Article from the British newspaper The Mirror
ORIGINAL LINK: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/man-who-killed-uss-most-31093039
Man Who Killed US’s Most Famous President Could Have Escaped Justice All Along
Matt Roper Senior Features Writer
The Mirror
09:00, 08 Oct 2023
Updated 09:12, 08 Oct 2023
Man who killed US’s most famous president could have escaped justice all along
Abraham Lincoln was shot as he watched a play and within days his killer was caught - but all these years later new evidence has emerged that John Wilkes Boot may not have been the wanted man.
Days after shooting president Abraham Lincoln as he watched a play in a Washington theatre, John Wilkes Booth was surrounded by Union troops inside a barn on a Virginia farm.
When he refused to surrender, the soldiers set the barn on fire, before shooting at him as he moved about inside. Booth, a famous stage actor admired across the country, was fatally wounded in the neck and dragged from the barn, dying three hours later, aged 26. Or at least that is how history has recorded the fate of the man who assassinated America’s most famous president.
Technology appears to have uncovered bombshell new evidence that it was not Booth who soldiers shot dead five days after he murdered Lincoln. And it suggests that, contrary to the history book accounts, Booth actually got away with the murder and lived for another 38 years under a different identity.
The extraordinary breakthrough came after researchers used new facial recognition software to examine three photos, which have long been used by conspiracy theorists to throw doubt on whether Booth was really killed after he assassinated President Lincoln. One was an image of a man called John St Helen from 1877, the other was of the embalmed corpse of a David E. George from 1902, and the third was of John Wilkes Booth taken in 1865, shortly before he fired a 44.calibre pistol into the back of Lincoln’s head.
The exercise was supposed to finally put the outrageous theory to bed - but scientists were stunned with what happened next. After the state-of-the-art software meticulously analysed the faces of similarities, such as the spaces between the eyes, the jaw lines, the shapes of the noses and cheek bones, the data showed a strong possibility that all three photographs were of the same man.
It would mean that Booth wasn’t killed in the Virginia barn by a Union soldier after all but managed to escape the manhunt, living for another three decades as St Helen and George, before dying of natural causes in 1902 aged 64. Ramy Romany, an Egyptologist who helped oversea the Booth investigation as part of a new Discovery Channel series, Mummies Unwrapped, said: “I was absolutely shocked.
“It changed my perspective on American history. For the first time, I thought this could be true. John Wilkes Booth could have gotten away." He said researchers obtained the best images available of the three people before feeding them into a high-resolution scanner to be analysed by the software.
Though not as definitive as DNA results, the facial recognition test is used widely by law enforcement agencies and results are considered reliable evidence in court. The photo of John St Helen was nearly a perfect match with Booth’s. It was within the top one per cent of those bearing similar facial features, according to researchers who worked with the creator of the New York Police Department’s first dedicated facial-recognition unit.
He was also within just one pixel of having the same eye structure. St Helen’s photo, meanwhile, which had been damaged and needed to be repaired for the test, still came within the top three per cent of the digital line-up, according to the researchers. Police examiners give special attention to results that come up at five per cent or less.
Mr Romany said: “Everyone was prepared for it not to be a match and just say, ‘Oh well, it was an intriguing story to tell. It sounded like a crazy conspiracy theory, but when we looked at it, it raised legitimate questions.” According to history, Booth, a matinee idol of his time, shot the 16th president in the back of the head at Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865, then fled through Maryland and Virginia.
Booth, who had free access to all parts of the theatre, killed Lincoln after slipping into the presidential box at around 10pm. He then jumped onto the stage where he raised his knife and shouted “Sic temper tyrannis” - Latin for ‘Thus always to tyrants’, attributed to Brutus at Caesar’s assassination, and the Virginia state motto.
