A Wonderful Find ...

[J. Beckert]

Booth had a strong fear of having his face scarred. While the places Laurie stated are more logical & common places to shoot one's self, a phobia like that would certainly make the neck a logical place for Booth. I've seen suicides where a man shot himself in the top of the head and another who rigged up a Rube Goldberg type contraption to horizontally mount a shotgun and fire it into his chest by pulling a string tied to the trigger. While incidents like this are uncommon, they do occur. Booth said to (I believe Jett) - if they don't kill me, I'll kill myself. His state of mind towards the end also lends to the suicide theory. He bragged to Lloyd on the 14th that he shot the President and he told Jett towards the end of his run that the assassination was "nothing to brag about." He was tired, sore, dejected and there was no way a man of his personal pride was going to take a ride on a Yankee haywagon and be paraded through Washington like a captured animal.