Identification of Booth's body

[Gene C]

(12-15-2018 10:22 AM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  Someone noted that Dr. May never said the body was not Booth, that he always claimed to have identified the body as Booth, as if somehow this settles the matter. If that is the standard, then why does not the fact that Dr. Mudd always solemnly swore that he did not recognize Booth when Booth stayed at his house with a broken ankle settle the matter?

First off, in point of fact, Dr. May did not always identify the body as Booth. By Dr. May’s own admission in his 1887 article, when he first saw the body on the Montauk, he insisted that it bore no resemblance to Booth and that he could not believe it was Booth. Dr. May’s statement is supported by Lawrence Gardner, who said the following in his 1891 article:

On removing the tarpaulin from the body, we were all struck by the lack of any resemblance to Booth. We had a number of photographs [of Booth] with us and endeavored by comparison to find a likeness between the photographs and the body, but there was no resemblance.

Mike you certainly know how to take out of context and misrepresent the truth.
You left out an essential part of Dr. May's 1887 essay, The Mark Of the Scalpel, where he clearly states the body was Booth's.
It's available on the Internet Archive. Would you like me to post the link and copy his words? It's a bit lengthy.

and this also
"May was asked point blank , "Do you recognize the body of that as John Wilkes Booth......?" May answered, "I do recognize it. I have no doubt it is his body"
(Source - The Lincoln Assassination Encyclopedia, by Edward Steers, p 363)

and this from the same source
The judge advocate general then questioned May while still on board the Monitor
Q. Do you recognize the body of J. Wilkes Booth from it's general appearance, and also from the particular appearance of the scar?
A. I do recognize it, though it is very much altered since I saw Booth. It looks to me much older, and in appearance much more freckled than he was. I have no doubt it is his body. I recognize the features

[Steve]

(12-15-2018 02:23 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(12-13-2018 09:05 PM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  * Luther Baker did not take off with the man in the barn’s body for several hours for no reason. The Booth-escaped theory does not require us to ignore this bizarre, extremely suspicious event. Rather, we can plausibly theorize that Baker had a very important reason for taking off with the body: to change the clothing, to break the body’s left fibula near the ankle, to slightly burn the back of the body’s neck if necessary (unless the body happened to have a scar on the back of its neck), and possibly to write the initials JWB on one of the hands.

I have a medical question. After examining the body on the Montauk, Dr. Barnes wrote Stanton as follows:

"The left leg and foot were encased in an appliance of splints and bandages, upon the removal of which, a fracture of the fibula (small bone of the leg) 3 inches above the ankle joint, accompanied by considerable ecchymosis, was discovered."

My question - if the break to the fibula occurred after the body was already dead would ecchymosis appear at all? Would it appear to the doctor exactly the same as if the injury had taken place 13 days previous (to a live person) as opposed to a matter of hours (to a person already dead)?

Yes, ecchymosis/bruising can occur after death, but depending on the situation can have a different appearance (the author of the 2001 article below uses the term "pseudo-bruising" for post-mortem bruising):

https://jcp.bmj.com/content/54/5/348

Notice, Dr. Barnes used the term "considerable ecchymosis", so it's possible the ecchymosis he saw could only be consistent with a fracture before death, with the blood still flowing. The author of the article says post-mortem bruising is usually a yellowish brown ("bloodless") appearance, but if there is congestion in the cadaver enough blood can escape the vessels to produce a bruise indistinguishable from one occurring shortly before death. So, post-mortem bruising/petechiae that resembles "freckles" could've been caused by moving the body to the Montauk.

In regards to the break to the fibula, the reparative phase of bone regeneration begins a few days after the injury, so that should have been detectable during the autopsy:

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322419.php

[Rob Wick]

Quote:Someone noted that Dr. May never said the body was not Booth, that he always claimed to have identified the body as Booth, as if somehow this settles the matter. If that is the standard, then why does not the fact that Dr. Mudd always solemnly swore that he did not recognize Booth when Booth stayed at his house with a broken ankle settle the matter?

I hope you're being sarcastic, but if you really think the two situations are the same, I would like to introduce you to a legal case, Apples v. Oranges. Whether Dr. May said it was Booth or wasn't, he was not facing time in jail or at the end of a rope. Mudd was. Therefore (and I can't believe I have to spell this out) one could not take Mudd's word at face value.

