Did John Wilkes Booth escape?

[LA RAM FAN]

I used to think that the theory that Booth escaped was absurd and loony, but when I delved into it, I was surprised to find that even back then there was considerable doubt that the man who was killed in the Garrett barn was actually Booth.

I'm not sure about either of the men who have been suggested as the escaped Booth, but I agree that there are some serious, gaping holes in the identification of the body from the Garrett farm as Booth's body.

John Wilkes Booth

Some believe that Lincoln’s assassin was not killed by Union soldiers, but escaped & lived until 1903. Read more about this mystery and watch the case now.

unsolved.com

Did He Go To Hell Or Texas?

Did John Wilkes Booth escape arrest and live out the remainder of his life in Texas and Oklahoma?

texascooppower.com

There is a lot more evidence than these articles mention, but they are a decent start. As chance would have it, I am trying to find some articles I wrote on the subject around six years ago. I forgot to transfer them to my Google Drive when I moved my homepage from Arvixe to Google Sites. I'm hoping they're on one of my backup flash drives.

I remember seeing on unsolved mysteries how his doctor treated the man that said he was booth and the doctor said, john booth had a major scar on himthis man has no scar,John Booth was six feet something real tall,this man is six feet something really short, john booth had a huge ankle,this man has a small ankle,but this is defintely john booth.

He was obviously afraid for his life to come out and say the man they dfound and said was john booth was not him because he would be killed if he had so thats why he confirmed he was john wilkes booth but subtley and brilliantly dropping hints it was not him.

 

[Michael1985]

We need to stop pandering to conspiracy theories

I would be inclined to agree with you, but enough doubt has been raised, whether justified or not, for his own family to petition the courts unsuccessfully in the '90s for an exhumation and testing. The only to know once and for all one way or the other is for that testing to be permitted.

 

[rightwinger]

I would be inclined to agree with you, but enough doubt has been raised, whether justified or not, for his own family to petition the courts unsuccessfully in the '90s for an exhumation and testing. The only to know once and for all one way or the other is for that testing to be permitted.

I can assure you he is dead

 

[whitehall]

I love CW history.....What I don't like is unfounded BS.

Goodness knows there are enough people trying to change it as it is without helping them along.

Unfounded B.S. is in the mind of the beholder. We aren't dealing with big foot conspiracies and nobody is trying to change history. Maybe the Sundance kid wasn't killed in Bolivia but that's for another day. We are dealing with a conspiracy theory about the most famous assassination in American history and the possibility that the Union cavalry mis-identified a corpse in a burned out tobacco barn in Virginia in 1864. Unless you would rather deal with Nitwin's never ending inane Russian conspiracies it's the best we can do these days.

 

[mikegriffith1]

I remember seeing on unsolved mysteries how his doctor treated the man that said he was booth and the doctor said, john booth had a major scar on himthis man has no scar,John Booth was six feet something real tall,this man is six feet something really short, john booth had a huge ankle,this man has a small ankle,but this is defintely john booth.

He was obviously afraid for his life to come out and say the man they dfound and said was john booth was not him because he would be killed if he had so thats why he confirmed he was john wilkes booth but subtley and brilliantly dropping hints it was not him.

Many if not a majority of Americans at the time were skeptical of the government's claim that Booth had been killed, precisely because of the very shaky identification, the secret burial, etc. Many newspapers expressed doubt about the government's story, and that doubt remained strong and widespread for decades.

In 1866, Senator Garrett Davis of Kentucky expressed the view of many Americans:

I have never seen myself any satisfactory evidence that Booth was killed. I would rather have better testimony of the fact. I want it proved that Booth was in that barn, why he was not taken alive and brought to this city alive. I have never seen anybody or the evidence of anybody that identified Booth after he is said to have been killed. Why so much secrecy about it? (The Congressional Globe, July 28, 1866, p. 4292)

The "identification" of Booth's body at the autopsy on the USS Montauk on April 27, 1865, was riddled with problems:

* Dr. John May, one of the autopsy doctors, admitted that the body looked nothing like Booth, and Dr. May knew Booth.

Those who accept the official story claim that when the body was seen on the USS Montauk, it looked so different from Booth because so much time had elapsed since he had died.

