Breaking a leg

[Gene C]

Bill, I appreciate the explaination because I've been a "he broke it at the theater" believer. I also thought due to the type of injury, it was more likely something that would occur from the fall to the stage. You've made me reconsider.

[wsanto]

(02-19-2013 02:25 PM)william l. richter Wrote:  ...I will say that my gut tells me that Kauffman is correct. Read his website. Mike Kauffman and I disagree on a lot of things about Booth and the assassination, but there is on thing we agree on completely--Booth was an exaggerator (the guy who played him in Killing Lincoln the other night, or overplayed him according to some, had him down pat. He was a born prevaricator and exaggerator and a showman par excellence.

So, he jumped about 12 feet to the stage, was thrown off-balance and wrenched his back (I am an expert on that one!), mounted his horse (who nearly refused to be mounted and who Booth managed to pull to the left to be thrown into the saddle and nearly ran over Stewart who ran out of Ford's Theater to stop them), talked his way across the bridge at the Navy Yard, and fell with his horse on Sopers' Hill, thus suffering one of the most common rider's breaks in his leg, as Kauffman posits, where his companion Davy Herold found him and took him to Surrattsville and then Dr. Mudd's place to be treated.

Gut feeling to gut feeling, there you have it. One fabulist to another.

I guess for a lot of us, that are relatively new to this controversy, too much weight is given to Herold's statement. Personally, I believe his statement is much less reliable than Booth's diary. I believe the presumption should be that it is a complete fabrication made-up like the rest of the cover story. They definitely needed an explanation for the injured leg. I believe they traded horses, perhaps on Soper's Hill, because Booth's injury made riding the skittish mare too painful compared to the more stable horse Herold was riding.

Mudd's farmhand claimed that the Mare was injured and, in his words, "lame". But The mare continued on for many more miles to the home of Cox and then to the pine thicket. Neither Swann or Cox made any comment that the horse appeared injured. They probably would have if it was, in fact, lame. The horse was then spotted by Jones in a clearing prior to him coming upon Booth and Herold in the woods. No mention that the horse appeared injured or "lame" by Jones either. He was the last to ever see the horse besides Herold himself.

Now to the great unanswered questions that needs an explanation-- How did the investigators in Bryantown (Wood) become convinced that Booth injured his leg in the leap to the stage and that the horse fall was a cover story prior to knowing the contents of Booth's diary? By then they had interviewed Lloyd and Mudd and Mudd's farmhand. But they still discount all those statements supporting the horse-fall theory and become convinced of the stage-leap theory. Why?

Then Booth validates the stage-leap theory unknowingly by entering it into his diary.

Jones also believes the stage-leap theory in his recollection of his direct contact with Booth for the week Jones is caring for him in the pines.

[Bill Richter]

How about Mudd told Woods about the leg at the Old Cap? Or those Yanks who questioned him at Bryantown did?

Jones is another guy who knows how to cover up the truth and did so many times in his book. See Rick Smith's "The Owens Statement" in the Surratt Courier or Steers, His Name Is Still Mudd

I wouldn't believe Booth either. But he had style, whether on the stage or writing in his diary

"Lame" is a relative term that a little exercise might cure.

[jonathan]

(02-19-2013 02:25 PM)william l. richter Wrote:  All right, Jonathan, you want to go with your gut. Fair enough. Now let's go with my gut.

I am 71 years old. I have worked with horses and mules for 50 years as a wrangler, a mule skinner, and a trail repairman at the Grand Canyon, down in and on top along the rim. I have spent the last 35 years as a professional farrier. I have been run over, kicked, stomped on, had the leather of my boot stripped right off my foot, bitten, and been bucked off of some of the best stock this Arizona countryside has to offer. I have seen all sorts of wrecks (horse and mule accidents to you dudes), and been in many others. I am so stove up I can barely walk. I have had horseshoe nails drawn through my hands right down to the bone with the fat and tissue from my hand left deposited in my palm. My back has been jerked out so many times, it is a chiropractor's dream.

