Mask For Treason

[mikegriffith1]

(12-05-2018 11:10 AM)Gene C Wrote:  Appreciate all that information, there is a lot of it.

Have you drawn any conclusion from all this info, is there some special significance for all this?

I did understand you to say you doubt Mrs. Surratt ever gave Lloyd the field glasses to begin with, which is interesting to me as John Surratt's and Mary's attorney never brought that up in their trial.

Aiken had no reason to address the issue in the conspiracy trial, since the field glasses were not introduced into evidence and were only mentioned a few times in passing. Plus, Mary Surratt was not allowed to testify or even submit a statement to give her side on the issue, and of course Aiken couldn't just get up and say, "Well, my client told me that she did not meet with Booth at 2:30 and never took a package from him."

At the John Surratt trial, the issue of the field glasses blew up in the prosecution's face. Lloyd not only refused to identify the alleged Booth field glasses in evidence as the ones he had seen, but he noted clear differences in the wording and printing of the writing on the field glasses he saw vs. that on the alleged Booth field glasses.

By the time of the John Surratt trial, of course, Mary was dead and was not around to shed any light on the matter.

(12-05-2018 11:10 AM)Gene C Wrote:  You mention - "Lloyd later admitted that he was threatened with death if he did not testify the way the prosecutors wanted him to testify."

Would you please share with me the source of that information. I have read that comment before, but do not know it's source.

There are tons of sources on this fact. For starters, it's in the John Surratt trial transcript:

Q. You state that that military officer told you that the statement you had made to Colonel Wells was not sufficient?
A. He said, as I remember, that it was not full enough.
Q. Did he say anything to you in the way of offering a reward, or use any threat towards you, for the purpose of getting you to make it fuller?
A. When I told him what I had repeated before, that I did not remember any person saying thus and so, he jumps up very quick off his seat, as if very mad, and asked me if I knew what I was guilty of. I told him, under the circumstances I did not. He said you are guilty as an accessory to a crime the punishment of which is death. With that I went up stairs to my room. (Volume 1, p. 290)

I would recommend reading Theodore Roscoe's discussion on Lloyd's testimony in his book The Web of Conspiracy, pp. 475-477.

None of this should be surprising. We know that other witnesses were also threatened with death or long prison terms if they would not say what the prosecution wanted them to say. Thomas Bogar discusses this coercion at length in Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination. Here is some of Bogar's research on this issue:

One day that week John Ford overheard an egregious instance of “witness preparation” in the prison yard: [Lafayette] Baker going at Rittersbach, putting words in his mouth. Whereas Rittersbach had actually heard Ned Spangler that night [April 14] say, “Hush your mouth. You don’t know whether it’s Booth or not,” Baker now told him to add that Spangler had slapped him across the face and warned, “For God’s sake, shut up! And don’t say which way he went.” If Rittersbach would not so testify, Baker threatened, he would be thrown definitely into the general prison population at Old Capitol. This approach by Baker, Ford believed, would unnerve anyone, “and cause him to think he believed he heard what did not.” Even though Rittersbach was self-motivated to testify and required little prodding, he was hauled before Colonel Burnett on the eve of the trial for another conversation. No notes exist of its nature.

Ford, his brother Harry, and Gifford witnessed the same sort of pressure brought to bear within the prison on a terrified Louis Weichmann, a Booth associate who had boarded at Mrs. Surratt’s. Weichmann would in due course provide exceedingly incriminating testimony, which led to the conviction and execution of several of the conspirators. A day later, Maddox, Gifford, and Carland overheard an officer in Old Capitol tell Weichmann “if he didn’t swear to more than he had told, he would be hung.” (Weichmann shortly after the trial would confess to Carland that he had perjured himself to save his skin, and tell Gifford “I’d give a million dollars if I had had nothing to do with it.”) As John Ford recorded in his ever-lengthening jail house manifesto, “Another damnable feature in this prison is that if a prisoner will not or cannot give such information as may be demanded of him, he is ordered to his room or cell and handcuffed and tortured into a more compliant witness or informer.” (pp. 180-181)