Brad Meltzer's Decoded (2010) s01e04 Episode Script

What if I told you that after murdering president Abraham Lincoln, the most famous assassin in American history lived for 40 more years? On a Friday night at Ford's theatre in 1865 -- good Friday, in fact -- John Wilkes Booth killed our 16th president with a single bullet to the back of his head.
Instantly America's most wanted man, he jumped from the presidential balcony and fled on horseback across Maryland and Virginia.
The conventional wisdom is that Booth was shot 12 days later at Garrett's farm near port royal, Virginia.
But some believe he didn't die that night and that he was actually acting on behalf of the confederate secret service, who then aided him in his escape.
They say the man killed at Garrett's barn was actually a look-alike, a patsy used to throw off union soldiers.
And what's crazy is that this is just one of three plausible theories of Booth's escape.
Whatever the case, 150 years later, if John Wilkes Booth was able to escape the law and live as a fugitive for another 40 years, I want to know what happened.
I'm Brad Meltzer.
I've spent my life collecting stories.
The best include signs, symbols, and codes, secret meanings that are hidden in plain sight.
Some have become the basis for my novels, but I've only scratched the surface of what's out there.
And now history has given me the resources to investigate the rest.
This is "decoded.
" -- Captions by vitac -- We're on the trail of the assassin.
This is awesome.
Ford's theatre, the scene of the crime.
Greatest manhunt in American history starts right there.
We know he was shot right there.
His wife was sitting next to him.
There was another couple up in the box.
I would think he would have been careful heading over to the president's box, because people would have been like, "hey, what are you doing over there? Why are you headed that way?" Apparently, that's the original picture of Washington that's there.
Ford's theatre was the perfect place for Booth to stage his final performance.
As a famous actor, Booth was friends with the owner, he was in the theater's inaugural play, and he even got his mail delivered there.
Booth knew the place inside out.
This was home turf.
On the night he shot president Lincoln, he didn't even try to conceal his identity.
He walks in the front door while the performance is still in progress, says hello to people who recognize him, and then he makes his way to the hallway outside the president's private box.
Presidential security back then was nothing like it is today.
Lincoln generally traveled with one or two guards, and conveniently, on this night, the man who was supposed to be guarding the door to the box wasn't even there.
He left the theater to get a drink with some friends.
So Booth peers through the peephole that he's said to have drilled in the door earlier that day to see inside.
There was no guard inside the president's box -- just Lincoln, his wife, and another couple.
Booth had even memorized the play.
He waited until the big laugh line, and when the big joke hit and everyone laughed, all Booth had to do was open the unlocked door, walk up behind the president, and shoot him.
[ Gunshot .]
Many people think this is the act that led to Booth's death, but now, 150 years later, his family is finally coming forward to tell a very different story.
So, you are a relative of John Wilkes Booth.
Yes.
My great-great-grandmother was John Wilkes Booth's aunt.
Are there emotions that you feel looking up at that balcony? Oh, absolutely.
I mean, to be related to somebody that assassinates a president is a heavy burden.
I was about 11 or 12 years old when my mother sort of laid on me that we were related to John Wilkes Booth.
That's when you first heard of that.
Without skipping a beat, she said, "you're gonna be learning this in school.
They're gonna say that he died in the barn.
He did not die in the barn.
He lived for many, many years.
" So she told you that blockbuster piece of information right away.
Yes.
I had no idea that John Wilkes Booth had survived.
The historians would come to our house and talk to my mother, and my mother didn't want to have anything to do with it.
But eventually, she felt that it was time to tell the family side of the story.
This was truly the great escape.
[ Gunshot .]
After he shot Lincoln, Booth jumped from the presidential balcony.
He actually got caught on a picture of George Washington.
And some say he broke his leg when he landed.
Imagine jumping from this? 11 feet is what I recall.
On pure adrenaline, he ran out the stage door to his waiting horse and galloped across the Navy yard bridge into Maryland.
Some think that it was during this ride that he was thrown from his horse, and that's where he broke his leg, but either way, Booth can't walk.
In Maryland, he met co-conspirator David herold, and the two of them traveled for two hours, 14 miles, to a confederate safe house -- surratt's tavern.
There, they picked up guns, ammo, and supplies.
Booth never got off his horse and probably wasn't there for more than five minutes.
But he had enough nerve to boast that he had just killed the President of the United States.
[ Gunshot .]