I will say that my gut tells me that Kauffman is correct. Read his website. Mike Kauffman and I disagree on a lot of things about Booth and the assassination, but there is on thing we agree on completely--Booth was an exaggerator (the guy who played him in Killing Lincoln the other night, or overplayed him according to some, had him down pat. He was a born prevaricator and exaggerator and a showman par excellence.

So, he jumped about 12 feet to the stage, was thrown off-balance and wrenched his back (I am an expert on that one!), mounted his horse (who nearly refused to be mounted and who Booth managed to pull to the left to be thrown into the saddle and nearly ran over Stewart who ran out of Ford's Theater to stop them), talked his way across the bridge at the Navy Yard, and fell with his horse on Sopers' Hill, thus suffering one of the most common rider's breaks in his leg, as Kauffman posits, where his companion Davy Herold found him and took him to Surrattsville and then Dr. Mudd's place to be treated.

Gut feeling to gut feeling, there you have it. One fabulist to another.

And I'm 43 and I've torn my knee up, had ligaments messed up, fallen from about 7 feet with all of my weight slamming down onto my shoulder, had the other shoulder pop out of socket a bunch of times and had to shove it back in myself, had concussions, fallen out of a pecan tree, worked on a tobacco farm and had different injuries and ailments with that. So we've both been beat up our fair share. I've got some problem with my shoulder for the last year where I can swing a bat as hard as I want and don't feel anything, but when I try to throw a ball too hard it hurts like hell. My point in mentioning sports injuries was that I have seen and experienced first hand a wide variety of injuries (to myself and others) that can be worked and played through. I believe that Booth's was one such injury.

I've been to Kauffman's website, in fact I addressed several of his points in my earlier post. I've also read American Brutus a couple of times and gone back and watched him on those c-span specials from a while back. I thoroughly enjoyed all of that. I'm just saying that the arguments made come up a little bit short for me. Anything Herold said has to be viewed suspiciously, as does anything that came from anybody at the Mudd residence. We don't know that Booth didn't have a little limp when he was crossing the stage, we don't know that he had trouble mounting his horse, and we don't know that he wasn't in pain crossing the Navy Yard Bridge. All we have is some people who didn't notice anything obvious. It's just not enough for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm open to the possibility that the leg was broken from a horse fall, and I find it pretty interesting. And I may change my mind one day, but not today.

[Rick Smith]

(02-19-2013 04:47 PM)jonathan Wrote:  

(02-19-2013 02:25 PM)william l. richter Wrote:  All right, Jonathan, you want to go with your gut. Fair enough. Now let's go with my gut.

I am 71 years old. I have worked with horses and mules for 50 years as a wrangler, a mule skinner, and a trail repairman at the Grand Canyon, down in and on top along the rim. I have spent the last 35 years as a professional farrier. I have been run over, kicked, stomped on, had the leather of my boot stripped right off my foot, bitten, and been bucked off of some of the best stock this Arizona countryside has to offer. I have seen all sorts of wrecks (horse and mule accidents to you dudes), and been in many others. I am so stove up I can barely walk. I have had horseshoe nails drawn through my hands right down to the bone with the fat and tissue from my hand left deposited in my palm. My back has been jerked out so many times, it is a chiropractor's dream.

I will say that my gut tells me that Kauffman is correct. Read his website. Mike Kauffman and I disagree on a lot of things about Booth and the assassination, but there is on thing we agree on completely--Booth was an exaggerator (the guy who played him in Killing Lincoln the other night, or overplayed him according to some, had him down pat. He was a born prevaricator and exaggerator and a showman par excellence.

So, he jumped about 12 feet to the stage, was thrown off-balance and wrenched his back (I am an expert on that one!), mounted his horse (who nearly refused to be mounted and who Booth managed to pull to the left to be thrown into the saddle and nearly ran over Stewart who ran out of Ford's Theater to stop them), talked his way across the bridge at the Navy Yard, and fell with his horse on Sopers' Hill, thus suffering one of the most common rider's breaks in his leg, as Kauffman posits, where his companion Davy Herold found him and took him to Surrattsville and then Dr. Mudd's place to be treated.