This is an invalid argument. The man in the barn was shot at sunrise on April 26, i.e., around 5:20 AM. The body was taken aboard the Montauk for identification and autopsy less than 24 hours later--at right around 1:45 AM the next day, and the "identification" began almost immediately. Even in very warm weather, 20 hours is not enough time for a body to undergo such a radical change in appearance that it bears no resemblance to how the person looked in life.

Forensic sources tell us that a dead body does not even begin to noticeably bloat until about 72 hours after death. The internal organs don't start to decompose until about 24 hours after death. Just Google murder cases where the body was not discovered until 24-48 hours after death—you will find that friends and relatives had no problem identifying the body (except, of course, in cases where the face had not been blown away or badly damaged, etc.).

So when Dr. May walked up to the body of the man in the barn to being the autopsy on the Montauk, there was no reason he should have said, "There is no resemblance in that corpse to Booth. nor can I believe it to be him." Nor should May have said, "Never in a human had a greater change taken place . . . every vestige of resemblance to the living man had disappeared."

* When trying to explain the inexplicable failure to take a single autopsy photo of the body during the autopsy, at one point the government actually claimed that the Major Eckert, the officer in charge of the autopsy, did not want any photos taken of the body because the body bore so little resemblance to Booth!

Later, the War Department claimed that an autopsy photo had been taken but that it had been "lost."

* Dr. May and Lawrence Gardner (who assisted with the autopsy) said that the corpse’s face was heavily freckled (“very much freckled”), but Booth had no freckles.

Traditionalists have no credible, science-based explanation for how a dead body could have magically sprouted freckles on its face. Livor mortis does not cause freckling but rather causes dark discoloration of the skin in large patches or over large areas, and only in those areas that were closest to the ground when the discoloration occurred. There is no known case in the history of forensic science of livor mortis causing freckles to appear on a person’s face after death.

* The alleged Booth body examined at Weaver’s funeral home in 1869 only had one filled tooth, whereas Booth was known to have had two fillings. Also, the hair on the body’s head was 10-12 inches longer than Booth’s hair, which is important because hair only grows a fraction of an inch, if at all, after death.

H. C. Young of Cincinnati wrote to Secretary of War Ed Stanton before Booth had even been captured. Young explained that he was a loyal citizen, that he had known Booth for years, and that he was anxious to help identify the “villain Booth.” Young said that he was not sure which hand bore the initials JWB but that they were “near the thumb.” Young also mentioned seeing scars on Booth’s “arms and body” and a scar that was either on the side of his head or on his forehead near the hairline.

Yet, not one of the people who saw the alleged Booth body during the autopsy on the Montauk that night saw a tattooed cross or three-letter initials near the thumb or between the thumb and the forefinger.

Young’s reference to scars on Booth’s arms and body and on the side of his face is corroborated by numerous witnesses and is strong evidence against the claim that Booth’s body was the body examined on the Montauk. Booth did indeed have scars on his arms and body and a scar on his temple near his hairline, yet not one of these scars was mentioned by any of the people who saw the body on the Montauk. They should have at least seen one of the following scars, if the body had been Booth:

- As a child, Booth suffered “a large cut” on his head that had to be stitched (Terry Alford, Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth, p. 15).

- Booth once accidentally stabbed himself with a dagger on stage at Ford’s Theater while playing Romeo (Theodore Roscoe, The Web of Conspiracy, pp. 417-418).

- Booth also stabbed himself severely under his right arm in Albany while playing Pescara (Alford, pp. 103-104; Roscoe, pp. 417-418). He did this when he accidentally fell on a dagger and “cut away the muscles for some three inches under his right arm,” and this wound was so severe that Booth could not perform for several days (Alford, pp. 103-104).

- In another stage mishap, a fellow actor “brought down his sword across Booth’s forehead, cutting one eyebrow cleanly through” (Alford, pp. 155-156).

- Booth also received a scar on the side of his face, near his hairline, when Henrietta Irving attacked him (Alford, p. 107; Roscoe, pp. 417-418). This scar should have been noticeable. Alford says that when Irving attacked Booth, she used “a dirk [dagger], cutting his face badly” (Alford, p. 107).

