Thanks for the Barbara Monroe clarification. Apart from that, I knew the rest. I still can't find anything at all about Monroe - nada. Do we know why Eaglesham/Palmer thought she could corroborate David's story, and what part they thought she could corroborate? Seemingly it couldn't have been the encounter in Pitzer's office? I would have to know much more before concluding that David's lack of help in locating her was consciousness of guilt.
As you probably know, there was all sorts of misinformation swirling around the death of Pitzer, including a wound to the left temple that supposedly "disproved" a suicide until Eaglesham nailed down that there wasn't. So God knows where David got the misinformation he relayed to the reporter in 1975. He may have just been repeating rumors he had heard, as opposed to inventing falsehoods (the left-handed claim was a plausible mistake on his part). I don't see the mistakes in the 1975 article as impacting his credibility too damagingly.
As to the network job offer, the woman with whom he was having the "affair" (see below) said that he described post-retirement job offers (plural), as did David. It was well-known, at least to his family, that he was retiring to teach educational television at Montgomery Junior College, the main campus of which was located very near his home until 1965 and for which he had done work. Mrs. Pitzer said he was "quite enthused" about the new job. In fact, on the Saturday of his suicide he went into his office to work on a speech he would be delivering to Montgomery students in a few days. So "pre-retirement stress" as an explanation for his suicide just doesn't add up to me.
The "affair" scarcely qualifies for that description. The woman had met him while he was on a business-related trip to Florida exactly a year before his suicide. They went on a few "dates" during a week but were not sexually intimate. A few months later, he flew her to Atlanta to join him for two days, and they were intimate. They corresponded casually, but he next saw her in Florida the month of his suicide, the last day being exactly one week prior. He wrote her a letter 90 minutes before his suicide in which he talked about seeing her in Florida in January. Possible red flags were that he said he was "in deep trouble at home" (his wife didn't seem to think so) and that the woman should not write again "until you hear from or of me." The woman could see no reason for his suicide. From the Navy's investigative report: "He seemed to like his work and always put his duty ahead of personal affairs. He spoke of employment opportunities awaiting him upon retirement. In discussing his family problems, he never seemed morbid or unduly upset; on the contrary he was a cheerful, mature individual." She also said that their relationship "was one of mutual understanding and did not involve matrimonial, or serious romantic implications. Each mutually respected the other, and sought to protect the other’s reputation and prevent friends and families from discovering the association."
Many suicides are, of course, puzzling and even inexplicable. I find Pitzer's really puzzling and David's story at least credible enough to have some suspicion there may have been a connection. It's one of the very few potential factoids I've explored that left me thinking there might actually be something to it.
Munroe was an officer in the same educational outfit at Bethesda as David and Pitzer. According to David, he, she, and Pitzer made up an impromptu office lunchtime bridge club (of.....three). According to the story, David ran into Munroe after the suicide when he was stationed at the Navy's Great Lakes station. He said that she told him that she also believed that Pitzer was murdered, presumably for the same reasons. As such, she would be valuable corroboration.
