What's that? You doubt that Jesse and Quantrill and the boys came to Enid for the KGC and slipped rat poison to the old fellow? Me too. But I did mention in passing, that (I assume) we've all read similar narratives. I've even read narratives where Boston Corbett is fancifully dealt back into the picture: sometimes he IS the man there calling himself Booth, sometimes he is (again?) assassinating Booth in Enid. I get a chuckle out of those colorful yarns, but am not derailed by these intentional caricature narratives.

Some claim that Jesse James was not killed in MO, but another man instead. I have no opinion. Then there are Juda Benjamin, John Surret, Vice President John Breckenridge who escaped the invading Federals. The escape of John Suratt to me was more amazing than the escape of John Wilkes Booth, himself. It very much appears that Butch Cassidy escaped too, and lived for decades. We still don't know what happened to the old insane man Boston Corbett. He stated that he believed Booth(s) the nemesis on his track.

Boston Corbett believed that John Wilkes Booth was alive and would eventually confront and kill him. Corbett slept with a loaded pistol under his pillow. He received letters addressed to him by John Wilkes Booth, and after 1865. Would Corbett have stood any chance at all in a gunfight, face on, against John Wilkes Booth? Apparently, Corbett didn't think so. And so, Corbett ran. When he fled from Neodesha KS on June 1 1888, did Corbett escape to (or near) Pine County, Minnesota? Was John St.Helen laughing as he'd read the newspaper reports, I wonder.

NOTICE TO NEW STUDENTS OF THE LINCOLN ASSASSINATION WHO MIGHT BE READING THESE THREADS: Please continue to research the subject by relying on experts in the field who have spent decades on tracking down documentable evidence and have authored some of the best publications available. They can give you straight answers based on evidence and facts, rather than theories, assumptions, and even baseless opinions. There is a marked difference between research and agitation.

(01-11-2016 06:38 AM)maharba Wrote:  Boston Corbett believed that John Wilkes Booth was alive and would eventually confront and kill him. Corbett slept with a loaded pistol under his pillow. He received letters addressed to him by John Wilkes Booth, and after 1865. Would Corbett have stood any chance at all in a gunfight, face on, against John Wilkes Booth? Apparently, Corbett didn't think so. And so, Corbett ran. When he fled from Neodesha KS on June 1 1888, did Corbett escape to (or near) Pine County, Minnesota? Was John St.Helen laughing as he'd read the newspaper reports, I wonder.

At the conspiracy trial Boston Corbett testified as follows regarding Booth:

"Finding the fire gaining upon him, he turned to the other side of the barn, and got toward where the door was, and as he got there I saw him make a movement toward the door. I supposed he was going to fight his way out. One of the men, who was watching him, told me that he aimed the carbine at me. He was taking aim with the carbine, but at whom I could not say. My mind was upon him attentively to see that he did no harm, and when I became impressed that it was time I shot him. I took steady aim on my arm, and shot him through a large crack in the barn."

Do you feel Corbett was guilty of perjury?

Well said Laurie

Guilty of perjury? It sure appears to be there. That version appears to be slightly vetted by a lawyer for him, and dressed for Corbett to recite. The first preliminary line there sounds unlike Corbett, but more as if scripted. Then the addition of "the man watching him told me he aimed the carbine at me" is an obvious fake. How could Boyd/Booth in a lit barn even see outside into the dark...through a crack to aim at Corbett. That line is not repeated in his lecture claims or his statement to Stanton.
And, what do YOU make, Roger, of his usual claims that God directed his bullet, that it followed the identical path and hit Booth behind the left ear? Wasn't Corbett lying, and many times over, and blaspheming God who certainly did no such thing? No bullet hit the man behind the left ear...did it? And what gun was used, pistol or rifle? At the outset 'of the capture of JWBooth', we see glaring contradictions that those Lincoln scholars do not want to address, and give more plausibility to John Wilkes Booth really escaping. Corbett himself appeared, later, to believe that JWBooth was very much alive and 'on his track', as Corbett fled across America.

