Mummies Unwrapped (2019) s01e02 Episode Script
Hunting the Mummy of Lincolns Assassin
Romany: What if history's most famous assassin John Wilkes Booth.
murdered one of this country's greatest presidents [ Gunshot, people scream .]
and got away with it? Booth escaped.
A mysterious missing mummy might hold the answer.
No way! But only ifI can find it.
Ohh.
I'm archaeologist and mummy expert Ramy Romany.
Across the globe, earth is giving up her dead.
Oh, my god, Pedro! Look at this! Thanks to cutting-edge technology, new mummies are unearthed every day.
It is like an underwater crime scene.
These mummies hold extraordinary secrets Oh, my god! What is this?! Priceless.
if you know how to unwrap them.
That changes Everything.
This is "Mummies Unwrapped.
" In the 1920s, a mummy began appearing as a popular attraction in traveling sideshows across the United States.
There was nothing especially freakish about this mummy except its alleged identity John Wilkes Booth.
The exhibitor claimed that after killing Abraham Lincoln [ Gunshot, people scream .]
Booth was not killed by U.
S.
troops.
They maintained that Booth escaped and lived out his days under various assumed identities.
Nobody has been able to confirm whether the mummy was really Booth because in the late 1970s, it disappeared.
If I can uncover the true identity of the mummy, I can prove whether the world's most famous assassin got away with murder.
There's a man in Washington, D.
C.
He says Booth did escape, that the history books are wrong.
I'm meeting with Nate Orlowek, who's been researching the Booth escape theory for over four decades.
Since the 1990s, Nate has been working with Booth descendants to get permission to conduct DNA tests on the body of the man that the government maintains is John Wilkes Booth.
So far, the courts have blocked all such attempts.
We're starting where it all began; Ford's theatre.
It gives me the chills looking at this and thinking, 150 years ago, the great president of this country, Abraham Lincoln, was sitting right there peacefully.
We all know the official story.
Lincoln was sitting in the president's box.
The guard was missing.
John Wilkes Booth, who knew the theater well, came to the box and waited for his moment.
A funny line in the play.
[ Laughter .]
He counted on the laughter to muffle the sound of the shot.
Booth stood behind Lincoln, pointed his gun at the back of Lincoln's head, then pulled the trigger.
[ Gunshot .]
Booth then climbed right here, onto the front of the box, and he jumped down, and he landed on his left leg and broke his leg.
Even though he had a broken leg, he was able to drag himself across the stage and out to the back.
And there was a horse waiting for him, and he jumped on the horse, and he galloped away.
According to the official account, John Wilkes Booth fled south from Ford's theatre and crossed the bridge into Maryland.
He was joined there by coconspirator David Herold, and the two collected weapons they'd hidden at a tavern.
After finding a doctor to treat Booth's broken leg, they continued south.
The federal government offered a reward of $50,000 for Booth's capture, and an epic manhunt was launched.
The government was determined to get Booth and quickly.
Booth and Herold hid in the woods of Southern Maryland for five days, avoiding the federal troops and detectives hunting for the two fugitives.
Booth eventually ended up in this tobacco barn, one that looks much like this.
Romany: How long were they hiding in there for? According to the conventional history, they were there for 2 1/2 days, and on the morning of April 26, 1865, the federal troops caught up with them.
They surrounded the barn, and they demanded that Booth and Herold surrender.
According to all accounts, Herold did surrender but the other man still refused to come out and so colonel Conger, the head of the platoon, ordered that the barn be set on fire.
Nevertheless, the man refused to surrender, and so colonel Conger set the barn on fire.
[ Fire crackling .]
One of the soldiers, named Boston Corbett, felt that he should do something to avenge Lincoln's murder.
He walked up to the entrance of the barn and put his gun through the slat and shot.
The bullet hit the man in the barn in the back of the neck, wounding him mortally.
And of course, the government claims that that man was John Wilkes Booth.
And that is where Nate believes the government began one of the biggest cover-ups in history.
There's overwhelming evidence that that man was not John Wilkes Booth.
Nate believes that Booth had already fled south the day that troops arrived and that the man killed in the barn only looked like Booth.
Nate also believes that the $50,000 reward for Booth's capture was motivation for the soldiers to insist that the dead man was in fact Booth.
A single photo of the corpse was reportedly taken, but it quickly disappeared from the secretary of war Edwin Stanton's files, along with 27 sheets from Booth's diary.
Rumors began to circulate, saying that Booth escaped and that there was a cover-up to hide this fact.
Years later, the photographer's adult son claimed that the photo of the man killed at the barn was never taken and the man's face was damaged and not recognizable as Booth.
And what sort of evidence do you have that the government attempted a cover-up? Let me show you.
The government claims Booth was secretly buried in Washington's old penitentiary.
They say his body was exhumed and moved twice more.
Yet no photos exist of it.
And all efforts to conduct DNA analysis have been blocked.
Even after the assassin's reported death, reports of Booth sightings continued for years.
In 1907, Finis l.
Bates, the former Attorney General for the state of Tennessee, published his firsthand knowledge of Booth's alleged escape.
Finis l.
Bates was a very young attorney in the 1870s in Texas.
And he became friendly with this man who called himself John St.
Helen.
John St.
Helen? John St.
Helen was John Wilkes Booth.
This is one of the very few copies that is still in existence of a book that Bates wrote to inform us of what this man told him.
One night in 1877, St.
Helen fell very ill and thought he was about to die, and he said to Bates, "I'm really John Wilkes Booth.
" He told him that the original plot was to kidnap President Lincoln.
This was not known until the government released the records in 1935.
In the book, Finis Bates explains that after St.
Helen confessed to killing Lincoln, he disappeared.
25 years later, the same man, going by the name David E.
George, confessed to being Booth and then committed suicide.
Well, David E.
George died on the morning of January 13, 1903, of poison, and he had left instructions that the people there should contact Bates, who was living in Memphis, Tennessee.
Mm-hmm.
Bates came and mummified this body because Bates believed that he was John Wilkes Booth.
So, wait.
Bates ordered the mortician to mummify David E.
George? Ordinarily, if someone dies and doesn't have any family or someone to claim the body, they would just Bury the body.
But Bates, when he came there, said, "well, this is not an ordinary person.
" This is not really David E.
George.
"And therefore, I would like you to mummify it.
" Bates arranged for the body to be mummified, and he profited when it toured sideshows and carnivals, which makes me wonder about Bates' motives in all this.