Gut feeling to gut feeling, there you have it. One fabulist to another.

And I'm 43 and I've torn my knee up, had ligaments messed up, fallen from about 7 feet with all of my weight slamming down onto my shoulder, had the other shoulder pop out of socket a bunch of times and had to shove it back in myself, had concussions, fallen out of a pecan tree, worked on a tobacco farm and had different injuries and ailments with that. So we've both been beat up our fair share. I've got some problem with my shoulder for the last year where I can swing a bat as hard as I want and don't feel anything, but when I try to throw a ball too hard it hurts like hell. My point in mentioning sports injuries was that I have seen and experienced first hand a wide variety of injuries (to myself and others) that can be worked and played through. I believe that Booth's was one such injury.

I've been to Kauffman's website, in fact I addressed several of his points in my earlier post. I've also read American Brutus a couple of times and gone back and watched him on those c-span specials from a while back. I thoroughly enjoyed all of that. I'm just saying that the arguments made come up a little bit short for me. Anything Herold said has to be viewed suspiciously, as does anything that came from anybody at the Mudd residence. We don't know that Booth didn't have a little limp when he was crossing the stage, we don't know that he had trouble mounting his horse, and we don't know that he wasn't in pain crossing the Navy Yard Bridge. All we have is some people who didn't notice anything obvious. It's just not enough for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm open to the possibility that the leg was broken from a horse fall, and I find it pretty interesting. And I may change my mind one day, but not today.

How many of you have had the experience of bringing an 1100 lb horse under control while in the hunt field? I have several times. My family raised thoroughbred horses and we were fox hunters. If you come out of your saddle in the hunt field, meaning out in the wide open spaces, your animal tends to be more difficult to bring under control to remount. Thoroughbreds tend to be highstrung and are uncooperative especially at the times when you most need cooperation. Bringing a large and excited animal under control so that it can be remounted is difficult if no part of your anatomy is injured; bringing one under control, as Booth was trying to do in Baptist Alley, if his leg was broken at the theatre, would be almost impossible.

Rick

[Jim Garrett]

(02-19-2013 02:25 PM)william l. richter Wrote:  All right, Jonathan, you want to go with your gut. Fair enough. Now let's go with my gut.

I am 71 years old. I have worked with horses and mules for 50 years as a wrangler, a mule skinner, and a trail repairman at the Grand Canyon, down in and on top along the rim. I have spent the last 35 years as a professional farrier. I have been run over, kicked, stomped on, had the leather of my boot stripped right off my foot, bitten, and been bucked off of some of the best stock this Arizona countryside has to offer. I have seen all sorts of wrecks (horse and mule accidents to you dudes), and been in many others. I am so stove up I can barely walk. I have had horseshoe nails drawn through my hands right down to the bone with the fat and tissue from my hand left deposited in my palm. My back has been jerked out so many times, it is a chiropractor's dream.

I will say that my gut tells me that Kauffman is correct. Read his website. Mike Kauffman and I disagree on a lot of things about Booth and the assassination, but there is on thing we agree on completely--Booth was an exaggerator (the guy who played him in Killing Lincoln the other night, or overplayed him according to some, had him down pat. He was a born prevaricator and exaggerator and a showman par excellence.

So, he jumped about 12 feet to the stage, was thrown off-balance and wrenched his back (I am an expert on that one!), mounted his horse (who nearly refused to be mounted and who Booth managed to pull to the left to be thrown into the saddle and nearly ran over Stewart who ran out of Ford's Theater to stop them), talked his way across the bridge at the Navy Yard, and fell with his horse on Sopers' Hill, thus suffering one of the most common rider's breaks in his leg, as Kauffman posits, where his companion Davy Herold found him and took him to Surrattsville and then Dr. Mudd's place to be treated.

