J. Edgar Hoover Same-Sex Marriage in 1959 Revealed

Maryland Justice of the Peace Makes Deathbed Confession

 

A 91-year-old retired justice of the peace in Elkton, Maryland revealed in a deathbed confession that he performed a marriage ceremony in 1959 for J. Edgar Hoover and his long-time companion, Clyde Tolson.

At the time of his death in 1972, Hoover was the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a post he had held since the 1920s when the FBI's predecessor agency was known as the Bureau of Investigation. Tolson was his chief lieutenant at the agency.

The two men worked together, vacationed together and ultimately lived together for more than 40 years and are believed to have been lovers. By some accounts, they were known at the FBI behind their backs as "J. Edna and Mother Tolson."

The revelation by Abner A. Morgenstern, who died last week two days after he made it in front of his lawyer, a notary public and a court stenographer, casts a new light on the same-sex marriage controversy and President Bush's support of a constitutional amendment that would ban gay and lesbian marriages.

In an at times rambling account of the Hoover-Tolson marriage ceremony, Morgenstern said he was a justice of the peace who performed wedding ceremonies in Elkton, located on the state line between Maryland and Delaware. Maryland law at the time made Elkton a popular wedding spot for residents of other states where marriage requirements and waiting periods were more strict.

"I was reading the newspaper one night around 10 o'clock and I still had my neon Justice of the Peace sign lit up over the porch," Morgenstern said in a transcript of the session prepared by the court stenographer. "I always stayed up and kept the sign on so I could catch any late business."

Morgenstern said he heard a knock at the door and when he opened it, two older men stepped into the parlor.

"I recognized Hoover right away," Morgenstern said. "He said, and I can still remember his exact words, 'We're here to get married.' So I says, 'Where's the brides?' And he says, 'He's the bride and I'm the groom.' Hoover pointed to the fella with him when he said, 'He's the bride.'"

Morgenstern said that Hoover threatened him and his wife, Thelma, who died in 1987, with "hard time at Alcatraz or Ft. Leavenworth" if either one of them ever revealed what they did that night.

"Hoover said that what he and this other fella Tolson were doing, getting a marriage license and going through the ceremony, was part of an operation to catch some Russian spies," Morgenstern said. "He said we must never talk about that night. Then he warned about going to prison. I told him Thelma and me'd never breathe a word."

In the confession, Morgenstern said that during the wedding ceremony both Hoover and Tolson began crying. "I wondered at the time why they were bawling like babies if the whole business was just part of catching some spies," he recalled. "But one thing you learned in the justice of the peace business was never ask too many questions."

In the transcript, Morgenstern is quoted as saying that several years later he saw a photograph in The Washington Post of Hoover at a party. "There was a fella standing next to him and it was the same one from the wedding night," he said.

Morgenstern's lawyer, Sydney Goldfarb of New Castle, Delaware, said that Morgenstern decided to come forward because in recent years he had begun to wonder if the marriage ceremony really had anything to do with catching spies.

"Abner told me he wanted to tell his story because he doubted that he would live long enough for the government get around to sending him to prison," Goldfarb said. "I warned him about the possibility of being sent straight to Guantanamo Bay without a trial or anything, but he said it might be nice to spend some time on a tropical island and get away from the coming winter."

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