So here we have an affidavit from six neutral physicians who examined the body stating that this man had a scarred right eyebrow, a scarred right thumb, and a broken left leg marks that John Wilkes Booth, we know today, had.
This is extremely intriguing.
Here's my problem, Nate.
Right? This happened when the mummy was already touring America, and this could have been nothing more than a publicity stunt.
Well, the physicians who did this examination had no ax to grind, and they don't even say that this was John Wilkes Booth.
They just simply did an examination.
There was enough evidence suggesting that Booth possibly escaped that the FBI created a file on the assassin.
The investigation was active in 1922, 1948, and 1977 with no definitive conclusion ever being reached.
John St.
Helen gave Bates a tintype photo.
It was a type of photo taken in the mid-1800s.
Mm.
So he kept this tintype.
It's the only photograph that we know of after he was supposedly killed in the barn.
I can barely make out who this man is.
It's damaged and very low resolution.
If we had the original, we might be able to recover more definitive information.
I spent many years trying to find the original, and finally, I was able to trace it to an obscure collection in a very small town in the middle of Texas.
And it ended up and is now in what's called the swaim collection at Georgetown university library in Washington, D.
C.
John St.
Helen and David E.
George could be the same person.
Their ages and their stories align with the Booth escape theory.
But if I'm going to find this missing mummy, I need to know if John Wilkes Booth really could have lived out his days as John St.
Helen and then David E.
George.
Thank you very much.
I need to find the clearest high-resolution photo to help prove whether these three names were all the same man.
The original photo.
Wow! So this photo was taken 12 years after the assassination of president Abraham Lincoln? It was 1877 when he gave the tintype to Bates.
It was 11 or 12 years later.
Of course, if this man is John Wilkes Booth, then that would settle the entire case, because if he was still alive in 1877, he certainly wasn't killed in 1865.
Nate has given me all the evidence he has that supports the theory that Booth escaped.
But there's one piece of hard evidence in there, the tintype photo.
My plan is to use 21st-century technology to try and solve a 150-year-old case.
I've arranged a meeting with former NYPD detective and facial recognition expert Roger Rodriguez to see how we might be able to use this latest technology in facial recognition to more precisely compare the two men in the images the photo of John St.
Helen and a known image of John Wilkes Booth.
I can't tell you how obsessed and interested I am with your line of work.
How did you get into this? Well, I started my career with the New York City police department, started doing patrol.
Did over 20 years of service there.
But shortly after the events of 9/11, I wanted to pursue a career in police technology, in utilizing technology to catch the bad guys.
And I was tasked to build the facial recognition unit.
The technology has been instrumental in assisting to identify thousands of people.
- Thousands? - Yes.
Do you think we can crack a 150-year-old case, though? We can give it a shot.
Come into my office.
I brought a flash drive today that has high-resolution photos of John Wilkes Booth, as well as photos of the man that claimed to be Booth years later.
That man went by the alias of John St.
Helen and then later called himself David E.
George.
How does the software actually work? What it does is it basically changes the actual face into a numeric code.
It locks into the eyes, and then the face is represented as a series of numbers.
And then the algorithms work their way around, performing their magic.
I clearly see lots and lots of damage to this photo.
These tools are very, very important in the investigative process to make these images more conducive for facial recognition.
Roger starts with a photo of John St.
Helen, the man who claimed to be Booth.
He duplicates, flips, and merges the undamaged side of the face.
This creates a John St.
Helen face that can be compared with the Booth face.
If we were to capture a mug shot of John Wilkes Booth, that is what the mug shot would look like.
I would definitely look at this photo a little more in detail.
After enhancing both photos, Roger uses specialized tools to compare the two faces, looking for shared landmarks and distinct facial features, like moles and freckles.
John Wilkes Booth and St.
Helen's features are similar.
But in order to get a more objective comparison, the software will examine the photos in a kind of virtual lineup.
Roger adds John Wilkes Booth's photo into a public mug shot database of 5,000 white males from the Virginia area.
Why do we need 5,000 pictures? Can't we just put it against the tintype photo and call it a day? It's more face templates that it has to compare against.
What you want to do is drive these results to levels of specificity.
Next, we'll run St.
Helen's photo through what's called a query, which compares his face to the thousands of faces in the database, including John Wilkes Booth's face.
According to Roger, if the John Wilkes Booth photo appears within the top 250 results, then it's a promising match.
Just run a query in the system and see where Booth landed.
Wait.
Am I reading this correct? Romany: There's a mummy who some believe was John Wilkes Booth that the notorious assassin wasn't killed by U.
S.
troops after shooting Abraham Lincoln.
I'm meeting with ex-police detective Roger Rodriguez to use the latest facial-recognition software to compare photos of Booth with the photos of a man who later claimed to be Booth.
If they are the same person, then it means that John Wilkes Booth got away with murder.
Just run a query in the system and see where Booth landed.
According to Roger, if the John Wilkes Booth photo appears within the top 250 results, then it's a promising match.
Wait.
That's within the top three percentile - out of 5,000? - Correct.
This image would definitely pique my interest in an investigation coming in or landing within the top 250.
How does the facial recognition system work on pictures of the dead? Let's take a look at the photo.
Let's see what we can do.
We can see here the shape of the eyebrow and the shape of the eye is very, very distinct on both images.
Putting in mind that one of them is an embalmed dead body Correct.
there is striking resemblance.
The earlobe's right there same earlobe.
And the shape of the inside of the ear is exactly the same.
They are strikingly similar.
We have now documented, using our landmark measurement tool, the space between the eyes.
They are separated by only one pixel.
That's a unique characteristic.
So the software has identified similarities within the two individuals.
Let's pull the shot of David E.
George.
Let's scroll.
Let's see where our subject landed.
There's no way he shows up at all.
Very, very surprising to me.
Pretty interesting.
It's less than 1%.
That's within the 0.
5%.
If that's true, then the mummy that toured America as John Wilkes Booth could be actually John Wilkes Booth.
Would it hold up in a court of law? No.
What would? DNA.
I find it really compelling that John Wilkes Booth, John St.
Helen, and the mummy all have these similarities.
But ultimately, I have to agree with Roger.
In my book, DNA is the only definitive proof and the only way I'll be convinced, which means I have to track down this mummy.
The mummy disappeared in the 1970s.
So I'll have to retrace the mummy's path all the way back to where Booth, under the alias of David E.
George, supposedly lived.
I'm in Enid, Oklahoma.
This is where he rented a room in the early 1900s above what is now a furniture store.
Here is where David E.
George died, and days later, his body was mummified.
The location is owned by amateur historian and researcher Russ frazee.
