Identification of Booth's body

[L Verge]

May I recommend that you read American Brutus as quickly as you can? On the other hand, however, I am quite sure that you will find a way to play devil's advocate with any piece of documented evidence, so why bother...

As to your comments here, there are documented rebuttals available (I believe that Dr. May himself later described the effects of livor mortis). But, you will dismiss them, so I am choosing to dismiss further debates with you. Perhaps you should - or already have - team up with Nate Orlowek.

[mikegriffith1]

(10-01-2018 06:40 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I think it's more likely that the gov't. wanted no reminders left of the villain - reminders that Southern sympathizers could immortalize or Union supporters could desecrate. Such was the reasoning behind the secret burial at the Arsenal and the unmarked grave in Green Mount. Our modern examples of desecration - from Lincoln statues to a slew of Confederate ones - should prove to us that, in 1865, those in command understood human behavior...

But actually many if not a majority of Americans at the time were very 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:

Quote: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 government didn't shy away from letting people see John Brown's body, nor Nat Turner's body, and those were cases where there was no doubt about the fact of death. So why did they carry out such an obviously flimsy identification and then secretly bury the body without showing it to long-time Booth friends and family, not to mention leading members of Congress and the press? There was no rational reason for the handling of the body if it was really Booth's body.

Regarding Detective Wardell's account of being ordered to maintain constant observation of the processing of the autopsy photograph, I meant to include as a source Leonard Guttridge's famous article in Navy Medicine on the identification of the body:

http://library.indstate.edu/rbsc/neff/PD...cation.pdf

Finally, retired Navy surgeon and coroner Dr. Robert Arnold makes a compelling argument that the track of the bullet and the damage it caused clearly prove that Boston Corbett could not have fired the shot that felled the man in the barn. This is crucial information.

Whoever shot the man in the barn fired from an elevation about 25 degrees above the man's head, such as from a hay loft in the barn.

There was no reason in the world to shoot the man in the barn, assuming everyone there was acting in good faith and following orders. There was every reason to bring back the man alive, if it was Booth. Corbett was never punished for allegedly committing a serious violation of orders and for supposedly robbing the government of the opportunity to extract more information from Booth, if Booth was the man in the barn.

[RJNorton]

(10-05-2018 01:54 PM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  Corbett was never punished for allegedly committing a serious violation of orders and for supposedly robbing the government of the opportunity to extract more information from Booth, if Booth was the man in the barn.

Mike, I have also read that Corbett violated orders, but I must admit that I do not recall ever reading the specific order from Stanton (or anyone else) that mandated that Booth be taken alive. Can you (or anyone on the forum) post the specific order Corbett violated?

[L Verge]

James O. Hall, Michael Kauffman, and Steven G. Miller (THE expert on the Garrett Farm Patrol and Boston Corbett) have all said - Steve in a speech at an early Surratt conference - that such an order would be stupid and detrimental to every person involved in the capture. That order pretty much tells the patrol to hold their fire, even when the fugitive is coming out with guns blasting. Therefore, such an official order has not been found by top researchers and likely was never given.

---

(10-05-2018 01:54 PM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  

(10-01-2018 06:40 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I think it's more likely that the gov't. wanted no reminders left of the villain - reminders that Southern sympathizers could immortalize or Union supporters could desecrate. Such was the reasoning behind the secret burial at the Arsenal and the unmarked grave in Green Mount. Our modern examples of desecration - from Lincoln statues to a slew of Confederate ones - should prove to us that, in 1865, those in command understood human behavior...

But actually many if not a majority of Americans at the time were very 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:

Quote: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 government didn't shy away from letting people see John Brown's body, nor Nat Turner's body, and those were cases where there was no doubt about the fact of death. So why did they carry out such an obviously flimsy identification and then secretly bury the body without showing it to long-time Booth friends and family, not to mention leading members of Congress and the press? There was no rational reason for the handling of the body if it was really Booth's body.

Regarding Detective Wardell's account of being ordered to maintain constant observation of the processing of the autopsy photograph, I meant to include as a source Leonard Guttridge's famous article in Navy Medicine on the identification of the body:

http://library.indstate.edu/rbsc/neff/PD...cation.pdf

Finally, retired Navy surgeon and coroner Dr. Robert Arnold makes a compelling argument that the track of the bullet and the damage it caused clearly prove that Boston Corbett could not have fired the shot that felled the man in the barn. This is crucial information.