And why wouldn't he brag? At this point, Booth thought he was a hero.
Herold and Booth raced off from surratt's and headed south for another 14 miles to the town of Waldorf, Maryland.
But this time, it took them four hours instead of two.
The pain from his broken leg must have been killing him, and they were forced to make an unplanned stop at the home of Dr.
Samuel mudd.
And this is the spot.
This is the actual couch where John Wilkes Booth had his leg set by Dr.
mudd.
Do you think he knows this is the guy who just killed the president? I don't think there's any possible way he could know.
Mudd set his leg, and it was here that some say Booth took the first steps toward assuming a brand-new identity -- shaving his mustache and maybe even coloring his hair.
He was officially on the run.
Later, for having helped Booth, mudd was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for almost five years.
And you know that expression "your name is mud"? A lot of people think this is where it came from -- from Dr.
mudd.
That is absolutely not true.
It was printed years earlier, but it was cool.
Booth and herold left Dr.
mudd's in the morning.
The manhunt for Booth was on.
And he already had a $100,000 price on his head.
So Booth and herold spend the next 10 days trekking through the forest and swamp, making their way south and, they hoped, into friendlier territory.
They arrive at Garrett's farm near port royal, Virginia, on April 24th.
This is the fork in the road.
The belief has always been that Booth was killed two nights later by union soldiers, but there are a lot of people who believe that Booth was never at Garrett's barn and that if he was there, it was only briefly.
Garrett's barn was burned down, but buddy, Mac, and Scott have found a replica that should give them some insight into what happened at the farm that night.
So, this is probably as close as we can get to seeing the actual barn.
Definitely, yes.
These slats open so that the air goes in and dries the tobacco.
Oh, okay.
Booth and herold are at the Garrett farmhouse, and they were with three confederate soldiers.
They take him to the Garrett farmhouse.
Did Booth have a mustache at the time, do you know? No.
He had shaved his mustache off at the mudd farm.
And they still recognized him.
Would you still recognize Brad pitt if he had a little beard? Everybody had a mustache.
Some of the women even had mustaches.
[ Laughter .]
Now, it's about 2:00 in the morning.
Okay.
And the soldiers have gotten here.
26 of them.
26 soldiers, yes.
It's dark outside.
It's dark inside.
So herold is very anxious to get out of that barn, and Booth says, "this man wants to surrender.
" And he shoves herold out the door.
The soldiers say, "come on out.
We want you to surrender.
" And he doesn't want any part of that.
So then one of the soldiers goes to the back of the barn, and they set fire to the barn.
Now, Boston corbett draws his bead on him and he shoots Booth, and it hits him in the back of the neck here.
Immediately, the doors are opened, and Booth is dragged out.
Why would John Wilkes Booth allow herold to leave and leave himself in there alone? 'Cause he knows.
He knows this is his very final act, and he wants the stage all to himself.
This is his sexy finale.
He's gonna go out with two guns.
Right.
Not with this guy that might take some of the credit.
God forbid.
What if he's better looking? I want to see what Booth was seeing.
I want to go in there.
This barn, to me, is where it gets really interesting.
It looks like one that you could easily get out of.
Well, you can see in and out of it, so you can shoot people going in and out of it.
I mean, I guess, can you get out of here? I could, but not with six guys standing there with guns.
So, all we're saying is that it's possible, you know? It's possible to get out and get shot, absolutely.
I give you that.
But that's not what happened.
He knew that he couldn't get out, so he stayed in here until he was just about lit on fire.
We're operating under the assumption that there were always only two people in the barn.
Right.
Because you can imagine this, okay? They shoot who they think is Booth, right? All of the soldiers are immediately gonna converge on that person.
All of the attention's gonna be focused there.
It's gone from the rest of the barn.
How easy would it be to escape at that point? There could easily have been more than two people in the barn at one time.
Including the possibility that Booth had switched and Booth gets away.
One thing I would like to point out is that after Booth is shot and he's laying there dying, herold is outside, and he says to Doherty, "who was that man that was in there shot? Who was he?" And Doherty says, "well, you know very well who that was.
" And he says, "no, I don't know who that was.
He said his name was Boyd.
He told me his name was Boyd.
I didn't know it was Booth.
" Herold says the guy's name is Boyd.
Not Booth, Boyd.
Yes.
That's what he said.
Doesn't that make it even more suspicious that this is someone else? Here's what doesn't make sense.
