Original subtitles

Tonight on History's Greatest Mysteries.

He was the actor whose most famous role was assassinating a president.

But was John Wilkes Booth also an escape artist?

I'm Lawrence Fishburne. On tonight's mystery, did John Wilkes Booth evade

justice and live for decades after assassinating Abraham Lincoln?

There was a son born five years after the assassination.

John Wilkes Booth could not have died in the barn and fathered a son five years

later. Did another man die in Booth's place? Booth was able to escape, and the

man in the barn was James Boyd. For the first time, Booth's descendants share

family lore of what they believe is evidence passed down through

Even to lift John Wilkes Booth here as Harry Jerome Stevenson's other father.

Their theories and others will be put to the test, including, for the first

time, Booth family DNA analysis from the autopsy table and the graveyard.

Where John Wilkes Booth was buried was an issue from the very beginning.

Suppose John Wilkes Booth actually isn't buried.

The escape of John Wilkes Booth tonight.

on history's greatest mysteries.

John Wilkes Booth, before he became John Wilkes Booth the Assassinator, had a

lot going for him. He was one of the most popular, if not the most popular,

actors in North America.

Was thought of as being the handsomest man in North America.

I mean, he had huge numbers of female fans who swooned over him.

He had these eyes that were described as black, a very unusual trait.

And it's something that seems to sort of draw you in. He also had a kind of

charisma and power over people, which he was able to use in drawing together

people for his conspiracy.

One of the most difficult things as a historian is to get through to people

different the world was in 1865.

You've got one half of the country.

Fighting against the other half, Washington, D .C., the nation's capital,

right on the line between the two, and it is thoroughly saturated with enemy

sympathizers. John Wilkes Booth identified himself as a Southerner. He

-slavery, anti -black, had racist views, which were quite common at the time.

And by the time of the Civil War, he identified himself firmly as a

who supported secession and opposed the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Booth was crushed that the man he thought was a tyrant had been re

hated Lincoln for conquering southern territory and for emancipating the

Booth's remedy for the presidential tyrant echoes themes in Shakespeare's

Caesar, a play he performed with his brothers.

Caesar has become a tyrant when Brutus comes along for the good of Rome and

kills him.

There's no doubt that John Wilkes Booth was the man who shot Lincoln at Ford's

Theater. He made certain the audience knew he had played the leading role.

Booth wanted to be a hero. He wanted to be the American Brutus. He believed he

was saving his country.

Booth pauses at the center stage and shouts, Thus always to tyrants.

He's saying it in Latin, the language of Julius Caesar and Marcus Brutus, making

it known.

that this is what tyrants get.

This is justice.

John Wilkes Booth has just performed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in

front of an audience of 1 ,500 people. Then he exits heading for the bridge

will take him from Washington to Maryland.

Booth crossed the Navy Yard Bridge into Maryland 20 minutes after shooting

Lincoln. Just over the border... He was joined by 23 -year -old David Herold,

the only one of Booth's co -conspirators to escape with him.

While Booth was assassinating Abraham Lincoln, David Herold and Lewis Powell

were supposed to murder the Secretary of State.

Powell nearly stabbed him to death in his bed.

Herold, who was waiting outside for Powell, got afraid.

The Seward's daughter opened a window and yelled, Help! Murder!

Help! He abandoned Lewis Powell at Seward's house.

David Herold finally catches up to Booth.

And then it's the two of them escaping together from that point on.

Booth and Harold traveled south for 12 days into Virginia until they reached a

farm owned by the Garrett family.

Most historians believe Booth was killed by Union soldiers in the Garretts'

tobacco barn.

We're in Caroline County, Virginia, about two miles south of the town of

Royal. It doesn't look like a historic site.

but as you can see, they've put up a sign about John Wilkes Booth's death.

This is ground zero for one of the greatest crime scenes in history, and we

a body, but as usual, the biggest thing we have to do is ID that body.

Who was pulled out of the barn that night?

Lori Rothschild -Ansaldi is a journalist and producer.

She's teamed with former U .S. Marshal Art Roderick, who spent decades tracking

down criminal fugitives.

Lori is handling the family side, and I'm more on the technical side, looking

forensic document examination, medical examiners, autopsies, photographs,

forensic photography, looking at some of the conspiracy theories that really

fall more into my lane from having almost 40 years in law enforcement.

I was actually approached by the family with their story of how they never

believed that John Wilkes Booth died at Garrett's farm.

They had all this information, things that were passed down from generation to

generation, things that could never be recorded in history books.

They were secrets.

Joanne Hulme is a descendant of the Booth family. She believes John Wilkes

escaped the Union manhunt and lived to father children after 1865.

My great -great -grandmother is John Wilkes Booth's aunt.

And how many siblings does John Wilkes have?

ten children born in the United States, and four of them died during the yellow

fever.

So there's Junius Brutus Booth II, Rosalie Booth, Edwin Thomas Booth,

Asia Booth Clark, John Wilkes Booth, and then Joseph Adrian Booth.

I was between 11 and 12 years old.

And my mother said, so you're going into sixth grade and you're going to study

about the Civil War.

And they're going to tell you that John Wilkes Booth was shot and died in the

barn. And she said, that is not true. He escaped the barn. He lived for many

years. He had a family. That is when my life changed. And maybe I think a part

of my innocence was lost forever.

But if Joanne's family lore is right.

then accepted history must be rewritten, especially the accounts of what

happened that fateful night at Garrett's farm.

