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.
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