Drawing of Booth Body

[mikegriffith1]

(11-03-2018 10:41 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(11-03-2018 10:26 AM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  why no one who knew Booth well was asked to ID his body on the Montauk

Charles Dawson saw Booth many times in the recent past.

"Many times"? I don't know about that. That seems unlikely. Booth was gone quite often in the months leading up to the assassination. Dawson stated in his testimony to Holt on the Montauk that he was no more acquainted with Booth than he was with any other guest at the hotel: "merely as intimate as I would be with any guest at the hotel."

Unless Dawson worked seven days a week and 12-14 hours a day, it is unlikely that he would have seen Booth more than a few times in the months leading up to the assassination, and those sightings would have been brief.

There is a big difference between knowing someone for years as a friend and seeing them a few times from behind a hotel reception desk among hundreds of other guests who came to the hotel.

And then there are the inherent problems with Dawson's testimony about his identification.

For starters, Dawson claimed that he "distinctly" recognized the body as Booth from its "general appearance." Was he talking about the same body that Dr. May said bore no resemblance to Booth and that he could not believe was Booth? Was he talking about the same body that L. Gardner said "shocked" everyone by its lack of resemblance to Booth?

Additionally, Dawson said he recognized the vest on the body as Booth's! So after seeing Booth occasionally, sporadically at the hotel, he remembered this one vest as opposed to the hundreds of others he would have seen at the hotel?! Really?! This is not to mention the evidence that the man in the barn was wearing gray clothing.

Dawson further claimed that he saw the initials "JWB" on the body's left "wrist." Leaving aside the conflicts about the location of the initials, if Dawson he had seen the initials on that body, surely he would have said something to those around him. Yet, not a single other person who testified that day mentioned seeing any initials or hearing about any initials, nor did either of the autopsy doctors mention the initials in their reports. Indeed, Holt seemed unaware of the initials until Dawson mentioned them in his testimony that day.

But Dawson wasn't done yet. Unlike all the other non-medical witnesses, Dawson also claimed he saw the scar on the back of the neck. That's odd. Dr. May didn't see the neck scar when he first viewed the body; he didn't see it until Dr. Barnes showed it to him.

To some people, it seems rather obvious that Dawson was a false witness, that he was saying what he knew Holt, Baker, and Bingham wanted to hear. He was not about to incur the wrath of Baker, whose reputation as a lawless thug was well known, by saying the body did not look like Booth. So he not only falsely said the body's "general appearance" looked like Booth, but he padded his story with the unlikely details of the vest, the scar, and the initials.