Breaking a leg

[Dave Taylor]

I'm sorry, but I cannot buy the "lost evidence" idea. It makes no logical sense to me. If anyone at or around Mudd's house told investigators like Wood that Booth stated he broke his leg in jumping to the stage, the government would have seized on this. If this was so, Wood (or the person he gained the information from) would have been the key witnesss at the trial against Dr. Mudd. This piece of information would have likely led to Mudd's hanging as it would prove the government's case that he knew who Booth was, and what he had committed when he came to his house. However this did not happen. Wood did not testify even though he reported to his authorities through his telegrams what he "knew". I'm sorry, but the government wanted to get Dr. Mudd. If there was any reliability in what he said, he would have testified and led to Dr. Mudd's likely death.

Also, Jones himself admits to just repeating what he has heard when it comes to talking about the assassination: "How Booth entered the box behind the President, fired the fatal shot, stabbed Major Rathbone, who attempted to interrupt him, leaped from the box, and catching his spur in the drapery, fell, fractured his leg; sprang upon the stage, and waving his bloody knife, exclaimed, "Sic semper tyrannis," and then sped away through the darkness - has become history, and I need not dwell over it." Jones had no first hand knowledge here, but is merely repeating the accepted story. Also, he does not discard the idea of Booth telling Mudd his horse fell on him, Jones merely recounts it with no expression of it being true or false: "Booth knew the doctor, having met him and visited at his house when in the country about eighteen months beforethe assassination. The statement he made to the doctor was that his horse had fallen and hurt him. Both he and Herold entered the house and the doctor, assisted by his kind-hearted wife, who had arisen for the purpose, proceeded to examine and dress the fracture." Jones wrote his book about thirty years after the fact. The only parts where he could have any reliability would be those where he was a direct participant (i.e. the pine thicket and setting the pair across the Potomac).