“I have now spent many years in the vicinity of Granbury, but plan on inhabiting the environs of Oklahoma Territory very soon. If you are ever in the vicinity of Enid, please find me, as I will be using the alias David E. George.”
“There is one last question I have to ask. Did General Watie know that you had recently assassinated the president of the United States?”
“I don’t think so. In fact, I highly doubt it. I certainly did not volunteer the information to him. Watie’s directive was to keep me concealed and protected for a time and this he did as a loyal member of the society without ever asking me why.”
18
The Professed Assassin Continues
The conversation continued with me interjecting that I had read many accounts of the assassination in which the government of the United States positively claimed that John Wilkes Booth had been shot dead in the Garrett Barn. Furthermore, I told him I had read that his body had been speedily returned to Washington City and brought aboard the Montauk, the ironclad sea vessel, and then promptly buried in Washington City’s old penitentiary, then being used as an arsenal. A supposed handful of officials were given the opportunity to inspect the body before its descent six feet under.
“Broussard, I hope the entire world believes that official story of the government of the United States, at least long enough for me to live a while longer. But, from one K.G.C. agent to another, I will do you the honor of presenting a few observations that I would not lay before anyone else, and you can arrive at your own conclusions.
“But before I lay before you the reasons that I am John Wilkes Booth, I want to thank you for hearing my story. Whether you believe my story as told by John St. Helen, an imposter, or by John Wilkes Booth the known murderer, matters not as much to me as you might think. You have done me a great kindness in hearing me recount what I needed to desperately relate to another human being. I have told you my story in good faith and have misled you in no way whatsoever, so, Drouet Broussard, I thank you for allowing me to unburden my heart and soul.
“Now, I know that after tonight I shall never see you again, so what follows is told in the same good faith as everything else recounted up to this point. From now on, you will wonder about the legitimacy of my story. What evidence have I to lend it support, you may ponder, before we go our separate ways? I give you my answer in five parts.
“First, you have to wonder how it was that I escaped through what everyone acknowledges were the nearly impenetrable federal lines after assassinating President Lincoln. I was in no way associated with anyone in the federal army to gain access across the bridge on that dark night. The only way this could be accomplished was through the intervention and authority of high-ranking Vice-President Johnson.
“Secondly, how was it that David Herold, one of my chief co-conspirators, also passed over the same point on the same bridge by the same guard and was then able to catch up with me at Surrattville?
“Third, under no circumstances would I have entered Lincoln’s box at the theatre without the assurance that Grant and his wife would not be in attendance with the president. The newspapers had reported the Grants’ upcoming presence with Lincoln that night, and yet, he was somehow called away from Washington City to attend to matters elsewhere. Again, this could not have been accomplished without the assistance of Andrew Johnson, a partner in the conspiracy.
“Fourth, don’t you find it interesting that the body was so hastily placed in the ground barely two days after retrieving it from the Garrett barn? They have the body of one of the most wanted assassins in the history of the world, and they do not keep it topside long enough to allow only but a few men to identify the body. Why? I can tell you why. Because John Wilkes Booth sits before you now and someone else was shot in Garrett’s barn, and their body brought back to Washington City and buried at breakneck speed in the ground at the old penitentiary as a part of the concealment conspiracy.
“And, fifth, don’t you find it interesting that I sit before you now to collect information and financial resources from you, an agent of the K.G.C., for duties performed? Were I not the man who assassinated the president of the United States, then, pray, why do you sit before me holding an envelope packed tightly with contents meant for me? The society to which we belong does not spend good money after bad, that much I can tell you. Those in the upper echelons of our cabal know exactly what I did to earn the contents of the envelope you now hold. They pay me to keep quiet about an assassination that changed history. They would have me killed for mentioning any of this, even to you.
“That is all I can tell you from where I sit at this point in time, but I can assure you that more information will be uncovered in years to come to bear out my story.”
“Do you have any regrets for your actions?”
“Every day I live with regret. I now believe that the man I killed was one of the greatest men to ever live, a man who did what he thought was right, who maintained the union of the United States and who did not sell out the country to foreign interests to do it.
“And I live with regret over the death of another.”
“Who might that be?”
“Mary Surratt. Mary Surratt was hung by her neck for a crime in which she played no part whatsoever. No day passes that I do not think of that good and noble and beautiful woman who met her dark end because of my actions.
“Broussard, do you ever look long and hard at photographs? Do you ever look deep into a photograph at the people going to and fro around the central subject, at people years before who went along unaware that they are stared at by the future? That point in time did not last but for only a few seconds; yet, that moment lives on, and it spreads across the ages when we see it today. Like so many moments in photographs, I wish my words about Mary Surratt could carry across time like that to all of the civilized people here today and to those yet to be born.”
“What about Ruddy, the man killed at the Garrett barn?”
“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about the possibility that the man I knew as Ruddy unintentionally gave his life for mine. That is why I carry with clarity the memory of his looks and demeanor. If the man they killed was, in fact, Ruddy then, yes, I feel great sorrow and allow that I should never have entered Lincoln’s box at the theater and killed him on that fateful night.”
