** NEW DISCOVERY REGARDING BOOTH AUTOPSY PHOTO

[stevewoolf]

The Harper's woodcut is almost certainly based on eyewitness accounts and not a photograph. For one thing, Alex Gardner himself is depicted at the head of the autopsy table. That would indicate that someone other than Gardner himself took the purported photograph. It seems highly unlikely to me that an assistant would have this responsibility while Gardner posed with the others. Further, in Gardner's Wirz autopsy photo, the pathologist has deliberately turned Wirz's head toward the camera so that Gardner could photograph the face. Surely, this would have been the case for the Booth autopsy photo as well, yet Harper's depicts Booth in profile. Also, if Secretary Stanton recieved the only, closely guarded negative and print, would he then have supplied Harper's Weekly with a working copy? Doubtful. And lastly, Lawrence Gardner was pretty clear about it, answering the question "Did we take a picture? No."