Whoever shot the man in the barn fired from an elevation about 25 degrees above the man's head, such as from a hay loft in the barn.

There was no reason in the world to shoot the man in the barn, assuming everyone there was acting in good faith and following orders. There was every reason to bring back the man alive, if it was Booth. Corbett was never punished for allegedly committing a serious violation of orders and for supposedly robbing the government of the opportunity to extract more information from Booth, if Booth was the man in the barn.

Both John Brown and Nat Turner were executed in a public setting, so there were plenty of "invited" witnesses.

You may want to register for the 2019 Surratt conference where Dr. Edward Steers of this forum will be speaking on the Neff-Guttridge papers and claims. I met both men when they visited Surratt House years ago and later had conversations with Len Guttridge - a very nice gentleman. On one of the last phone calls we had, he told me that he was regretting getting involved with Mr. Neff.

See another comment that I just posted elsewhere as to why no one has found an order to take Booth alive.

[mikegriffith1]

(10-04-2018 06:56 PM)L Verge Wrote:  May I recommend that you read American Brutus as quickly as you can? On the other hand, however, I am quite sure that you will find a way to play devil's advocate with any piece of documented evidence, so why bother...

As to your comments here, there are documented rebuttals available (I believe that Dr. May himself later described the effects of livor mortis). But, you will dismiss them, so I am choosing to dismiss further debates with you. Perhaps you should - or already have - team up with Nate Orlowek.

I consulted seven forensic sources on livor mortis. They all said that it causes skin discoloration, "blueish" or "purplish red" discoloration. Not one of them mentioned anything about it causing freckles. Some of the sources included autopsy pictures, and none of the pictures showed freckles but showed large areas of skin discolored in dark shades of blue or purple.

I notice you chose not to address the fact that Dr. May said that he had *never* seen a body whose appearance had changed so drastically from how it looked in life. Obviously, he was talking about a lot more than just the presence of freckles, which Booth did not have. Of course, by Dr. May's own admission, when he first saw the body, he said,

Quote:There is no resemblance in that corpse to Booth. nor can I believe it to be him.

Additionally, he specified that the body's right leg was broken, not the left ankle.

As for the autopsy photo, when interviewed by a historian in 1896, Detective Wardell made it clear that Gardner did take one picture of the body and that he accompanied the photo every step of the way--by the way, he also defended the War Department's decision to suppress the photo, which makes his account all the more compelling. Here's what he said:

Quote:Under no circumstances was I to allow him or his assistant out of my sight until they had taken a picture and made the print, and then I was to bring the print and the glass [negative] back to the War Department and give it only to Col. [L.C.] Baker [chief of the Secret Service] or Secretary of War Stanton. ...[Gardner] was told that only one plate was to be made and it was to have only one print made and both were to be given to me when finished….

Gardner took the plate and then gave it to the assistant and told him to take it and develop it and to make one print. I went with him and even went into the dark room. About 4:00 in the afternoon I got the plate and the print from the assistant and took it to the War Department. I went in to the outer office and Col. Baker was just coming out of the War Office. I gave him the plate and print and he stepped to one side and pulled it from the envelope. He looked at it and then dismissed me. (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/d...59798338/)

The excuses for the handling of the body just make no sense to me. The War Department invited people to view the hanging of the four people whom the tribunal sentenced to death and buried them in plots--and did all this very publicly. Stanton et al also allowed numerous photos of the hanging to be taken.

When Nat Turner and John Brown were executed, their executions were very public. In fact, Turner's head was placed on display for all to see. Brown's body was publicly transported to New York for public burial, a burial that included speeches by two abolitionists.

So why all the secrecy regarding "Booth's" body? Why the secret burial? Why no public viewing, or at least a viewing for leading members of Congress and select journalists? Why only one autopsy photo and why did it vanish? Why was not a single person who knew Booth well, or a family member, invited to ID the body on the Montauk or just before it was buried--not years later when the body was decomposed beyond recognition, but when supposedly it was recognizable as Booth by its "general appearance" and by the "JWB" tattoo (never mind that only one person said they saw the tattoo, and he said that after the fact when he was interviewed)?

What's more, when a request was made to subject a tiny fragment of the alleged Booth spine section being held by the Army Medical Command to DNA testing, why was the request denied? The Army claimed that it did not want to damage the spine section, even though the medical expert who authored the request pointed out that only a very tiny fragment would be needed to do the testing? Besides, what in the devil is the Army going to do with the spine segment? Who cares if a tiny piece of it is removed? What are they saving the spine segment for?