On April 24th at about 2 p .m., Booth and Harold made contact with a trio of

Confederate cavalry men who accompanied the fugitives as they were ferried

across the Rappahannock River.

Then he's taken to the farm of Richard Garrett.

Now, the Garretts don't know who Booth is. They're told, these are Confederates

going home, they need your help.

The first night they're there, the Gerrits take them in. They let them

the house. The next day, a cavalry patrol comes near the Gerrit family.

The Gerrit family sees Booth and Harold run for cover.

So now they're thinking, what have these men done?

They tell them, you can't sleep in the house tonight.

You've done something.

You can sleep in our tobacco barn. Right.

But they don't realize as soon as they go inside and go to bed, the Gerrits

them into the tobacco barn.

Most historians say Booth and Harold were locked in the tobacco barn and

couldn't escape when Union troops arrived.

When soldiers set fire to the barn to smoke them out, Harold gave himself up.

Moments later, Booth was shot, dragged from the flaming barn, and later died.

But Joanne Hume doubts that account.

There's hundreds and hundreds of books talking about a tobacco barn.

I don't understand why historians then question this more.

Tobacco barn is made for drying tobacco.

It's not made for keeping people in.

Any one of us could escape from a tobacco barn without detection.

This is a frame, circa 1900 or so, tobacco shed.

What's the difference between a tobacco shed and a tobacco barn?

geographically, basically.

They call tobacco buildings different in different areas, but this is basically

a shed here. And it has these vertical ventilators here that help dry out the

product inside.

But in around April, the end of April, in Virginia, the barn would have been

cleaned out at that point. By a few months.

Can a human be locked into a tobacco barn? Are those lots...

Very heavy to move.

Couldn't they just kick it out or push it out from the inside? Relatively easy

to pivot on their hinges.

We see a couple different attachments here to kind of secure this.

Yeah. You've got the wooden flap that spins on one nail. Right. If you're

to get out, that looks like a pretty easy way to... But the thing of it is,

you have 25 vertical ventilators or something like that, some may be half

It's like a shutter on a house. Right.

Structurally... It's not made to keep anybody in, right?

Well, no. In other words, it's not made. No, it's not a jail. Yeah, exactly.

You've got two desperate fugitives. They're on the run, obviously, from one

the most heinous crimes ever done in the United States up until that point in

time.

They're in the barn. They're aware that there's Union troops are coming down the

road. They've probably got about 10, 15 minutes to figure out what the heck to

do. If they're locked in here, do you think they could have got out of this?

Yes. My own opinion, yes.

So why wouldn't the most wanted men in the country simply push their way out of

that tobacco barn?

It's the first of many questions about what truly happened to John Wilkes

Twelve days after assassinating President Lincoln, John Wilkes

Booth was locked in a tobacco barn at the Garrett Farm with co -conspirator

David Herold.

When Union cavalry set a fire to smoke them out, Harold surrendered.

But Booth was shot, dragged from the burning barn, and later died.

Case closed, justice served.

Or was it?

My cousins grew up with the same story, that John Wilkes Booth was not the body

in the barn.

Some Booth family members believe John Wilkes was not the man killed that night

at Garrett's farm.

And they cite various reasons.

There's the enduring claim that as David Harold surrendered, He said that the

man in the barn was not Booth.

And the fact that, at the official autopsy, Dr. John Frederick May, the man

brought in to identify the body, did not recognize it as Booth's.

That's significant to Dr. Robert Arnold, who has written about the

assassination. When May first saw the corpse, he said, that's not Booth, and I

have no reason to believe this could ever be the man.

But if John Wilkes Booth escaped, where did he go?

According to Booth family lore, he reunited with a woman named Martha

someone they believe was his wife.

Author Troy Cowan, who wrote a book about Izola, agrees.

Historians have ignored the marriage to John Wilkes Booth because they kept it a

secret and nobody knew about it.

Some members of the Booth family believe Booth and Martha Izola had a daughter

named Ogarita.

Ogarita was born nine months after they were married in 1859.

As the story goes, After the assassination, Booth and Martha Izola

India, leaving their daughter behind.

After a very short stay, they decided to return to the United States.

That is what some Booth family members and others believe. There's evidence

Martha Izola did get married, but not to Booth.

According to court records, she married a man named John Stevenson in 1871.

The couple had a son named Harry Jerome Stevenson.

But according to Booth family lore, that marriage was a cover story to conceal

the fact that Harry Jerome Stevenson's real father was John Wilkes Booth.

Is that accepted that it was John Wilkes Booth's child? In our family and among

historians, or not, it's going by the general accepted history.

This story was published in a 1937 book by Ogarita's daughter, Izola Forrester,

Harry Jerome Stevenson's niece.

Thirty years earlier, a Tennessee lawyer named Finnis Bates had written a

different account of Booth's life as a fugitive. According to Bates, Booth made

his way west, where he died in Enid, Oklahoma, in 1903 under the alias David

George. To investigate these different accounts, the team will examine critical

evidence and conduct DNA testing on some possible Booth family members.

It's a process familiar to former U .S. Marshal Art Roderick.

There's been so many books written about John Wilkes Booth. You could spend your

lifetime actually wading through all the different conspiracy theories. And what

we always try to do from the law enforcement perspective is boil it down

facts. The hunt for facts continues at the place where Lincoln was

We're in Ford's Theater on 10th Street in Washington.