Your store is associated with a very important story in history.
Well, it's one of the oldest remaining buildings in downtown.
It was built in 1898, built as the grand Avenue hotel at the time of Booth or David E.
George's death.
So David E.
George lived up here? Yes.
We can go upstairs here now.
Local lore has it that David E.
George arrived in Enid and would sometimes confess to being John Wilkes Booth.
But I'm curious about the evidence that supports that claim.
This was kind of the motel 6 of the day; very basic.
There wasn't even any running water up here.
This is the room where George lived.
So this is it.
Oh, look at this.
This is where David E.
George lived.
This is the place.
Original wallpaper.
Oh, a bottle of whiskey.
They were big drinkers in those days.
So, based on your story, after Booth assassinated president Abraham Lincoln, he fled to Texas.
Then after that, he came up to Enid.
It is somewhat difficult to figure him out between the assassination and until he got to Texas.
He had many aliases.
There was no formal identification papers in those days.
You could be anyone you wanted.
And David E.
George spent his evenings in saloons.
When drunk, he would confess to being John Wilkes Booth.
He even revealed details of the assassination plot that wouldn't be made public until 1935.
I mean, you grew up around this legacy and this story all your life.
What do you believe? Do you believe that John Wilkes Booth actually survived? Well, I do.
It was in the Oklahoma history textbooks back in the early '60s, when I was in junior high.
Wait.
John Wilkes Booth's survival was a part of the textbooks here in Oklahoma? Sure was.
So it's not just the oral history.
It's a part of the written history of Enid, Oklahoma.
Yes.
I want to see the documents about David E.
George that Russ has collected over the years.
This is from the Oklahoma historical society, 1922.
"The last will and testament of Dave E.
George.
January 15, 1903.
" This is a written record days after he died.
"At most times, he was jolly" and when drinking, would entertain a crowd "by acting portions of Shakespeare.
" Shakespeare? And drink.
Yeah.
Wasn't John Wilkes Booth also a Shakespearean actor? A great Shakespearean actor.
"January 21, 1903, the Enid daily way.
" Doctors are confident from his symptoms "that he died from arsenic poison self-administered.
" Russ, do you believe that John Wilkes Booth escaped after killing Lincoln? Do you believe that it's a cover-up? Yes.
Romany: I'm in Enid, Oklahoma, where David E.
George spent his last days in 1903.
George claimed to be John Wilkes Booth and to have gotten away with killing Abraham Lincoln.
Shortly after his death, his body was mummified.
Russ, do you believe that John Wilkes Booth escaped after killing Lincoln? Do you believe that it's a cover-up? Yes.
We believe that some unfortunate soul was murdered by the federal government in the barn and then claimed to be Booth.
And what happened after David E.
George died? Well, the body was loaded on a wagon and taken across the square to the funeral parlor, and they embalmed it.
And the embalming process involved injecting the body with arsenic.
And that's how he became a mummy? Yes.
What happened to his mummy? People tried to claim the body, but the mortician kept it at the funeral home.
People were pouring into Enid, asking, "is this the body of Booth?" So people had already heard this could be Booth? Yeah.
And then what happened to the mummy? He sold it to a circus.
They were a little more lenient with the law back in those days.
Before movie houses and radio became the American public's primary source of entertainment, freak shows, dime museums, and sideshows toured the country.
Customers would pay a small fee to see everything from bearded ladies and two-headed cows to fire-eaters and, yes, human mummies.
We have some excellent pictures here.
That's him sitting clothed as a mummy in the funeral parlor.
That's how he looked in the funeral home? That's it.
Yeah.
This man is the same man right here, a picture taken 35 years later while his mummy was touring America? That's correct.
Based on what I've seen so far, the mummy of David E.
George really could be the mummy of John Wilkes Booth.
If I can find the body, I want to do some DNA testing to see if both people are one and the same.
But first, I need to know if the mummy would still be intact after all this time.
I know that arsenic was commonly used towards the end of the 19th century as an embalming agent, but what I don't know is whether somebody embalmed with arsenic could maintain his facial features.
I'm meeting Dr.
John Fritch here at the university of central Oklahoma.
He's an expert in period embalming procedures.
I got some photos right here.
All right.
So, quick background.
This right here is a photo of a man named Dave E.
George.
We also know that he died of arsenic poisoning self-administered.
And 35 years later, this right here is allegedly his mummy, which toured the country in sideshows as John Wilkes Booth.
Is it possible that after 35 years, from this picture to that picture, arsenic preservation could have kept the body, maintaining the features like this? I have some textbooks from that period, and they're kind of these are historical.
Embalming techniques.
The art and science of embalming, I just found fascinating.
One is right here.
"Arsenate of soda is one of the strongest preservations" for animal tissue.
"Causes a rapid desiccation of the cellular tissue.
" So we're talking, it would dry out those tissues very quickly, and that is key to long-term preservation.
Absolutely.
Even in the current environment, when we use formaldehyde, that's the secret, is removing water.
So this person took their own life? Yes.
Okay.
And was found Nearly instantly.
His body, biologically, was healthy.
So the prediction would be that it would take our procedure quite well.
Now, these are historical items.
Wow! Look at this.
Can I take it out? Of course.
Yes.
That's an injection.
It was very common in this period to do the embalming at home.
And so you didn't want to make a mess, and so you would use your drain tubes.
You'd insert them in the veins.
And then as you push your arsenic-based fluid in, the blood would then be withdrawn, and they would put it in a vessel so that they could take it away from the house.
Do you think there's any chance that today this mummy still exists with the features? I would say it's possible.
If this embalmer had knowledge that there was going to be a need for this mummy to be around for an extended period of time, they would have used a strong higher concentration of arsenic.
Absolutely.
Well, we know that this embalmer did plan on having this mummy become a sideshow mummy.
I think it's a great possibility it still exists and in a recognizable form.
I'm now confident that the so-called Booth mummy could be intact today.
But I still have to find it.
I'm here in Austin, Texas, to meet with Steve Busti, an exhibitor of sideshow artifacts and one of the country's foremost collectors of human remains.
I need to find out if he has any theories about where the missing John Wilkes Booth mummy is today.
Okay, Ramy, this is a cabinet of curiosities.
No way! Oh, my god! Look at this! This is the mummy from Guanajuato.
The properties of the soil combined with maybe the arid region created these natural mummies.
What does it take to acquire a mummy like that? Basically, you just need to have the right connections.
They're still around, but it's become increasingly harder to find the real deal.
