Identification of Booth's body

[L Verge]

Why was only one autopsy photo taken of the body? And why did that photo quickly disappear? How do you "lose" such a historic piece of evidence?

Sorry, Mike, but I forgot to comment on the above comment that you made earlier. I don't have the time nor the inclination to find a very important posting regarding researcher John Elliott's discovery of an article by Lawrence Gardner, the son of Alexander Gardner who went with his father aboard the monitor to photograph the prisoners. According to Lawrence, they did not photograph Booth's body. In the famous newspaper sketch of the "autopsy" done later by Alexander Gardner, he actually drew himself into the picture, evidently to indicate that he was not doing any photography.

I guess that you will counter that the government refused to let him photograph Booth's body because they didn't want it known that they had gotten the wrong man. I think it's more likely that the gov't. wanted no reminders left of the villain - reminders that Southern sympathizers could immortalize or Union supporters could desecrate. Such was the reasoning behind the secret burial at the Arsenal and the unmarked grave in Green Mount. Our modern examples of desecration - from Lincoln statues to a slew of Confederate ones - should prove to us that, in 1865, those in command understood human behavior...