Did Lincoln's Assassin Get Away?

December 27, 2010

John Wilkes Booth lived until 1903. He traveled the country as the world's most wanted (and least sought-after) fugitive, changing his name several times, until taking his own life.

That is the story that Booth's descendants have heard over and over in the 145 years since America's greatest president was murdered with a single shot to the head from the famous actor's gun. Soon that theory may finally be proven -- or put to rest.

Descendants of the assassin have now agreed to exhume the body of his brother, Edwin Booth, who was also a famous Shakespearean actor of the time. Edwin died in 1893. DNA from his body could be tested against vertebrae of the man shot in a barn and identified as John Wilkes Booth. Those remains are currently in the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C., and the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia.

So will the history books need to be rewritten? Stay tuned.

Read the Story

Vincent Bugliosi Looks at the JFK Assassination

Photo: MPI/Getty Images

 

 

Comments

[joanne hulme]

At no time did any of JW Booth's family identify the body, not on the Montague, not at Weaver's Funeral Home, not at the barn. The goverment could have brought the family forth, but chose not to. I am a Booth cousin, by blood and a great niece to JW Booth by marriage of my great Aunt Cora Mitchell, to JWB'S younger brother Joseph. He said numerous times that neither he or Edwin Booth ever identified the body and history continues to be recorded that they did identify the body. It's the "historians" with TV and Book deals that continue to stand in the way of proving this, and let the history prove what is right or wrong!!!!!