The time came for me to escort my friend back to his room near Camp and First Streets. We departed the club, boarded the carriage and made our way back using the same devious route as before, going along in an unassuming fashion and blending in with the darkness and shadows of buildings.
Before stepping down off the carriage to begin his walk to the side door of the residence, my friend and I exchanged heartfelt words of good luck and good fortune to one another, both of us expressing that the drink and conversation had ended all too soon. We shook hands, he stepped down and began walking to his room, but turned back to me with one last remark.
“I saw the way you looked at me tonight at the club. I saw in your countenance that you beheld not only me. I know you also saw the shadow people who walk with me.”
I did not answer but merely tipped my hat toward him as the carriage pulled away.
19
Life and Death Goes On
In the days and weeks after the professed assassin departed New Orleans, Loreta and I discussed the conspiracy in which he claimed his noteworthy role.
As it turns out, Loreta had known of the early meetings in New Orleans between Booth, Pike, Slidell, and Benjamin in which they planned for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. She had known those plans were abandoned for a time as Booth and his group in Washington City concocted a plan to kidnap the president so as to use him to free Confederate prisoners during the war. She claimed ignorance of Booth’s plan to assassinate the president after the surrender at Appomattox and stated that her brief encounter with Booth near the Ford Theater on the day of the assassination had been a mere coincidence.
Loreta had also known
of the planned visit of John St. Helen to New Orleans for the sole purpose of meeting with me. I had heard her mention the name at the Comus ball and fathomed then that she enjoyed a larger K.G.C. network of contacts than did I.
I asked Loreta why she never mentioned John Wilkes Booth before. She answered that she did not want to risk losing my admiration over the association. She then asked me why I never broached the subject with her, and I answered that I did not want to risk losing her affection by insinuating a connection with the assassin.
It seemed we both possessed enough wisdom to let sleeping dogs lie undisturbed.
Through our mutual K.G.C. contacts, but mainly through hers, as well as from newspaper reports and other sources, we were able to ascertain certain other facts concerning the assassination over the subsequent months and years.
We learned that when David Herold ran out of Garrett’s barn, he shouted to Luther Baker and the rest of the party that the man he left behind inside was not John Wilkes Booth. One would have to believe Sergeant Corbett shot the man in the barn believing him Lincoln’s assassination.
We learned of Joseph Zisgen and Wilson D. Kenzie, Yankee soldiers present with Luther Baker and the rest of the party at Garrett’s barn. They recounted a much different narrative than the version given by the Baker brothers who likely coordinated their story which became the official version of the United States government. Zisgen and Kenzie both stated that the corpse turned over to Lafayette Baker did not feature a broken leg. We speculated the brothers Baker had the corpse’s leg broken while en route to Washington City to make the body look like that of Booth so they could claim their share of the reward money.
Sources told us that both Zisgen and Kenzie later dropped out of sight and kept their account to themselves after none other than Lafayette Baker threatened them with their lives.
Also, Dr. John Frederick May, summoned to the Yankee ship Montauk, on which the corpse had been taken by Luther Baker and company immediately upon arriving in Washington City, stated in no uncertain terms that the corpse did not resemble John Wilkes Booth. “There is no resemblance in that corpse to Booth, nor can I believe it to be him.”
We also received reports that roughly eighteen pages of Booth’s diary were missing when the journal was removed from a war department file in Washington City a few years after the assassination. The diary had never been used in the 1865 conspiracy trial. Loreta strongly believed the missing pages incriminated Lafayette Baker and that her former boss in the National Detective Bureau had them extracted to hide his own involvement in the affair.
Loreta, familiar with the Yankee chain of command in Washington City at the time, said the search for Booth should have been orchestrated by General Christopher Augur, then in command of the Twenty-Second Army Corps and the military district of Washington City. She told me in the strongest terms that Augur should have been in charge of the capture, death, identification, and burial of the assassin but knew on good authority that he never had been notified. She believed Augur had been intentionally cut out so that Lafayette Baker, reporting to the secretary of war Stanton, could orchestrate the ruse and collect the reward money.
The firestorm of protest over the matter in Washington City at the time reinforced her belief.
Senator Garrett Davis of Kentucky said he never saw any satisfactory evidence that Booth was killed. He went on to say, “I would rather have better testimony of the fact. I want proof that Booth was in that barn. I cannot conceive if he was in that barn, why he was not taken alive as was ordered. I have not seen anybody, or any evidence of anybody, that identified Booth after he was said to be killed. Why so much secrecy about it? Booth could have been captured just as well alive or dead. It would have been more satisfactory to have him brought here alive and to have inquired of him to reveal the whole transaction. Or bring his body up here, let all who have seen him playing, all who had associated with him on stage, tavern, and other public places have access to his body to have identified it.”
Davis’ remarks, which had been aimed at the secretary of war Stanton, represented many people in Washington City and around the country at the time who believed the Yankee cabinet member had much to conceal in the matter. Loreta told me Stanton and Baker had been a formidable team, with her former boss serving as the strong-arm thug of the partnership while often taking direct orders from Stanton, the mastermind.