This is the place where President Lincoln came on the night of Good

April 14th, 1865.

The previous Sunday, Robert E. Lee had surrendered to General Grant, and the

city had been celebrating all week long.

Mary Lincoln decided to celebrate that evening by attending the popular comic

play, Our American Cousin.

The president, in a joyous mood, agreed to join her.

It wasn't so much the play, it was joining in the celebration of the end of

war. But in the closing months of the Civil War, John Wilkes Booth had

orchestrated an evolving plot against the president.

John Wilkes Booth's first plot against Abraham Lincoln was not to murder him.

was to kidnap him.

He could use Lincoln as a captive to force the North to surrender all the

Confederate prisoners of war.

In the fall of 1864, Booth drew a group of associates into his kidnapping plot.

But on the 18th of January, 1865, the Union government agreed to resume

exchanges with the South.

There was no longer any reason to capture Abraham Lincoln and force them

what, in fact, they were already doing.

Booth was very disappointed. He thought he could perform this masterstroke where

he'd become part of history and change history. Then, on April 3rd, Richmond

fell. Then, news got even worse for Booth.

On April 9th, Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appalachia.

He thought the cause was lost.

When John Luke Booth woke up on the morning of April 14th, 1865, he did not

that he was going to assassinate Abraham Lincoln that night. He went to Ford's

Theater to pick up his mail.

One of the theater employees told Booth that... Abraham Lincoln is planning to

be here tonight. That started the ticking clock in Booth's head. Maybe

still time for me to act. So Booth ticked off in his head, who's still in

Lewis Powell is still here.

George Atzerodt is here. David Harreld is here.

We can do it. He starts making plans not only for an attack on the president,

but also possibly the vice president and certainly the Secretary of State

William Seward.

That afternoon, Booth arrived at Ford's Theater during rehearsal.

He went into the vestibule behind the presidential box, taking with him a

of wood from a music stand that he'd later used to barricade the door.

Once he put that bar in place, no one could follow him into Abraham Lincoln's

box at Ford's Theater.

The play began around 8 o 'clock that night, and John Wilkes Booth...

dropped in from time to time, looking at the clock in the lobby and so on. He

went next door and had a drink, and he had a kind of a last -minute get

-together with Lewis Powell and possibly George Atzerodt. He needed to make sure

his pistol was ready.

He had decided to use a single -shot Derringer pistol.

Maybe Booth thought it was, in his twisted mind, more honorable to take

with a single coup de grace, like a hunter.

Lincoln's entrance to Ford's theater was majestic in its simplicity.

He arrived with no entourage, no armed guards.

We think of security of the president today as completely different than the

it was back then. There was no security detail around the president all the time

like we see now with what the Secret Service does. Lincoln did have a detail

with him that evening from the Metropolitan Police Department.

More than likely, the two main responsibilities he had at most were to

president at the door when he arrived at board, get him to his box. Once the

play was over, then get him from the box.

back to the street even in a city where you have the vast majority of people are

pro -southern they still didn't think it was necessary that you protect the

president william seward once said oh assassination it's not an american habit

or custom that's not going to happen here so john wolk's booth came back in

about 10 o 'clock he comes to the back of the theater and calls out to Ned

Spangler. He wants Spangler to hold his horse for him.

Spangler says, I'm busy.

I'm here working. And so he refuses.

So then Booth gets this young boy by the name of Joseph Burroughs to hold the

horse's reins for him.

And then he goes inside.

Booth is about ready to go into that final stretch.

Booth's path pretty much followed the perimeter of the building, very similar

the path that Lincoln had taken. Oftentimes, people will maybe ask

why on earth would you have let John Wilkes Booth access the president?

Why would you not have? Today, you see celebrities hanging out with

very similar in 1865 as well. One thing I find interesting about Booth is if he

just wanted to kill the president, he could have been sitting back there with

Civil War -era rifle. Making a shot from that distance across the theater would

have been a pretty easy shot with a rifle.

Yeah, but then there would be a chance that somebody else would get credit.

This is the door leading to the vestibule that would have then led to

presidential box.

Booth more than likely gets here during the third act, scene two, of Our

American Cousins. And he knows when he wants to fire the shot because he's

familiar with the play and it's going to be a big burst of laughter and all of

that. So Booth makes his way into the vestibule here, then closes.

The door behind him, picking up the broken music stand that he had placed

earlier, and then wedges this door shut. He is waiting outside the box. He can

see through the hole.

Through that hole, you could see the top of the president's rocker and the

president's head.

Really in perfect position for just simply walking in and firing the shot.

Major Henry Rathbone hears the shot.

The

audience

was stunned and didn't understand what was going on. Booth got to the

front rail and vaulted over, landing down on the stage. That's 12 and a half

feet down.

Booth lands unevenly on the stage and breaks a bone in his left leg.

And after a few seconds, Mrs. Lincoln screamed, and John Wilkes Booth ran off

the stage and went out the back door where Joseph Burroughs was waiting with

horse.

According to some, what happened in the ensuing hours and days didn't play out

the way history books say it did.

As President Lincoln lied dying in a boarding house across the street from

Theater, His assassin fled through Northern Maryland, headed for a tavern

by Mary Surratt.

Booth would have felt comfortable in Maryland and Virginia because they were

slave states, and so I think it would have been seen as a haven for any

sympathizer.

Surratt's tavern was indeed a haven for those with Southern sympathies.

Former U .S. Marshal Art Roderick met with author James L. Swanson.

to retrace fugitive Booth's known steps.

