Mary Lincoln's engraved opera glasses?

[Linda Anderson]

Roger, Kent said in his 1891 interview that he went to his boarding house soon after the body was carried out, discovered his key was missing and went back to the theater where "the interior of the auditorium was deserted."

In his 1909 interview, Kent said that he sat down on Ford's steps and had a good cry. "I started to go for home and discovered I had lost my latch key."

Lawrence Gobright went to Ford's as soon as he had heard of the assassination. Kent gave the pistol to him so it seems like Kent went back to the theater rather quickly.

In American Brutus, Kauffman says that Kent "looked around for someone in authority. Finding no one, he handed the gun over to Gobright, the reporter."

Oddly, Kent said in his 1891 interview that the "interior of the auditorium was deserted" when he went back. In the 1916 article, Kent said after he found the pistol, that he held it up and "called out to the few persons wandering about: 'I have found the pistol!'"

However, Gobright in his book, Recollection of Men and Things at Washington, During the Third of a Century, states that, "A man standing by picked up Booth's pistol from the floor, when I exclaimed to the crowd below that the weapon had been found and placed in my possession."

[RJNorton]

Thank you very much, Linda!! No matter how many folks were or were not there, securing a crime scene has certainly changed since those days.