{"id":1801,"date":"2019-06-30T20:01:22","date_gmt":"2019-06-30T20:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/expandedperspectives.com\/elite\/?p=1801"},"modified":"2019-06-30T20:01:22","modified_gmt":"2019-06-30T20:01:22","slug":"mysterious-death-of-jw-booth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/expandedperspectives.com\/elite\/mysterious-death-of-jw-booth\/","title":{"rendered":"Mysterious Death of JW Booth"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/expandedperspectiveselite\/Mysterious_Death_of_JW_Booth.mp3\">Mysterious Death of JW Booth<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4\" data-reactid=\"353\">Twelve days after John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, he was fatally shot by an army sergeant as the barn he was hiding in burned to the ground. Or at least that\u2019s the conventional narrative of Booth\u2019s final hours.\u00a0Despite the fact that Booth\u2019s body had been identified by a number of people who knew him well, some conspiracy theorists maintained that Booth escaped to Texas, and that the man shot outside that barn had merely been a look-alike. In Finis L. Bates\u2019 1907 book <em data-reactid=\"357\">Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth<\/em>, the author contends that Booth assumed a new identity, John St. Helen, and lived in exile until taking his own life in 1903.<\/p>\n<div data-reactid=\"359\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4\" data-reactid=\"360\">Following the success of his book, Bates began to display the mummified cadaver he claimed was Booth\u2019s at traveling carnivals. According to LIFE, the mummy, which was for some reason &#8220;always clad in khaki shorts,&#8221; changed hands several times, \u201cbringing bad luck to its owners.&#8221; By the time LIFE photographed it at Jay Gould\u2019s &#8220;Million Dollar Spectacle&#8221; in 1938, both doctors and historians had weighed in on the matter:<\/p>\n<p class=\"column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4\" data-reactid=\"360\">Though the public lost interest for a few decades, a 1977 book and subsequent movie adaptation, both called <em data-reactid=\"367\">The Lincoln Conspiracy<\/em>, thrust the controversy back into the mainstream. The book and film offered new theories about Booth\u2019s alleged escape, chief among them an elaborate cover-up of a plot to kidnap and ultimately remove Lincoln from the presidency.<\/p>\n<p class=\"column small-12 medium-10 medium-offset-1 large-offset-2 end text size-1x-large line-height-large _10M0Ygc4\" data-reactid=\"369\">Historians and Booth descendants have attempted to obtain permission to exhume Booth\u2019s corpse for DNA testing, but all requests so far have been denied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mysterious Death of JW Booth Twelve days after John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, he was fatally shot by an army sergeant as the barn he was hiding in burned to the ground. Or at least that\u2019s the conventional narrative of Booth\u2019s final hours.\u00a0Despite the fact that Booth\u2019s body had been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1803,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-elite-podcast"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/expandedperspectives.com\/elite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Booth.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/expandedperspectives.com\/elite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/expandedperspectives.com\/elite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/expandedperspectives.com\/elite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/expandedperspectives.com\/elite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/expandedperspectives.com\/elite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1801"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/expandedperspectives.com\/elite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1804,"href":"http:\/\/expandedperspectives.com\/elite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801\/revisions\/1804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/expandedperspectives.com\/elite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/expandedperspectives.com\/elite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/expandedperspectives.com\/elite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/expandedperspectives.com\/elite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}