New Development in Booth Case Coming Soon

[Steve]

(04-18-2019 07:06 PM)L Verge Wrote:  One question - what is the history of glass (fake) eyes? Were they around in 1903?

They've been around since at least Shakespeare's time:

Get thee glass eyes;
And like a scurvy politician, seem
To see the things thou dost not.

King Lear, Act IV Scene 6

[Gene C]

(04-18-2019 07:06 PM)L Verge Wrote:  One question - what is the history of glass (fake) eyes? Were they around in 1903?

Not sure of the history of the glass eye, but you must be forgetting your movie history. Remember this western with Dean Martin, "The Sons of Katy Elder"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvCm0SITe4U

[Eva Elisabeth]

http://wordpress.artificialeyeclinic.com/history/
The site isn't as informative on the entire history as some German sites I found but better and interesting as for the US history...however, the oldest artificial eye found - not of made of glass, but of tar and animal fat, was found in the body of a ca. 25 yrs old female who died ca. 4800 yrs ago in Schahr-e Suchte in Iran.
PS: Nowadays they are mostly made of plastic, but Glas is still the best material (least side effects, micro lesions etc.). The problem is that you need real artists to make them, who are rare and which makes them way more expensive.

[mikegriffith1]

Here are some articles on the facial recognition analysis, including the article that I mentioned earlier:

https://www.philly.com/news/john-wilkes-...90415.html

https://www.monstersandcritics.com/small...oth-mummy/

[L Verge]

Quote from Ramy Romany regarding the hunt for JWB: "If John Wilkes Booth got away with the most notorious crime in American history, that is ludicrous."

Back to the photos of the mummy of David E. George: Am I the only one who thinks that the George mummy, fully dressed and sitting upright in a chair at Penniman's mortuary in Enid, Oklahoma, is not the same mummy as the one that is shown naked from the torso up and lying flat? The shape of the head and the facial features just don't seem to match to my untrained eye.

One more comment about the mummy and the carnival circuit: The point was made about the heavy concentration of arsenic that was used by Mr. Penniman in the process of preserving Mr. George. Some experts like Dr. John K. Lattimer often commented on how toxic that body was and that maybe that is one of the reasons it "disappeared" into private hands after WWII when railroads might have refused to ship it as part of the carnival circuit. There is one source that mentions the early carnival days when the owners carried it around in a typical carnival wagon and slept with it between them at night in that same wagon.

P.S. Would have loved to know Nate Orolowek's thoughts once the mummy hunt by Ramy Romany failed. Of course, Nate does not hang his whole theory on the mummy being Booth. Since he was a teenager, he has supposedly tracked a variety of other JWBs around the country. To me, so many stories of a variety of "Booth" escapees only lessens the chances that the assassin escaped.

[Gene C]

Anyone who watched the show, did they reach a conclusion?
I didn't watch it.

[LincolnMan]

I missed it too.

[RJNorton]

I saw the very end of the show. Ramy Romany interviews a human remains collector who gave his name as "Robert." The interview goes smoothly until Romany asks "Robert" about the Booth mummy. "Robert" says he has seen the mummy since the 1970s, but he won't say if he owns it or not. Romany tries to nail "Robert" down, but "Robert" says the time is not right to give out information about where the mummy is, etc. Romany is disappointed and leaves "Robert's" house in a hurry. The viewer is left believing "Robert" knows a lot more than he is willing to say (assuming "Robert" is telling the truth about what little information he was willing to give out).

[L Verge]

(04-28-2019 09:11 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  I saw the very end of the show. Ramy Romany interviews a human remains collector who gave his name as "Robert." The interview goes smoothly until Romany asks "Robert" about the Booth mummy. "Robert" says he has seen the mummy since the 1970s, but he won't say if he owns it or not. Romany tries to nail "Robert" down, but "Robert" says the time is not right to give out information about where the mummy is, etc. Romany is disappointed and leaves "Robert's" house in a hurry. The viewer is left believing "Robert" knows a lot more than he is willing to say (assuming "Robert" is telling the truth about what little information he was willing to give out).

The "teaser" information leading up to the show led in the direction that facial recognition computer programs would be used to "prove" that supposed photos of John St. Helen and David E. George that have been in circulation for over a century were indeed of Booth. The outcome on TV basically said there was a possibility, but no proof. Romany asked the expert what would prove it, and the reply was "DNA," of course.