- On another occasion, Booth suffered a knife cut when he intervened in a fight (Alford, pp. 171-172).

Again, not one of the identification witnesses on the Montauk, including the three autopsy doctors, said anything about any of these scars, not even the scar on the side of the face or the one under the right arm.

These are just some of the problems with the official story that Booth was killed in Garrett's barn and that his body was autopsied on the USS Montauk.

 

[rightwinger]

Many if not a majority of Americans at the time were skeptical of the government's claim that Booth had been killed, precisely because of the very shaky identification, the secret burial, etc. Many newspapers expressed doubt about the government's story, and that doubt remained strong and widespread for decades.

Many Americans are still skeptical that Oswald shot JFK.
It is in our nature when we face a national tragedy.
See 9-11

 

[mikegriffith1]

Many Americans are still skeptical that Oswald shot JFK.

Uh, yeah, because Oswald could not have done the shooting by himself. Wow, why am I not surprised that you are part of the minority of the Western world that still believes the Warren Commission's lone-gunman theory?

Perhaps you missed the news, but in the late 1970s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reinvestigated the JFK case and concluded that two gunmen were involved, that shots were fired from two directions, that Oswald was being impersonated in Mexico City just weeks before the assassination, that Jack Ruby had substantial Mafia ties, that Ruby lied about how he entered the police basement to shoot Oswald, that Ruby lied about why he shot Oswald, that Ruby made suspicious phone calls to high-level Mafia contacts weeks before the assassination, among other findings.

It is in our nature when we face a national tragedy.
See 9-11

9/11? Only a small, fringe element in America doubts the official explanation of that event.

 

[rightwinger]

Uh, yeah, because Oswald could not have done the shooting by himself. Wow, why am I not surprised that you are part of the minority of the Western world that still believes the Warren Commission's lone-gunman theory?

Another example of embracing wild conspiracies over the simplest explanation

Oswald was incapable of firing three shots from his window at work?

The only credible explanation

Oswald read in the papers that the JFK motorcade would pass by his window at work. So he brought his gun to work, fired three shots and blew JFKs brains out

After 60 years, no other explanation is believable

 

[rightwinger]

The main reason I am skeptical that John Wilkes Booth managed to escape (remember all the claims that Hitler escaped?) is that booth was the most hated man in America.

There was no place for him to go without being recognized.
His plan was that he would become a hero in the South and they would welcome him…..they didn’t.

There was no place for Booth to hide

 

[mikegriffith1]

Another example of embracing wild conspiracies over the simplest explanation

Oswald was incapable of firing three shots from his window at work?

The only credible explanation

Oswald read in the papers that the JFK motorcade would pass by his window at work. So he brought his gun to work, fired three shots and blew JFKs brains out

After 60 years, no other explanation is believable

Right, and the Earth is flat, and Agent Orange never harmed any Vietnam veterans, and no Gulf War soldiers were exposed to chemical weapons (all those chemical weapons detections were false alarms--every single one of them), etc.

In many cases, the simplest explanation is wrong and ignores numerous important facts that contradict it.

Are you aware that when the Warren Commission had three Master-rated riflemen attempt to duplicate Oswald's alleged shooting feat, using the alleged murder rifle, not one of them even came close to doing so?

I discuss that rifle test in a chapter in my recent book A Comforting Lie: The Myth that a Lone Gunman Killed President Kennedy.

So you reject the most thorough government investigation into JFK's death (the House Select Committee) and accept the flimsiest one (the Warren Commission).

The main reason I am skeptical that John Wilkes Booth managed to escape (remember all the claims that Hitler escaped?) is that booth was the most hated man in America.

Oh, boy. You haven't done much research on this issue, have you? FYI, many people in the South regarded Booth as a hero.

And there are many scholars who believe that Hitler did in fact escape. We know that Joseph Stalin did not believe that Hitler committed suicide. The alleged forensic evidence of Hitler's supposed remains ended up being discredited. I'm guessing you've read nothing on this issue either.

Are you aware of the declassified post-WWI files that indicate Hitler was known to be alive in South America, such as one intercept that specifically stated this to a contact in Germany?