So, James, here we are at Surratt's Tavern. Why don't you tell me what

here in April of 1865?

A little after midnight, General Booth and David Harold rode up to this tavern,

and Booth didn't want to dismount because of his broken leg.

David Harold got up his horse, knocked on this door, and told the tavern keeper

to come down and let them in.

Booth knew he was coming here. It was always part of his plan. Earlier that

he stopped at Mary Surratt's boarding house in Washington, D .C.

She was the mother of John Surratt, Jr., one of Booth's conspirators in the

kidnapping plot. Booth handed her his binoculars, and he said, Mary, can you

take these to your country tavern and tell the innkeeper, John Lloyd, that

people are coming tonight, and I want to pick up my guns.

Earlier, as part of the kidnapping plot,

Booth had left two Spencer repeating carbines here. They were hidden behind a

wall. Cleverly, they were suspended on ropes.

So you'd have to look down and see that the carbines were down there.

Now, we don't know if Booth told Mary that I'm stopping there after I've

the president and I want my gun. He probably only told her, I'm passing

town, I'm going to pick up the binoculars and tell Lloyd, the

those guns ready.

Lloyd told David Herold, wait here, I'll get the guns.

Then Booth said to Lloyd, there's some news, if you'd like to hear it. And

said, I'm not particular about it, tell me if you want.

And Booth unbelievably confessed the action of him. Couldn't resist boasting

about what he had done. He said, I'm pretty certain that we've assassinated

president. Because he wasn't sure. He did not know yet if he had succeeded.

He didn't know if it was a fatal wound.

It sounds like the assassination plot was done kind of on the spur of the

moment, and the planning was done for the kidnapping as opposed to the

assassination.

Booth still knew where the safe houses were. He knew the names of Confederate

operatives and agents.

But he had one big advantage when he got here. He was riding ahead of the news.

Nobody in Maryland knew that Abraham Lincoln did the shot.

They didn't want to stay here long because Calvary was going to come out of

Washington searching the countryside.

And then Booth and Harold rode off into the night.

The traditional story says that Booth and Harold rode from Surratt's tavern to

the home of Dr.

Samuel Mudd.

Booth was badly in need of medical attention.

From Washington to Mudd's house is 25 to 30 miles, and

Booth had broken his ankle when he fell onto the stage.

In riding a horse...

You use your legs sort of as shock absorbers. He couldn't do that. And he

bounce along, and by the time he got to Mudd's, his back was killing him.

But Dr. Mudd's statements about Booth's visit suggest it might not have been

David Harold traveling with Booth, but a younger man named Edwin Hinson, shown

in this photo.

In testimony, Dr.

Mudd gave to Union authorities.

He said Booth's accomplice gave his name as Henson.

Mudd stated he had seen the photograph of Harold, but did not recognize it as

that of the young man.

In another statement, Mudd described Henson as a well -grown boy who looked

be about 17 or 18, a boy who had never yet shaved.

That's a far better description of Edwin Henson than the 23 -year -old Harold.

whose ample 5 o 'clock shadow can be seen in photos taken after his capture.

If Booth was traveling with Hinson, then is it possible Booth wasn't at

Garrett's farm with Harold, and that he wasn't the man who died there?

That's what some Booth family members believe, and they point to the

that Booth fathered children after the history books say he died.

To help find the truth, Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick, a noted forensic

agreed to undertake DNA testing of some Booth family members.

So I've been contacted by one of the Booth family members. Her name is Joanne

Yolm, and she has documentation showing her lineage. Can we possibly use

Joanne's DNA to prove or disprove whether or not these people are

Well, that's where genetic genealogy comes in.

Forensic genealogy is the application of scientific methods to genealogy. In an

informal sense, it's known as CSI meets roots.

Fortunately, we have the ability to take DNA tests as genealogists to prove

family lines or to disprove family lines, and so we no longer have to rely

family stories and documentation that may not have provenance.

Now, when you test Joanne, the whole point really is to compare her to some

people that might be Booth but are not sure.

When we want to compare, I'll call them the maybe Booth against authentically

documented Booth, Joanne is a candidate because she descends from John Wilkes

Booth's paternal aunt.

This whole project actually comes down to DNA.

We're sitting in a time where history and science are going to merge together.

Among the possible descendants of John Wilkes Booth is Andy Gordo, whose great

-great -grandfather is Harry Jerome Stevenson, a man allegedly fathered by

after Booth was supposed to be dead.

At left, Mrs.

Joseph Bala, the former...

Isola Frances Stevenson, who asserts John Wilkes Booth was her grandfather.

At right, this is Isola Martha Stevenson, who Mrs. Ballas says married

of President Lincoln in Connecticut in 1864.

So this would be Isola Martha Mills.

That's my mother's mother, actually. This is your mother's mother. Yes. Got

And then her father would have been Harry Jerome Stevenson? Yes.

You've given your sample for the DNA testing, which is exciting.

It is. The only thing I get really concerned about is at the end of the

it's going to come down to science. We're going to come up with an answer.

And are you guys ready to face that answer?

Oh, definitely.

It would just be nice to know.

It would be nice to vindicate my mother and grandmother, you know, and shed some

light on really what happened.

Five and a half hours after John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln, he arrived

at the home of Dr. Samuel Mudd with a broken leg.

Relying on statements Dr.

Mudd gave to Union officers after his arrest, some theorized that Booth was

accompanied by a young man named Edwin Hinson.

