Identification of Booth's body

[mikegriffith1]

(12-16-2018 09:48 AM)tom82baur Wrote:  

(12-15-2018 05:07 PM)Gene C Wrote:  

(12-15-2018 11:22 AM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  Someone noted that Dr. May never said the body was not Booth, that he always claimed to have identified the body as Booth, as if somehow this settles the matter. If that is the standard, then why does not the fact that Dr. Mudd always solemnly swore that he did not recognize Booth when Booth stayed at his house with a broken ankle settle the matter?

First off, in point of fact, Dr. May did not always identify the body as Booth. By Dr. May’s own admission in his 1887 article, when he first saw the body on the Montauk, he insisted that it bore no resemblance to Booth and that he could not believe it was Booth. Dr. May’s statement is supported by Lawrence Gardner, who said the following in his 1891 article:

On removing the tarpaulin from the body, we were all struck by the lack of any resemblance to Booth. We had a number of photographs [of Booth] with us and endeavored by comparison to find a likeness between the photographs and the body, but there was no resemblance.

Mike you certainly know how to take out of context and misrepresent the truth.
You left out an essential part of Dr. May's 1887 essay, The Mark Of the Scalpel, where he clearly states the body was Booth's.

and this also
"May was asked point blank , "Do you recognize the body of that as John Wilkes Booth......?" May answered, "I do recognize it. I have no doubt it is his body"
(Source - The Lincoln Assassination Encyclopedia, by Edward Steers, p 363)

and this from the same source
The judge advocate general then questioned May while still on board the Monitor
Q. Do you recognize the body of J. Wilkes Booth from it's general appearance, and also from the particular appearance of the scar?
A. I do recognize it, though it is very much altered since I saw Booth. It looks to me much older, and in appearance much more freckled than he was. I have no doubt it is his body. I recognize the features

If the above is accurate, and I have no reason to doubt that it is, then it raises some serious issues which Mr. Griffith needs to address before we go any further. Why, in his 146 previous posts over the post several months, has this information from Dr. May never been mentioned? Please explain.

You need to go back and re-read my reply, part of which you snipped. The part you snipped explained that the original handwritten transcript of May's answer that you quote reveals that he was stumbling over his words. Furthermore, I already stated that, except for his first utterance on the Montauk, May always claimed that he recognized the body as Booth.

As I stated in my reply, you can't just uncritically accept a witness's central claim and ignore his other statements that contradict and cast serious doubt on his central claim. Again, please go back and re-read my reply.

I also notice that you chose not to address the point that L. Gardner said that everyone was "struck" by the body's lack of resemblance to Booth, and that when they compared their photos of Booth to the body, they saw no resemblance, whereas when Rollins was shown a photo of Booth, less than 72 hours before the Montauk autopsy, he had no problem recognizing the photo as being the Booth he had seen on crutches. How do you explain this? What in the world could have happened to the body in less than 72 hours to cause it to sprout freckles, to age markedly, and to become so unrecognizable that everyone on the Montauk was "struck" by its lack of resemblance to Booth?