Best
Rob

[tom82baur]

(12-15-2018 04:07 PM)Gene C Wrote:  

(12-15-2018 10:22 AM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  Someone noted that Dr. May never said the body was not Booth, that he always claimed to have identified the body as Booth, as if somehow this settles the matter. If that is the standard, then why does not the fact that Dr. Mudd always solemnly swore that he did not recognize Booth when Booth stayed at his house with a broken ankle settle the matter?

First off, in point of fact, Dr. May did not always identify the body as Booth. By Dr. May’s own admission in his 1887 article, when he first saw the body on the Montauk, he insisted that it bore no resemblance to Booth and that he could not believe it was Booth. Dr. May’s statement is supported by Lawrence Gardner, who said the following in his 1891 article:

On removing the tarpaulin from the body, we were all struck by the lack of any resemblance to Booth. We had a number of photographs [of Booth] with us and endeavored by comparison to find a likeness between the photographs and the body, but there was no resemblance.

Mike you certainly know how to take out of context and misrepresent the truth.
You left out an essential part of Dr. May's 1887 essay, The Mark Of the Scalpel, where he clearly states the body was Booth's.

and this also
"May was asked point blank , "Do you recognize the body of that as John Wilkes Booth......?" May answered, "I do recognize it. I have no doubt it is his body"
(Source - The Lincoln Assassination Encyclopedia, by Edward Steers, p 363)

and this from the same source
The judge advocate general then questioned May while still on board the Monitor
Q. Do you recognize the body of J. Wilkes Booth from it's general appearance, and also from the particular appearance of the scar?
A. I do recognize it, though it is very much altered since I saw Booth. It looks to me much older, and in appearance much more freckled than he was. I have no doubt it is his body. I recognize the features

If the above is accurate, and I have no reason to doubt that it is, then it raises some serious issues which Mr. Griffith needs to address before we go any further. Why, in his 146 previous posts over the post several months, has this information from Dr. May never been mentioned? Please explain.

[wsanto]

(12-15-2018 02:23 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(12-13-2018 09:05 PM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  * Luther Baker did not take off with the man in the barn’s body for several hours for no reason. The Booth-escaped theory does not require us to ignore this bizarre, extremely suspicious event. Rather, we can plausibly theorize that Baker had a very important reason for taking off with the body: to change the clothing, to break the body’s left fibula near the ankle, to slightly burn the back of the body’s neck if necessary (unless the body happened to have a scar on the back of its neck), and possibly to write the initials JWB on one of the hands.

I have a medical question. After examining the body on the Montauk, Dr. Barnes wrote Stanton as follows:

"The left leg and foot were encased in an appliance of splints and bandages, upon the removal of which, a fracture of the fibula (small bone of the leg) 3 inches above the ankle joint, accompanied by considerable ecchymosis, was discovered."

My question - if the break to the fibula occurred after the body was already dead would ecchymosis appear at all? Would it appear to the doctor exactly the same as if the injury had taken place 13 days previous (to a live person) as opposed to a matter of hours (to a person already dead)?

Wouldn't there be a big difference on how the two wounds would look to a doctor?

Roger,

You are correct that ecchymosis would not develop if you broke the leg of a corpse. Ecchymosis develops after any significant soft tissue and/or orthopedic injury as blood is being pumped to the injury and leaking out of the vascualture in areas where blood vessels and capillaries are injured. If the fibula was broken after the heart is actively pumping blood then no significant swelling or ecchymosis would develop at the site of the post mortum injury. If you punch a corpse in the face he would not develop a black eye.

Booth’s leg would have been more swollen and ecchymotic than usual due to the fact that his leg was mostly dependent in the hours and days after the acute injury. He never had any real time to rest and elevate the leg to help limit the swelling and subsequent ecchymosis.

That all being said a corpse will develop ecchymosis in dependent areas as the blood will pool in the capillaries of dependent areas of their body due to gravity. So if some dies and falls on the floor on their back and the lies there for a time they will have ecchymotic areas in their back and buttocks and to a lesser extent in their calves and the back of their thighs and so on. But that would be a very routine occurrence for a pathologist to see in a corpse and probably wouldn’t be noted as a significant finding.