But most historians, like James Swanson, maintained that Booth was traveling

with conspirator David Herold.

Booth stayed on this horse right about here, about 20 paces from the house.

David Harold dismounted and pounded on the front door until he woke Dr. Mudd.

Mudd shouted through the door, Who is it? What do you want?

Harold said, Well, from around here, I'm with a friend. His horse fell. He's got

a broken bone. He needs help.

Mudd came out to help the injured man off the horse.

And that's when Dr.

Mudd knew it.

This is John Wilkes Booth. This wasn't Booth's first visit to this house.

He'd spent the night here. He had come down to this county and met with Dr.

and other Confederate operatives. Mudd was part of Booth's plot to kidnap

Abraham Lincoln.

Dr. Mudd did not know that John Wilkes Booth was going to assassinate Abraham

Lincoln that night.

Well, after Dr.

Mudd helped John Wilkes Booth come through the front door, he took him into

room, the front parlor.

And Mudd had him on the sofa.

He didn't even take him up to his office.

So Booth reclined on that sofa, and Dr. Mudd began to help him. On that actual

sofa? That sofa. That sofa right there. Yes.

Mudd knew he had to get Booth's left boot off, but it wouldn't come off. He

tried to yank it off, and it caused Booth agonizing pain.

So he cut the boot open and pulled it off his leg. He detected that he had a

simple fracture, easy enough to treat.

Dr. Mudd left Booth on the sofa, and he went upstairs, fashioned a splint.

And then Dr. Mudd knew that Booth was going to need crutches, and so he made a

pair of crutches here. He invited him to spend the night and took him upstairs

to the front bedroom where Booth rested for several hours.

David Harold came down for breakfast, but Booth didn't want food. He just

upstairs until at least around noon.

Yeah, they spent quite a few hours here then. They did. They got here at 4 a

.m., and they were here until the following evening.

And during his stay here, he asked for a razor and shaving cream, and he shaved

his mustache off. So this is where he cleaned up quite a bit. This is where he

cleaned up and changed his appearance. And changed his appearance, exactly.

Knowing it would be painful for Booth to ride a horse, Dr. Mudd and David Herold

searched for a carriage, but none were available.

Herold returned to the farm, and Dr. Mudd rode on to Bryantown, where he saw

Union Cavalry.

and learned that President Lincoln had died that morning, killed by John Wilkes

Booth.

He didn't tell the soldiers. He rushed back here to tell John Wilkes Booth,

have you done?

You've implicated me. You've endangered me and my family. You've got to go.

I'll protect you. I won't tell them you were here.

But you have to leave right now. You can't be found here.

John Wilkes Booth knew the cavalry was just a few miles away in Brinetown, but

he felt safe and familiar on this spot. But once Mudd sent him down that road to

the Great Sakai Swamp, he was heading into territory unknown to him.

From the time John Wilkes Booth left Dr. Mudd's farm, he had to make it up.

as he went along. This is an individual that almost commits a perfect crime, but

because he broke that bone in his leg, he started to have to improvise, and

that's where these criminals always go wrong.

That's right.

Hobbling on crutches, Booth pressed on, determined to elude the spreading union

dragnet.

When he left, mud.

He then connects with Thomas Jones, an agent who specializes in fearing spies

and agents across the river here.

And Jones gave him the most important advice that Booth got during the entire

escape. Jones said, the cavalry's going to be close.

I suggest we hide in place. Wait for the Union forces to sweep through the area

and move on past us.

For five days, Booth and Harold hid in the pine thicket.

waiting for a chance to cross the Potomac River into Virginia.

They finally crossed into Virginia on April 24th. There, they met three

Confederate soldiers and were ferried across the Rappahannock by William

Rollins. The soldiers then guided them to Garrett's farm.

Now, Rollins is still in the same place the following day when pursuers from the

16th New York Cavalry come along.

And he says, yeah, they were here about 24 hours ago.

Willie Jett is one of the soldiers who is with them. You can go ask Willie.

Everybody knows where he is because he's got a girlfriend down in Bowling Green,

Virginia. And they pull Willie out of bed. And Colonel Everton Conger puts a

to his head and says, we know that you were with Booth. So Willie Jett tells

them, I left him at the Garrett Farm.

The Union soldiers returned with Jet to Garrett's farm and surrounded the barn

where Booth and Harold were hiding.

When the fugitives wouldn't surrender, soldiers set fire to the barn.

After Harold gave himself up, a sergeant named Boston Corbett saw Booth move

toward the door holding a rifle and shot him through the neck.

Dr. Robert Arnold disputes that account.

A Navy surgeon for 30 years, and an assistant county coroner. He was

write his own book about the Lincoln assassination.

There was a little journal published by the Navy, and there was an article about

the autopsy of the man that was killed in Garrett's barn, and it questioned the

identification of the corpse.

That article by Leonard Guttridge is among the Neff Guttridge papers housed

Indiana State University.

A collection like this is often labeled a conspiracy collection.

In fact, it is not a conspiracy collection.

It's a collection of research materials, and it can be interpreted different

ways by different researchers.

Dr. Arnold joined Art Roderick at Indiana State to share his theory about

corpse at Garrett's farm.

Central to his argument are three vertebrae that were removed from Booth's

during his autopsy aboard a Navy gunboat.

the USS Montauk. The vertebrae are now kept at the National Museum of Health

Medicine in Silver Spring, Maryland.