How would a man like myself track a mummy, let's say like John Wilkes Booth's alleged mummy? Out of all the mummy exhibits, that was probably the most famous.
I don't know where it is.
The last known location was probably mid-1970s, somewhere in Pennsylvania.
It's out there somewhere, you know.
You don't just lose a mummy or misplace a mummy.
You've acquired mummies.
I've only studied them.
Big difference.
Now, how do you trace a mummy that you're looking for? You basically have to start making connections.
You have to know who are some of these other collectors out there that have maybe some of these mummies in their private collection.
And You have connections? [ Laughs .]
Um These collectors are very private.
They don't want to share what they've got with the world.
But I will make some phone calls for you.
That's great.
[ Cellphone rings .]
Steve, what do you got? Yes.
Please.
I got it right here.
What's his name? Robert.
His phone number? No, I completely understand.
I will tread lightly.
Yes, I'll be very careful.
I may have just found the Booth mummy.
Romany: There's a theory that after assassinating president Abraham Lincoln in 1865, John Wilkes Booth escaped.
Years later, his mummified remains toured the country, but then the mummy vanished.
[ Cellphone rings .]
Steve, what do you got? What's his name? Robert.
His phone number? No, I completely understand.
I will tread lightly.
Yes, I'll be very careful.
I may have just found the Booth mummy.
40 years; 40 years since it's last been seen.
If that's true, one DNA test and we'll know if the killer of the greatest president in American history actually got away with it.
This is it.
This is the house.
Let's see where this takes us.
I've reached out to this collector multiple times, and he has not responded.
Knocking on his door may be the only way in.
Okay.
He said yes.
Come on.
Just be very respectful.
I told him one camera.
I think two is fine, but be very respectful.
Robert, the cameras are here.
Oh, wow! Look at this! You know When I got your phone number, they told me that you're very protective and that you're never gonna let anyone in.
It seems like you have a reputation that you don't want to let anyone in.
You're a professional Egyptologist.
You're an educated man.
You're someone I would be interested in knowing.
It's that simple.
Well, thank you very much, Robert.
I am interested in knowing you.
Robert, if you don't mind me asking, what got you interested in all this? I would have to blame that on my grandmother.
My grandmother used to take us to the Museum of Natural History in New York City, and it was love at first sight.
Finally, she started to take us to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I'm sure you know they have a magnificent Egyptian collection there.
Yeah.
It's like coming home.
It's wonderful stuff.
I hope that my appreciation for Robert's impressive collection is buying me some goodwill so I can finally ask about the John Wilkes Booth mummy.
As we all know, it's a sensitive subject.
The collection also has a number of skulls from new Guinea, the Asmat people.
This is a real Papua New Guinea skull? Yes.
That's a skull cup.
This is Tibet, so they don't have a lot of wood, and doing this is honoring their ancestors.
Absolutely.
It honors their dead.
How many humans do you think live with you or dead with you in your own house? About 200.
It's about 208, in fact, I think.
You have 208 other humans? Right.
How often do you get to go around your house and show people that have never seen your collection before? You're the first.
I am here for a very specific reason.
I was looking for a real human mummy, maybe even famous.
Do you want to see it? Let's go down here.
Finally, after all the phone calls and detective work, Robert knows I'm looking to see his famous sideshow mummy.
There's a lot of rooms in this house.
You just never know what's gonna be behind a closed door, so You've seen a lot of mummies in your travels, but I doubt you've ever seen one like this.
Ohh.
Robert, are you married? I am.
What does your wife Everyone wants to know what the wife well, look, you have all these dead people inside your house, Robert.
The wife understands the historical significance and importance of these things, so it doesn't bother her, doesn't bother her.
I mean, you know as well as I do, the dead are not gonna hurt you.
It's the living you have to worry about.
Ha! That's very true.
You've seen a lot of mummies in your travels, but I doubt you've ever seen one like this.
Romany: My cross-country search for the mummy that many believe to be the notorious assassin John Wilkes Booth has brought me here to the basement of one of the world's foremost collectors of human remains.
I'm convinced that the only way to determine whether Booth escaped after killing Lincoln is through DNA testing of his supposed mummy.
Ohh.
This is What you're looking at has been referred to over the years as the pig-tailed man or the pig-tailed woman.
It's unusual, it's rare, but on occasion, people are born with a caudal appendage; a tail.
He was mummified exquisitely.
Yes.
This has gone from one commercial anatomical museum to another.
I was able to trace it up to about the year 1919 in a store show, or a freak show, if you will.
This is indeed a rare sideshow mummy, but it's not the John Wilkes Booth mummy.
It's not the mummy I came here for.
I've been following a story um a story of significant historical value.
It's a story that relates to one of the greatest presidents our country ever had.
I can tell that, from the way you're reacting, you already know what I'm talking about.
I do.
I do.
You're not the only person that's losing a lot of sleep over the Booth mummy, trust me.
The story ends for me in Pennsylvania, 1970s, when this mummy was last seen.
Mm-hmm.
Does it have the same ending with you? A lot of people would like to know where that mummy is a lot of people.
No one seems to know where it is.
Like you said, it was last seen in the mid-'70s in Pennsylvania.
That much, everyone knows.
But they don't know where it is today.
Least, most people don't.
Have you seen it after the '70s? I have.
I'll say that.
I have seen it.
And what did you see? Saw what is reportedly the John Wilkes Booth mummy.
The condition of the skin and all was excellent.
Make no mistake about it.
It's an amazing thing.
Do you have it? Not gonna answer that question.
Nope.
Won't answer that.
Do you know who has it? Is there anything I can do to Convince you to take me to the Booth mummy? No.
No, I can't do that.
And you can't because you can't, or you can't because you won't? Both.
People have been hunting this thing for years, and The time's just not right.
The day you saw the Booth mummy, can you tell me more about that day? No, no.
I can't do that either.
No.
No.
Like, when you saw it.
Like, not no.
No, I can't do that.
No? I can't.
We're done here.
All right, guys.
All right.
We're done here, guys.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Fascinating man.
I've pushed Robert as hard as I could, and he knows something that he's not sharing.
He had 208 different human remains in his house.
Robert could very well own the Booth mummy, and he's not willing to share it with the world.
I saw it in his eyes.
He knows something.
He knows something that he's not sharing.
Does he know the truth? I believe that I just found where the trail of the missing John Wilkes Booth mummy ends.
Robert didn't want to appear on television, but I changed his mind.