Why would herold say Booth was Boyd? He's been captured.
There's nothing to gain.
So we've got to find out more about who Boyd was.
Was he even a real person? And here's where the spooky music starts to play.
Is it possible that he was some sort of patsy placed there to take the fall for Booth? With so many leads to follow, it's time for the team to split up and conquer.
Buddy's headed to one of my favorite places in Washington, the national archives, to see if he can find out who Boyd really was.
And Mac and Scott are gonna see if there's any chance that it wasn't Booth in that barn.
It's impossible that the man killed in that barn was John Wilkes Booth.
Three different witnesses said that the man killed in the barn had reddish hair even though it's a known fact that John Wilkes Booth had jet-black hair, and Dr.
may says the body looked much older than the John Wilkes Booth he knew in life and was freckled.
But hair color -- isn't hair color something that can be changed quite easily? Even if the hair color somehow had been changed, there's a lot of other evidence.
It was in everybody's interest for it to be believed that John Wilkes Booth was killed.
All of the soldiers at that barn and all the officers got enormous amounts of reward money.
Colonel conger received what in today's money would be $208,000.
Even the privates got what today would be $23,000.
They all agree to -- let's call it a cover-up for money? I cannot find any evidence that lieutenant Doherty, who was the actual commander of the 16th New York cavalry -- I don't think he believed that he was killing the wrong man, but once they pulled the body out, they realized that it wasn't Booth.
This is why they didn't do any kind of an I.
D.
Whatsoever.
Let me get this straight.
John Wilkes Booth kills Lincoln at the theater, he goes to the surratt tavern, he goes to Dr.
mudd's, but he doesn't go to the barn? He did go to Garrett's, but he left there two days before the man in the barn was killed.
In fact, that itself -- although it's not a documentary piece of evidence -- makes sense to me.
Why would a desperate fugitive hang around in a person's house for several days? I would think, if I was John Wilkes Booth, I'd want to keep going south as fast as I could.
Okay, we've got to remember that the country's in complete chaos at this point.
The war is over, but the confederacy was very much alive in spirit.
General Robert e.
Lee had surrendered just five days before Booth had killed Lincoln.
Confederate president Jefferson Davis -- he's got no intention of letting that stop him.
He's just fled Richmond with all the money in the southern treasury, and his plan -- he wants to build another army to fight on.
He is not giving up.
And the nation's so unstable that all the pressure is on secretary of war Edwin Stanton to bring Lincoln's assassin to justice.
Now we've got motive.
[ Gunshot .]
With the eyes of an entire nation on him, there's simply no way to understand the lengths that Stanton might have gone to to close this case.
And knowing that the nation needed Lincoln's killer brought to justice so that it could survive as a united country, here's the key question.
Did Stanton place a Booth look-alike at Garrett's farm? Nate, we've heard a lot about the theories and everything.
Do you have anything, any tangible evidence you can actually show us or give to us? Well, the statement of two different people.
This is from John p.
Simonton, who, for 43 years, was employed in the office of the judge advocate general of the war department.
And he said, "I studied the evidence in this case and found no definite proof that John Wilkes Booth was ever captured.
" So there's the government's own top expert -- 43 years -- saying, "there's no evidence that the man killed there was really John Wilkes Booth.
" Well, and I have a lot of respect for a judge advocate general, being one myself.
I haven't heard enough evidence to prove this in court at this point.
So this is very interesting.
So, this is an actual service record.
A service record for a Captain James w.
Boyd.
He's a confederate soldier, 6th Tennessee infantry.
He's a prisoner of war, and he was a Captain in the confederate army.
"By direction of the secretary of war, I have the honor to request you will order Captain j.
W.
Boyd, rebel army, a prisoner of war, recently transferred from ft.
Delaware to Hilton head, south Carolina, to be delivered to the provost marshal in this city --" so Washington, d.
C.
-- "With as little delay as practical.
" Sent by secretary of war Edwin Stanton to Washington, D.
C.
Right.
Okay, and this is almost exactly two months to the day before -- before the assassination, correct.
I think Boyd is a really important piece of this puzzle.
Here's a guy who was a confederate officer.
He ends up getting caught and put in prison in south Carolina.
Then, for no reason that we know of, Boyd is transferred to Washington, D.
C.
, on secretary of war Edwin Stanton's orders.
I wonder what Stanton might want with him.
That's not indicated in the record.
