Identification of Booth's body

[mikegriffith1]

(12-20-2018 03:38 PM)L Verge Wrote:  

(12-20-2018 12:38 PM)GustD45 Wrote:  

(12-20-2018 12:19 PM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  And why did Mary Lincoln have such kind words for Stanton when she learned of his death?

Yes, that's another good question Susan.

As is why was Stanton invited to Robert Lincoln's wedding?

All of this emotional speculation does nothing to explain the medical-scientific problems with the claim that Booth's body was the one taken from the barn and examined on the Montauk.

If Brutus had killed Julius Caesar secretly, Caesar's family would have had nothing but nice things to say about Brutus. Until shortly before the assassination, Brutus had been close to Caesar and had warmly supported him. Even months later, Brutus was seen to weep over Caesar's murder. Stanton was one sick man: deceptive, two-faced, maniacal, brutal, harsh, etc., etc. People like that can express great remorse one minute and turn cold as ice the next.

Why was the diary allowed to exist? I already addressed this question. Conger didn't read it before he handed it over to Lafayette Baker, along with the other items that Booth had handed over to be claimed as having been removed from the man in the barn. Doherty never saw any diary removed from the man, nor any of the other items that Conger claimed he found on the man--if Doherty saw these things taken from the man, it's very odd that he said nothing about this in his report. Somehow, possibly via Baker, two newspapers got wind that a diary had been found. So at that point Stanton didn't know how much traction those stories would get. It turned out that they died out rather quickly, because the War Department stonewalled on the matter. But, Stanton also could not be certain that someone who had seen the diary, such as Baker, would not later reveal its existence. So he kept it. But, when he and others got around to reading it, they realized they needed to edit it, and they edited it as much as they could without making the editing brazenly obvious to the untrained observer. Even the edited version clearly was unacceptable, which is one reason that it was suppressed.

In all seriousness, I would really prefer to believe that Booth was the man killed in the barn. It would make the case neater, less complicated, and more palatable. Whoever the man was, he was never gonna leave that barn alive. The search party was an execution party, hence all the lying about who shot the man and what he was doing when he was shot. There was no excuse for not taking the man alive.

Really, I would love to believe that the body on the Montauk was Booth, but there are too many glaring holes in the "identification" and three inexplicable scientific problems with it. Freckles don't just sprout on a dead body, and there is not even a halfway credible theory for how Booth could have acquired freckles during his flight. Similarly, bodies do not magically become markedly unrecognizable after the kind of flight that Booth experienced. Shortly before the barn shooting, Rollins had no trouble recognizing the picture he was shown of Booth as Booth, but on the Montauk no one could see a resemblance between their photos of Booth and the body in front of them. What in the world could have happened in the meantime to cause such a drastic change? And, the conditions of Booth's flight would not have caused him to look markedly older than he had looked when May saw him less than two years earlier.