(01-11-2016 11:34 AM)maharba Wrote:  And, what do YOU make, Roger, of his usual claims that God directed his bullet, that it followed the identical path and hit Booth behind the left ear?

I thought Corbett said he was actually aiming at Booth's shoulder but his aim was too high, and the bullet hit Booth below the right ear.

(01-11-2016 11:34 AM)maharba Wrote:  And, what do YOU make, Roger, of his usual claims that God directed his bullet, that it followed the identical path and hit Booth behind the left ear?

Quote: maharba wrote
When Corbett went missing in action, and was captured by John Singleton Mosby, he supposedly fought it out to the last before giving up --shooting 12 times with a rifle...but hitting nothing. When Corbett had his last (known) mayhem episode in Topeka at the statehouse, again he supposedly shot 12 times, and again missed every time

According to you then, Corbett wouldn't have been able to hit the broad side of a barn, perhaps that is what he was aiming at when he shot Booth?
Bless your heart, you can't have it both ways.

By the way, what are you shooting/aiming at? What point are you trying to make?

(01-11-2016 11:54 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(01-11-2016 11:34 AM)maharba Wrote:  And, what do YOU make, Roger, of his usual claims that God directed his bullet, that it followed the identical path and hit Booth behind the left ear?

I thought Corbett said he was actually aiming at Booth's shoulder but his aim was too high, and the bullet hit Booth below the right ear.

Thank you for finding that Roger. The question of left or right ear has been nagging at me because I knew I had seen reference to right ear somewhere. I have not read that particular book, but I may have to now.

I admittedly haven't delved very far into the Booth escape theories, but I'm curious to know from Maharba why he thinks all those who identified Booth's corpse in 1865 and in 1869 were either lying or mistaken. I'm especially curious to know why Joseph Booth and the others who identified the remains at the undertaker's in 1869 would cynically deceive JWB's grieving mother and top off their performance by handing her a lock of hair from a corpse they knew to be that of a stranger.

I could talk about evidence for and against the body being Booth, or narrow to one item which I might say is absolutely diagnostic --either being John Wilkes Booth or that the body could not have been Booth. Also I could spend a lot of energy talking about the mummy and Bates, that it must have been a fraud, who owned it and when, and where it is now, and/or how it was analyzed and matched closely JWBooth. Instead, I proceed on what we absolutely do know and try to run it down from there. There surely absolutely was a living man or men in the era 1870 Texas into Oklahoma 1903 claiming to be John Wilkes Booth. It makes more sense to me to look at the records of that fellow and closely examine all the original material possible, and try to figure out who he actually was. Rather than to say: so and so at such and such date had seen Booth, and therefore we can close our minds to the very real existence of this JWBooth in Texas/Oklahoma. So, to answer your question Susan: I have no book to sell, no website to visit, no DVD for folks to view. I'm looking at the records of the existence of this man, because I believe history demands that it should be done.

It has been done. I urge you once again to get a copy of THE BODY IN THE BARN at the very least. We have also had sessions on this at Surratt conferences. We have file drawers at the Surratt Museum's James O. Hall Research Center. How far do you live from Washington, D.C.? Surratt House is 15 miles from Ford's Theatre. If nothing else, the Fred Black Papers would be of more help to you than sources like Murderpedia.

(01-12-2016 11:05 AM)L Verge Wrote:  It has been done. I urge you once again to get a copy of THE BODY IN THE BARN at the very least. We have also had sessions on this at Surratt conferences. We have file drawers at the Surratt Museum's James O. Hall Research Center. How far do you live from Washington, D.C.? Surratt House is 15 miles from Ford's Theatre. If nothing else, the Fred Black Papers would be of more help to you than sources like Murderpedia.

I know you weren't addressing me, but that reminded me to order The Body in the Barn!

At Garrett's, John Wilkes Booth, still under the assumed name Boyd, asked to inspect a map. Young Richard Baynham Garrett
handed the map to him. Booth told the boy that his ultimate destination was Mexico.

That was April 1865. By 1870, a man calling himself John St.Helen was in Granbury TX and who privately revealed he was in fact, John Wilkes Booth.