[L Verge]

Five years ago, we were discussing much the same thing, especially regarding any inquest photos. No one could find James Wardell then either. Has anyone been able to confirm that this man even existed?

http://rogerjnorton.com/LincolnDiscussio...ge-12.html

[mikegriffith1]

(10-05-2018 03:47 PM)L Verge Wrote:  James O. Hall, Michael Kauffman, and Steven G. Miller (THE expert on the Garrett Farm Patrol and Boston Corbett) have all said - Steve in a speech at an early Surratt conference - that such an order would be stupid and detrimental to every person involved in the capture. That order pretty much tells the patrol to hold their fire, even when the fugitive is coming out with guns blasting. Therefore, such an official order has not been found by top researchers and likely was never given.

This is another example of what I see as missing the forest for the trees because of a commitment to uphold the traditional story. Now, the two men in the barn were surrounded and heavily outnumbered. It was those two men, one of them hobbled and on crutches, against an entire squad of armed soldiers. When the younger man surrendered, the odds were one one hobbled man on crutches against an entire squad. So I have a very hard time buying any excuses for not taking him alive.

Furthermore, one report states the man in the barn dropped his weapon and began walking toward the door and that at this point someone shot him.

I am new enough to the Lincoln assassination case that I would need to go back and research where I read that the orders were to take Booth alive if possible. I have always assumed as a given that that was the operational order, since one would assume that the War Department would have desperately wanted to bring Booth back for questioning before putting him on trial and hanging him--assuming, of course, that Stanton et al were acting in good faith and had honorable motives (and there is the rub).

Many, many people pointed out at the time that the obvious goal would and should have been to capture Booth alive so that authorities would have had the chance to try to get more information from him about the plot and others who might have been involved. As Senator Garrett Davis said,

Quote:I do not see why, if Booth was in the barn, he should have been shot. He could have been captured just as well alive as dead. It would have been much more satisfactory to have brought him up here alive and to have inquired of him to reveal the whole transaction. . . ." (The Congressional Globe, July 28, 1866, p. 4292)

If there was in fact not even a verbal order to bring Booth back alive, then that is all the more suspicious. If Stanton and Baker were acting honorably and were really interested in uncovering the assassination conspiracy as much as possible, they should have made it crystal clear that Booth was to be captured alive if at all possible.

(10-01-2018 06:40 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Both John Brown and Nat Turner were executed in a public setting, so there were plenty of "invited" witnesses.

Exactly my point. So why all the secrecy about Booth's body? Why the obviously flimsy, rigged "identification," where the one doctor who actually did know Booth saw the body and declared that it looked nothing like Booth and that he could not believe that it was Booth? Why didn't Baker go get the conspirators who were being held below deck and have them come up and identify the body? Why was only one autopsy photograph, and why did it disappear? Brown was buried at a public ceremony, so why wasn't Booth? Turner's head was put on display, so why couldn't Booth's body be given a public showing--or at least shown to leading members of Congress and a few prominent journalists?

(10-01-2018 06:40 PM)L Verge Wrote:  You may want to register for the 2019 Surratt conference where Dr. Edward Steers of this forum will be speaking on the Neff-Guttridge papers and claims. I met both men when they visited Surratt House years ago and later had conversations with Len Guttridge - a very nice gentleman. On one of the last phone calls we had, he told me that he was regretting getting involved with Mr. Neff.

Shortly before he died, Guttridge strongly defended his and Neff's book Dark Union:

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/3873

And Dr. Vancil, one of the curators at the Indiana State University library, has repeatedly defended the authenticity of the Neff-Guttridge documents:

http://miketgriffith.com/files/unwanted.pdf

Finally, the Smithsonian Institution article seems to make it clear that James Wardell existed. In his book Witness to an Era: The Life and Photographs of Alexander Gardner, Mark Katz quotes what Wardell told a historian who interviewed him in 1896. And I would again point out that Wardell defended the War Department's suppression of the autopsy photograph, so he was not providing information that was intended to attack the War Department.

[RJNorton]

I do not know about Dr. Merrill, but I believe I have read that Booth's Baltimore dentist also positively identified Booth's remains when they were turned over to the family in 1869.

