Olivia Jenkins

[Susan Higginbotham]

If the visitor was Scott rather than Booth, the defense would have called him as a witness. By doing so they would have chipped away at Weichmann and Mary's involvement with Booth at a critical time on the day of the assassination.

That's assuming that Scott (whoever he was) could be tracked down, or that he was still alive in 1867 to be called as a witness. In any case, perhaps the defense didn't feel that a trial within a trial was needed on the issue of how many times Booth had visited the Surratt boardinghouse, especially since the defense was more concerned with proving John Surratt's absence from Washington on the day in question.