John Burr Northrop Jr., an armed services veteran and bond salesman who played an unlikely role in the Watergate scandal, died on May 1 in Vero Beach, Fla. He was 96 and had been a summer resident of East Hampton for many years.
In April 1974, Mr. Northrop, then living in Cold Spring Harbor, was laid up in the hospital following a back injury sustained while lifting fertilizer in his yard. “President Nixon had just released a 1,000-page transcript of White House conversations, hoping to finally put an end to the Watergate scandal and prove that he was not involved in the Democratic National Committee headquarters break-in,” Mr. Northrop’s family wrote.
“Out of sheer curiosity,” Mr. Northrop “spent hours carefully poring over the transcripts from his hospital bed and stumbled upon an important detail: There were two transcripts of the same conversation, indicating that Nixon’s team doctored the transcripts.”
He wrote to the Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who broke the story about the discrepancies in the transcripts. Eventually Nixon released the tape in question. He was impeached and resigned from office.
Mr. Northrop “later told family members that reading Faulkner prepared him to spot the inconsistencies in the dense transcripts,” his family wrote. “Reporters loved the story of an ordinary bond salesman with no experience in politics or journalism who helped hold Nixon accountable.” Newspapers from around the country ran stories with headlines like “Transcript Discrepancies Found ‘Just by Reading,’ “ “L.I. Guy Detected Tape Tangle,” and “Slow Reader Finds Slip in Transcript.” Mr. Northrop was interviewed by Walter Cronkite on the “CBS Evening News.”
The story “has since become entrenched in Northrop family lore,” his children said.
He was born in New York City on Feb. 8, 1928, to John Burr Northrop and the former Virginia Cox. He and his younger sister grew up in New York City and spent summers on Georgica Road in East Hampton. His parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had all spent summers in East Hampton, and his great-grandfather the Rev. Thomas Ritchie had inspired the construction of St. Thomas Episcopal Chapel in Amagansett in 1907 to serve the summer community.
Mr. Northrop and his sister learned to swim and sail at the Devon Yacht Club in Amagansett.
After attending Trinity School and Middlesex School, Mr. Northrop went on to Princeton University, where his family said he spent more time on cards than studying. He dropped out in his junior year and in 1951, during the Korean War, enlisted in the Army’s 82nd Airborne. He was stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and was honorably discharged in 1953.
Having learned discipline in the military, he then enrolled at Columbia University to study economics and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.
He was recruited to work on Wall Street as a municipal and corporate bond salesman, and then moved to the credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s, where he helped establish the first computerized bond pricing service.
He had two children with his first wife, the former Barbara Stewart, whom he had met through mutual friends in East Hampton. They lived in Greenwich Village before divorcing in 1969. She died in 2006.
With his second wife, Seta, a biochemist and antiques dealer, he lived in Cold Spring Harbor from the early 1970s until she died in 2014.
Family members said Mr. Northrop’s Watergate story “is just one example” of his “meticulous nature.” He was “a genealogy fanatic” and enjoyed researching his ancestors, who included Aaron Burr.
Mr. Northrop also “had a silly, fun-loving personality,” his family said. “He often sported a goofy smile and was an easy conversationalist. A talented pianist, he loved to spend evenings listening to Mozart or Gilbert and Sullivan operas from his elaborate home stereo systems. He was also an avid scuba diver — his children remember going on several diving trips in the Caribbean with unreliable, first-generation scuba tanks.”
He moved to Vero Beach after his second wife died, and in the final years of his life had reconnected with an old friend living there, Joyce Carlson. The two “spent many lovely hours hanging out . . . in the Florida sunshine,” his family said.
He is survived by two children, Michael Northrop and India Northrop Pratt, both of East Hampton, and by 10 grandchildren. A sister, Mary Virginia Damask, also lives in East Hampton. He leaves two stepchildren from his second marriage, Randy Luck of North Carolina and Wendy Luck of Colorado, and many nieces, nephews, and cousins.
Mr. Northrop was cremated and his ashes were interred at Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale. The family is planning a September service in East Hampton at a date to be determined.