[L Verge]

Please see Post #37 above: The article by Len Guttridge was written in 2004. Len did not die until 2009, plenty of time to learn the errors of his cooperation with Ray Neff and regret it. Also note that Len was the author of a fair number of books, but his expertise was in naval history - not the Lincoln assassination. His work with Neff (and the later defensive articles he wrote about that work) comprises his only venture into that field, I believe. His best work may be his book on the Jeannette Expedition to the North Pole and his later co-authoring - with George S. McGovern - of The Great Coalfield War and the Ludlow Massacre of the early-1900s. This pertains to one of the worst labor conflicts in American history. The following is a brief bio on Leonard Guttridge from Indiana State University's library system:

LEONARD GUTTRIDGE
A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
Known as Len to his friends, Leonard Francis Guttridge was born on August 27, 1918 in Bournemouth, England. He died June 7, 2009.

In his 90 years, Leonard packed many roles into an eventful life. During World War II, at the age of 19 he enlisted in the British Royal Air Force and performed the duties of aircraft mechanic, working on fighter and bomber fuselages. He was stationed in Tunisia and Morocco, often volunteering to make supply runs to U. S. military bases so he could borrow the latest Hollywood movies. He had a breadth of knowledge of classic films and would regale friends with his insights about Bogart, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astair, Gene Kelly, and Bette Davis. In addition, he loved jazz and big swing bands and shared V-discs with his American allies.

In 1946, he immigrated to Washington, D.C., where he was employed by the Indian embassy. He met some of the legendary jazz greats during this period of his life, including Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Jimmy McPartland, and trombonist-crooner Jack Teagarden. In 1960, Len started his 50-year career as an author when he co-authored a biography, Jack Teagarden: the Story of a Jazz Maverick, with Jay Smith.

Len developed an abiding interest in the history of his newly adopted country, writing numerous articles for adventure magazines and many highly-regarded books. These books include The Commodores with Jay Smith, 1969; The Great Coalfield War with George McGovern, 1972; Icebound: The Jeanette Expedition's Quest for the North Pole , 1986; Mutiny: a History of Naval Insurrection, 1992; Ghosts of Cape Sabine: The Harrowing True Story of the Greely Expedition, 2000; Dark Union: the Secret Web of the Profiteers, Politicians, and Booth Conspirators That Led to Lincoln's Death with Ray Neff, 2003; Our Country, Right or Wrong: The Life Stephen Decatur, the Navy's Most Illustrious Commander. Shortly before his death, Guttridge completed a handwritten account of the evidence supporting the findings in Dark Union, a work he considered to be among the most important of his writings.

Not much life-long work on the assassination of Lincoln until snared by Dr. Neff. Historians have been dealing with the Neff theories since the 1970s when The Lincoln Conspiracy movie was released by Sunn Classics. It has been a very "interesting" and frustrating ride. BTW: The Surratt Society and the Dr. Mudd Society were the first to see that movie. Its premiere was actually in the town of Waldorf, Maryland, near both museums. The audience came out disgusted as well as amused at the corruption of documented history.

And, in fairness, let's post Ed's and Joan's response to the articles by Guttridge and David Vancil: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/3874

[mikegriffith1]

In another forum, the claim has been made 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, there was no reason that 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."

One might wonder how Dr. May could have identified the body as Booth given the above statements. He did so solely on the basis of the scar on the back of the corpse’s neck. But Dr. Robert Arnold, a former Navy surgeon and coroner, says a single scar cannot be used as the sole basis for an identification:

Quote:Dr. May was summoned to the Montauk. He ignored the first summons, but when Lafayette Baker personally called on May to identify the body, he “deemed it most prudent to obey.” Dr. May knew the reputation of Baker as a scheming bully who had locked up numerous citizens, guilty or not, and as habeas corpus had been suspended, they remained there as long as Baker desired. When May boarded the Montauk, the autopsy had been completed and the body covered with a tarpaulin. He approached the body, the tarpaulin was removed, and May instinctively blurted out, “There is no resemblance in that corpse to Booth, nor can I believe it to be him.” This was not what Lafayette Baker wanted to hear. After some persistent insistence from Major Eckert, Dr. May agreed to have another look. This time, May asked Dr. Barnes about the presence of a scar, and Barnes said indeed there was one, that it looked like the scar of a burn and was located “three inches below the ear upon the large muscle on the neck.” May was asked if he recognized the body as Booth’s, and this time he replied, “I do, although it is much altered. It looks older, more freckled. I do not recall that he was freckled. Never in human history had a great change taken place; every vestige of resemblance to the living man had disappeared. But the mark of the scalpel during life remained indelible in death.” It is no surprise that Dr. May could not recall freckles, as Booth was not freckled.

