John Wilkes Booth Conspiracy

On the evening of April 14, 1865, while attending a special performance of the comedy, "Our American Cousin," President Abraham Lincoln was shot. Accompanying him at Ford's Theater that night were his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, a twenty-eight year-old officer named Major Henry R. Rathbone, and Rathbone's fiancee, Clara Harris. After the play was in progress, a figure with a drawn derringer pistol stepped into the presidential box, aimed, and fired. The president slumped forward.

The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, dropped the pistol and waved a dagger. Rathbone lunged at him, and though slashed in the arm, forced the killer to the railing. Booth leapt from the balcony and caught the spur of his left boot on a flag draped over the rail, and shattered a bone in his leg on landing. Though injured, he rushed out the back door, and disappeared into the night on horseback.

A doctor in the audience immediately went upstairs to the box. The bullet had entered through Lincoln's left ear and lodged behind his right eye. He was paralyzed and barely breathing. He was carried across Tenth Street, to a boarding-house opposite the theater, but the doctors' best efforts failed. Nine hours later, at 7:22 AM on April 15th, Lincoln died. (Cited from http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/alrintr.html)

Now that you have a little bit of background on the shooting of Abe Lincoln, allow me to fill you in on what most everyone else believes. After booth shot Lincoln he fled, naturally. He was chased and chased and was finally 'cornered' in a barn. The authorities burned the barn down and killed Booth, later finding his burnt body. John Wilkes Booth died in that fire in that barn...WRONG!

Some select people believe that the body found in the barn was not that of John Wilkes Booth. They believe that he actually fled from that barn unscathed, or at least alive. He made his way to Granbury Texas and assumed the name of John St. Helen. John loved to go to the theatre where he would not only watch but quote Shakespere. Conspirators believe that he now haunts that theatre NOT violently but peacefully. He has his own seat reserved up in the balcony where no one ever sits because that is his seat and its well known.

The question is did John Wilkes Booth die in the burning barn? Or, did John go on to live under the alias of 'John St. Helen'? I'm a conspirator...are you?