So I finally went to the medical museum to look at the actual specimen to see

the vertebrae from the corpse that was on the Montauk. This looks like a

from the medical museum I know you had talked about. You actually saw this.

Yes. This is the three vertebrae that...

The pathologist removed, and it shows the downward inclination of the bullet.

That's the trajectory, which I measured out at 20 degrees.

This is almost one vertebra lower here.

You're saying a shot from a higher up angle? Yes.

Since Boston Corbett was a short man standing on the ground, Dr. Arnold

he could not have fired the deadly shot from overhead.

Boston Corbett could not have killed the man in the barn.

Corbett would have had to have been 18 feet in the air to have fired that.

Trajectories don't lie. People do.

Dr. Arnold also points out issues surrounding Dr. Frederick May's role in

autopsy. A highly regarded surgeon, Dr.

May had removed an infected growth from the back of Booth's neck two years

earlier. He was brought aboard the Montauk to identify Booth's body.

If you were a pathologist, I mean, Dr.

May was a surgeon. I don't know how many times he would come across a body that

was... into decomposition he would ordinarily never do that especially with

surgery he said this this man does not resemble john wilkes booth but the the

most interesting thing to me is when he said his right leg was black from a

fracture yes now may is smart enough to know that a fracture does not cause your

leg to turn black that's soft tissue the injury that booth received on the stage

and it was corroborated by dr mudd was a simple fracture two inches above the

instep. But Mudd did not describe any soft tissue damage whatsoever.

He even noted the lack of tumification, which is swelling.

Yet the corpse on the Montauk had enough soft tissue damage that it had turned

black. Dr. Arnold notes that Dr.

May indicated the body had an injured right leg.

Booth fractured his left leg. And his son said if he said it was the right

it was the right leg. He didn't make those kind of mistakes.

For these reasons, Dr.

Arnold makes a bold assertion.

The man that May saw on the Montauk could not possibly have been the same

one that broke his ankle on the stage and that Mudd saw.

Some believe the description of John Wilkes Booth's dead body by Dr.

May raises questions about who actually died in Garrett's barn.

They point to an article Dr. May wrote years later about the autopsy aboard the

USS Montauk, in which he states that at first he didn't recognize the body as

Booth.

To further investigate that autopsy, Art Roderick met with Graham Hetrick, a

coroner for three decades, Hetrick has conducted more than 3 ,000 autopsies.

They examined the report by the Army surgeon who actually conducted the

This here is a statement by the Surgeon General Barnes.

I made at 2 p .m. this date, April 27th, a post -mortem examination of the body

of Jay Wilkes Booth.

The left leg and foot were encased in an appliance of splints and bandages, upon

the removal of which a fracture of the fibula was discovered.

The cause of death was a gunshot wound in the neck, the ball passing through

bony bridge of the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae, severing the spinal

cord. Paralysis of the entire body was immediate.

And all the horrors of consciousness of suffering and death must have been

present to the assassin during the two hours which he lingered.

His description of the person being totally aware is true because he has the

capacity of thought. He is paralyzed and he was dying really of asphyxiation

because the diaphragm and not being able to move to help with the breathing. The

overall autopsy was not what we expect today.

There would probably be a hundred autopsy photos. They had a photographer

but there was only one plate.

That one photo has never been seen, fueling conspiracy theories ever since,

especially since one of the primary purposes of the examination was to make

positive identification of Booth's body.

None of Booth's family members or co -conspirators were present to ID the

but Dr. John Frederick May was.

And May's initial reaction was that the body did not resemble Booth. I'm not

surprised that he said this doesn't even look like a likeness of Mr.

Booth. Because you have somebody who's been running through the swamps and the

woods. He hasn't been eating regularly. He hasn't been sleeping. He probably

didn't look like that handsome actor that May was used to seeing in Ford's

theater. He died approximately at 5 .30 a .m. on April 26th. Lieutenant Doherty

sewed him into the blanket around 8 .30.

No body bags and nosedads. Yeah, really.

The wrapped body was placed face down in a horse cart and taken to the Potomac

River, where it traveled by boat to the Washington Navy Yard and was brought

aboard the Montauk. The autopsy did not start till 2 p .m. Wow. There's a lot of

post -mortem changes going on there. The first one...

You get into rigor mortis, you stiffen. Another one simultaneously to that is

called lividity. If you're laying somebody face down, that blood is going

towards the face during decomposition.

By the time they got him, his face probably didn't look too good. It could

deceiving. But Dr.

May, looking at the back of the neck, did say that although it isn't what I

would consider a likeness of him, that is the scar, it's consistent with what I

did.

The Schlesinger Library at Harvard University holds the personal papers of

Paige Forrester, a celebrated author. Her 1937 book, This One Mad Act, tells a

story in which Booth was not the dead man on the Montauk. Forrester believed

was the granddaughter of John Wilkes Booth.

Based on all of the writings that we're finding in here, of all these letters,

it's pretty clear that Isola Mills, or Martha Isola Mills, was married

to John Wilkes Booth. Is that something that has always been known?

Always in our family and all the generations and all the different

Always known, always accepted, always acknowledged.

Talk of the date of when they were married.

And while historians see no convincing evidence of that marriage, Joanne Hume

believes the proof exists in a document written by the minister who is alleged

to have officiated their wedding.

What it looks like is a marriage certificate that was dated January 9th,

Reverend Weaver. This is to certify that on January 9th, 1859, I performed a

ceremony joining in holy matrimony John Byron Wilkes Booth and Martha Mills at

my home in Dingleton, Connecticut.