Okay.
So that's the big question.
Were confederate soldiers made into spies? Were they ever used as pawns in negotiation? The answer to that is yes to both.
It seems really unusual to me that someone as powerful as Edwin Stanton would intervene in this particular soldier's behalf, for his release, and especially so soon before the assassination of Lincoln.
'Cause we don't have anything showing that he intervened on his release, which is the unusual part, 'cause sometimes the president and the secretary of war did intervene to get prisoners released.
But in this case, we have something showing that he intervened to send him to a D.
C.
Prison.
At which point, they have him to do with whatever they want.
Right.
He might even agree to be a spy.
That is a possibility, yes.
In fact, that's exactly who Boyd was.
He was a spy for the union.
It was his job to inform the north about confederate smuggling operations in Tennessee.
But what many ask is -- was Boyd actually summoned to D.
C.
to be the fall guy, to be inserted into the barn that night undercover, and to actually become Booth? I know -- I think it's totally out there, too, but at this point, Stanton needs a body.
And before you make your decision, wait till you hear about the corpse they claimed to be John Wilkes Booth.
John Wilkes Booth was brought here and then was put on board the montauk, a monitor-class ironclad.
Was the autopsy itself performed on the ship? Yes, it was.
It was performed on the ship, and I believe it was the afternoon of the following day.
Well, who would have been present, then? Who was actually there? Well, there were 13 people who were present.
With the exception of three of those, they all had government connections.
They were all connected either to the war department or the Navy department.
Two were photographers.
And one was -- sorry.
There were photographers.
So there was photos taken.
The story is that one negative was taken.
[ Camera shutter clicks .]
The photographer was sent back to the studio with a Detective accompanying him.
The instructions were to develop the negative, the glass-plate negative, make a single print from it, and then turn the negative and the print over to the Detective, who was to then turn it in to secretary of war Edwin Stanton.
I'm not sure who actually got the negative, but it's been lost over the years, perhaps on purpose.
Didn't his family identify him, his family doctor? Family was not allowed to see the body.
They were not brought aboard the montauk.
Certainly, there were fellow actors in the city who could have been brought aboard.
Right.
They were not.
And they were not.
And most surprisingly, many of the conspirators who had already been apprehended were being held prisoner aboard the montauk.
Why they weren't brought up to the deck to identify the body is a question that's never been answered.
The chain of custody here is pretty suspect.
I'm starting to think cover-up.
And when you add a witness like Dr.
John Frederick may, who operated on Booth years before, this thing's really starting to get murky.
The temper of the interrogation is fairly clear -- that he's under duress, that he says, "this body doesn't look anything like Booth.
I don't recall Booth being freckled.
I don't recall him being as old as this gentleman.
" But he was under duress, and he realized, "anyone who was involved in this conspiracy --" these folks realized early on if they were implicated in this, they were gonna stretch a rope.
They knew that.
The fact that the autopsy was done on the montauk, on a gunboat, and not in a morgue or a hospital, doesn't mean there's a conspiracy, but it does tell us they wanted this done as quickly as possible.
And it becomes even more suspicious when they won't let Booth's family identify the body.
And then they only take one photo of the body, and it's given directly to secretary Stanton, who then conveniently loses the thing.
And that's where I start wondering, "what's going on?" Do you believe that that autopsy was done on John Wilkes Booth's body or somebody else's? Based on the evidence that I've seen, the documents I've seen, it was a pretty sloppy identification.
How convinced are you? Do you believe it beyond a reasonable doubt? I think I do, yes.
I could say that.
Rather than just go on and conjecture this until the end of time, why not use modern science to do it? It can't hurt.
In this case, there are samples.
There are? The cervical vertebrae that were removed from the body and a little section of the spinal cord reside in the national museum of health and medicine at the Walter Reed army medical center.
You could take a DNA sample and then you could do a partial exhumation of Edwin Booth's body, which is buried in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his brother, a close relative, certainly close enough for this kind of thing.
I've always thought it was just a rumor, but jan confirms there are bone and tissue samples at Walter Reed taken from the body on the montauk.
Whether these tissue samples are from Booth's body or someone else's body is the question.
And we can answer that question with a DNA test.
What are they waiting for? Why aren't we doing this? Ah, $64,000 question.
I think from the professional historical point of view, there are many people who have a vested interest in keeping the story the way it is.
The bad guy was caught, and resisting arrest, he was killed.
