On December 5, 2020, the History Channel aired the fourth episode of their television show History’s Greatest Mysteries. This episode was called The Escape of John Wilkes Booth. And while it did have some reputable experts like Michael Kauffman who described the assassination and Booth’s subsequent 12 day escape, the almost hour and a half long episode mainly dealt with the plethora of conspiracy theories claiming that JWB escaped his death at the Garrett farm. Sadly, it seems like all the “documentaries” today that cover the Lincoln assassination story end up being about these very fringe and long discredited theories. When the episode first aired, I angrily tweeted from my friend Bob’s ottoman about the most obvious falsehoods as so many incorrect and illogical statements were presented alongside legitimate history.
The show seemed to be following the route of its injudicious “everything you have ever been told is a lie” predecessors which would inevitably end with a call to exhume JWB’s body on the basis of “evidence” that has been repeatedly and thoroughly debunked. While the very end of the episode did ultimately feature the hosts wondering if more information could be found by digging Booth up, just prior to that, this program pleasantly surprised me. They actually put some of these conspiracy theories to the test by using handwriting analysis and DNA comparison.
Below, I have excerpted a seven minute portion from near the end of the program that reveals their analysis of three theories presented in the show. These theories are: that David E. George was John Wilkes Booth (as claimed by Finis Bates), that John Wilkes Booth fathered children with Izola Martha Mills both before and after his supposed death, and a separate claim that John Wilkes Booth escaped and fathered a child that bore his own name. Give it a watch:
Let’s recap what we just saw there. First a handwriting expert looked at notarized document which stated, only at the end, that David E. George claimed to have been John Wilkes Booth just before his death. The expert concluded the document had been altered and the sentence describing George’s so called confession was added after the original had been notarized. The same expert also compared David E. George’s signature to known examples of John Wilkes Booth’s handwriting and found they did not match.
Next, the show used DNA from a descendant of Jane Booth Mitchell, Junius Brutus Booth’s sister, in order to see if various descendants of Martha Izola Mills are related to the Booth family. It was established that Booth descendant and the Mills descendants are not related. Then a similar comparison was done to a descendant who claimed John Wilkes Booth as her great great grandfather. Her father’s name was John Wilkes Booth III (and was actually interviewed by members of the Surratt Society in the 1980s). It was found that this descendant was also not related to the family of the real John Wilkes Booth.
In one fell swoop, History’s Greatest Mysteries actually did a huge favor to legitimate history by publicly discrediting these conspiracy theories. While it’s unfortunate that the important information uncovered is hidden in over an hour of misinformation, I’m still grateful they made some attempt to be objective and not just cater to sensationalism.
In this way, the show proved what close family and siblings of John Wilkes Booth knew all along. Their brother was killed at the Garrett farm on April 26, 1865. Even before he died, JWB was identified by photograph comparison at the Garrett farm and he had identifying items on his person. Despite the poor condition of his corpse by the time it got back to Washington, numerous friends, acquaintances, and his doctor further identified him on the USS Montauk. Finally, when his body was released to the family in 1869, his remains were once again identified by close theater friends who had known him for years and by his own brother, Joseph Booth. While some modern Booth relatives may wholeheartedly hope that their distant relative escaped his death, it’s just not so. Hopefully this program will help bring closure to a family that has long been abused by hucksters and frauds who attempted to use members of the Booth family to push their own agendas.
If you would like to watch the full episode, it’s available to purchase digitally on sites like Amazon and Google Play for like $2. You can also purchase season 1 & 2 of History’s Greatest Mysteries on DVD from Amazon for $10. If you are a subscriber to the Disney Plus streaming service, you can actually watch the episode for free. Just be warned that some of the “experts” featured on the show are really out there with their fantasies (i.e. the claim that Willie Jett shot “Booth”).
My friend Steve Miller refers to the Booth escaped conspiracy theories as rubber spiders. Like rubber spiders, no matter how hard you stomp on them, they just can’t be killed. I know that despite the mountain of evidence proving that John Wilkes Booth was killed at the Garret farm and is buried in the family plot at Green Mount Cemetery, people will continue to claim that Booth somehow escaped his own death. We’ll never be able to stomp out these stories for good. Still, I try to find solace in the fact that anyone who actually takes the time to investigate and evaluate these stories for themselves will quickly see that, like the rubber spiders, these conspiracy theories have never been real.
LincolnConspirators.com 
About 30 years ago, I ran the giftshop at the 490-foot-level of the Washington Monument when I guy asked for my help. It was soon apparent that he was deep in the conspiracy well. I spoke with him for about 45 minutes about how evil individuals wanted the DNA of the great villains and assassins in American history to create a clone army that was going to take over the United States government. He wanted my help, as the giftshop goy, to get the DNA of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and others to great an army of heroes. I sincerely apologized that I did not have access to the requested DNA but wished him well on his quest. He thanks me for his time and politely left. To the best of my knowledge, there have been no successfully created clones made of John Wilkes Booth.
Hi thank you for the follow up on all the theories Has it been noted where John Wilkes booths remains are located in the family plot seems like it is know by the family if they were to exhume him for test let me know Thanks vinnie
Vinnie, the common belief is that JWB is buried behind the Booth obelisk with the coffins of some of his older siblings who died in childhood buried on top of him. This was part of the issue the conspiracy theorists faced during their attempt in the 1990s to exhume Booth’s body. It would be impossible to do so without disturbing the graves of his siblings.