He told me that it wasn't the right time to go public with the Booth mummy, but I hope my conversation today will change his mind and he will agree to let me conduct DNA testing that proves once and for all whether America's greatest assassin paid for his crimes with his life or walked away scot-free.
murdered one of this country's greatest presidents [ Gunshot, people scream .]
and got away with it? Booth escaped.
A mysterious missing mummy might hold the answer.
No way! But only ifI can find it.
Ohh.
I'm archaeologist and mummy expert Ramy Romany.
Across the globe, earth is giving up her dead.
Oh, my god, Pedro! Look at this! Thanks to cutting-edge technology, new mummies are unearthed every day.
It is like an underwater crime scene.
These mummies hold extraordinary secrets Oh, my god! What is this?! Priceless.
if you know how to unwrap them.
That changes Everything.
This is "Mummies Unwrapped.
" In the 1920s, a mummy began appearing as a popular attraction in traveling sideshows across the United States.
There was nothing especially freakish about this mummy except its alleged identity John Wilkes Booth.
The exhibitor claimed that after killing Abraham Lincoln [ Gunshot, people scream .]
Booth was not killed by U.
S.
troops.
They maintained that Booth escaped and lived out his days under various assumed identities.
Nobody has been able to confirm whether the mummy was really Booth because in the late 1970s, it disappeared.
If I can uncover the true identity of the mummy, I can prove whether the world's most famous assassin got away with murder.
There's a man in Washington, D.
C.
He says Booth did escape, that the history books are wrong.
I'm meeting with Nate Orlowek, who's been researching the Booth escape theory for over four decades.
Since the 1990s, Nate has been working with Booth descendants to get permission to conduct DNA tests on the body of the man that the government maintains is John Wilkes Booth.
So far, the courts have blocked all such attempts.
We're starting where it all began; Ford's theatre.
It gives me the chills looking at this and thinking, 150 years ago, the great president of this country, Abraham Lincoln, was sitting right there peacefully.
We all know the official story.
Lincoln was sitting in the president's box.
The guard was missing.
John Wilkes Booth, who knew the theater well, came to the box and waited for his moment.
A funny line in the play.
[ Laughter .]
He counted on the laughter to muffle the sound of the shot.
Booth stood behind Lincoln, pointed his gun at the back of Lincoln's head, then pulled the trigger.
[ Gunshot .]
Booth then climbed right here, onto the front of the box, and he jumped down, and he landed on his left leg and broke his leg.
Even though he had a broken leg, he was able to drag himself across the stage and out to the back.
And there was a horse waiting for him, and he jumped on the horse, and he galloped away.
According to the official account, John Wilkes Booth fled south from Ford's theatre and crossed the bridge into Maryland.
He was joined there by coconspirator David Herold, and the two collected weapons they'd hidden at a tavern.
After finding a doctor to treat Booth's broken leg, they continued south.
The federal government offered a reward of $50,000 for Booth's capture, and an epic manhunt was launched.
The government was determined to get Booth and quickly.
Booth and Herold hid in the woods of Southern Maryland for five days, avoiding the federal troops and detectives hunting for the two fugitives.
Booth eventually ended up in this tobacco barn, one that looks much like this.
Romany: How long were they hiding in there for? According to the conventional history, they were there for 2 1/2 days, and on the morning of April 26, 1865, the federal troops caught up with them.
They surrounded the barn, and they demanded that Booth and Herold surrender.
According to all accounts, Herold did surrender but the other man still refused to come out and so colonel Conger, the head of the platoon, ordered that the barn be set on fire.
Nevertheless, the man refused to surrender, and so colonel Conger set the barn on fire.
[ Fire crackling .]
One of the soldiers, named Boston Corbett, felt that he should do something to avenge Lincoln's murder.
He walked up to the entrance of the barn and put his gun through the slat and shot.
The bullet hit the man in the barn in the back of the neck, wounding him mortally.
And of course, the government claims that that man was John Wilkes Booth.
And that is where Nate believes the government began one of the biggest cover-ups in history.
There's overwhelming evidence that that man was not John Wilkes Booth.
Nate believes that Booth had already fled south the day that troops arrived and that the man killed in the barn only looked like Booth.
Nate also believes that the $50,000 reward for Booth's capture was motivation for the soldiers to insist that the dead man was in fact Booth.
A single photo of the corpse was reportedly taken, but it quickly disappeared from the secretary of war Edwin Stanton's files, along with 27 sheets from Booth's diary.
Rumors began to circulate, saying that Booth escaped and that there was a cover-up to hide this fact.
Years later, the photographer's adult son claimed that the photo of the man killed at the barn was never taken and the man's face was damaged and not recognizable as Booth.
And what sort of evidence do you have that the government attempted a cover-up? Let me show you.
The government claims Booth was secretly buried in Washington's old penitentiary.
They say his body was exhumed and moved twice more.
Yet no photos exist of it.
And all efforts to conduct DNA analysis have been blocked.
Even after the assassin's reported death, reports of Booth sightings continued for years.
In 1907, Finis l.
Bates, the former Attorney General for the state of Tennessee, published his firsthand knowledge of Booth's alleged escape.
Finis l.
Bates was a very young attorney in the 1870s in Texas.
And he became friendly with this man who called himself John St.
Helen.
John St.
Helen? John St.
Helen was John Wilkes Booth.
This is one of the very few copies that is still in existence of a book that Bates wrote to inform us of what this man told him.
One night in 1877, St.
Helen fell very ill and thought he was about to die, and he said to Bates, "I'm really John Wilkes Booth.
" He told him that the original plot was to kidnap President Lincoln.
This was not known until the government released the records in 1935.
In the book, Finis Bates explains that after St.
Helen confessed to killing Lincoln, he disappeared.
25 years later, the same man, going by the name David E.
George, confessed to being Booth and then committed suicide.
Well, David E.
George died on the morning of January 13, 1903, of poison, and he had left instructions that the people there should contact Bates, who was living in Memphis, Tennessee.
Mm-hmm.
Bates came and mummified this body because Bates believed that he was John Wilkes Booth.
So, wait.
Bates ordered the mortician to mummify David E.
George? Ordinarily, if someone dies and doesn't have any family or someone to claim the body, they would just Bury the body.
But Bates, when he came there, said, "well, this is not an ordinary person.
" This is not really David E.
George.
"And therefore, I would like you to mummify it.
" Bates arranged for the body to be mummified, and he profited when it toured sideshows and carnivals, which makes me wonder about Bates' motives in all this.
So here we have an affidavit from six neutral physicians who examined the body stating that this man had a scarred right eyebrow, a scarred right thumb, and a broken left leg marks that John Wilkes Booth, we know today, had.