But on April 26, the man believed to be John Booth was cornered by soldiers, hiding in a tobacco barn at a farm belonging to Southern sympathisers near Port Royal, Virginia. According to reports, he shouted out “Draw up your men before the door, and I’ll come out and fight the whole command. Well, my brave boys, prepare a stretcher for me.”
A soldier lit a tuft of hay, threw it inside and, as the barn burned, saw the silhouette of a man on crutches, and fired at him with a single shot. He collapsed to the ground, mortally wounded in the neck. In his dying moments, he reportedly whispered: “Tell my mother I died for my country.”
Asking that his hands be raised to his face so that he could see them, Booth uttered his last words, "Useless, useless," and died as dawn was breaking. But from the beginning, several people who saw the body at the barn questioned the official account. Some said the dead man didn’t resemble the fair, raven-haired Booth, a dashing Shakespearean performer who, with his brothers Edwin and Junius, played theatres in Philadelphia, New York, and Washington.
Though others identified the corpse as Booth’s and the government confirmed the assassin’s death, questions lingered. In 1995, a request was made to exhume remains from a family plot at a Baltimore cemetery to check his body for identifying marks - a broken left leg and crushed right thumb - and to superimpose photographs to match the skull to photos of Booth.
But the judge turned down the request after determining that it could not be proved where the body was buried. Nate Orlowek, a historian who believes that it wasn’t Booth who soldiers surrounded and killed, said: “The government told us that Booth was caught and killed and traditional historians went along with it. They fell down on the job and ridiculed those of us who toiled for decades to disprove the hoax. We were right. John Wilkes Booth got away.”
Orlowek believes Booth fled to Granbury, Texas, and took the name John St. Helen before moving to Enid, Oklahoma, where he was known as David E. George. He said: This is the first time any independent scientific test has been performed to try to settle this controversy. This high-tech test has determined there is an 99 percent likelihood that George is Booth - and now history needs to be rewritten.”
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Article from the American newspaper The Philadelphia Inquirer
ORIGINAL LINK: https://www.inquirer.com/news/john-wilkes-booth-lincoln-conspiracy-photo-recognition-20190415.html
Did John Wilkes Booth Get Away with Murdering President Abraham Lincoln?
John Wilkes Booth.
Public Domain
by Edward Colimore, For The Inquirer
Published April 15, 2019, 5:00 a.m. ET
The latest photo-recognition software backs a belief that had been dismissed by most historians as conspiracy nonsense.
The researchers were hot on the trail of an infamous 19th century assassin, using the latest 21st century technology to track him down.
Before them were photographic images of a man named John St. Helen from 1877, of the embalmed corpse of a David E. George from 1903 — and of John Wilkes Booth taken in 1865, shortly before he famously fired a .44-caliber pistol, made by Philadelphia’s Henry Deringer, into the head of President Abraham Lincoln.
Facial-recognition software, already loaded with photos of 5,000 other white males, began to meticulously analyze the faces for similarities: the spaces between the eyes, the jaw lines, the shapes of the noses and cheek bones.
In less than a minute, results came back that left the researchers stunned. The data showed a strong possibility that all three photographs were of the same man — a belief long-held by a small number of historians, but always dismissed by scholars and assassination experts as conspiracy nonsense.
Though not as definitive as DNA results, the facial recognition test used widely by law enforcement agencies raises the prospect on April 15, the 154th anniversary of the day Lincoln died, that Booth was not killed in a Virginia tobacco barn by a Union soldier in 1865, as history books say, but lived 38 years more as St. Helen and George, said Ramy Romany, an author and Egyptologist who helped oversee the Booth investigation as part of the new TV series Mummies Unwrapped.
“I was absolutely shocked,” said Romany, host of the segment scheduled to air on the Discovery Channel at 10 p.m. Wednesday. “It changed my perspective on American history. For the first time, I thought this could be true. John Wilkes Booth could have gotten away."
After researchers obtained the best images available, they fed them into a high-resolution scanner, said Scott Hartford, executive producer of Fight or Flight Studios.
