A Wonderful Find ...

[Rick Smith]

Roger / Joe,

Thanks for posting the article which Bill & I wrote. I suppose that I must try to make plain what I have tried to make plain many times before, but for some reason have little success.

The premise of the Booth Suicide article is not that Booth did commit suicide, we do not know if he did or not, but that it was absolutely mechanically possible to inflict, by his own hand, the wound that Booth sustained.

If you read the article, look on page 8, I believe if you click twice on the blank space a photo of my son will appear which illustrates our point.

Or maybe Roger could extract the photo and post it for us.

I do not know how to do this.

Rick

---

(03-21-2014 05:03 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Terry loves the mystery of the Lincoln assassination as much as the rest of us. As for James Swanson, we have converted him. Jim's a friend of mine and of the museum and Society and freely admits that his first impression of us was that we were "weird." He and Joan Chaconas and I have had some good laughs about that -- he's been converted, trust me.

Your last paragraph describes my feelings about my obsession quite accurately. You and I are on the same page. It is a shame that a few others cannot look beyond the crime itself to see the effect it had/has on American history.

Laurie,

What crime? This was a wartime event.

Yr. Obt. Unreconstructed srvt.

Rick

---

(03-22-2014 08:23 PM)J. Beckert Wrote:  That was a great article Bill and whether it angers anyone or not is beside the point. You and Rick did a great job of explaining that no one can prove what happened either way while being sensitive and respectful to other's theories, but that suicide was a distinct possiblity.

I tried to find a link to the Suite101 site, but I can't find it.

I don't buy the suicide by cop theory for a minute. If that were the case, I think Booth would have actually have had to have seen a "cop". In a barn packed with furniture and farm equipment, I don't think he was planning on anyone taking him out. He blatantly refused to come out and he knew what was waiting for him if he did. The rope - and just what he wrote he wanted to avoid - dying like a criminal.

Joe,

As you know, our article does not show that Booth did in fact shoot himself, just that it could have been done, I do agree with all you have pointed out.

Rick