And there's a further shocking revelation in this one mad act.

There's an historic record of Martha I .M. Booth marrying John Stevenson in

Baltimore. in 1871.

But Forrester's book claims Martha Izola's marriage to Stevenson was an

arrangement to cover for Booth's escape and to conceal the identity of Booth's

newborn son, Harry, by giving him Stevenson's name.

One mad act refers to his conversation that Harry has with his father at the

of his father's life. His father is dying.

According to Forrester...

The man Harry believed was his father confessed that Harry was really the son

his friend, John Wilkes Booth.

You can't father a child, you know, five years after you have been dead.

There are plenty of stories about John Wilkes Booth having children, being

married. I can believe that he probably got a woman pregnant.

I would find it hard to believe that he never did.

But as for the marriage, I'm very skeptical about it. Now in this age of

genealogy done through DNA, I'm expecting we'll see an answer before too

A critical step in investigating whether John Wilkes Booth escaped after killing

President Lincoln and fathered a son named Harry Jerome Stevenson.

is the DNA testing of Harry Jerome Stevenson's descendants.

Dennis Farley and his sister Linda Casey are the great -grandchildren of Harry

Jerome Stevenson.

The official historical record says that Harry was the son of Martha Izola and

John Stevenson. But Dennis and Linda recall learning that their ancestor's

father was really John Wilkes Booth.

We were all at my grandmother's house.

I think it was Joanne Gordo started telling people, you know, we're related

John Wilkes Booth, of course.

Most of us didn't believe it, but my grandmother's mouth just dropped because

she never wanted the story to get out. She thought people would take

on the family.

She asked people to just keep it within the family. And this would have been

Harry Jerome Stevenson's daughter.

Did you guys ever know of John Henry Stevenson? Uncle Tom was the one that

us that.

This man, Stevenson, took the kids under his name. So that they could mask the

identity again of the child.

Yeah, we did hear that Stevenson was a convenient thing to help with her and

child.

And you never heard of the story of Martha Izola meeting John Wilkes Booth

California and taking a boat to India.

I did hear about the boat trip. In that story, they go to India with John using

an alias.

John Byron Wilkes. There's a will that was created in India.

Those who believe Booth escaped to India cite as proof the will of John Byron

Wilkes. A certified copy of the will was found in Clay County, Indiana.

The unsigned will, apparently executed in Bombay in 1883, gives sums of money

wives, lovers, and heirs of my body, known to be associated with Booth.

And in that, Harry Jerome Stevenson is listed.

Ogarita is also listed.

Izola is listed.

Well, whether it's all true or not.

Yeah. DNA will tell. DNA will tell.

Author Troy Cowan believes Booth escaped and fathered Harry Jerome Stevenson.

Cowan's interest in the Booth story was sparked by his own family lore.

I became interested in the John Wilkes Booth story because of my Aunt Jane

Davis. Her grandfather was John Riley Davis, and he was a cousin of Jefferson

Davis. After Jefferson Davis got out of prison, John Booth's Booth wrote him a

letter saying that he was alive, well, and living in Mexico.

But Cowan doesn't believe Booth died in India. In his version, Booth returned

from India very much alive and went to Mexico, where many Confederate veterans

fled after the Civil War.

Booth left Mexico and went to Glen Rose, southwest of Dallas, and he opened a

business selling liquor and tobacco.

About this time, a U .S. marshal from Paris, Texas, was coming to Glen Rose

his marriage.

Booth did not want to be seen. He went east, and he wound up in Suwannee,

Tennessee, and he got a job as a carpenter. There he met Louisa J. Payne.

The fugitive Booth's alleged travels out west.

were of particular interest to the late Arthur Ben Shitty, who did extensive

research into local booth lore in Franklin County, Tennessee.

The team met with his daughter to explore his theories.

He started collecting oral histories. He never called himself a historian

because he didn't do all the comparative analysis.

He called himself a historiographer.

And the distinction was that he collected this stuff and then let's see

happens with it later.

So a gentleman came from Fayetteville to give in one of these oral histories to

your dad?

His name was Reese.

He had known McCager Payne. Now, McCager Payne was the purported stepson of John

Wilkes Booth, who was nine years old at the time Booth entered their lives.

Here's something from the Cager Paper. Oh, yeah. This John Wilkes Booth made

acquaintance with my mother at Sewanee, Tennessee.

And the 25th of February, 1872, he married my mother. He told mother and me

he was the man that killed Lincoln, that he was a rich man, if he could get to

Little Rock. And we got as far as Memphis, Tennessee.

There he disappeared, and we never heard of him anymore.

While in Memphis, he was recognized.

He got frightened and went back to Glen Rose, Texas.

Louisa was four or five months pregnant when he left.

Louisa gave birth to a daughter. She named Laura Ida Elizabeth Booth.

He was married here, and then your dad went looking for proof of that, and he

actually found it. So this is a certified copy of the actual marriage

certificate. It says that John W. Booth married to a Louisa Payne, February of

1872.

There's also a marriage license.

That's C .C. Rose. Right. The justice of the peace. And you have J -N -O -W

Booth. And the other thing I see is an E at the end of it.

Is it possible that E was an effort on Booth's part to disguise his true

identity? Okay, but look at this. Rose.

A C .C. Rose was on the marriage certificate.

I believe it was a judge.