This is extremely intriguing.
Here's my problem, Nate.
Right? This happened when the mummy was already touring America, and this could have been nothing more than a publicity stunt.
Well, the physicians who did this examination had no ax to grind, and they don't even say that this was John Wilkes Booth.
They just simply did an examination.
There was enough evidence suggesting that Booth possibly escaped that the FBI created a file on the assassin.
The investigation was active in 1922, 1948, and 1977 with no definitive conclusion ever being reached.
John St.
Helen gave Bates a tintype photo.
It was a type of photo taken in the mid-1800s.
Mm.
So he kept this tintype.
It's the only photograph that we know of after he was supposedly killed in the barn.
I can barely make out who this man is.
It's damaged and very low resolution.
If we had the original, we might be able to recover more definitive information.
I spent many years trying to find the original, and finally, I was able to trace it to an obscure collection in a very small town in the middle of Texas.
And it ended up and is now in what's called the swaim collection at Georgetown university library in Washington, D.
C.
John St.
Helen and David E.
George could be the same person.
Their ages and their stories align with the Booth escape theory.
But if I'm going to find this missing mummy, I need to know if John Wilkes Booth really could have lived out his days as John St.
Helen and then David E.
George.
Thank you very much.
I need to find the clearest high-resolution photo to help prove whether these three names were all the same man.
The original photo.
Wow! So this photo was taken 12 years after the assassination of president Abraham Lincoln? It was 1877 when he gave the tintype to Bates.
It was 11 or 12 years later.
Of course, if this man is John Wilkes Booth, then that would settle the entire case, because if he was still alive in 1877, he certainly wasn't killed in 1865.
Nate has given me all the evidence he has that supports the theory that Booth escaped.
But there's one piece of hard evidence in there, the tintype photo.
My plan is to use 21st-century technology to try and solve a 150-year-old case.
I've arranged a meeting with former NYPD detective and facial recognition expert Roger Rodriguez to see how we might be able to use this latest technology in facial recognition to more precisely compare the two men in the images the photo of John St.
Helen and a known image of John Wilkes Booth.
I can't tell you how obsessed and interested I am with your line of work.
How did you get into this? Well, I started my career with the New York City police department, started doing patrol.
Did over 20 years of service there.
But shortly after the events of 9/11, I wanted to pursue a career in police technology, in utilizing technology to catch the bad guys.
And I was tasked to build the facial recognition unit.
The technology has been instrumental in assisting to identify thousands of people.
- Thousands? - Yes.
Do you think we can crack a 150-year-old case, though? We can give it a shot.
Come into my office.
I brought a flash drive today that has high-resolution photos of John Wilkes Booth, as well as photos of the man that claimed to be Booth years later.
That man went by the alias of John St.
Helen and then later called himself David E.
George.
How does the software actually work? What it does is it basically changes the actual face into a numeric code.
It locks into the eyes, and then the face is represented as a series of numbers.
And then the algorithms work their way around, performing their magic.
I clearly see lots and lots of damage to this photo.
These tools are very, very important in the investigative process to make these images more conducive for facial recognition.
Roger starts with a photo of John St.
Helen, the man who claimed to be Booth.
He duplicates, flips, and merges the undamaged side of the face.
This creates a John St.
Helen face that can be compared with the Booth face.
If we were to capture a mug shot of John Wilkes Booth, that is what the mug shot would look like.
I would definitely look at this photo a little more in detail.
After enhancing both photos, Roger uses specialized tools to compare the two faces, looking for shared landmarks and distinct facial features, like moles and freckles.
John Wilkes Booth and St.
Helen's features are similar.
But in order to get a more objective comparison, the software will examine the photos in a kind of virtual lineup.
Roger adds John Wilkes Booth's photo into a public mug shot database of 5,000 white males from the Virginia area.
Why do we need 5,000 pictures? Can't we just put it against the tintype photo and call it a day? It's more face templates that it has to compare against.
What you want to do is drive these results to levels of specificity.
Next, we'll run St.
Helen's photo through what's called a query, which compares his face to the thousands of faces in the database, including John Wilkes Booth's face.
According to Roger, if the John Wilkes Booth photo appears within the top 250 results, then it's a promising match.
Just run a query in the system and see where Booth landed.
Wait.
Am I reading this correct? Romany: There's a mummy who some believe was John Wilkes Booth that the notorious assassin wasn't killed by U.
S.
troops after shooting Abraham Lincoln.
I'm meeting with ex-police detective Roger Rodriguez to use the latest facial-recognition software to compare photos of Booth with the photos of a man who later claimed to be Booth.
If they are the same person, then it means that John Wilkes Booth got away with murder.
Just run a query in the system and see where Booth landed.
According to Roger, if the John Wilkes Booth photo appears within the top 250 results, then it's a promising match.
Wait.
That's within the top three percentile - out of 5,000? - Correct.
This image would definitely pique my interest in an investigation coming in or landing within the top 250.
How does the facial recognition system work on pictures of the dead? Let's take a look at the photo.
Let's see what we can do.
We can see here the shape of the eyebrow and the shape of the eye is very, very distinct on both images.
Putting in mind that one of them is an embalmed dead body Correct.
there is striking resemblance.
The earlobe's right there same earlobe.
And the shape of the inside of the ear is exactly the same.
They are strikingly similar.
We have now documented, using our landmark measurement tool, the space between the eyes.
They are separated by only one pixel.
That's a unique characteristic.
So the software has identified similarities within the two individuals.
Let's pull the shot of David E.
George.
Let's scroll.
Let's see where our subject landed.
There's no way he shows up at all.
Very, very surprising to me.
Pretty interesting.
It's less than 1%.
That's within the 0.
5%.
If that's true, then the mummy that toured America as John Wilkes Booth could be actually John Wilkes Booth.
Would it hold up in a court of law? No.
What would? DNA.
I find it really compelling that John Wilkes Booth, John St.
Helen, and the mummy all have these similarities.
But ultimately, I have to agree with Roger.
In my book, DNA is the only definitive proof and the only way I'll be convinced, which means I have to track down this mummy.
The mummy disappeared in the 1970s.
So I'll have to retrace the mummy's path all the way back to where Booth, under the alias of David E.
George, supposedly lived.
I'm in Enid, Oklahoma.
This is where he rented a room in the early 1900s above what is now a furniture store.
Here is where David E.
George died, and days later, his body was mummified.
The location is owned by amateur historian and researcher Russ frazee.
Your store is associated with a very important story in history.
Well, it's one of the oldest remaining buildings in downtown.
