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Life after Death Search then the ruling passion: there, alone, The wild are constant, and the cunning known; The fool consistent, and the false sincere. Alexander Pope The fire from the burning tobacco barn blazed throughout the early morning hours casting a red &ow over the scene unfolding at the ~ a r r e t t farmhouse . A column of grey smoke rose skyward sending a signal to everyone within a two-mile radius that something was happening. The hidden eyes that had watched Yankee horsemen riding from Port Royal didn't have to guess who was behind the smoke. It was all too common a scene in the warravaged countryside. By midmorning the troopers were gone leaving the Garrett barn a blackened pile of smoldering embers. The smoke that rose from the barn would eventually subside, only to be replaced by the smoke of conspiracy rising in its place. The conspiratorialists would soon begin obscuring what had taken place that April morning at the Garrett farm. On October 24, 1994, a small group of lay historians filed into the large white building that housed the circuit court for the city of Baltimore. They had come in response to a petition that had been filed with the court requesting permission to exhume the body of John Wilkes Booth from its grave in the family plot in Baltimore's Green Mount Cemetery.' The petitioners claimed a legal right to do so, stating the "public interest" as their justification. The legal right was based on the fact that among the petitioners were several individuals who bore a collateral relationship to John Wilkes Booth. The justification was based on their belief that the body in the grave was not that of the killer of Abraham Lincoln, but another man's, an innocent victim of a deep and sinister plot. The principal movers behind the petition were two avocational historians who claimed that it was not Booth who was killed in the Garrett barn. Booth had escaped earlier and made his way to the small town of Enid, Oklahoma Territory, where he died by suicide in 1903 using the name David E. George. It was an old story retold many times in newspaper articles and dime-store paperbacks. Now it would be heard again, this time in a court of 246 Blood on the lldoon law where the shocking claims of conspiracy would be subjected to legal scrutiny. It was a scrutiny long overdue. A book had been published in 1907 that eclipsed all of the previous sensationalclaimsthatJohn Wilkes Booth was never lulledin Richard Garrett's barn.?Finis L. Bates, a Tennessee lawyer, published his personal account of having heard the confession of a Texas saloon keeper, John St. Helen, who claimed to be the assassin of Abraham Lincoln. According to Bates,John St. Helen and David E. George were names adopted by Booth. Basing their petition on the book's allegation, the two historians submitted additional "evidence" to support the claim. Their evidence consisted of a resurrection of old tales that had circulated through a half century of newspaper articles3 Prior to their attempt to "dig up" Booth's body, one of the petitioners had convinced the producers of the NBC television series UnsolvedMyste~ies that the story of Booth's escape was true and was worthy of a television production . In 1991 NBC aired the program as part of the Unsolued Myste~ies show. Flushed with the success of having the story of Booth's alleged escape viewed by millions of people, the two historians made an effort to convince the Circuit Court for the City of Baltimore that the only sure way to settle the mystery of whether the body in the grave was really that ofJohn Wilkes Booth was to dig it up and subject the bones to forensic examination. Unknown to the presiding judge, and many of the courtroom spectators, the body of John Wilkes Booth had been exhumed before, not once but twice, and his remains positively identified on both occasions. But twice was not enough. Only a third time would satisfy the latest advocates of this strange request for resurrection. The court day arrived and the petitioners submitted seventy pages of "evidence" to support their contention that the body in the grave was not that of Lincoln's killer. The cemetery corporation opposed the petition and requested that the court hold a hearing on the matter.Joining with the officers of the cemetery were several prominent historians whose...

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