Since the credibility of the identification of the body on the Montauk was based primarily on the testimony of one man who initially said it bore no resemblance to Booth but recanted because of the scar, a word about scars is pertinent here. Wounds that heal by granulation are characteristically wider than those that heal primarily, but wounds that heal by granulation are all similar. It is impossible to assign characteristics to a scar that would be unique to a certain individual. The idea that a corpse could be identified by a scar when “there is no resemblance to the living man” is totally without merit. (The Conspiracy Between John Wilkes Booth and the Union Army to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln, Louisville, KY: Windsaloft Publishing, 2016, pp. 258-259)

Dr. Arnold also points out that Dr. Barnes’ description of the bullet track and the type of bullet proves that Corbett could not have been the gunman who shot the man in the barn, that whoever shot him must have been “on the right side of the victim, above and in front of him,” and that the bullet entered at around a 25-degree downward angle (p. 264). Corbett said he used his pistol, and Corbett was standing on the ground when he supposedly fired his pistol at the man in the barn.

Dr. Arnold further notes that Barnes’ original description of the missile was “carbine bullet” but that he later changed it to “conoidal pistol bullet,” and that the original card attached to the spinal section “quoted his first description, but it was later changed to pistol ball there as well” (p. 265). The bullet type had to be changed because Corbett supposedly fired his pistol at the man in the barn.

Importantly, Dr. Arnold observes that photographs of the spinal section held by the Army prove that the bullet was a carbine bullet (i.e., rifle bullet), not a pistol bullet:

Quote:The picture of the specimen clearly demonstrates that the spinous processes of the vertebrae were completely blown away, the effects of a high-energy missile such as a rifle bullet, not a medium-energy missile such as a pistol ball.

High-energy missiles that traverse the spinal canal are especially damaging. The pulverized bone is blasted into the spinal canal, and a temporary cavity is caused by the secondary bone and neural tissue missiles, which may be as much as 25 times the frontal area of the bullet. The permanent track was at the C4-C5 (cervical vertebrae) level, and the temporary cavity would likely be about six inches in each direction. The proximal damage would have been to the nerve roots to the phrenic nerves, which supply the diaphragm. Death would have occurred in a few minutes. (p. 265)

So whoever shot the man in the barn used a rifle and was positioned on his right front and was high enough above him that the bullet entered him at a 25-degree downward angle.

Finally, just FYI, Dr. Arnold was not just any Navy surgeon. 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. In addition, he was selected for duty on a Fleet Surgical Team and became the commanding officer of Fleet Surgical Team 4. After he left the Navy (as a captain), he became an assistant coroner. 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.

[RJNorton]

Mike, what are the odds of the man whom you regard as not Booth also having the initials J.W.B. tattooed on his hand just like the real Booth as stated by Charles Dawson, the clerk at the National Hotel who had seen Booth frequently and ID'd him on the Montauk?

[L Verge]

I have not met and did not know of Dr. Robert Arnold until he sent unsolicited information to Surratt House on how to order his book to sell in our gift shop. I am sure that he is a very nice, learned man; however, besides his knowledge as a naval surgeon and then a coroner, how many years of research did he spend on studying the Lincoln assassination story once his interest was "piqued" -- please note correct spelling of that word (not peaked)?

While some of our readers disagree with Dr. John K. Lattimer's assessment of how Booth could/could not shoot himself in the neck, I still stand in awe of his years of study of the assassination in general and especially of his reputation in the medical field: medical advisor at the Nuremberg Trials, personal physician to a number of celebrity patients due to his recognized position at the top of the field of urology, chief of department at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the first civilian doctor to be allowed access (at the request of the Kennedy family) to the full autopsy report and photographs related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Dr. Lattimer was also a historian and widely-known collector in the Lincoln field as well as medieval history. How does Dr. Arnold compare?

