Did JWB visit Mary's boarding house after the assassination?

[Susan Higginbotham]

As I recall, there's considerable doubt about whether Richards visited the boarding house after the assassination. The letters to Weichmann in which Richard claims to have been first upon the scene are dated 1898 and 1899, but in a letter to Secretary Stanton dated May 12, 1865, contained in the rewards file, Richards makes no mention of his being there. Instead, he writes: "On the night of the assassination of President Lincoln, Detectives J. A. W. Clarvoe and Jas. A. McDevitt of the Police force of this Department obtained information which led them to believe that John H. Surratt was implicated in the murder of the late President, and on application to me previous to the hour of two o'clock on the night of the murder, I gave them permission to take other officers of the force with them and proceed to the house of Surratt's mother . . . and search said house . . . "

Surely if Superintendent Richards had gone to the house himself that evening and spoken to Mary Surratt (and observed the suspicious behavior that he mentions in his 1898 letter to Weichmann) he would have mentioned it to Secretary Stanton. (The editor of Weichmann's book suggests that Richards might have failed to mention the alleged visit because he had been reprimanded by Stanton for sending Weichmann to Canada and wanted to "disengage himself from any further confrontation with Stanton," but I don't find this argument convincing--why get himself further in trouble with Stanton by withholding material evidence relating to one of the defendants?)

John T. Holohan in an affidavit contained in the rewards file dated June 16, 1865, claimed that Clarvoe and McDevitt were the first officers to appear at the boarding house at 2:00 a.m. on April 15. McDevitt in his conspiracy trial testimony mentions only himself, Clarvoe, and some unnamed other officers turning up at the boardinghouse.

I don't know of any one else besides Richards himself in those 1890's letters who places Richards at the boardinghouse in the hours after the assassination. I think Richards' memory might have been playing tricks with him in 1898--quite understandable given the passage of time and all that had been written since.