Gut feeling to gut feeling, there you have it. One fabulist to another.

So tell me how you really feel!

[jonathan]

(02-19-2013 05:03 PM)Rick Smith Wrote:  Bringing a large and excited animal under control so that it can be remounted is difficult if no part of your anatomy is injured; bringing one under control, as Booth was trying to do in Baptist Alley, if his leg was broken at the theatre, would be almost impossible.

Rick

Even if the injury was of a nature that it was causing minimal discomfort in the moments after being sustained? Had he snapped a femur in two I'd be right there with you. That's the whole argument, that the injury was unnoticed or virtually unnoticed in the moments when Booth was escaping the theater and mounting the horse. I just feel that the adrenaline/excitement/fear factor has to be respected. And we have to consider, as has been said before, that it's very possible that there was an initial injury at the theater, which was aggravated later. Maybe mounting the horse was the thing that aggravated it. And just maybe he didn't hurt himself at all at the theater, but his horse fell on him.

[JMadonna]

So you're saying that booth's the kind of guy who would tell a girl in a bar that he had an old football injury rather than admit he slipped on dog feces on the way in?

Been there, done that.

[L Verge]

Do we discount the number of trained, medical doctors who have told me and others that the fibula is not a weight-bearing bone and that breaking it would still enable one - especially being driven by adrenaline - to run and mount a horse? Do we also discard the time that Booth continued a performance on stage after being stabbed with a sword?

I have a twelve-foot stepladder. Which one of you wants to volunteer to jump and break your fibula while wearing high boots and then see if you can run maybe fifty feet and mount a horse?

---

It just dawned on me that the telegrams that Dave Taylor quoted earlier in this thread were all dated April 23. That was the day BEFORE Dr. Mudd was arrested. Someone had mentioned that Wood might have been told something by Mudd while in the Old Capitol. The dates rule that out. I still think that Wood had access to a statement made by someone in the theater - a statement that has now been lost or not yet located.

[Gene C]

(02-19-2013 06:56 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I have a twelve-foot stepladder. Which one of you wants to volunteer to jump and break your fibula while wearing high boots and then see if you can run maybe fifty feet and mount a horse?

I still like Jim Garrett and Dave Taylor's reenactment plan on post 166

[jonathan]

(02-19-2013 07:19 PM)Gene C Wrote:  

(02-19-2013 06:56 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I have a twelve-foot stepladder. Which one of you wants to volunteer to jump and break your fibula while wearing high boots and then see if you can run maybe fifty feet and mount a horse?

I still like Jim Garrett and Dave Taylor's reenactment plan on post 166

I agree, sounds like a sweeeet plan. I volunteer to play the part of Cobb.

[Dave Taylor]

(02-19-2013 07:19 PM)Gene C Wrote:  

(02-19-2013 06:56 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I have a twelve-foot stepladder. Which one of you wants to volunteer to jump and break your fibula while wearing high boots and then see if you can run maybe fifty feet and mount a horse?

I still like Jim Garrett and Dave Taylor's reenactment plan on post 166

The things I do for the sake of research. Ok, have Jim get the pipe to bash my leg with...

[L Verge]

Have you cleared that with Lindsey yet? I'm not going to give her time off to nurse maid you...

[Dave Taylor]

Laurie,

Wood wasn't at Old. Cap. during this time. He was in Bryantown as part of the investigation. Mudd gave his statements on the 21st and 22nd. Wood must have learned about them and read that Mudd stated Booth told him the horse fell on him.

[L Verge]

Dave, I was referring to what someone else had posted that Wood could have heard something from someone in Old Capitol. I know that Wood was in Bryantown and I think he knew about the stage break from something in the papers piling up in the investigations in D.C. He had either read or been told something before heading into Charles County or was told something by someone in the know around Bryantown. He had not read the diary. He just didn't pull the story out of thin air that the leg had been broken at the theater.