Lucy Hale

[Dave Taylor]

When I first starting reading about the assassination and doing research, I avoided the topic of Booth's lady friends like the plague. Isabel Sumner, Ella Starr, Lucy Hale, they all seemed to be temporary flings that Booth used and then disposed of. While I still feel that way to a large extent about two of the ladies, I have come around to the belief that Booth thought he loved Lucy Hale. I say he thought he loved her because I don't know how capable Booth was loving someone other than himself.

I main evidence for believing that Booth and Lucy were actually in love is not only the collections of the Booth family who supported the idea of an engagement but also Booth's own words. Some of Booth's final thoughts were of Lucy and this is demonstrated in his diary.

It is largely forgotten or ignored that the very first words written in Booth's diary are "Ti Amo". "Ti Amo" is Italian but seems to me to be an understandable misspelling of the Spainish "Te Amo". Regardless, both translate into English as "I love you". This announcement of love, coded a bit, always struck me as odd. Before starting his manifesto about why he shot the President, Booth was compelled to write a brief note of love to someone. I propose that this someone was Lucy Hale.

Senator Hale had been appointed minister to Spain and all of the Hales were in earnest to learn some Spainish before heading abroad. Though it may just be the romantic in me, I believe this Ti Amo was Booth's final message to the woman he loved, Lucy Hale. It was a message she would know was meant for her and for no one else. It was a way for him to announce his love for her, for the last time, without endangering her further.

I cannot say what their relationship would have been like if he had not assassinated the President, perhaps it was always doomed to fail due to his womanizing. But I believe that John Wilkes Booth and Lucy Hale were secretly engaged, and that in his final days on the run, he thought, of and loved, Lucy.