There was no place for him to go without being recognized.
His plan was that he would become a hero in the South and they would welcome him…..they didn’t.

Uh, wrong. Many in the South cheered Lincoln's death and praised Booth for his deed. In fact, a number of Radical Republicans also cheered Lincoln's death.

There was no place for Booth to hide

Really? In April 1965 in the United States? No place to hide? With the limited technology available back then? Really?

I know you'll never bother to do any serious research on this issue, but here are some books you should read if you want to have some idea of what you're talking about:

The Conspiracy Between John Wilkes Booth and the Union Army to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln (2019), by Dr. Robert Arnold. FYI, FYI, Dr. Arnold was a Navy surgeon and a coroner. He was recognized highly enough by his peers and superiors in the Navy to be selected to train other Navy surgeons and was selected for advanced training at Bethesda Naval Hospital. His interest in the Lincoln assassination was peaked when he read the medical evidence relating to the alleged death of Booth and recognized that the medical evidence severely contradicted the official story about Booth’s supposed death.

The Reason Lincoln Had to Die (2013), by Don Thomas. Thomas maintains a website on the subject: The Reason Lincoln Had To Die - Pumphouse Publishers LLC.

Dark Union: The Secret Web of Profiteers, Politicians, and Booth Conspirators That Led to Lincoln's Death (2003), by historian Leonard Guttridge and historian Ray Neff.

The Web of Conspiracy (1960), by historian Theodore Roscoe.

Why Was Lincoln Murdered? (1937), by Otto Eisenschiml. Eisenschiml was a scientist who became interested in Lincoln's death. The book is available on Amazon and on the Internet Archive.

 

[rightwinger]

Are you aware that when the Warren Commission had three Master-rated riflemen attempt to duplicate Oswald's alleged shooting feat, using the alleged murder rifle, not one of them even came close to doing so?

See? These are the outright lies that we have to deal with when dealing with conspiracy theories. When they don’t have facts, they just make them up.

Any USMC trained marksmen here on USMB?
Could you make that shot?
I never met a Marine trained rifleman who says he couldn’t have hit two out of three at that range.

 

[rightwinger]

Are you aware of the declassified post-WWI files that indicate Hitler was known to be alive in South America, such as one intercept that specifically stated this to a contact in Germany?

Again showing you will accept any wild conspiracy theory regardless of how silly it may be

Hard to argue with a Conspiracy Theorist….they live in their own reality

 

[LA RAM FAN]

Uh, yeah, because Oswald could not have done the shooting by himself. Wow, why am I not surprised that you are part of the minority of the Western world that still believes the Warren Commission's lone-gunman theory?

Perhaps you missed the news, but in the late 1970s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reinvestigated the JFK case and concluded that two gunmen were involved, that shots were fired from two directions, that Oswald was being impersonated in Mexico City just weeks before the assassination, that Jack Ruby had substantial Mafia ties, that Ruby lied about how he entered the police basement to shoot Oswald, that Ruby lied about why he shot Oswald, that Ruby made suspicious phone calls to high-level Mafia contacts weeks before the assassination, among other findings.



9/11? Only a small, fringe element in America doubts the official explanation of that event.

Your wasting your breath,this is a paid shill from Langley.this Langley shill always does this- when you bring up the fact even the hsca concluded there were two shooters or give evidence oswald was innocent.he also ignores thst all the Dallas doctors said the head shot came from an entrance wound to the front of the head, and like you said so well,no expert marksmen was ever able to duplicate his shot plus Oswald’s buddies said he was a poor shot.the fact he ignores all this is clear proof this is a shill from Langley that has penetrated the site.yeah he indeed also thinks the earth is flat and that agent Orange never harmed any American soldiers indeed.

 

[LA RAM FAN]

Unfounded B.S. is in the mind of the beholder. We aren't dealing with big foot conspiracies and nobody is trying to change history. Maybe the Sundance kid wasn't killed in Bolivia but that's for another day. We are dealing with a conspiracy theory about the most famous assassination in American history and the possibility that the Union cavalry mis-identified a corpse in a burned out tobacco barn in Virginia in 1864. Unless you would rather deal with Nitwin's never ending inane Russian conspiracies it's the best we can do these days.

