Herold and Surratt

[Pamela]

"There are newspaper reports from 1907 that a Hanson Hiss, identified as a Cincinnati newspaper reporter, died. One report claims he was a suicide, the other claims that he died of exposure. He was 35 at the time of his death, and one report states that he was a Johns Hopkins graduate with family in Baltimore. That seems to make him a likely candidate to be the person who wrote about John Surratt.

Doing some more checking, this Hanson Hiss (whose full name was Phillip Hanson Hiss) was indeed from a prominent Baltimore family. Here's a link to his tombstone at Greenmount:

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi...54&df=al"

Very odd. What about the report that he was murdered with a fractured skull and signs of a struggle after reporting on gamblers? Around the time his name is attached to the Surratt interview he was writing for a sports magazine about jousting and fox hunting.

The Hiss article on Surratt, which I believe was a three part series, is really just a monologue with an introduction. There are no question and answers. And the writing in the introduction sounds somewhat like Surratt with braggadocio and grandiosity. "...the first voluntary statement of anyone who had aught to do with Wilkes Booth." And have I missed something? (I'm sure I've missed a lot) When did Surratt become a Captain? Both A. C. Richards and Weichmann wrote responses to the article which were printed in the Washington Post soon after. Their responses were at odds with Surratt's claims, but I'm not aware that Hiss defended his interview, or attempted to interview Richards or Weichmann, despite his assertion that his story had "considerable historical significance".