We, John Wilkes Booth, C .C. Rose, are held and firmly bound to the state of

Tennessee in the sum of $1 ,250.

John Wilkes Booth owed C .C. Rose $1 ,250, according to this document. Which

a lot of money. It's like $25 ,000. It's huge.

Whereas the above -bound Booth has this day obtained a license to marry Louisa

Payne, this obligation to be void.

He had to avoid his debt with Cece Rose, and the way he did it was marrying

Louisa Payne. Was this a shotgun wedding?

Maybe Cece Rose was like an uncle. He was rescuing her reputation.

To test this theory, Art Roderick brought the Payne marriage papers to

document examiner Robert Floberg for analysis.

Well, Rob, I know you spent quite a few years in law enforcement. How long have

you been doing document examinations?

I've been doing it now for 30 years.

This is a series of documents from the state of Tennessee, Franklin County,

1872, which purport to be marriage licenses and accompanying documents

Louisa Payne and John Wilkes Booth. They do appear to be from that time frame,

1872.

The middle name is not really evident, so it's John W. Booth. We don't know

it's Wilkes.

Booth is spelled B -O -O -T -H -E.

Why would they add an E to Booth? The story is that after they got married, he

confessed to her that, hey, I'm John Wilkes Booth. And being the religious

that she was, she wanted to be married under his real name.

And the question is, did he alter his handwriting?

Right. You can disguise your handwriting, but it's difficult. There

aspects you have to disguise, and I doubt that he could have done that under

pressure of signing a court document.

What do you think about this particular document?

An agreement between a justice of the peace and a John W.

Booth. We can compare the actual groom's signature with the known John Wilkes

Booth signature.

There are inconsistencies.

To where I doubt that this would be John Wilkes Booth, there's an inconsistency

with the T crossing and how the lowercase letters are created.

So it's two different people. Not John Wilkes Booth. Not John Wilkes Booth.

Floberg also examined the John Byron Wilkes will.

That's unfortunate. There's no handwriting on the will. It's just a

document. Filed in Clay Circuit Court in the state of Indiana.

The typewriter exists in 1883.

Well, yes, it did. At that time, typewriters had been around at least 10

and this specific typeface was in existence in the 1880s. The early

were all capital letters. So it is conceivable that this is a legitimate

document. Unfortunately, there is no cursive signature from the testator, and

that would have been John Byron Wilkes. John Wilkes Booth had a very unique

cursive signature, and if he would have signed this alias name with... a lot of

the similar letters and the letter connections, we could conceivably make a

match. Right.

To further investigate the mystery of John Wilkes Booth, the team went to

Massachusetts and the grave of the assassin's oldest brother, Junius Brutus

Booth Jr.

Their guide is his great -grandson, Tony Booth. So right over here is your great

-grandfather. How were you told that you were part of the Booth family?

Actually, it was probably when I was 13 or 14.

There was a trunk that was hidden away in the attic.

And one day I got in there and opened it up and I found all these costumes.

Then I asked my mom and she said, well, you're a Booth. And I said, what does

that mean particularly, you know?

And she said, well, you're related to John Wilkes Booth. And it was sort of a

stigma, but it wasn't anything that I couldn't handle.

I'm not a fan of John Wilkes Booth. He's the same to me as everybody else. He's

a villain.

And a killer. And I had no desire to be related to the guy.

Did your mom ever tell you about your great -grandfather or any of your

She mentioned that they were actors.

Yeah. And that the stuff that I'd found was costume, you know, that they wore,

like for Julius Caesar and for some of these other plays that they did on

To help solve the mystery, Tony Booth agreed to provide his DNA.

It will be compared to those who believe they may be descended from children

fathered by Booth after history says he died.

If you can prove that somebody was born after the date of John Wilkes' death,

supposed death, that would be proof that John Wilkes never did die in the barn,

that he lived after that. I'm in a way hope that he did die because he deserved

to die right there in the barn.

But if he didn't, then let's find out why or where and how he escaped.

Theories about Booth's possible escape often include a mysterious figure named

James William Boyd. The majority of historians agree that John Wilkes Booth

killed at the Garrick Farm by Union troops on April 26, 1865.

His accomplice, David Herold, was arrested and later hanged with fellow co

-conspirators Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt. After his

David Herold had given testimony that Booth was using the alias Boyd.

when they crossed into Virginia and met the Confederate cavalrymen.

And one of those rebel troopers, Willie Jett, testified that Booth gave his name

as James William Boyd when they took him to Garrett's Farm.

Yet some researchers and Booth family members believe Booth wasn't at

Farm that night.

Some suggest he escaped the manhunt in the company of a young man named Edwin

Hinson. But if Booth wasn't traveling with David Herold, then who was the man

with Herold in that burning barn?

And who was James William Boyd?

It's well documented that a Confederate soldier named James W. Boyd existed, and

that while a prisoner of war, he petitioned Secretary of War Edwin

his release.

What happened to Boyd after his release is where the mystery lies.

In a statement purportedly made by the Confederate officer John Singleton Mosby

shortly before his death in 1916, Mosby claims he sent James William Boyd to

help Booth kidnap Lincoln.

If Mosby's statement is authentic, it's a stunning claim.

Author Troy Cowan asserts that when the kidnap plot failed and Booth impulsively

killed the president instead, Boyd fled south along the same path as Booth.

John Wilkes Booth and David Harreld met up with him by accident at Cox's Farm,

the next house after.