Louis Weichmann

[L Verge]

(09-15-2015 10:41 PM)Pamela Wrote:  Eva, I think a professional historian can answer your question. I believe the letter you are referring to was taken into evidence, so I don't know.

My non-professional guess is that Weichmann had access to trial files legally after the John Surratt trial was over and done with. Just like today's researchers, I bet he copied (in shorthand?) anything that he thought might be useful to him in the future. Another possibility is that Holt supplied things to him. They maintained a correspondence history for over twenty years after the trials. I'm not tackling the research trail at NARA now, but the Holt Papers file should be interesting.

Switching back to the mention of Robert Lockwood Mills. Joan Chaconas and I had lots of dealings with him when he was working on his Book of Speculations about twenty years ago. Nice man, but difficult to deal with.

I can also say that his talk before the Lincoln Group of Washington, DC, is the only time that I have ever seen a member of any audience stand up - to the point of having apoplexy - and denounce a speaker's performance (and Bob's was indeed a performance) as an insult to everyone's intelligence and pure B.S. He and a number of other members then put on their coats and left the building -- and they were quite correct in their assessment of the talk and had the historical and legal backgrounds to make such an assessment.