It was built in 1898, built as the grand Avenue hotel at the time of Booth or David E.
George's death.
So David E.
George lived up here? Yes.
We can go upstairs here now.
Local lore has it that David E.
George arrived in Enid and would sometimes confess to being John Wilkes Booth.
But I'm curious about the evidence that supports that claim.
This was kind of the motel 6 of the day; very basic.
There wasn't even any running water up here.
This is the room where George lived.
So this is it.
Oh, look at this.
This is where David E.
George lived.
This is the place.
Original wallpaper.
Oh, a bottle of whiskey.
They were big drinkers in those days.
So, based on your story, after Booth assassinated president Abraham Lincoln, he fled to Texas.
Then after that, he came up to Enid.
It is somewhat difficult to figure him out between the assassination and until he got to Texas.
He had many aliases.
There was no formal identification papers in those days.
You could be anyone you wanted.
And David E.
George spent his evenings in saloons.
When drunk, he would confess to being John Wilkes Booth.
He even revealed details of the assassination plot that wouldn't be made public until 1935.
I mean, you grew up around this legacy and this story all your life.
What do you believe? Do you believe that John Wilkes Booth actually survived? Well, I do.
It was in the Oklahoma history textbooks back in the early '60s, when I was in junior high.
Wait.
John Wilkes Booth's survival was a part of the textbooks here in Oklahoma? Sure was.
So it's not just the oral history.
It's a part of the written history of Enid, Oklahoma.
Yes.
I want to see the documents about David E.
George that Russ has collected over the years.
This is from the Oklahoma historical society, 1922.
"The last will and testament of Dave E.
George.
January 15, 1903.
" This is a written record days after he died.
"At most times, he was jolly" and when drinking, would entertain a crowd "by acting portions of Shakespeare.
" Shakespeare? And drink.
Yeah.
Wasn't John Wilkes Booth also a Shakespearean actor? A great Shakespearean actor.
"January 21, 1903, the Enid daily way.
" Doctors are confident from his symptoms "that he died from arsenic poison self-administered.
" Russ, do you believe that John Wilkes Booth escaped after killing Lincoln? Do you believe that it's a cover-up? Yes.
Romany: I'm in Enid, Oklahoma, where David E.
George spent his last days in 1903.
George claimed to be John Wilkes Booth and to have gotten away with killing Abraham Lincoln.
Shortly after his death, his body was mummified.
Russ, do you believe that John Wilkes Booth escaped after killing Lincoln? Do you believe that it's a cover-up? Yes.
We believe that some unfortunate soul was murdered by the federal government in the barn and then claimed to be Booth.
And what happened after David E.
George died? Well, the body was loaded on a wagon and taken across the square to the funeral parlor, and they embalmed it.
And the embalming process involved injecting the body with arsenic.
And that's how he became a mummy? Yes.
What happened to his mummy? People tried to claim the body, but the mortician kept it at the funeral home.
People were pouring into Enid, asking, "is this the body of Booth?" So people had already heard this could be Booth? Yeah.
And then what happened to the mummy? He sold it to a circus.
They were a little more lenient with the law back in those days.
Before movie houses and radio became the American public's primary source of entertainment, freak shows, dime museums, and sideshows toured the country.
Customers would pay a small fee to see everything from bearded ladies and two-headed cows to fire-eaters and, yes, human mummies.
We have some excellent pictures here.
That's him sitting clothed as a mummy in the funeral parlor.
That's how he looked in the funeral home? That's it.
Yeah.
This man is the same man right here, a picture taken 35 years later while his mummy was touring America? That's correct.
Based on what I've seen so far, the mummy of David E.
George really could be the mummy of John Wilkes Booth.
If I can find the body, I want to do some DNA testing to see if both people are one and the same.
But first, I need to know if the mummy would still be intact after all this time.
I know that arsenic was commonly used towards the end of the 19th century as an embalming agent, but what I don't know is whether somebody embalmed with arsenic could maintain his facial features.
I'm meeting Dr.
John Fritch here at the university of central Oklahoma.
He's an expert in period embalming procedures.
I got some photos right here.
All right.
So, quick background.
This right here is a photo of a man named Dave E.
George.
We also know that he died of arsenic poisoning self-administered.
And 35 years later, this right here is allegedly his mummy, which toured the country in sideshows as John Wilkes Booth.
Is it possible that after 35 years, from this picture to that picture, arsenic preservation could have kept the body, maintaining the features like this? I have some textbooks from that period, and they're kind of these are historical.
Embalming techniques.
The art and science of embalming, I just found fascinating.
One is right here.
"Arsenate of soda is one of the strongest preservations" for animal tissue.
"Causes a rapid desiccation of the cellular tissue.
" So we're talking, it would dry out those tissues very quickly, and that is key to long-term preservation.
Absolutely.
Even in the current environment, when we use formaldehyde, that's the secret, is removing water.
So this person took their own life? Yes.
Okay.
And was found Nearly instantly.
His body, biologically, was healthy.
So the prediction would be that it would take our procedure quite well.
Now, these are historical items.
Wow! Look at this.
Can I take it out? Of course.
Yes.
That's an injection.
It was very common in this period to do the embalming at home.
And so you didn't want to make a mess, and so you would use your drain tubes.
You'd insert them in the veins.
And then as you push your arsenic-based fluid in, the blood would then be withdrawn, and they would put it in a vessel so that they could take it away from the house.
Do you think there's any chance that today this mummy still exists with the features? I would say it's possible.
If this embalmer had knowledge that there was going to be a need for this mummy to be around for an extended period of time, they would have used a strong higher concentration of arsenic.
Absolutely.
Well, we know that this embalmer did plan on having this mummy become a sideshow mummy.
I think it's a great possibility it still exists and in a recognizable form.
I'm now confident that the so-called Booth mummy could be intact today.
But I still have to find it.
I'm here in Austin, Texas, to meet with Steve Busti, an exhibitor of sideshow artifacts and one of the country's foremost collectors of human remains.
I need to find out if he has any theories about where the missing John Wilkes Booth mummy is today.
Okay, Ramy, this is a cabinet of curiosities.
No way! Oh, my god! Look at this! This is the mummy from Guanajuato.
The properties of the soil combined with maybe the arid region created these natural mummies.
What does it take to acquire a mummy like that? Basically, you just need to have the right connections.
They're still around, but it's become increasingly harder to find the real deal.
How would a man like myself track a mummy, let's say like John Wilkes Booth's alleged mummy? Out of all the mummy exhibits, that was probably the most famous.
