True Crime in The Civil War

[Gene C]

Yes, this is what he says about Lloyd

"Lloyd said that a little more than a month before Lincoln's assassination, John Surratt, George Atzerodt, and David Herold came to Surrattsville with a cache of guns and ammunition. They secreted the stash under the floorboards of a room above the tavern. According to Lloyd, on the evening of the assassination, Mary Suratt said that the 'shooting irons' " would be needed soon - a remark, that according to the prosecution, suggested she knew about the murder plot.

Surratts lawyer, Fredrick Aiken, noted that the prosecutions entire case rested on 'three circumstances'; Lloyd's testimony about the 'shooting irons', Surratt's statement that she didn't know Lewis Paine when he came to her boardinghouse after the assassination, and her association with John Wilkes Booth. "These three circumstances constitute the part played by the accused, Mary Surratt in this great conspiracy", Aiken said. "They are all that two months of patient and unwearying investigation, and the most thorough search for evidence that was probably ever made, has been able to develop against her".

Lloyd's testimony must, according to Aiken be mitigated by his heavy drinking. "But on the 14th of April," Aiken said, "and at a time when, as testified by his sister-in-law, he was more than ordinarily affected by intoxicating drink." Even though Lloyd had apparently dried his own bar supply on April 14th, he stuck to his story. But, Aiken implied, how reliable could it be?" (page 193)

The author draws no conclusion after these statements regarding Lloyd and other testimony about Mary.