New Booth Pic?

[John Fazio]

Tom:

Both the interpretation of the photo as Booth and the story that goes with it--Booth telling a black barber that he intended to kill the president; the barber's being related to Thomas Jefferson through Sally Hemmings; and the barber trundling off to Washington to warn Lincoln--are tortured. The man in the photo bears only a very slight resemblance to Booth; he is wearing a hat we have not seen Booth wear in any other photo; and his clothes are singularly pedestrian compared to the finery we usually see on Booth in the photos of him about which there is no controversy. Conclusion: The photo is almost certainly not of Booth and the story has all the earmarks of fiction, and not very good fiction at that.

John