I don't know where it is.
The last known location was probably mid-1970s, somewhere in Pennsylvania.
It's out there somewhere, you know.
You don't just lose a mummy or misplace a mummy.
You've acquired mummies.
I've only studied them.
Big difference.
Now, how do you trace a mummy that you're looking for? You basically have to start making connections.
You have to know who are some of these other collectors out there that have maybe some of these mummies in their private collection.
And You have connections? [ Laughs .]
Um These collectors are very private.
They don't want to share what they've got with the world.
But I will make some phone calls for you.
That's great.
[ Cellphone rings .]
Steve, what do you got? Yes.
Please.
I got it right here.
What's his name? Robert.
His phone number? No, I completely understand.
I will tread lightly.
Yes, I'll be very careful.
I may have just found the Booth mummy.
Romany: There's a theory that after assassinating president Abraham Lincoln in 1865, John Wilkes Booth escaped.
Years later, his mummified remains toured the country, but then the mummy vanished.
[ Cellphone rings .]
Steve, what do you got? What's his name? Robert.
His phone number? No, I completely understand.
I will tread lightly.
Yes, I'll be very careful.
I may have just found the Booth mummy.
40 years; 40 years since it's last been seen.
If that's true, one DNA test and we'll know if the killer of the greatest president in American history actually got away with it.
This is it.
This is the house.
Let's see where this takes us.
I've reached out to this collector multiple times, and he has not responded.
Knocking on his door may be the only way in.
Okay.
He said yes.
Come on.
Just be very respectful.
I told him one camera.
I think two is fine, but be very respectful.
Robert, the cameras are here.
Oh, wow! Look at this! You know When I got your phone number, they told me that you're very protective and that you're never gonna let anyone in.
It seems like you have a reputation that you don't want to let anyone in.
You're a professional Egyptologist.
You're an educated man.
You're someone I would be interested in knowing.
It's that simple.
Well, thank you very much, Robert.
I am interested in knowing you.
Robert, if you don't mind me asking, what got you interested in all this? I would have to blame that on my grandmother.
My grandmother used to take us to the Museum of Natural History in New York City, and it was love at first sight.
Finally, she started to take us to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I'm sure you know they have a magnificent Egyptian collection there.
Yeah.
It's like coming home.
It's wonderful stuff.
I hope that my appreciation for Robert's impressive collection is buying me some goodwill so I can finally ask about the John Wilkes Booth mummy.
As we all know, it's a sensitive subject.
The collection also has a number of skulls from new Guinea, the Asmat people.
This is a real Papua New Guinea skull? Yes.
That's a skull cup.
This is Tibet, so they don't have a lot of wood, and doing this is honoring their ancestors.
Absolutely.
It honors their dead.
How many humans do you think live with you or dead with you in your own house? About 200.
It's about 208, in fact, I think.
You have 208 other humans? Right.
How often do you get to go around your house and show people that have never seen your collection before? You're the first.
I am here for a very specific reason.
I was looking for a real human mummy, maybe even famous.
Do you want to see it? Let's go down here.
Finally, after all the phone calls and detective work, Robert knows I'm looking to see his famous sideshow mummy.
There's a lot of rooms in this house.
You just never know what's gonna be behind a closed door, so You've seen a lot of mummies in your travels, but I doubt you've ever seen one like this.
Ohh.
Robert, are you married? I am.
What does your wife Everyone wants to know what the wife well, look, you have all these dead people inside your house, Robert.
The wife understands the historical significance and importance of these things, so it doesn't bother her, doesn't bother her.
I mean, you know as well as I do, the dead are not gonna hurt you.
It's the living you have to worry about.
Ha! That's very true.
You've seen a lot of mummies in your travels, but I doubt you've ever seen one like this.
Romany: My cross-country search for the mummy that many believe to be the notorious assassin John Wilkes Booth has brought me here to the basement of one of the world's foremost collectors of human remains.
I'm convinced that the only way to determine whether Booth escaped after killing Lincoln is through DNA testing of his supposed mummy.
Ohh.
This is What you're looking at has been referred to over the years as the pig-tailed man or the pig-tailed woman.
It's unusual, it's rare, but on occasion, people are born with a caudal appendage; a tail.
He was mummified exquisitely.
Yes.
This has gone from one commercial anatomical museum to another.
I was able to trace it up to about the year 1919 in a store show, or a freak show, if you will.
This is indeed a rare sideshow mummy, but it's not the John Wilkes Booth mummy.
It's not the mummy I came here for.
I've been following a story um a story of significant historical value.
It's a story that relates to one of the greatest presidents our country ever had.
I can tell that, from the way you're reacting, you already know what I'm talking about.
I do.
I do.
You're not the only person that's losing a lot of sleep over the Booth mummy, trust me.
The story ends for me in Pennsylvania, 1970s, when this mummy was last seen.
Mm-hmm.
Does it have the same ending with you? A lot of people would like to know where that mummy is a lot of people.
No one seems to know where it is.
Like you said, it was last seen in the mid-'70s in Pennsylvania.
That much, everyone knows.
But they don't know where it is today.
Least, most people don't.
Have you seen it after the '70s? I have.
I'll say that.
I have seen it.
And what did you see? Saw what is reportedly the John Wilkes Booth mummy.
The condition of the skin and all was excellent.
Make no mistake about it.
It's an amazing thing.
Do you have it? Not gonna answer that question.
Nope.
Won't answer that.
Do you know who has it? Is there anything I can do to Convince you to take me to the Booth mummy? No.
No, I can't do that.
And you can't because you can't, or you can't because you won't? Both.
People have been hunting this thing for years, and The time's just not right.
The day you saw the Booth mummy, can you tell me more about that day? No, no.
I can't do that either.
No.
No.
Like, when you saw it.
Like, not no.
No, I can't do that.
No? I can't.
We're done here.
All right, guys.
All right.
We're done here, guys.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Fascinating man.
I've pushed Robert as hard as I could, and he knows something that he's not sharing.
He had 208 different human remains in his house.
Robert could very well own the Booth mummy, and he's not willing to share it with the world.
I saw it in his eyes.
He knows something.
He knows something that he's not sharing.
Does he know the truth? I believe that I just found where the trail of the missing John Wilkes Booth mummy ends.
Robert didn't want to appear on television, but I changed his mind.
He told me that it wasn't the right time to go public with the Booth mummy, but I hope my conversation today will change his mind and he will agree to let me conduct DNA testing that proves once and for all whether America's greatest assassin paid for his crimes with his life or walked away scot-free.