Frederick Demond

[Dave Taylor]

(08-09-2015 09:18 AM)Gene C Wrote:  

(08-09-2015 08:35 AM)Dave Taylor Wrote:  For what it's worth, author Micheal Schein and researcher James O. Hall believed the entire Hanson Hiss interview to be a fraud.

In what way?
Did the interview never happen?

Gene,

Hall, Schein, and two Surratt researchers names James E. T. Lange and Katherine DeWitt, Jr. put forward a few pieces of evidence that cast doubt on the Hanson Hiss article being a genuine interview. They all seem to take the stance that Hanson Hiss did a great deal of research on John Surratt and then fabricated a so called interview to make his research seem as if it came straight from the horse's mouth.

Lange and DeWitt published an article in the November of 1994 Surratt Courier noting the inconsistencies in the Hanson Hiss article and the true details of John Surratt's life. Some inconsistencies are great such as the Hanson Hiss article claiming that Surratt decided to stop running, signed his real name at a hotel in Alexandria, and was arrested at the hotel while causally smoking a cigar. In truth, Surratt was identified while stuck in quarantine after his boat docked in Alexandria and was arrested then. Other inconsistencies are minor, grant you, but are ones that the real McCoy wouldn't have erred upon (such as his age in 1898).

In addition, Lange and DeWitt point to a telling piece of evidence contained in the 1909 book The Death of Lincoln: The Story of Booth's Plot, His Deed and the Penalty by Clara Laughlin. Laughlin was a friend of John Surratt's daughter and said that everything credited to John Surratt aside from the text of his Rockville lecture of 1870 was a fraud. She states, "Every now and then an alleged newspaper interview with him appears; they are all fabrications — he has never been interviewed."

James O. Hall believed the Hanson Hiss article to be fake as well due to John Surratt's well known aversion to the public eye after his trial and failed lecturing career brought him more bad than good. This also is likely why Surratt made no move to discredit the article after it was published, according to Hall, because refuting it would still bring Surratt unwanted attention. Others attacked some of the points in the Hanson Hiss article, such as A. C. Richards who vehemently denied "Surratt's" statement that a noose was placed around Weichmann's throat to get him to betray Mrs. Surratt.