Some observations:
1. The autopsy does not refer to either a pistol or rifle. It states that it was a "gun-shot" wound.
2. While neither man testified at the trial, both Dr. John Frederick May and Booth's friend Matt Canning described the unique scar on Booth's neck - May because he did the surgery and Canning because he was a forced-into-service assistant and witness to the bloody surgery in April of 1863 (surgery done without any form of anesthesia). Canning ended up passing out as did Booth at the very end. See American Brutus, page 123
3. Booth went on stage the same night after his surgery and within a few days returned to Dr. May in agony. There was not much else that could be done, and the wound healed more as a large burn scar than a nicely stitched closure.
4. Dr. May's description of the freckling of the body is in LAS 4:360 in the NARA, and his personal recollections of the autopsy are in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Washington's Evening Star newspaper of April 27, 1865, also carried a description of the blood settling "in the lower part of the face and neck."
5. As for the tattoo on Booth's hand, Charles Dawson was not the only one who saw it. Willie Jett, Richard Baynham Garrett, Emory Parady of the Garrett's Farm Patrol, and a Marine sergeant of the guard all left statements or letters about the tattoo as identifiable evidence. See the LAS files and also the Marine Corps Library at the Washington Navy Yard.
6. Because my lunch hour is over, I will end by asking Wild Bill to counter your claims about how fast (or slowly) Booth's remains would have deteriorated. I made the same mistake as you by once suggesting that the body would not have changed that much. Wild Bill elicited the opinions of a number of doctors, coroners, whatever in proving me wrong, based on temperatures, humidity, etc.

[mikegriffith1]

Regarding the argument that Dr. May simply erred when he said that the body’s right leg was the injured leg, does it seem likely that Dr. May would not remember which leg was injured in the most important case of his life, in the crime of the century, in an article that he had ample time to write? When Dr. May’s son, who was also a doctor, was asked about this, he insisted that if his father said the right leg was the injured leg, then the right leg was the injured leg. From Guttridge’s article on the identification and autopsy:

Quote:"The right limb was greatly contused. and perfectly black from a fracture of one of the long bones...."

An old man's memory playing him false? This was suggested more than 30 years later and drew a response from May's son. also a doctor. His father's statements were unfailingly reliable. If he said that the right leg was bruised and discolored. "that would undoubtedly mean that it was the right leg that was broken." (Guttridge, “Identification and Autopsy of John Wilkes Booth: Reexamining the Evidence,” Navy Medicine, January-February 1993, p. 24)

This is not the only problem posed by Dr. May’s description of the leg injury: The injured leg would not have looked the way that Dr. May described it. Dr. Robert Arnold:

Quote:Dr. May described the leg wound as such: “The right lower limb was greatly contused and perfectly black.” The right limb? Someone had forgotten to tell Dr. May that it was the left limb Booth had fractured, and May simply reported what he saw.

Perfectly black? This indicates major soft tissue damage—which would not have been present from a vertical fall such as Booth’s—and not a simple fracture of the malleolus of the distal fibula, which is different than Dr. Mudd’s observation that the wound was a straight fracture with no tumefaction (swelling) and did not regard as a painful or dangerous wound. A fracture of this nature is not perfectly black unless there is associated soft tissue damage. There was never any attempt to explain these discrepancies; they were simply ignored. (The Conspiracy Between John Wilkes Booth and the Union Army to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln, 2016, pp. 259-260)

Let us return to the neck scar that Dr. May used as his basis for identifying the body as Booth: Interestingly, Dr. Barnes said the wound looked like a wound from a burn, not from an incision, but he claimed that Dr. May told him that this was because the wound was torn open on the stage when it was nearly healed:

Quote:Q. Describe to the Court the scar which is alleged to have been on his neck.
A. The scar on the left side of the neck was occasioned by an operation performed by Dr. May, of this city, for the removal of a tumor, some months previously to Booth’s death.
Q. What was its peculiar appearance, if it had any peculiar appearance?
A. It looked like the scar of a burn, instead of an incision. . . . (The Conspiracy Trial for the Murder of the President, Ben Poore transcript, volume 2, p. 61)

A scar from a burn? Could this be one of the reasons that Lt. Baker took off with the body and kept it for some three hours—to burn a scar onto the back of the neck?

Now, Dr. Barnes sought to explain the fact that the scar looked like a burn and not an incision scar: He said that Dr. May told him that it looked like a burn scar because the wound had reopened on the stage when it was nearly healed:

Quote:It looked like the scar of a burn, instead of an incision; which Dr. May explained, from the fact that the wound was torn open on the stage, when nearly healed. (p. 61)

In his report, Barnes said that Dr. May stated that the reopening of the wound left a large scar formed by granulation (Terry Alford, Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth, Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 318-319) Dr. May said the same thing at the John Surratt trial (The Trial of John H. Surratt, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1867, volume 1, pp. 270-272).