“Everyone was prepared for it to not to be a match and just say, `Oh well, it was an intriguing story to try to tell...,'” he said. "It sounded like a crazy conspiracy theory, but when we looked at it, it raised legitimate questions.”
George’s photo was nearly a perfect match with Booth’s, within the top 1 percent of those bearing similar facial features, said researchers who worked with the creator of the New York Police Department’s first dedicated facial-recognition unit. What’s more, he was within one pixel of having the same eye structure.
St. Helen’s photograph, which was damaged and had to be repaired for the test, came within the top 3 percent of the digital lineup, researchers said. Police examiners give special attention to results that come up at 5 percent.
History says Booth — the matinee idol of his time — shot the 16th president in the back of the head at Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865, then fled through Maryland and Virginia, where the man believed to be the assassin was cornered by soldiers and detectives shortly after 2 a.m. on a cool, cloudy Wednesday in a barn near Port Royal, Va.
“Draw up your men before the door, and I’ll come out and fight the whole command,” called a voice from the barn. “Well, my brave boys, prepare a stretcher for me!”
A soldier lit a tuft of hay, threw it inside and — amid the smoke and flames — spied the silhouette of a man on crutches, a carbine resting on his hip.
A shot rang out. The man collapsed to the ground, mortally wounded in the neck.
For historian James L. Swanson, the case is closed. “The survival myth of John Wilkes Booth, roaming across the land, evokes the traditional fate of the damned, of a cursed spirit who can find no rest,” he wrote in his book Manhunt. The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer.
But from the beginning, several people who saw the body at the barn questioned the official account. The dead man didn’t resemble the fair, raven-haired Booth, a dashing Shakespearean performer who, with his brothers Edwin and Junius, played theaters in Philadelphia, New York, and Washington.
Though others identified the corpse as Booth’s and the government confirmed the assassin’s death, questions lingered. Attempts were made in 1995 to exhume the remains from a family plot at a Baltimore cemetery to check it for identifying marks — a broken left leg and crushed right thumb — and to superimpose photographs to match the skull to photos of Booth. The judge turned down the request after determining it could not be proved where the body was buried.
“The government told us that Booth was caught and killed, and traditional historians went along with it,” said Maryland educator and historian Nate Orlowek, who has investigated the assassination since he was 15 years old and worked with a group of other like-minded historians. “They fell down on the job and ridiculed those of us who toiled for decades to disprove the hoax. We were right. John Wilkes Booth got away.”
Historian Andy Waskie, author of Philadelphia and the Civil War and associate professor in Temple University’s language department, said he is open to new insights offered by facial recognition technology. “I always support any and all practices that lead to a better understanding and concept of historical events and personalities,” he said. “If this practice can lead researchers into a clearer picture of the past, I am all for it.”
Waskie and other scholars such as Rob D’Ovidio, associate professor of criminology and justice studies at Drexel University, who focuses on high-tech crime and electronic surveillance, including facial recognition software, say new technologies can be useful. “But the evidence needs to be strong if you’re going to rewrite history,” D’Ovidio said. “This is like the History Detectives show on PBS,” which uses modern tools and old-fashioned legwork to learn more about the past.
Facial characteristics can be like a fingerprint, but much depends on “the quality of the photos,” said D’Ovidio. “That’s a huge factor. The best samples are taken in controlled environments. You’re not going to get 90 percent accuracy if you have photos of questionable quality.”
Based on various historical accounts, Orlowek is convinced that Booth fled to Granbury, Texas, and took the name John St. Helen before moving to Enid, Okla., where he was known as David E. George. An image of George’s mummified remains in 1931 also was visually compared by researchers to a picture of the embalmed George in 1903.
“This is the first time any independent scientific test has been performed to try to settle this controversy,” Orlowek said. “This high-tech test has determined there is an 99 percent likelihood that George is Booth — and now history needs to be rewritten.”
