Herold and Surratt

[Pamela]

What comes to mind was that there was something phony about the missing letter and Mary knew it would not stand up to close scrutiny if it came to that. Weichmann said he saw the letter so he would have recognized the handwriting unless it was a good forgery and maybe he never held it and looked at it closely. I don't believe it was lost by some accident. Would Mary have wanted detectives to see a real letter that would give weight to John's being somewhere other than DC on the 14th? It had that effect on Weichmann. I'm thinking Mary was much more involved in the conspiracy than I used to.

P.175, "I went to Mrs. Surratt's door and knocked. 'Here, Mrs. Surratt, said I, are the detectives who have come to search the house.' 'For God's sake! Let them come in! I expected the house to be searched, ' answered she." Weichmann also related that Mary already knew of the assassination from A.C. Richards and Sergeants Dye and Cooper, who passed by the house.

Weichmann expanded on the missing letter on P.178, "There was a purpose in withholding it. Had the letter and envelope been produced it would have settled the fact as to whether it was written by John Surratt in Canada on the 12th of April, or elsewhere and dated back. At any rate, it was read to me, at suppertime, as I verily believe, for the purpose of deception, and, if that was the intention, it succeeded admirably, for it controlled the subsequent movements of the detectives and myself, and was the means of carrying us to Canada in pursuit of Surratt." Maybe Weichmann never saw the handwriting at all, since he said it was read to him.

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It just occurred to me, who knows how many telegraphs Annie Ward might have sent and received for the conspiracy, since she handled letters more than once. Could she have received a telegraph from John identifying his location on April 12th, and then Mary decided to concoct a letter with the same information so as to avoid the inconvenient details behind the telegraph that otherwise would have alarmed the "inquisitive" Mr. Weichmann and brought Annie Ward into the conspirators circle as far as detectives were concerned?