And, as you said, he got his just deserts, and there's people that like that ending.
I like that ending.
I want to know this guy was -- you can like it, but if it's wrong, it's wrong.
We all grew up with that ending.
Are we happy with it? I'm not.
[ Gunshot .]
To me, nothing would be stronger than actual DNA comparison, and now we know that's possible.
It's just a matter of getting permission to test the piece of bone at Walter Reed and compare it to the sample of Booth's brother Edwin's body in Massachusetts.
Yet, in 1994, the Booth family and a group of historians petitioned the state of Maryland to have his body exhumed.
The courts denied the request, but there's the question, right? Why would they possibly deny what would give them the truth? Now we're seeing the evidence.
It's starting to look real, right? That the person shot in Garrett's barn might not have been John Wilkes Booth.
So far, we've been exploring the possibility that it was James w.
Boyd, and we've just located his military records.
We're also analyzing evidence that suggests that the government might have known it wasn't Booth, but they covered it up to calm the nation.
But the one thing I can't shake -- look at the people who are telling us these stories.
These aren't passengers on the crazy train.
As they talk about it, good guy and bad guy in this story, the motive always makes sense.
Hey.
Hey! What's up? It's good to see you.
You look excited.
Yeah, you look lit up.
What happened? Oh, you want to just jump in? Cut to the chase, man.
What do you got? Okay, so, I went to the national archives, and James w.
Boyd was a real confederate soldier taken prisoner -- okay? -- Right before the assassination.
He signed an oath of allegiance to the United States.
What do you mean he signs an oath of allegiance? To the union.
Essentially to the union.
He's turned.
He's either turned or Stanton has decided on his own to use this guy either as a patsy or as a spy.
He disappears from the historical record on February 15, 1865 -- ironically, two months before the Lincoln assassination.
I found, on my own, the neff collection -- archives in Indiana.
Mm-hmm.
This is James w.
Boyd? This is the one that Edwin Stanton released.
Who does he look like? He looks astonishingly like John Wilkes Booth.
He's a dead ringer.
Amazing, huh? And look at this.
This is an interview about the Booth case, and here's a quote from a member of the secret service.
Allen's widow, Mrs.
Hannah Allen, told journalist Rufus woods that her husband had seen the corpse in Virginia and told her that it had auburn- or Chestnut-colored hair.
Hair color is actually an important piece of the puzzle here.
John Wilkes Booth was known to have dark hair, but several witnesses at the scene claim that the body taken from Garrett's barn had light-colored hair and freckles.
James w.
Boyd, on the other hand, had light hair.
Descriptions say it was slightly blondish-red.
Let me tell you what else we discovered from our medical guy.
There's more? There are two medical artifacts that remain from John Wilkes Booth's body.
Oh, is there, like, a vertebrae? Yes, vertebrae that are large enough, we believe, to perhaps extract some DNA from to compare with Booth's brother, who we know where he is buried.
Because if there is a match, case closed.
If there's not a match Can open, worms everywhere.
[ Laughs .]
"Can open, worms everywhere.
" [ Gunshot .]
Hey, Brad, it's Scott.
Hey, Scott.
This is the rewriting of history.
If John Wilkes Booth continued to live, there should be evidence of that.
Where'd he go? So, here's what I've been finding.
When Booth realized that he wasn't a national hero and that he basically was screwed forever, he adopted an alias.
So there are now two trains of thought, two different aliases.
One is a man called John St.
Helen, and there's another that say he went as John b.
Wilkes.
So you're gonna find out who these two people are, 'cause these are the two -- as far as I can tell, the two best leads we have for where he really went afterwards.
There are three strong possibilities.
One is that Booth then assumes Boyd's identity, but there are no records of Boyd after April of 1865.
Another theory is that he assumes the alias John b.
Wilkes and flees the country.
Fleeing the country is smart, but making your alias John b.
Wilkes -- that's dumb.
But as a patriot, one who was willing to kill for his country, we also have to look at the possibility that he stayed in the U.
S.
and lived out his days in west Texas under the alias John St.
Helen.
There's compelling evidence for both of these last two theories.
With two leads to chase down, buddy and McKinley are headed to sewanee, Tennessee, to look into the John St.
Helen alias.
Scott's gonna see what he can find out about the John b.
Wilkes identity.
We're on the trail of John Wilkes Booth and what happened to him after Garrett's farm.
