Madeleine Duncan Brown

Madeleine Duncan Brown (July 5, 1925 – June 22, 2002) was an American woman who claimed to be a longtime mistress of United States President Lyndon B. Johnson.

In addition to claiming that a son was born out of that relationship, Brown also implicated Johnson in a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.

In the 1940s, the Johnsons owned a radio station in Austin, KTBC, run by Jesse Kellam.

According to Brown, she left her husband in 1948 while he was in the hospital, returning to Dallas with her two-month-old son, Jimmy Glynn Brown.

She said that she was subsequently hired that same year by Glenn Advertising and was promoted to media buyer whose responsibilities including purchasing radio advertising time.

She said that the affair began in 1948 after a party at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas and lasted until 1967.

The Dallas Morning News also published the allegations under the headline "Dallas Woman Claims She Was LBJ's Lover", noting that spokespeople for Lady Bird Johnson and the Johnson family rejected the claims.

Brown's statement, in which she said she wanted to "clear the record", came three weeks after published reports of an affair between Johnson and Alice Glass.

The suit included an affidavit from Madeleine Brown, alleging that she met President Johnson in 1948 at a social function within a Dallas hotel, then had an affair with him that lasted from 1948 until 1969.

According to her affidavit, Ragsdale, a deceased Dallas attorney, was assigned to assist with legal issues regarding her pregnancy and later claimed to be the child's father in order to shield Johnson from negative publicity.

Betty Tilson, the press secretary for Lady Bird Johnson, was quoted as stating: "We're convinced the whole thing is made-up, frankly."

Tilson indicated that close associates of the Johnson family were not familiar with the name "Steven Mark Brown" nor was there any record of correspondence or visitation from him within the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum.

She also stated that no one she talked to knew Ragsdale.

Madeleine Brown claimed that she attended a KTBC reception in 1948 while working for a Dallas advertising agency and was introduced to Johnson through Kellam.

She reported that Johnson flirted with her during this initial encounter and that she was "dazzled" by him.

According to Brown, Kellam immediately asked her to another reception three weeks later at the Adolphus Hotel.

It was at that meeting, she said, that her long affair with Johnson began after he invited her up to his apartment in the hotel.

Brown said that Johnson insisted the affair be kept secret, and she alleged that Kellam functioned as a go-between who arranged for Johnson and her to meet.

People magazine reported that she claimed her relationship with Johnson was "purely physical" and had discovered that he had other mistresses.

According to Brown, she told Johnson in April 1950 that she was pregnant and he assured her he would provide for her needs.

She claimed that Kellam told her a few days later that she would be contacted by attorney Jerome Ragsdale.

Brown alleged that after the birth of Steven in 1950, Ragsdale provided her with "a six-room house for $15,000, complete with a live-in maid", and paid the various charge cards he supplied to her.

She said her physician told her that he would note her husband, James Glynn Brown, as the father.

According to Brown, she continued to meet with Johnson throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

She told People that for five years, at Kellam's urging, she had a "paper marriage" to a Dallas businessman with whom she never lived.

She said that years after they divorced, she was told by a friend that the man had committed suicide.

According to Brown, she was on her way to see Johnson in Austin when she heard about the assassination of Kennedy over the radio, then turned around.

She said that a few weeks later Kellam instructed her to meet the new President of the United States in their usual place.

Brown said at the age of 19 she married James Glynn Brown, a childhood sweetheart and neighborhood soda jerk, whom she divorced in 1955.

She described her husband as a veteran of the United States Marine Corps whose "war experiences had shattered his nerves, and turned him into a hopeless, physically abusive drunkard".

Brown said that he "was eventually institutionalized in a veteran's hospital for 'chronic paranoid schizophrenia'".

Brown told People that her sexual relationship with Johnson abruptly ended in 1967 after she was badly injured in a car accident in which her son, Steven, was at the wheel.

She said she had one last meeting with Johnson in 1969 at the Shamrock Hotel in Houston, Texas, in which they had a two-hour discussion which she described as their first "real conversation".

On November 5, 1982, Brown spoke at a news conference held at the Dallas Press Club, alleging that she had an extramarital relationship with Johnson for almost twenty years.

On June 18, 1987, Brown's second son, Steven Mark Brown (December 27, 1950 – September 28, 1990), filed a $10.5 million lawsuit against Lady Bird Johnson in a Texas district court alleging that the former first lady and two friends of President Johnson, Jesse Kellam of Austin and Jerome T. Ragsdale of Dallas, had conspired to deprive him of a share of the Johnson estate.

His suit claimed: "My legal birthrights have been violated and a conspiracy was formed to deprive me of my legal heirship."

The August 5, 1987 issue of People magazine detailed additional claims made by Madeleine and Steven Brown.

Brown described her background in her 1997 autobiography, Texas in the Morning: The Love Story of Madeleine Brown and President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

According to Brown, she was raised in a middle-class Catholic household in Dallas, Texas, where her father was a utility company supervisor and her mother was a housewife.

She stated that she attended W. H. Adamson High School.