Nevertheless, Loreta and I put the matter out of our minds and went about living our lives together. We had given much of our time and energies to the K.G.C. and were purposeful in moving forward to new endeavors. We were wise enough to know that many of our questions might never be answered.
Some years later, however, around 1903, I strode into the Pickwick Club, and someone handed me a newspaper from Enid, Oklahoma Territory along with an envelope. The pages of the paper had already been turned to a page showcasing the following story: “Booth” Dies, Enid Man Claimed to be Lincoln’s Assassin, Crowds Throng Funeral Parlor, Identification Sought.”
According to the story, a man claiming the identity of John Wilkes Booth passed away at the Grand Avenue Hotel in Enid, Oklahoma Territory. He went by the name David George. In his deathbed confession, he said he wanted to unburden his soul of guilt over the hanging of Mary Surratt and wanted to clear her name. He had been a resident of Enid for several years and lived a solitary life with no friends or family known to anyone in Enid. Large crowds thronged to the funeral parlor where his body lay inside.
Crowds gathered outside the Kaufman funeral parlor in Enid when news of the man’s death was released. Some in the crowd demanded that the body be handed over to a lynch mob.
Loreta and I later learned that the mysterious resident of the Grand Avenue Hotel in Enid had arrived there fresh out of the state of Texas where, the story claimed, he had dishonored a young lady whose affections he won through less than gentlemanly devices. Once in the territory, he claimed to be a house painter by profession but no one ever saw him paint a house, and yet he never fell short of money. He sometimes performed in the local plays in Enid and always mesmerized the audiences with his riveting portrayals. Before making his home in Enid, he resided for a time in El Reno, Oklahoma Territory and, before that, in Guthrie, the Oklahoma Territorial capital. In both of those cities, he had performed in the local plays and brought down the house each time with his performances. Everywhere he went, locals sensed he did not belong among them and wondered among themselves as to his true identity and background.
The Kaufman funeral parlor in Enid had infused the assassin’s corpse with so much arsenic that it became an almost mummified display in Pennaman’s Furniture Store adjacent to the funeral parlor. The corpse stayed in the front window in hopes that its former owner could be identified and funeral costs obtained.
After reading the newspaper story, I opened the envelope and from within extracted a photograph which I inspected closely. I own the very photograph to this day, and its subject is none other than the man I met in New Orleans and to whom I handed checks and other material from the K.G.C., John St. Helen, also known as David George, and who I know beyond a shadow of a doubt to have been none other than John Wilkes Booth. The photograph featured the professed assassin’s corpse sitting in a chair in the window of the aforementioned Pennaman’s Furniture Store in Enid.
It turns out a lawyer identified the body, paid the funeral costs and took it back to his Memphis, Tennessee home where he displayed it. The following year, in 1904, the lawyer had the body displayed at the St. Louis World’s Fair as the body of John Wilkes Booth. The lawyer continued displaying the body in his home until such time as he died and his widow sold the artifact to a traveling carnival.
The shadow people had seemingly escorted the actor and assassin to a highly fantastic and grotesque final act. His earthly deeds had sadly designated him to further degradation after passing through the veil of this life.
As for Loreta and me, we made New Orleans our home. Marguerite, father’s mistress,
along with certain members of her family, had lived in father’s home after it became safe to stay there. I eventually deeded the property to her, as I felt Father would have wanted this, too. I kept the apartment in the Vieux Carre and Loreta, and I divided our time in New Orleans between it and her home on Prytania Street.
Loreta had traveled throughout the west before we met and told many stories describing the rugged grandeur found in the mountains and deserts of places like Colorado, New Mexico, and California. We traveled to those places many times but always returned to the New Orleans with great joy and anticipation of the sights and sounds of our beloved city.
We lived mainly in the Vieux Carre apartment. We frequented the old haunts there as well as the new, always enjoying the spirit of fun and frolic as much a part of the area as the bricks and mortar of its ancient buildings along its streets and alleyways.
We enjoyed the new sounds as well as the old. We heard the music of Emile “Whiskey” Benrod, Willie “Cajun” Bussey, Frank “Monk” Bussey, “Slew-foot” Pete and a fellow named “Warm Gravy.” This group of young street urchins whose musical instruments were cigar box guitars, cheese box banjos, washboards, kettles, cowbells, gourds filled with pebbles and stovepipes emerged. They called themselves the Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band, and they specialized in fast tempos and chord-based improvisation. Some say they were the first jazz band. We stood mesmerized hearing former slaves strumming the guitars and singing the beautiful sing-song poetry of suffering. Seemingly, many had been given the chance for new beginnings with their vocalized artistry.
We came to terms with our past life together, fighting and working on behalf of the Confederacy and that certain society that worked toward a goal that we both deemed dubious in hindsight. However, along with others of the time, we believed in our cause, and neither of us ever apologized for our work on behalf of Southern independence.
Ghost Knights Of New Orleans Page 17