There's some aliases that John Wilkes Booth may have taken on.
One of them was j.
B.
Wilkes.
What we have here is a 19th-century case of identity theft.
It's my understanding, from several different sources, that a lady from south bend, Indiana, introduced John Wilkes Booth to a fellow in terre haute by the name of John b.
Wilkes.
He was born in sheffield, England, in 1822.
Booth stole his identity and used that, as an englishman, to go to India, where he lived out the rest of his natural life and died in 1883.
This John b.
Wilkes of India came to the United States in 1873 and had his picture taken.
I've got a copy of the picture.
You're kidding me.
A chill just went up my spine.
It's not a resemblance.
It looks to me like the exact same person.
But I have to accept it on your word at this point that this a photograph of John Wilkes.
As much as the picture looks like the real Booth, there's something nagging at me.
There's just no way to authenticate the photo.
This was my dad's library.
It's where he did all his work on John Wilkes Booth.
So, do you have evidence that John Wilkes Booth survived the burning barn on Garrett's farm? We believe he did, and his signature appears in the Franklin county courthouse in the marriage register.
His actual signature, "John Wilkes Booth"? Yes.
Wow.
That's amazing.
Arthur Ben chitty was a historiographer at the university of the south and one of the main proponents that John Wilkes Booth used John St.
Helen as an alias.
Unfortunately, Dr.
chitty passed away in 2002.
After growing up in a house surrounded by all things John Wilkes Booth, chitty's daughter, em Turner chitty, has herself become a Booth expert.
John Wilkes Booth got here probably in 1872.
He fell in love with a local girl whose name was Louisa Payne.
He confessed to her that he was the assassin of Abraham Lincoln.
[ Gunshot .]
She was not fazed by this.
Wow.
But she was fazed that she had married a man under the wrong name.
That's what bothered her? That's what bothered her.
So she insisted that they go back to the courthouse and get remarried, and I can show you the documentary evidence.
We'd love to see it.
Okay.
These are the documents that my dad looked for and found in the Franklin county courthouse in the marriage register.
Signed by John w.
Booth in 1872, which was seven years after the escape.
This is a long shot, but are there any living heirs? Yes, there is a 90-year-old lady named juanita keele.
And she's related how? She is the granddaughter of Louisa Payne's sister.
Okay, well, we got to go talk to juanita.
I'd like to ask you if you have anything more.
Well, I do have with me a will that John b.
Wilkes executed in India in 1883, 18 years after John Wilkes Booth's alleged death, that I think will prove to you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that John Wilkes Booth survived and lived in India.
So you're telling me that you're holding in your hand right now the will of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of president Lincoln.
That's what I'm telling you.
I definitely want to see that.
I do not see John Byron Wilkes' actual signature on here, and wills do have to be signed.
And if it was, we might be able to do a handwriting analysis and compare it with any known signatures of John Wilkes Booth.
It would be wonderful to have the original will, but we have searched and searched and searched and we just haven't been able to find it.
So, how does this prove that this person who wrote this will was John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of president Lincoln, after he was supposedly killed in the barn? This document contains special bequests to people who were either friends or family of John Wilkes Booth.
Well, who were they? Tell me.
The first specific request -- "to ogarita Rosalie Wilkes, natural heir of my body.
" That would be Booth's daughter by his wife, who's later mentioned, izola Martha Stevenson.
Why in the world would John Byron Wilkes be giving money to John Wilkes Booth's wife? And how would these two have even known each other, right? That's the question, and the obvious answer is -- it wasn't John b.
Wilkes that was really writing this will.
"Mary Louise Turner, natural heir of my body," is another daughter of John Wilkes Booth, this time by Ella Turner, who was, at the time of the assassination, John Wilkes Booth's mistress.
Then to Henry Johnson, who was Booth's valet, who escaped with Booth up to Harpers ferry.
Henry Johnson was his valet, even if he didn't help him escape.
That's provable historical fact.
There's no question that the will seems to point to the fact that John Wilkes Booth lived well beyond 1865, but without a signature or some other way to authenticate the will, I'm just not convinced that John Wilkes Booth adopted the alias of John b.
Wilkes.
With the Wilkes identity becoming a dead end, Scott has joined buddy and Mac in Tennessee to follow up some interesting leads on the John St.
Helen alias.
My grandmother's sister married John Wilkes Booth.
The John Wilkes Booth? Yes.
