Identification of Booth's body

[L Verge]

James Wardell, the detective who accompanied Gardner, said Gardner took one photograph and that he watched the photo being developed and then took the photo and the plate to Baker.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/d...159798338/

I'm aware of Wardell's claim - made thirty years later - and also the article (in which Timothy O'Sullivan is identified as Gardner's assistant). I have never researched James Wardell, so cannot comment on his veracity. Personally, if he had any ties to Lafayette Baker, I would not trust him.

Just as an aside, I searched American Brutus for information on the photographing (or not) of the body and found no reference to Gardner, Wardell, or the photograph. Knowing what an excellent researcher Mike Kauffman is, I find that strange -- unless he didn't believe the evidence as known at that time, before John Elliott's research turned up the Lawrence Gardner version. Like many of us, Mike has spent a lifetime trying to dispel wrong information and probably found it better to ignore the subject than to repeat possibly bad history.