Identification of Booth's body

[mikegriffith1]

(09-29-2018 06:42 PM)L Verge Wrote:  You have not read enough of the excellent, well-researched books, articles, even the responses on this forum. Just a day or so ago, I gave the explanation for the "freckles." I believe the medical term is livor mortis - look it up. Also, the plugged tooth dental record was presented to the folks by Dr. Joseph Adrian Booth at the 1869 exhumation and was identified in the funeral parlor behind Ford's Theatre as the body awaited transport to Baltimore. The late-John C. Brennan did quite a bit of research on Dr. Merrill.

And, I don't believe that there were any identification reports attached to the "autopsy" - such as it was. The doctors pretty much just reported the cause of death. The identification was a different topic. Mike, I just bet that if you had been Booth back in 1865 and had been on the run for 12 days with a good deal of exposure to the elements and possible mishandling of your body after death, you might not be in the best of shape either.

I could continue, but at this point I suspect that I'm boring those on this forum who have cut their teeth on the Lincoln assassination story and don't want to hear more postulating on the "Booth escaped" theory. I am going to ask once more, have you read at least Michael Kauffman's American Brutus?

Regardless of why they did not mention it, the fact remains that neither Woodward nor Banes documented the presence of the initials "JWB" on the left hand in their autopsy report.

If Merrill was there, where is his report? Why is he not listed in the official records as having been there?

The whole thing smells to high heaven of cover-up and fraud.

Stanton could have easily had numerous people who knew Booth well come and ID the body, not to mention the accomplices on the Montauk. He also could have had Booth family members come and ID the body. He did neither.

We have only the hotel clerk's word that he saw the JWB tattoo. No one else mentioned seeing it.

Most of the 14 people who ID'd the body did so based on its "general appearance."

I do not buy the explanation for the freckles as some kind of post-mortem manifestation.

In his later years, Dr. May, even though he went along with the ID of the body as Booth, stated that never before had he seen a body change so radically in appearance from how it looked alive.

I see several problems with the 1869 ID, starting with the fact that there are several conflicting accounts of it. Anyway, by that time, both the Booths and the War Department had strong motivation to pronounce the body as Booth's.

I think the the 1873 picture of "John R. Wilkes" bears a remarkable resemblance to Booth, and so did Dr. Lawrence Angell of the Smithsonian Institution, as I discuss in my article on the evidence that Booth escaped.

I have not read Kauffman's American Brutus. I have read Terry Alford's Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth, Booth's sister's book, and what's left of Booth's diary. I plan on reading Kauffman's book. It's on my list of books to read.