I have to disagree with some of this, Finnis Bates was a friend of the man that died in Enid, Oklahoma in 1903, he did purchase the embalmed body, and kept his it in his garage here in Memphis for 10 years before taking it on the road, and displaying it to the public for charge! I have a magazine from 1939 that has the mummified body on the front cover, and an article inside with additional pictures of Bates , and the mummy! I also have a Readers Digest magazine from 1939 that has an article “ Booth on Tour Again “, along with the book written by Bates telling the history of his relationship with Booth! I have a book written by the Great Grandnephew of Booth telling the family history, with pictures of his family, which was Booth’s family! The television program was written for entertainment, I don’t know if all of these people were real, or just actors! They talked of exhuming Booth’s body to take DNA samples, the state has denied them access to the grave, stating that there is a child buried on top of Booth’s body! When Edwin Booth asked President Johnson for permission to remove his brother’s remains from the grave in the old Capitol Prison, he and his mother viewed the remains, and the mother said it was not her son, because the body had red hair, and she was told that the hair had changed color from being burned! Which was a lie, my ancestor, General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s body was removed from his grave a couple of years ago, he had been dead since 1875, and his hair had not changed color! We had his reburial at the Sons of Confederate Veterans headquarters in Columbia, Tennessee! So as I said that television show was made for entertainment!
I was surprised you invoked Finis Bates in this comment, David, as your comment on the other post stated that you believe James W. Boyd was the man in the barn. The Boyd theory is incompatible with Bates as Bates says a man named Ruddy was killed in JWB’s place. Bates also claimed Andrew Johnson was the big baddie behind Lincoln’s assassination while the evil puppet master in the Boyd theory is Edwin Stanton. The two theories are mutually exclusive, yet conspiracy theorists always conflate them in order to create their houses of cards.
Needless to say both the Bates and Boyd theories are long disproved. But you feel free to keep believing in rubber spiders. It’s a free county.
Dave, do you personally believe either Johnson or Stanton was complicit? We’ll never know for SURE, but it is definitely fun to speculate.
Neither Edwin Stanton nor Andrew Johnson were involved in Lincoln’s death. It amazes me how people can believe that they were.
Stanton only became a target for conspiracy theorists because of the work of Otto Eisenschiml in the 1930s. But there really isn’t any evidence against him. Eisenschiml threw out a few accusations based on flawed research and Stanton has suffered the specter of suspicion in the public’s mind ever since.
I’m no fan of Andrew Johnson but it’s clear that the idea he was connected to Lincoln’s death was a product of politics rather than facts. Grief stricken Mary Lincoln found it suspicious that Booth left a note for Johnson on the day of the assassination, and Johnson’s political enemies used this to further their own campaign against him. They attempted to tie Johnson to Lincoln’s death during their impeachment investigation. The radical Republicans in Congress even sent an envoy to Fort Jefferson to interview the convicted conspirators in hopes of getting dirt against Johnson. But even with the idea that they might be rewarded with an early release for information against Johnson, the conspirators had no dirt to give. Johnson had nothing to do with the assassination.
You couldn’t be more wrong. I can prove the Booth mummy was Booth. However, you will dismiss me without actually seeing my evidence. You only hurt yourself and your readers. Take the challenge, you have nothing to lose. I will change your mind if given the chance. I will use forensic evidence you haven’t even considered to do so. Contact Mark at Historicalheadstones@aol.com and learn what I too once considered not possible.
Mark,
Thanks for this humorous response. This is exactly the style of email I get from conspiracy theorists from time to time.
It’s funny how laughably predictable those type of emails go. These people send me an email with their images of St. Helen/the Mummy/ some other random guy they claim is Booth. They also send me their so-called “forensic evidence”. They zoom in on blurry pixels, superimpose real photos on top of their fakes, match “vein patterns”, utilize “earlobe analysis”, or, the newest gimmick, add the photo to a collection of others and get a statistical “match” back to the desired subject. All of this “evidence” is in order to stop people from believing what their own eyes tell them: that person in the photograph doesn’t look anything like the genuine historical figure.
There are many people out there who “see” historical figures in every old photograph they come across and then come up with this “forensic evidence” to try to prove it to others. The odds of anyone actually finding an unpublished photograph of a historical figure must be akin to winning the lottery, and yet these people always seem to have found hundreds of them! They put together books full of their “discoveries”. How they don’t realize how impossible it would be for one person to find so many “new” photos, is beyond me. Not every man with a mustache is John Wilkes Booth. Not every man with a beard is Abraham Lincoln. Not every old west photo has Billy the Kid or Wyatt Earp in it.
I’m sent these types of photographs all the time, and when I tell the owners that their subject doesn’t look like Booth, they respond back with more “evidence” as if them drawing lines on the photos and claiming the distances between the features are the “same” will suddenly prove to me that my own eyes are wrong. I’m convinced so many of these people suffer from face blindness and just don’t know it.
Thanks again for the chuckle.
Stanton did have the most to gain by wiping out all his chief competitors for the presidency in one swift stroke. Lincoln, Johnson, Seward. Grant too, if you believe there was an assassin on his train.
Speaking of, does anyone know (or think they may know) who the stranger pounding on Grant’s railcar was?