told ABC affiliate KEZI 9 that his mother “told the White House… that they had evidence that would ‘literally blow the White House out of the water.'”
He added: “And that was a direct threat and you know, she was a smart lady, she should have known there’s going to be consequences if you threaten to blackmail the President of the United States,”
Indeed, Dorothy Hunt died just weeks after she and her husband clashed with Colson over payments to the Watergate burglars.
The Sudden Crash Of United Flight 553
On Dec. 8, 1972, Dorothy Hunt boarded United Flight 553 from Washington, D.C., to Omaha, Nebraska. She was carrying at least $10,000 in cash. And just before her departure, Dorothy took out a flight insurance policy worth $225,000.
Hours later, the plane crashed while trying to land for a layover at Chicago’s Midway Airport. Forty-three of the 61 people onboard were killed, including Dorothy Hunt. Dorothy Hunt was not the only person connected to U.S. politics who died in the plane crash; CBS reporter Michelle Clark was also aboard the plane, as was Democratic Representative George Collins.
National Transportation Safety BoardThe plane carrying Dorothy Hunt crashed into a neighborhood close to Midway Airport in Chicago.
According to the official report, the plane crash was due to pilot error. It crashed in a residential area, killing two people on the ground. The Chicago Fire Department swiftly responded to the scene as did — to the surprise of some — dozens of FBI agents.
As for the $10,000? Many believe that Dorothy Hunt was carrying White House hush money. Howard Hunt only said that she had been carrying the money in order to invest in hotels.
In the aftermath, E. Howard Hunt struck a deal with Colson. He would plead guilty and avoid a public — and potentially politically embarrassing — trial if Colson could get Nixon to agree to pardon him. With his wife gone, Howard didn’t want to leave his children “orphans” by spending an extended time in prison. Colson and Nixon agreed to the deal.
But conspiracy theorists have other ideas of what went on between Dorothy Hunt, her husband, and the Nixon administration.
Lingering Questions About Dorothy Hunt’s Death
Was Dorothy Hunt simply unlucky when she boarded United Flight 553? Though the tragedy was chalked up to pilot error, conspiracy theorists suspect that Dorothy was murdered.
Some believe that Dorothy Hunt was killed because of the pressure she was exerting on the White House. Some believe that she was about to blow the whistle on Watergate, possibly to the CBS reporter, Michelle Clark, who was also on the flight. (This is the angle the series White House Plumbers takes). Possibly, her death was meant to pressure Hunt to cooperate, which he did.
That said, Nixon expressed what seemed to be genuine surprise when he heard about Dorothy Hunt’s death. Colson broke the news during a recorded telephone conversation with the president, telling Nixon: “I just got a terribly tragic bit of news. That plane crash – Howard Hunt’s wife was on it.”
“His wife is dead?” Nixon asked.
Public DomainThe Watergate scandal ultimately led to Richard Nixon’s resignation.
“Yes sir,” Colson said, “she was killed in the plane crash in Chicago,” to which Nixon replied, “Oh my God!”
In the end, despite the White House’s efforts to keep Watergate cover-up a secret, the scandal came to light. Nixon resigned from office in August 1974 and Hunt never received a pardon. He spent 33 months in prison.
Decades later, history has largely forgotten the “paymistress” of the Watergate hush money payments. Yet questions continue to swirl around the plane crash that killed Dorothy Hunt. And Colson, for one, came to believe that her death was more sinister than it seemed.
“I think they killed Dorothy Hunt,” he told Time Magazine in 1974.
After reading about Dorothy Hunt, discover the strange story of Dorothy Kilgallen, the journalist who died mysteriously while investigating the JFK assassination. Or, learn about Mark Felt, the high-ranking FBI official known as “Deep Throat” who leaked information during Watergate.