Does the family history tell you of when he dropped this bomb on her? They were married before he told her.
What name did he call himself then? He went by the name of John St.
Helen.
Oh! And then when he told her that he was John Wilkes Booth, she insisted they go back and be remarried because -- yeah, that's what we heard yesterday.
Love is powerful.
Yes, it is.
Even if you're married to John Wilkes Booth.
So these newlyweds head to Memphis, and then what happens? She left because she was homesick, and she came back to live in the Payne house.
And then he vanishes.
He told her he would come back, but he never did.
How do you feel about it? And how does your family feel about that connection, being sort of married to the mob? It was not to be talked about outside the family.
Why are you open about it now? Well, at my age, I've decided everybody's dead that mattered that would have been hurt by it, so I'll tell it.
Right.
We came down here to Tennessee to follow up another connection to John Wilkes Booth, a person by the name of Mary bates wehbi.
Do you know that name? Was she kin to finis bates? Would that be significant if she was? Well, he was a good friend to John Wilkes Booth.
Would you like to meet her? Oh, I'd love to, yes.
Well, we have a surprise for you.
Here she is.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for coming.
Oh, it's my pleasure.
How do you do? It's such a pleasure to meet you.
I'm so glad to get to meet you.
Finis l.
Bates was my paternal grandfather, and he was a lawyer and confidant of John Wilkes Booth in granbury, Texas.
However, at that time, Booth was calling himself John St.
Helen, and he became such a good friend of his that he gave him a picture of himself that was a tintype.
But, as you can see, it was so severely damaged that my grandfather had this painted from it.
Oh, to complete the picture.
Yes.
But he kept that so that he could prove that this is what he looked like.
And he would have been highly recognizable in those days.
John St.
Helen.
Huh.
After that, my grandfather got a call St.
Helen was dying and had sent for him.
He needed to make a deathbed confession.
And so he told my grandfather how he had escaped.
As he made the confession, my grandfather began to think that no man would make a deathbed confession this serious if he were not the real person.
According to Mary's grandfather finis bates, John St.
Helen did not die that day, but he left Texas and later settled in enid, Oklahoma, taking a new alias -- David e.
George.
And here's the crazy part about that.
The name appears to be code.
Two of Booth's co-conspirators where David herold and George e.
Atzerodt -- David e.
George.
It's either a sly reference to Booth's true identity or just a guy with two first names.
Many years later, 1903, he saw a clipping in the newspaper from enid, Oklahoma, that said a man in enid had confessed to being John Wilkes Booth, and the body was there in the mortuary.
So my grandfather made a trip to enid to be sure to identify the body, and he did find that it was, indeed, his friend John Wilkes Booth, or John St.
Helen.
The David e.
George part is actually the best part of the story.
The man committed suicide by drinking arsenic, and the arsenic combines with his embalming fluids, and it actually mummifies his body.
So when finis bates arrives to identify the body, they actually give him the mummy because no one else claims it.
Can we just stop here? One, we have a mummified body that people think is John Wilkes Booth.
Two, people are giving away mummies.
Over the years, bates even tries to sell it a few times.
He actually offers it to Henry Ford for $1,000, but ultimately, it ends up in his garage.
When bates dies in 1923, his wife sells it to a traveling circus.
It actually toured the U.
S.
for almost 50 years before it vanishes in the early '70s.
Come on, we've got people paying to see a mummified body that they think is John Wilkes Booth.
This is officially the greatest Abraham Lincoln story of all time.
Here's what we know.
There is evidence that John Wilkes Booth may have not been killed at Garrett's barn, but is the evidence airtight? Can it be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Booth was either John St.
Helen or John b.
Wilkes? The only way to really know for sure is to exhume the body, do the DNA testing.
So, clearly, both of those women believe that that was John Wilkes Booth in their families' lives.
Yeah, but they have reason to, don't you think? Well, of course they have reason to.
For one, there's a woman that marries John Wilkes Booth and has a baby.
The other one -- her well-respected grandfather believes it's John Wilkes Booth.
It's embarrassing to them if it's not John Wilkes Booth.
Family lore is powerful, so it's embedded in them now.
There's an answer to this.
It comes out of the exhumation of the body.
Agreed.
If we can do a forensic analysis of it, this story ends.
So let's find out why that was denied.
So, let me just really briefly tell you how the process works.
If you mess with a grave or disturb a grave, that is against the law.
