The Great Escape of John Wilkes Booth

The conventional wisdom is that the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln – John Wilkes Booth – was shot in the neck and killed in a barn on the Garrett farm in Virginia just 12 days after the murder. But truth is always stranger than fiction.

In this book, longtime investigative author Pat Shannan and others detail a wealth of evidence showing how Booth actually escaped and lived a long life, and who the man in the barn really was. Once you read this book, you’ll never look at the Lincoln assassination – or American history – in the same way ever again.

Who was in on the high-level plot to kill Lincoln? Who was Lafayette Baker and what did his cryptic poem, written in the margin of a military manual, really mean? Who was John Stevenson and was his deathbed confession real or fiction? What happened to Booth’s accomplices? Who were the Knights of the Golden Circle and how did they fit into the plot? Were members of Lincoln’s own cabinet in on the assassination scheme? What about John Wilkes Booth’s last will and testament? Who was Izola D’Arcy Booth and what inside secrets did she hold? What happened to Booth’s diaries? Booth’s gold? How could the body of “Booth” have been so easily misidentified? How could all of this be kept secret for so long – and why?

Excerpt from page 52:

From the diary of John H. Stevenson (Michael O’Laughlin) as told to Lottie Eaton. October 15, 1886: “In the spring of 1864 Wilkes had lunch with me at his Hotel in Washington City, and during this luncheon, he mentioned to me that he had been approached by a ‘high government official’ and asked to carry out an assignation for the Government. I knew at the time that Booth had carried dispatches for the Confederacy and that his loyalty (if he had any such thing to other than himself) lay with the South. I could not imagine him working for the Union unless it had possible advantages for the South or himself. He then went on to explain that a man high in the government had offered to pay him to kidnap the president of the United States. I did not know whether I believe him or not, but as he talked I realized that the idea appealed to him.”

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