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[Susan Higginbotham]

(07-06-2016 11:37 PM)Pamela Wrote:  Again, Richards knew there was one actor on the stage when the shot was fired. The entire country knew it and probably half of the world. As you know, reporters can misquote and make mistakes. Do you really think that Richards didn't know that Hawkes was on the stage? And that not knowing, felt comfortable coming up with-noone was on the stage!
Another again, Richards knew that Grant wasn't there that night. I wouldn't rule out that in the surreal first moments after the shot a few people may have thought of Grant since killing the president was unimaginable. This part of Richard's account only makes it more credible.
Not surprising that Stewart didn't mention Richards. He wanted to be the hero or almost hero.
The McDevitt issue was interesting in the way it evolved over time in the letters and that Richards concluded that there were two visits by police that night, the first was Richards without McDevitt. I certainly understand why you want to invalidate Richards since his observations don't support Mary who you depict as a romance heroine on the cover of Hanging Mary. I didn't know who it was at first because I didn't realize that Mary had blonde ringlets.

I don't particularly want to "invalidate Richards." I just find it rather hard to believe that it took a man in his position 20 years to mention such critical evidence of Mary's guilt when Secretary Stanton would have been quite happy to learn of such evidence in 1865. (Weichmann himself would have appreciated knowing of this evidence when he was having his exchange with Brophy that summer.) For that matter, Richards' testimony about being in the theater and about questioning the "colored boy" (his words) would have probably strengthened the case against Spangler. If all of what he recalled in 1885 and afterward was true, it certainly doesn't say much for Richards' competence that he failed to bring it to the government's attention at the time of the trial. I see no reason why the government would have suppressed evidence that was favorable to its case.

My book cover was designed by the publisher, not by me (authors, except for self-published authors, have little say in cover design), and the idea in designing a cover for a historical novel is not to literally depict a historical figure but to evoke a mood and draw the reader's eye.