Identification of Booth's body

[mikegriffith1]

(11-09-2018 10:20 AM)L Verge Wrote:  

(11-08-2018 03:44 PM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  A few points: [SNIP--MG]

This is just another recitation of the same old points you have been making for lo these many weeks with no substantive proof.

Actually, that is incorrect. Those points contain several new observations that I have not made before.

For example, the point about the extreme unlikelihood of a filling being "small" back then due to the lack of x-ray machines and to the fact that therefore no one knew they had a cavity until it had grown large enough to cause pain--this point is new. This is in addition to the fact, which I have mentioned previously, that dentists had to use manual drills because the electric dental drill did not exist yet, which also makes it very unlikely that any filling back then was small.

Someone suggested that the second filling was overlooked at the 1869 viewing because it was small.

I might add that those points stand unrefuted.

I have already proved that hair never grows more than a fraction of an inch after death, citing medical sources. So how could the body that Pegram saw have had hair that was "nearly a foot" longer than Pegram remembered Booth's hair being? (Photos of Booth show that he kept his hair at a consistent length.)

Quote:I posted about the "longevity" of human teeth after death, and you just bring up Merrill again.

I do not understand your point. I, too, have posted sources on the fact that teeth last a very, very long time, and that they don't even begin to decay for at least 40 years. I have also cited sources on the fact that teeth rarely fall out after death because they are sort of cemented with the bone that houses them when the body dies.

Quote:Please post definitive information on COL. Cobb also...

As I made clear, I was citing Booth's first biographer, Francis Wilson, who defended the government's version. Here is what Wilson said about Colonel Cobb:

The Colonel Clarence F. Cobb mentioned was a boarding-school companion of Booth's. He and Booth had kept up their friendship. Booth had hailed Colonel Cobb in front of Humphries's livery stable and talked with him on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, the day of the assassination. Paymaster Benjamin Price sent Colonel Cobb to help identify the body of Booth. Surgeon-General Barnes told Cobb that it was unnecessary; that he, Barnes, and nine others had fully identified the body; that the well-known Washington dentist, Dr. Merrill, had filled two of Booth's teeth; that Booth's mouth had been forced open and the fillings fully identified by Dr. Merrill, so that the identification of the body had been complete. (John Wilkes Booth: Fact and Fiction of Lincoln's Assassination, p. 199)

As I have shown previously, the claim that Dr. Merrill came to the Montauk and ID'd his two fillings has been repeated in numerous traditionalist books and articles, even though there's no trace of Merrill's presence or findings in the official records. This story was also told in some newspapers at the time.

So the one guy who came to the Montauk who actually knew Booth well was told that his services were not needed because others had supposedly ID'd the body and because Dr. Merrill had allegedly identified the two fillings in the mouth.

This case is loaded with evidence that has been there along but that has been overlooked by most scholars because it does not fit the traditional narrative.

For example, we are told over and over that the body was "positively identified" at the 1869 viewing, but this is absolute poppycock. The "body" at that viewing was a collection of blackened bones, hair, and teeth. That's why Joseph Booth placed such importance on the finding of one filled tooth, but, oops, he didn't know that Merrill had done a second filling shortly before the assassination. So to believe the traditional story, one must assume that the other filled tooth either fell out, which is extremely rare (and no one mentioned a missing tooth), or that someone stole it but for some reason left the clearly visible older filling alone, or that the other filling was very small and went unnoticed, which is highly implausible.

Additionally, as mentioned, the body at the 1869 viewing had hair that was a foot longer than Booth's hair and had serious damage to or just below the left knee that neither Dr. Mudd nor the autopsy doctors mentioned seeing.

These are serious problems. Bodies don't just magically grow 10-12 inches of hair after death; they don't magically grow freckles on the face after death; they don't inflict serious damage near the knee on themselves; they rarely lose teeth after just four years; and bodies do not undergo such a drastic change in their appearance, after less than 24 hours, that they "bear no resemblance" to the body in life.

If anyone can find me a single case in the annals of forensic science where this has occurred, I would really like to see it. I've been searching for one, and so far have found no case that even remotely parallels this one, and I've found plenty of cases that prove the opposite (i.e., cases where friends and family members were able to identify loved ones' bodies 72 hours or longer after death, provided there was no serious damage to the face).