Hope that helps.

[L Verge]

Thank you, and welcome back. It's so nice to have a doctor back on board while Blaine takes a hiatus. He had been an emergency room doctor for so long and also a coroner before retirement that I came to depend on his medical knowledge.

[tom82baur]

(12-16-2018 08:48 AM)tom82baur Wrote:  

(12-15-2018 04:07 PM)Gene C Wrote:  

(12-15-2018 10:22 AM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  Someone noted that Dr. May never said the body was not Booth, that he always claimed to have identified the body as Booth, as if somehow this settles the matter. If that is the standard, then why does not the fact that Dr. Mudd always solemnly swore that he did not recognize Booth when Booth stayed at his house with a broken ankle settle the matter?

First off, in point of fact, Dr. May did not always identify the body as Booth. By Dr. May’s own admission in his 1887 article, when he first saw the body on the Montauk, he insisted that it bore no resemblance to Booth and that he could not believe it was Booth. Dr. May’s statement is supported by Lawrence Gardner, who said the following in his 1891 article:

On removing the tarpaulin from the body, we were all struck by the lack of any resemblance to Booth. We had a number of photographs [of Booth] with us and endeavored by comparison to find a likeness between the photographs and the body, but there was no resemblance.

Mike you certainly know how to take out of context and misrepresent the truth.
You left out an essential part of Dr. May's 1887 essay, The Mark Of the Scalpel, where he clearly states the body was Booth's.

and this also
"May was asked point blank , "Do you recognize the body of that as John Wilkes Booth......?" May answered, "I do recognize it. I have no doubt it is his body"
(Source - The Lincoln Assassination Encyclopedia, by Edward Steers, p 363)

and this from the same source
The judge advocate general then questioned May while still on board the Monitor
Q. Do you recognize the body of J. Wilkes Booth from it's general appearance, and also from the particular appearance of the scar?
A. I do recognize it, though it is very much altered since I saw Booth. It looks to me much older, and in appearance much more freckled than he was. I have no doubt it is his body. I recognize the features

If the above is accurate, and I have no reason to doubt that it is, then it raises some serious issues which Mr. Griffith needs to address before we go any further. Why, in his 146 previous posts over the post several months, has this information from Dr. May never been mentioned? Please explain.

This issue has still not been addressed, or even acknowledged, by Mr. Griffith: Why did he not share the full statement by Dr. May in his posts? Was he not aware of the full statement, or was he aware of it, and just deliberately left it out? Or is there some other possible explanation? Please do tell.

[mikegriffith1]

(12-16-2018 08:48 AM)tom82baur Wrote:  

(12-15-2018 04:07 PM)Gene C Wrote:  

(12-15-2018 10:22 AM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  Someone noted that Dr. May never said the body was not Booth, that he always claimed to have identified the body as Booth, as if somehow this settles the matter. If that is the standard, then why does not the fact that Dr. Mudd always solemnly swore that he did not recognize Booth when Booth stayed at his house with a broken ankle settle the matter?

First off, in point of fact, Dr. May did not always identify the body as Booth. By Dr. May’s own admission in his 1887 article, when he first saw the body on the Montauk, he insisted that it bore no resemblance to Booth and that he could not believe it was Booth. Dr. May’s statement is supported by Lawrence Gardner, who said the following in his 1891 article:

On removing the tarpaulin from the body, we were all struck by the lack of any resemblance to Booth. We had a number of photographs [of Booth] with us and endeavored by comparison to find a likeness between the photographs and the body, but there was no resemblance.

Mike you certainly know how to take out of context and misrepresent the truth.
You left out an essential part of Dr. May's 1887 essay, The Mark Of the Scalpel, where he clearly states the body was Booth's.

and this also
"May was asked point blank , "Do you recognize the body of that as John Wilkes Booth......?" May answered, "I do recognize it. I have no doubt it is his body"
(Source - The Lincoln Assassination Encyclopedia, by Edward Steers, p 363)

and this from the same source
The judge advocate general then questioned May while still on board the Monitor
Q. Do you recognize the body of J. Wilkes Booth from it's general appearance, and also from the particular appearance of the scar?
A. I do recognize it, though it is very much altered since I saw Booth. It looks to me much older, and in appearance much more freckled than he was. I have no doubt it is his body. I recognize the features

If the above is accurate, and I have no reason to doubt that it is, then it raises some serious issues which Mr. Griffith needs to address before we go any further. Why, in his 146 previous posts over the post several months, has this information from Dr. May never been mentioned? Please explain.

