Breaking a leg

[wsanto]

(02-19-2013 02:25 PM)william l. richter Wrote:  ...I will say that my gut tells me that Kauffman is correct. Read his website. Mike Kauffman and I disagree on a lot of things about Booth and the assassination, but there is on thing we agree on completely--Booth was an exaggerator (the guy who played him in Killing Lincoln the other night, or overplayed him according to some, had him down pat. He was a born prevaricator and exaggerator and a showman par excellence.

So, he jumped about 12 feet to the stage, was thrown off-balance and wrenched his back (I am an expert on that one!), mounted his horse (who nearly refused to be mounted and who Booth managed to pull to the left to be thrown into the saddle and nearly ran over Stewart who ran out of Ford's Theater to stop them), talked his way across the bridge at the Navy Yard, and fell with his horse on Sopers' Hill, thus suffering one of the most common rider's breaks in his leg, as Kauffman posits, where his companion Davy Herold found him and took him to Surrattsville and then Dr. Mudd's place to be treated.

Gut feeling to gut feeling, there you have it. One fabulist to another.

I guess for a lot of us, that are relatively new to this controversy, too much weight is given to Herold's statement. Personally, I believe his statement is much less reliable than Booth's diary. I believe the presumption should be that it is a complete fabrication made-up like the rest of the cover story. They definitely needed an explanation for the injured leg. I believe they traded horses, perhaps on Soper's Hill, because Booth's injury made riding the skittish mare too painful compared to the more stable horse Herold was riding.

Mudd's farmhand claimed that the Mare was injured and, in his words, "lame". But The mare continued on for many more miles to the home of Cox and then to the pine thicket. Neither Swann or Cox made any comment that the horse appeared injured. They probably would have if it was, in fact, lame. The horse was then spotted by Jones in a clearing prior to him coming upon Booth and Herold in the woods. No mention that the horse appeared injured or "lame" by Jones either. He was the last to ever see the horse besides Herold himself.

Now to the great unanswered questions that needs an explanation-- How did the investigators in Bryantown (Wood) become convinced that Booth injured his leg in the leap to the stage and that the horse fall was a cover story prior to knowing the contents of Booth's diary? By then they had interviewed Lloyd and Mudd and Mudd's farmhand. But they still discount all those statements supporting the horse-fall theory and become convinced of the stage-leap theory. Why?

Then Booth validates the stage-leap theory unknowingly by entering it into his diary.

Jones also believes the stage-leap theory in his recollection of his direct contact with Booth for the week Jones is caring for him in the pines.