A few points need to be made:

One, when Dr. May testified just two years later in the John Surratt trial, he described the first surgery, the reopened wound, and the second surgery, and he said nothing about the scar looking like a burn. Rather, he described it as a scar made by an incision that had reopened and that was closed again with granulation instead of adhesion (The Trial of John H. Surratt, volume 1, pp. 270-272). He did not say one word about the scar looking like a burn.

Two, since when does re-repairing a wound that was nearly healed cause the wound to look like a burn instead of an incision? How does that work?

Three, the fact that Barnes said that Dr. May said the scar formed by granulation refutes Michael Kauffman’s attempt to turn Barnes’ statement into evidence for Dr. May’s identification. Says Kauffman,

Quote:Booth had torn it open before it had a chance to heal, and the scar looked more like a burn, than the work of a surgeon, which made it distinctive. (American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies, Random House, 2004, p. 323)

But this will not work. As Dr. Arnold notes, scars formed by granulation are impossible to distinguish from each other. Far from making the scar unique, granulation would make the scar impossible to distinguish from other scars formed by granulation. (Furthermore, Barnes said that Dr. May told him that the scar was reopened when it was nearly healed, not merely “before it had a chance to heal.”)

Four, there’s yet another problem: Dr. May was not the only doctor who operated on the back of Booth’s neck. Booth’s sister stated that on one occasion when John Wilkes came home, a Quaker doctor “lanced a great carbuncle on his neck” and that he “suffered much” from it (Asia Booth Clarke, John Wilkes Booth: A Sister’s Memoir, edited by Terry Alford, University Press of Mississippi, 1996, pp. 84-85).

This surgery was done after Dr. May’s surgery. Unless the carbuncle happened to be in the same location as the tumor that Dr. May removed, and unless the Quaker doctor operated inside the scar left by Dr. May, there should have been two scars on the neck of the body examined on the Montauk, IF the body was Booth.

[L Verge]

Only two words, Mike -- GOOD GRIEF! The "right leg" error was just that - an error on the part of Dr. May (no matter what his son declared). There have been previous discussions about this over the years with one of the simplest being that Dr. May was one of those people who had trouble identifying right from left unless standing in the same direction as the subject! No other doctor at the inquest made that mistake.

As for the condition of the leg, there is a description from either Ruggles or Bainbridge, both of whom were with Jett when they encountered the fugitives at the Rappahannock ferry crossing. The leg was described as being in quite bad condition before Booth died.

As for the scar on Booth's neck, did you even bother to read what I posted about actor Matthew Canning describing the removal of the 1863 tumor? Or, that Booth went on stage that night and subsequent nights so that the healing process was disturbed? Another personal note, but my husband had several operations for carbuncles (what the doctors called fibrous tumors) over the years, and the tumors seemed to reoccur at or very close to the site of the first one. There is not a lot of space on the human neck for them to grow due to the spinal cord.

Do you have any surgical scars on your body? Do you describe them as granular or otherwise? What would Dr. Barnes or Dr. May describe them as? What in the world causes you to suggest that Lt. Baker burned that scar on the neck of the dead Booth?

My final comment/question here is: What is your purpose in trying to continue the old theory that the government allowed Booth to escape and then went to extreme measures to establish that the body on the Montauk and the body reinterred in 1869 was truly Booth, the assassin? You seem intent on establishing in one month what historians on both sides of the issue have studied (and failed to establish) for nearly one hundred years.

[Warren]

I'm confused. If it wasn't Booth who was shot in the barn, then who was it? How did he get there? And who shot him? And why was the barn burned anyway if Booth wasn't inside? Was Booth ever at the farm? Who was Davy paling around with? Did they pay Davy off or threaten him with maybe a hanging if he didn't go along with the fraud? Was he threatened with a medieval hooded torture device if he didn't tow the party line? Killing somebody for grins at that time would have to be a murder because at that point the war in those parts had been over for a couple of weeks. And a body from any recent battles would be far too decomposed to substitute for Booth. Did any one make a missing person report in that time period? Any local gossip about a barroom brawl that went bad, or maybe poltergeist in the neighborhood?