Identification of Booth's body

[mikegriffith1]

(10-25-2018 09:44 PM)AussieMick Wrote:  Mike , I do think that you need to provide a reason why so many people would have been willing to, and knowingly, take the very risky course of claiming the body as being Booth when it wasnt him. Even if a few were dupes and only following the assertions of others, there must have been some that did it knowingly and criminally. Why would they do that?

The risk of being caught out would have been enormous ... why? and for what? As a reward him for killing Lincoln? To enable Booth to live a life in Canada or overseas or out West? Hoping he'd keep quiet and not be dobbed in (exposed) ? Hope that your co-conspirators could lie convincingly and keep their nerve? Plan to have him killed somewhere quiet? (Again, high risk and high chance of him not going quietly).

I do not get this argument at all. What "risk" was there? How were they at "risk" of "being caught" when they were being asked--or coerced--to ID the body as Booty by the likes of Holt and Baker, i.e., the Judge Advocate General of the United States and the head of the National Detective Police?

You need to keep in mind that several of these "witnesses," such as Montauk crew members Crowninshield and Collins, probably not only did not know Booth but had never laid eyes on him, and were simply tagged on the spot to "identify" the body as Booth.

Holt knew that some of Booth's accomplices were below deck and also on the nearby Saugus. He could have quickly and easily summoned them to view the body. But, for obvious reasons, he declined to do so. Similarly, many theater workers who had known Booth for years could have been summoned to view the body, but they were not called either.

Dawson, the hotel clerk, admitted that he was only as familiar with Booth as he was with other guests at the hotel, i.e., only casually and briefly. He was clearly trying to be a team player: Not only was he the one and only ID witness who told Holt that day that he had seen the initials on the body when he had viewed the body a short time earlier on the boat, but he was the only non-medical witness who told Holt that he noticed the scar on the neck that day. Wow! Super Witness!

Is it not very baffling, then, that this sharp-eyed clerk failed to notice the scar on the side of the face, the scar under the right arm, and the eyebrow scar, as well as the other scars that should have been on the body if the body was Booth? This is not to mention the fact that Dawson must have said nothing about the initials to any of the people who were hovering around the body when he viewed it, because nobody else whom Holt interviewed that day knew anything about any initials on the body.

Two of the other "witnesses" were Lafayette Baker henchmen Luther Baker, who had run off with the body for hours, and Everton Conger, who had dashed back to Washington to make sure he got credit to secure a large chunk of the huge reward being offered. I mean, really?