From there, the original premise of the show went down the drain and the remaining time was spent upholding the purpose of the show -- finding the mummy! After all, the title of this series is "Mummies Unwrapped."

Personally, I found the remainder of the show rather disgusting as the cameras took us to a personal museum in Texas where all sorts of desecrated human specimens are displayed and finally to Silver Spring, Maryland, where the Booth mummy supposedly once resided -- all this leading up to a climax where the most disgusting mummy of all was found in a "secret place" within the family home and covered with a white sheet. The sheet was drawn back to reveal what I guess was a human once upon a time.

With that, our mummy chaser feigned disgust and disappointment, left the house in a huff, and that ended the show. Once again, history is made to look ridiculous to the average viewer, imo.

[wpbinzel]

Re: the facial recognition "match." As one who has been follically-challenged since his 20s, I am especially impressed how the balding Booth on the right managed to fill in his receded temples 20+ years later in life. He must have been a client of Ye Olde Hare Clubb for Menne....

[mikegriffith1]

The Discovery Channel and the Philadelphia Inquirer's information on the facial recognition analysis of Booth and St. Helen is starting to get picked up by other news sources. Here's an interesting article on it from the UK newspaper The Daily Mail:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...iases.html

EXCERPT:

Quote:New evidence uncovered by facial recognition technology appears to show that Booth lived for decades under an assumed identity after he shot Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865.

The conventional historiography holds that Booth was shot dead by Union soldiers five days after the assassination inside a barn on a farm in Virginia.

But an investigator with the Discovery Channel series Mummies Unwrapped says that modern-day face recognition technology shows that Booth’s face matched with that of two other men - John St. Helen and David E. George. . . .

While Booth is purported to have died in 1865, the image of St. Helen was from 1877. The picture used of George was from 1902.

St. Helen was considered a near perfect match.

The facial recognition software analyzes features like the spaces between the eyes, jaw lines, and the shapes of the noses and cheek bones.

Just before St. Helen is purported to have died in 1877, he told Finis L. Bates, an acquaintance of his in Granbury, Texas: ‘I am dying. My name is John Wilkes Booth, and I am the assassin of President Lincoln.’

I was very skeptical about Bates's claims because he said Booth told him that Andrew Johnson was behind the plot and that Johnson wanted to have Lincoln killed in order to protect the South from being exploited in a harsh reconstruction. Of course, that's nonsense. Lincoln had no intention of imposing anything like Radical Reconstruction on the South--quite the opposite. So when I read this in Bates's book, I became very skeptical.

Lately, however, it has occurred to me that if Booth was a double-agent and was in league with the Radicals, it would make sense that he would spin a yarn to blame Johnson as the man behind the assassination. Or, Booth might have said this because he wanted to avoid provoking the Radicals and because he knew it would be politically acceptable to blame Johnson.

[L Verge]

(04-30-2019 04:54 PM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  The Discovery Channel and the Philadelphia Inquirer's information on the facial recognition analysis of Booth and St. Helen is starting to get picked up by other news sources. Here's an interesting article on it from the UK newspaper The Daily Mail:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...iases.html

EXCERPT:

Quote:New evidence uncovered by facial recognition technology appears to show that Booth lived for decades under an assumed identity after he shot Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865.

The conventional historiography holds that Booth was shot dead by Union soldiers five days after the assassination inside a barn on a farm in Virginia.

But an investigator with the Discovery Channel series Mummies Unwrapped says that modern-day face recognition technology shows that Booth’s face matched with that of two other men - John St. Helen and David E. George. . . .

While Booth is purported to have died in 1865, the image of St. Helen was from 1877. The picture used of George was from 1902.

St. Helen was considered a near perfect match.

The facial recognition software analyzes features like the spaces between the eyes, jaw lines, and the shapes of the noses and cheek bones.

Just before St. Helen is purported to have died in 1877, he told Finis L. Bates, an acquaintance of his in Granbury, Texas: ‘I am dying. My name is John Wilkes Booth, and I am the assassin of President Lincoln.’