You need to go back and re-read my reply, part of which you snipped. The part you snipped explained that the original handwritten transcript of May's answer that you quote reveals that he was stumbling over his words. Furthermore, I already stated that, except for his first utterance on the Montauk, May always claimed that he recognized the body as Booth.

As I stated in my reply, you can't just uncritically accept a witness's central claim and ignore his other statements that contradict and cast serious doubt on his central claim. Again, please go back and re-read my reply.

I also notice that you chose not to address the point that L. Gardner said that everyone was "struck" by the body's lack of resemblance to Booth, and that when they compared their photos of Booth to the body, they saw no resemblance, whereas when Rollins was shown a photo of Booth, less than 72 hours before the Montauk autopsy, he had no problem recognizing the photo as being the Booth he had seen on crutches. How do you explain this? What in the world could have happened to the body in less than 72 hours to cause it to sprout freckles, to age markedly, and to become so unrecognizable that everyone on the Montauk was "struck" by its lack of resemblance to Booth?

[Steve]

Lawrence Gardner gave his account of seeing the body in this article from the April 1, 1891, edition of the Buffalo Commercial:

Gardner seems pretty sure that the body he saw was Booth, even if it had a beard and signs "there had been great bodily suffering". He attributes the freckled appearance to exposure to the sun, meaning "liver spots".

[Gene C]

Mike, I have gone back and read your replies. You should go back and read your post 238 again too.
You frequently emphasize the problems Dr. May has in identifying the body on the Montauk as Booth, and just as frequently fail to mention that Dr. May states he is positive that it is Booth's body. So now you acknowledge Dr. May always claimed he recognized the body as Booth.

And yet in the same post I also notice that you chose to again emphasize the point that L. Gardner said that everyone was "struck" by the body's lack of resemblance to Booth, and that when they compared their photos of Booth to the body, they saw no resemblance". Yet in the article posted by Steve above, we find you did it again, by failing to mention that L Gardner also says "Was it Booth's body? Of coarse it was."

And here is your inconsistency. You accept Dr May and L Gardner as credible witnesses when they say what you want them to say, but when they say the body was Booth's, that's a problem so you leave that out. Because if these two credible witnesses identify the body as Booth, then your belief that Booth didn't die at Garrett's, goes up in smoke.
So who is the credible witness, Dr. May and L. Gardner who you frequently quote, who actually saw the body and identify it as Booth, or you viewing the events from a distance of 150+ years and insisting on a different conclusion?

[JMadonna]

Even assuming that it wasn't Booth (which would make Davy Herold even dumber for riding with him than we thought) when did authorities know this fact and why didn't they continue to search?

[Rob Wick]

Jerry has a very good point, and it got me to thinking about something else. The government pursued John Surratt until he was captured and put on trial. If this massive conspiracy was so widespread throughout the government, why would they allow Surratt to be tried? Doing so opened up the possibility that Surratt could very well try to bring the whole conspiracy to light in order to save his own skin. Yet, nothing. He was tried and acquitted without ever saying a word about this vast conspiracy.

Best
Rob

[Warren]

I’m about as sharp as a rubber ball, and here’s what I don’ t understand. If Stanton is so evil, so evil he would conspire to kill Lincoln, Seward, Johnson, Grant, et al, why would he let such a loose cannon such as Booth, who supposedly, in the missing 680 plus pages of an out of date memorandum/diary could bring it all down - why would he let him live? If I orchestrated that plot, the first person I would kill after the deed is Booth.

[Wild Bill]

David Balsiger and Charles E. Sellier agree with you and that is what their Lincoln Conspiracy is all about? An even more controversial study by Rick Stelnick, Dixie Reckoning, follows a similar line.

[RJNorton]

IMO, Warren and Wild Bill make logical points. So why was Booth hidden in a safe house (and replaced by Boyd) rather than being killed? Hopefully, Mike G. will explain.