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L Verge · (This post was last modified: 12-11-2018 08:26 PM by L Verge.)

(12-11-2018 05:07 PM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:
(12-09-2018 04:00 PM)L Verge Wrote: 1. In case I missed your previous postings, Mr. Griffith, please cite in full for me the exact pathology report regarding the angle of the bullet as it entered Booth's neck.

I've given the source twice now, including in my last list of unwanted facts.

(12-09-2018 04:00 PM)L Verge Wrote: Also, I do not believe that the Booth vertebrae are privy to full, hands-on inspection - and Dr. Arnold's credentials do not appear high enough on any totem pole to grant him such access.

I don't know if Dr. Arnold meant that he handled the spinal section or if he just visually examined it. But I would not be shocked to learn that the NMHM allowed him to handle it, since he is a retired Navy surgeon and a former coroner. There is no one among the military commission apologists who has his medical credentials.

(12-09-2018 04:00 PM)L Verge Wrote: 2. Have you stopped to consider that Weichmann gave full details long after the trial because he was not questioned about such things before and during the proceedings -- and was smart enough to keep his mouth shut? "Don't ask, don't tell" has been a standard form of self-preservation long before the 1865 Conspiracy Trial and the late-20th century gender debates.

Uh, if so, then why would he have given any statement at all after the conspiracy trial? That makes no sense.

He volunteered plenty of information for which he was not asked in response to questions that were barely even tangentially related to his answers.

(12-09-2018 04:00 PM)L Verge Wrote: 3. Perhaps both you and Beast Butler did not fully understand the concept of "conspiracy" as applied to the Lincoln conspirators?

LOL! "Beast Butler"?! The Confederates were the ones who gave him that label because he reacted with toughness when some Southern women were throwing stones at Union soldiers from windows and roof tops. Are you a Lost Cause believer?

I'm sure Butler had a pretty good handle on the concept of conspiracy as applied to any group of suspects. You realize that he was widely recognized as a skilled lawyer and was chosen to be the lead prosecution manager in Andrew Johnson's trial in the Senate, right? You knew that, right?

I know lots of things, Mr. Griffith, but when I (and others) attempt to point out facts to you, you rudely dismiss them and throw out more spurious information.

I'm sure that you know that when the Union troops set up shop in Baltimore and the rest of the state (especially Southern Maryland), the ruling officer became infuriated at the women of Baltimore and their blatant dislike of the Yankees. So the ladies were invited on a little tour of the city that ended high on a hill or on a rooftop with the Yankee suggesting that the ladies behave themselves or he could turn the guns around the other way and point them directly at the heart of the city. Not the best of ways to try and scare off a mouthy woman -- a lesson you need to learn.

Beast Butler was a very unwelcome visitor in Baltimore long before he went to Louisiana. As for believing in the Lost Cause, no, I never did - but I understand how the moonlight and magnolias blossomed as a way of dealing with the horrors of the war, the loss of life, and the loss of a way of life that had gone on for centuries. The handling of Reconstruction certainly didn't help the situation either. Don't try and sell me on the idea that either side in our greatest conflict was totally correct or totally wrong.

BTW: My great-grandmother Huntt (who figures in the story) was a Methodist abolitionist. Mr. Huntt came from a slave-holding family, but they held their marriage together. She had one brother who fought for the Union and another who fought with the Confederate navy, was captured, and nearly died at Point Lookout - the prison camp in Southern Maryland that was just about fifty miles from where his sister lived.

That brother kept an open wound on his ankle for the rest of his life because of an injury from a pick-ax while he served on a burial detail. Both brothers survived and attended family get-togethers, but they never spoke to each other for the rest of their lives. My grandmother remembered those times vividly.

On the other side of the family, everyone was a Confederate from Southern Maryland. Look up the story of Col. John Sothoron sometime - he's family. On my father's side, they were all from the Virginia-North Carolina border and poor dirt farmers who owned no slaves, but loved their state.

Now, what's your story? Feel free to post while I hunt down your citations for that report on the bullet angle.

I'm back. Is this your citation? In 1993, a team of forensic anthropologists from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) and the National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM) examined the vertebrae and spinal cord and “were able to establish” that the bullet “entered high on the right and exited low on the left side of the neck,” and that it “was not self-inflicted” (Gretchen Wordon, “Is It the Body of John Wilkes Booth,” Transactions and Studies of the College of the Physicians of Philadelphia, 5:16, December 1994, p. 78). Note that the downward angle must have been rather sharp, since the bullet entered “high” on the right side and exited “low” on the left side.

* The fact that the AFIP-NMHM pathologists determined that the bullet entered on the right side of the neck and traveled markedly downward means that when the victim was shot, he was not facing the shooter, and that the shooter must have fired from a position significantly above the victim

It appears to me that you/maybe Dr. Arnold are citing Gretchen Worden of Philadelphia's Mutter Museum, who was a wonderful historian and scientist and did not believe the escape theories. Also in 1993, the museum director at AFIP (then housed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center) was a brilliant and personable young man named Paul Sledznik, who put no faith in the escape theory either. My staff and I worked with Paul for several years arranging tours of his facility. He was a topic of conversation just today as I was interviewed by the Green Mount Cemetery lawyer who defended the cemetery during the exhumation trials of 1994-1996. Paul appeared as a witness for the cemetery and cast aspersions on the claims of Orlowek and Chitty.

Your citations appear to need a little investigation as to what exactly they said - if anything.

Finally, my answer to your question as to why Weichmann kept on talking (but mainly writing a ms that he never published) after the trial and executions were over. I refer you back to my original statement that he was doing everything he could to clear his conscience and public opinion of the fact that he helped send a woman (whether guilty or innocent) to the gallows. His written work that was later published by Floyd Risvold (another acquaintance) is one of the most obvious pieces of self-vindication you could ask for.