So you have to get legal permission before you can do it.
Okay.
So the first place you go in Maryland is to the state's attorney's office, same office I held for 12 years.
I found out that the state's attorney in Baltimore city did, indeed, say it was okay originally to exhume John Wilkes Booth's body.
Yes, absolutely.
Why haven't we done it? Well, somebody appealed to the courts, and it now went to a judge, and then the judge makes a decision.
So, it says here, "to summarize, the alleged remains of John Wilkes Booth were buried in an unknown location some 126 years ago, and there is evidence that three infant siblings are buried on top of John Wilkes Booth's remains.
There may be severe water damage to the Booth burial plot, and there are no dental records available for comparison.
Thus, an identification may be inconclusive.
So the above reasons coupled with the unreliability of the petitioners' --" that's the people who were asking to do this -- "less-than-convincing escape/cover-up theory gives rise to the conclusion that there is no compelling reason for exhumation.
" Wait.
"Coupled with the unreliability of the petitioners' less-than-convincing escape/cover-up theory.
" At this point, it's not gonna happen.
At this point.
At this point.
One of the objections to exhuming John Wilkes Booth's body was that it would have been out of the ground for as long as six weeks.
That was 15 years ago.
Given today's technology, all we need is a sample from Booth's brother Edwin and access to the bone at Walter Reed.
Is that really so much to ask? Guys got this figured out? Buddy? I have some conclusions, but I don't have it figured out.
All right, well, some is good.
How about you, Mac? I feel like I have it figured out.
Oh, really? I do.
All right, well, tell us.
The John b.
Wilkes is -- to me, that's not the same guy.
It's just not conclusive enough.
Even the photos, to me, did not look really like the same guy.
And the John St.
Helen -- it all comes down to his first lie, saying that he's John Wilkes Booth to his new wife.
And from there, it is the same guy, but there's no reason for us to truly believe that's John Wilkes Booth.
Maybe he was telling Louisa Payne that for some reason.
Maybe he knew he was gonna run away from her, and he was just giving her some weird story.
What seems more credible to me is the guy was chased for 12 days.
Everybody was looking for him.
A confederate soldier even helped turn him in.
He was not in a safe place.
You can call me a skeptic, but I believe that John Wilkes Booth died in that barn -- period, end of story.
There's actually a lot of evidence for John Wilkes Booth taking on the alias of John b.
Wilkes.
There were photos.
There were letters.
There was even a will.
And these documents were actually pretty amazing, if they were real.
But I just didn't think they would hold up in a court of law.
What I've got a problem with is going down these two separate paths, and I have to say -- I think the path that I went down, with India and John b.
Wilkes, is a dead end.
However, the stuff that we heard today really is what makes me think that it's possible that John Wilkes Booth did not die in the barn.
We're pretty closely aligned, and since you're a lawyer and I'm not, I want to just try to go down my points in the way that you might.
Great.
Sure.
I'm gonna go with mine.
All right, counselor, it's your summation.
Looking at everything that we've encountered, could Booth have escaped the tobacco barn at Garrett's farm? Absolutely.
Was the handling of the body and the autopsy suspect? Yes.
Should Booth's body be exhumed at the green mount cemetery and tested? I think so.
I think so, too.
Do you? I do.
The evidence points to the fact that Booth died in Garrett's barn, but so much of it is circumstantial that I don't know what to believe.
So you would be a hung jury.
I would.
I would.
I believe he died there.
I really do.
The question is -- is the body taken from the barn John Wilkes Booth? And there is an answer to that question.
Well, we all agree that it's worth going for the DNA, maybe just the DNA of his brother versus the little piece of his spine or Booth's body.
We all agree that that is a worthwhile activity.
Absolutely.
History deserves to know that answer.
I agree.
I wish we had a definitive answer, but I think we do, in a way.
Our definitive answer is -- there's a way to get to the bottom.
There's now only one way to solve the John Wilkes Booth case once and for all, and that's with a DNA test.
If we want to close this chapter in our history, we'll need to compare the samples that we know exist with the DNA sample from Booth's brother Edwin.
The test is either gonna show that they're brothers or that they're strangers.
And without that, what we have is a great story of a great escape and a famous actor who may have pulled off the role of his life Hiding his own identity and hiding from history.
But until we can force the hand of the powers that be and test that DNA, we will never know for sure whether John Wilkes Booth died in 1865 or not.
[ Gunshot .]