John Wilkes Booth conspiracy theories

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There are a number of conspiracy theories regarding John Wilkes Booth following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Most concern Booth not being executed, but instead escaping while someone else is executed in his place. These theories are generally dismissed by historians as lacking substance.

1 The Finis Bates theory
2 The Lincoln Conspiracy theory
3 Other theories
4 References

[edit] The Finis Bates theory

Finis L. Bates claimed to have met John Wilkes Booth in Granbury, Texas in the 1870s. Booth, who at that time was allegedly living under the pseudonym John St. Helen. Bates was a lawyer defending St. Helen on a charge of selling tobacco and whiskey without a license, and Bates claimed that St. Helen revealed his real name under the assumption of attorney-client privilege. After St. Helen moved away, Bates claimed to have read about a suicide of David E. George in Enid, Oklahoma, the rumor existed that George revealed himself to be John Wilkes Booth. Bates then went to Oklahoma to view the body, recognized the corpse as St. Helen, and the body was mummified. This mummified corpse later travelled the carnival circuit, and the eventual location of the mummified remains are unknown.

A group of people which included a descendant of Booth petitioned a court to have the believed remains of Booth exhumed for testing, but the request was denied due to the inexact location of the actual Booth family plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland.

[edit] The Lincoln Conspiracy theory

In the book The Lincoln Conspiracy, it is asserted that James William Boyd, who looked like Booth, was executed in place of John Wilkes Booth. Booth then escaped to the swamps.