Assassination-Related Suicide?

[Jill Mitchell]

I found online from Project Gutenberg a copy of Between the Lines: Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After by Henry Bascom Smith. In his book (see File XLI in the online version) he writes:

The following from the New York "Tribune," April 29th, 1865, describes one of those who had knowledge before the act. He had been intimate with Paine, and undoubtedly we were creeping up too dangerously near him. The suicide was buried in Greenmount Cemetery, and in the darkness of night we dug the body up as mentioned by the "Tribune." This was the only time I ever acted the part of a ghoul. If I remember right, the man was a builder and committed suicide out behind a barn in the country:

Suicide in Baltimore.

"A well known citizen of Baltimore committed suicide last Monday, a short distance from this city, by shooting himself with a pistol. No cause could be assigned for the rash act except that he had recently seemed depressed and melancholy. Subsequent events have induced the suspicion that he was someway implicated in the conspiracy, and last night the body was exhumed, embalmed, and sent to Washington, by orders of the Government. The affair causes much speculation, and there [311]are many reports in connection with it as well as some facts which it is deemed imprudent to publish at present."

(New York Tribune, April 29, 1865.)

Any idea who this was and from whence the suspicion that he was connected with the assassination? I'm wondering what the facts are which were then deemed too imprudent to publish. Digging up up a body seems to be to more than a little overkill (no pun intended) if there was only a vague suspicion, due to suicide, that the unnamed individual was connected with the assassination.