Indeed.

 

[LA RAM FAN]

Many if not a majority of Americans at the time were skeptical of the government's claim that Booth had been killed, precisely because of the very shaky identification, the secret burial, etc. Many newspapers expressed doubt about the government's story, and that doubt remained strong and widespread for decades.

In 1866, Senator Garrett Davis of Kentucky expressed the view of many Americans:

I have never seen myself any satisfactory evidence that Booth was killed. I would rather have better testimony of the fact. I want it proved that Booth was in that barn, why he was not taken alive and brought to this city alive. I have never seen anybody or the evidence of anybody that identified Booth after he is said to have been killed. Why so much secrecy about it? (The Congressional Globe, July 28, 1866, p. 4292)

The "identification" of Booth's body at the autopsy on the USS Montauk on April 27, 1865, was riddled with problems:

* Dr. John May, one of the autopsy doctors, admitted that the body looked nothing like Booth, and Dr. May knew Booth.

Those who accept the official story claim that when the body was seen on the USS Montauk, it looked so different from Booth because so much time had elapsed since he had died.

This is an invalid argument. The man in the barn was shot at sunrise on April 26, i.e., around 5:20 AM. The body was taken aboard the Montauk for identification and autopsy less than 24 hours later--at right around 1:45 AM the next day, and the "identification" began almost immediately. Even in very warm weather, 20 hours is not enough time for a body to undergo such a radical change in appearance that it bears no resemblance to how the person looked in life.

Forensic sources tell us that a dead body does not even begin to noticeably bloat until about 72 hours after death. The internal organs don't start to decompose until about 24 hours after death. Just Google murder cases where the body was not discovered until 24-48 hours after death—you will find that friends and relatives had no problem identifying the body (except, of course, in cases where the face had not been blown away or badly damaged, etc.).

So when Dr. May walked up to the body of the man in the barn to being the autopsy on the Montauk, there was no reason he should have said, "There is no resemblance in that corpse to Booth. nor can I believe it to be him." Nor should May have said, "Never in a human had a greater change taken place . . . every vestige of resemblance to the living man had disappeared."

* When trying to explain the inexplicable failure to take a single autopsy photo of the body during the autopsy, at one point the government actually claimed that the Major Eckert, the officer in charge of the autopsy, did not want any photos taken of the body because the body bore so little resemblance to Booth!

Later, the War Department claimed that an autopsy photo had been taken but that it had been "lost."

* Dr. May and Lawrence Gardner (who assisted with the autopsy) said that the corpse’s face was heavily freckled (“very much freckled”), but Booth had no freckles.

Traditionalists have no credible, science-based explanation for how a dead body could have magically sprouted freckles on its face. Livor mortis does not cause freckling but rather causes dark discoloration of the skin in large patches or over large areas, and only in those areas that were closest to the ground when the discoloration occurred. There is no known case in the history of forensic science of livor mortis causing freckles to appear on a person’s face after death.

* The alleged Booth body examined at Weaver’s funeral home in 1869 only had one filled tooth, whereas Booth was known to have had two fillings. Also, the hair on the body’s head was 10-12 inches longer than Booth’s hair, which is important because hair only grows a fraction of an inch, if at all, after death.

H. C. Young of Cincinnati wrote to Secretary of War Ed Stanton before Booth had even been captured. Young explained that he was a loyal citizen, that he had known Booth for years, and that he was anxious to help identify the “villain Booth.” Young said that he was not sure which hand bore the initials JWB but that they were “near the thumb.” Young also mentioned seeing scars on Booth’s “arms and body” and a scar that was either on the side of his head or on his forehead near the hairline.

Yet, not one of the people who saw the alleged Booth body during the autopsy on the Montauk that night saw a tattooed cross or three-letter initials near the thumb or between the thumb and the forefinger.

Young’s reference to scars on Booth’s arms and body and on the side of his face is corroborated by numerous witnesses and is strong evidence against the claim that Booth’s body was the body examined on the Montauk. Booth did indeed have scars on his arms and body and a scar on his temple near his hairline, yet not one of these scars was mentioned by any of the people who saw the body on the Montauk. They should have at least seen one of the following scars, if the body had been Booth:

- As a child, Booth suffered “a large cut” on his head that had to be stitched (Terry Alford, Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth, p. 15).

