Louis Weichmann

[Susan Higginbotham]

(07-08-2015 04:21 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(02-12-2015 12:58 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  Long ago I asked this question, and my aging brain does not recall a specific reply (not sure if there was one). For some reason I think I may have read somewhere (years ago) that Weichmann said that on two occasions bullets whizzed past his head at night in the years after the assassination. He felt someone was trying to kill him. Am I imagining this?

Last night while reading Michael Schein's new book I came across what I had read many years ago, although it's not exactly as I remembered it. But there were apparently two assassination attempts against Louis Weichmann in the years subsequent to the assassination. Weichmann's sisters were interviewed in 1926 by Lloyd Lewis. In his book Shein includes what the sisters told Lloyd Lewis:

"One evening, as he was walking home from work, a neighbor woman screamed to him to run. A man was following him on the other side of the street and began to run as soon as Lou did. The woman held the door open and pulled Lou in just as the man fired. The bullet stuck in the door. Another time he was sitting in the second-story window at home reading when a revolver went off across the street and the bullet hit the window sill and fell down into a flower-bed where a little neighbor girl was playing."

Assuming both stories are true the incidents happened when Weichmann was living in Philadelphia. Could John Surratt have tried to kill Weichmann? If not Surratt, who else might have tried?

I don't believe Surratt was the would-be assassin (assuming there was one). He was too obvious a suspect, and after he married and had children, he had a lot more to lose.