I was very skeptical about Bates's claims because he said Booth told him that Andrew Johnson was behind the plot and that Johnson wanted to have Lincoln killed in order to protect the South from being exploited in a harsh reconstruction. Of course, that's nonsense. Lincoln had no intention of imposing anything like Radical Reconstruction on the South--quite the opposite. So when I read this in Bates's book, I became very skeptical.

Lately, however, it has occurred to me that if Booth was a double-agent and was in league with the Radicals, it would make sense that he would spin a yarn to blame Johnson as the man behind the assassination. Or, Booth might have said this because he wanted to avoid provoking the Radicals and because he knew it would be politically acceptable to blame Johnson.

Have you read Jerry Madonna's interesting book?

[Gene C]

I finally saw the show Mummies Unwrapped, about the Booth mummy the other night, which reminds me of a song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYbavuRe...rt_radio=1

[LincolnMan]

Gene: yup - that’s the look. It was kind of cute for a very short while but has long since lost it’s appeal-at least for me.

[mikegriffith1]

(04-20-2019 01:26 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Quote from Ramy Romany regarding the hunt for JWB: "If John Wilkes Booth got away with the most notorious crime in American history, that is ludicrous."

Back to the photos of the mummy of David E. George: Am I the only one who thinks that the George mummy, fully dressed and sitting upright in a chair at Penniman's mortuary in Enid, Oklahoma, is not the same mummy as the one that is shown naked from the torso up and lying flat? The shape of the head and the facial features just don't seem to match to my untrained eye.

One more comment about the mummy and the carnival circuit: The point was made about the heavy concentration of arsenic that was used by Mr. Penniman in the process of preserving Mr. George. Some experts like Dr. John K. Lattimer often commented on how toxic that body was and that maybe that is one of the reasons it "disappeared" into private hands after WWII when railroads might have refused to ship it as part of the carnival circuit. There is one source that mentions the early carnival days when the owners carried it around in a typical carnival wagon and slept with it between them at night in that same wagon.

P.S. Would have loved to know Nate Orolowek's thoughts once the mummy hunt by Ramy Romany failed. Of course, Nate does not hang his whole theory on the mummy being Booth. Since he was a teenager, he has supposedly tracked a variety of other JWBs around the country. To me, so many stories of a variety of "Booth" escapees only lessens the chances that the assassin escaped.

Are you going to address the fact that the facial recognition analysis found that "George’s photo was nearly a perfect match with Booth’s, within the top 1 percent of those bearing similar facial features" according to researchers who worked with the creator of the New York Police Department’s first dedicated facial-recognition unit? What’s more, "he was within one pixel of having the same eye structure."

Are you ever going to get around to dealing with the specific results of the facial recognition analysis? Just curious.

"Within the top 1 percent" means the match was 99%, give or take a small fraction. The match with George was 99%; the match with St. Helen was 95%. Considering that facial recognition analysis measures features like the spaces between the eyes, jaw lines, and the shapes of the noses and cheek bones, this is an amazing correspondence. In criminal cases, a 95% correspondence is considered a positive match and evidence that can be presented in court.

Could this be why your side fought so hard to keep relatives and skeptical researchers from getting Booth's alleged body exhumed for a facial recognition analysis? Your party-line scholars came out of the woodwork to oppose this effort. Gee, why was that? Perhaps because they, and you, feared the results would destroy your myths about Lincoln's killer?

If the scientific evidence discussed in the Discovery Channel documentary somehow isn't good enough for you, why don't you call for a DNA analysis of the alleged Booth spinal section held by the government with DNA from Edwin Booth? The results would absolutely establish beyond dispute whether the spinal section belonged to JWB. Researchers pushed for this before, but the AFIP came up with the lame excuse that the test would "damage" the spine, even though the sample would have been only 0.4 grams of the spine. 0.4 grams is only 0.014 ounces, or only 1.4% of 1 ounce. By way of comparison, a grain of salt weighs 0.0023 ounces. So we’re talking about a fragment of bone that would have been no more than 7 grains of salt combined.

Who in the devil cares if 0.014 ounces of bone is removed from a spinal section that nobody ever comes to see anyway? What are they "saving" it for? No one would be able to tell if 0.014 ounces of bone had been removed from the spinal section. We all know that you guys don't want that spinal section tested because you're afraid the results will further destroy your myths about the case.