- Booth once accidentally stabbed himself with a dagger on stage at Ford’s Theater while playing Romeo (Theodore Roscoe, The Web of Conspiracy, pp. 417-418).

- Booth also stabbed himself severely under his right arm in Albany while playing Pescara (Alford, pp. 103-104; Roscoe, pp. 417-418). He did this when he accidentally fell on a dagger and “cut away the muscles for some three inches under his right arm,” and this wound was so severe that Booth could not perform for several days (Alford, pp. 103-104).

- In another stage mishap, a fellow actor “brought down his sword across Booth’s forehead, cutting one eyebrow cleanly through” (Alford, pp. 155-156).

- Booth also received a scar on the side of his face, near his hairline, when Henrietta Irving attacked him (Alford, p. 107; Roscoe, pp. 417-418). This scar should have been noticeable. Alford says that when Irving attacked Booth, she used “a dirk [dagger], cutting his face badly” (Alford, p. 107).

- On another occasion, Booth suffered a knife cut when he intervened in a fight (Alford, pp. 171-172).

Again, not one of the identification witnesses on the Montauk, including the three autopsy doctors, said anything about any of these scars, not even the scar on the side of the face or the one under the right arm.

These are just some of the problems with the official story that Booth was killed in Garrett's barn and that his body was autopsied on the USS Montauk.

Yeah it was clear the man that was killed was not John Wilkes booth.same thing in the Lincoln case as with oswald,both men did not resemble the birth John Wilkes booth or Lee Harvey Oswald.the serious researchers unlike rightwinger believe that the man they said was oswald that was gunned down was a Russian double agent,we know it wasn’t oswald because the birth oswald was 5,11 and the man gunned down was 5,8,I sure would like to know about that miracle shrinking formula,I don’t like being as tall as I am. Plus oswald same as booth had a major scar on him,in both cases,the man they said was booth and the man they said was oswald didnot have a scar on him.Oswald’s mother as well said she never believed the man thst was killed in the Dallas police department was her son.

Don’t feed the troll leftwinger by responding to him,he is just seeking attention,the more you feed the troll,the more you play his game.

 

[whitehall]

Many Americans are still skeptical that Oswald shot JFK.
It is in our nature when we face a national tragedy.
See 9-11

Americans are well aware that Oswald shot JFK but the government created the grassy knoll theory to cover up the CIA's incompetence in inviting a traitor back into the U.S. That argument is for another day though. Since the CIA didn't have to burn a barn to silence Oswald his death is well established.



everyone saw Ruby shoot Oswald and his death is not in question.

 

[gipper]

I can assure you he is dead

Lots of truth here by Ron Paul, but you won’t see it.

 

[whitehall]

A "scientific" analysis back in the latter half of the 19th century consisted at best of looking for identifyable old scars on the cadaver and at worst the anecdotal testimony of persons who may or may not have been involved or witnessed the incident. Burning a barn to cause the surrender of a fugitive might have been commonplace at the time but is generally frowned at today.

 

[lennypartiv]

He definitely broke his leg. The physician who helped him famously coined the term "my name is mud" because, EVERYONE hated him for it. It ruined his life.

---Mudd was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson and released from prison in 1869. Despite repeated attempts by family members and others to have it expunged, his conviction was never overturned---

---Mudd believed that slavery was divinely ordained---

---Roger Mudd, an Emmy award winning journalist, television host and former CBS, NBC, and PBS news anchor was related to Samuel Mudd---

Samuel Mudd - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[LA RAM FAN]

Americans are well aware that Oswald shot JFK but the government created the grassy knoll theory to cover up the CIA's incompetence in inviting a traitor back into the U.S. That argument is for another day though. Since the CIA didn't have to burn a barn to silence Oswald his death is well established.



everyone saw Ruby shoot Oswald and his death is not in question.

There goes the other trollboy with his babble that oswald shot jfk never doing any research that proves it and ignoring the massive evidence the cia did it.