Identification of Booth's body

[mikegriffith1]

(09-21-2018 09:28 PM)SSlater Wrote:  I have a problem with the refusal to allow an identification of John Wilkes Booth's body.
There is no problem with who shot Lincoln, but there is some question with the identification of the corpse of the person who was said to have shot Lincoln.
The trouble began when the corpse first reached Washington in the custody of the Military. Apparently, there was no embalming of the corpse, so there were problems making an unquestionable identification. A Doctor was called in and because he had treated Booth, he said "Yep! that's him", but others who "knew" Booth - were not questioned.
The body was then interred. (still no record of embalming). As time went on, the body was disinterred, and moved to a new burial site. At some point the body was exhumed and sent on a Circus Circuit. ( Of course this has never been confirmed, but we are led to believe - he was.), resulting in another burial.
I can easily understand why the family of John Wilkes Booth would question the true identity of the body being exploited, so they asked for an up-to-date, DNA confirmation, that this WAS Booth. The government said NO!. Are they afraid of the possible results? Are they sure of known, unacceptable, results?

The more I've studied the identification of the corpse from the barn, the more skeptical I've become.

Why did Lt. Baker run off with the body for over three hours, against Lt. Doherty's express orders? Why did he want to be alone with the body for so long? To change the clothes from the gray clothes that Boyd was wearing to dark clothes? To write Booth's initials on Boyd's left hand?

Speaking of Booth's tattoo, why didn't the autopsy report mention the tattoo? Only the hotel clerk mentioned seeing the tattoo on the corpse, correct? I find it very odd that the autopsy doctor made no mention of it.

When Dr. May first saw the body, he stated that it looked nothing like Booth and that he could not believe it was Booth.

Even when May got talked into going along with the ID of the body as Booth, he insisted that the change in appearance was unlike any he had ever seen and that the body he saw had freckles. He also said that the *right* leg was broken, whereas Booth broke his left ankle.

Why was only one autopsy photo taken of the body? And why did that photo quickly disappear? How do you "lose" such a historic piece of evidence?

Why wasn't anyone who knew Booth well asked to identify the body? Some of his fellow conspirators were on the Montauk, yet none of them were asked to ID the body.

Contrary to traditional myth, Booth's dentist did not ID the body, much less on the basis of dental records. There is no record that Dr. Merrill was even there, and there is no identification of the body in any of the official records on the case.

Here is my first stab at an article on this issue:

http://miketgriffith.com/files/boothescaped.pdf