By Dan Pacheco 
Denver Post Staff Writer 
Feb. 12, 1995 
When a one-half-inch metal bullet tore through the skull of President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, in Ford's Theater, nobody had any doubt that it came from a gun fired by John Wilkes Booth. 

A prominent actor - the Clark Gable of his time - Booth was identified by dozens of his contemporaries as he leaped from the president's box, caught his right heel on a draped flag and dropped 12 feet to the stage, fracturing his left ankle. But the exact whereabouts of the assassin's body is another story. Over a century later, many wonder if the remains that went into Booth's grave were actually those of a Booth look-alike. 

Chaotic period

Allen and a growing number of part-time Booth sleuths are investigating this scenario: Twelve days after the assassination, U.S. government forces caught a scapegoat in a burning barn near Port Royal, Va. As the theory goes, they used the doppelganger to put a tidy knot around one of history's most famous murders. 

The official story is starting to unravel, they claim. Distrust of the government's long-standing account has fueled two Washington historians - and 22 of Booth's 24 living relatives - to request an exhumation of Booth's supposed remains from Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore. A court hearing is set for May 18 to discuss whether the cemetery can block the exhumation, as it hopes to do. 

Several uncanny quirks surrounded Lincoln's death and its perpetrator, and those mysteries must be explained, Allen says. For example, research has found that: 
 

"This is a tragedy that has never been written. It rivals even the great Greek tragedies," says Allen as he sifts through a pile of documents he says give weight to the "Booth in hiding" theory. 

But in his to-be-produced television documentary called "Mr. Lincoln's War," Allen hopes to be able to present more conclusive forensic evidence that will either prove or debunk a theory that started with the 1903 appearance of the alleged Booth mummy in Enid, Okla. 

The mummified body was that of a man who called himself David E. George. After making the outrageous claim that he was John Wilkes Booth, George committed suicide by swallowing arsenic. To F.L. Bates, a lawyer in Memphis, Tenn., the claim had an eerily familiar ring. 

Thirty years earlier in Granbury, Texas, Bates heard a similar tale from the sickbed of his good friend John St. Helen, who like Booth could quote Shakespeare at length. Believing he would die, St. Helen confessed, "I killed the best man that ever lived." St. Helen went on to give a detailed account of how he, as Booth, had been persuaded to kill the president, according to a book later written by Bates. 

At the time, Bates dismissed the story as the ramblings of a delirious man and lost track of the pseudo-Booth after St. Helen recovered and moved to Leadville. But when Bates later read a newspaper account about George, he rushed to the site of the man's arsenic-induced suicide. There, he identified David E. George as his old friend John St. Helen. 

Bates was given possession of the body - which mummified due to a reaction between the arsenic and embalming agents - and recounted St. Helen's story in a book titled "The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth," published in 1907. Bates later informed the U.S. secretary of state that Booth may never have been caught. 

"He received a letter back saying, "Thank you very much for your interest, but Booth died by gunshot in a barn,"' Allen says. "They had no interest in his story." 

If true, the bizarre tale casts a macabre light on President Andrew Johnson, who was vice president when Lincoln was assassinated. 

According to Bates' book, Booth and Johnson met in the Kirkwood Hotel in Washington, D.C., on the day of the assassination, a fact supported by a calling card Booth left at the hotel for the vice president. 

Johnson - like Booth, a Southerner - turned to him with a cold stare and asked, "Are you man enough to kill him?" according to Bates. When the actor asked for clarification, Johnson allegedly replied that an assassination would give him the presidential power to oppose the 14th Amendment (which granted citizenship to blacks) and to take a softer line against the South, Bates wrote. 

"Booth's (and Johnson's) motive would have been ... to stop the blacks from getting the vote and to keep citizenship out of reach for blacks," Allen says. 

After becoming president, Johnson did oppose a civil rights bill and condemned the 14th Amendment. And during U.S. Senate hearings to impeach Johnson in 1869, which failed by one vote, Johnson was accused by a senator of being a party to the assassination, Allen says. 

"It was a slap in the face to Lincoln, to every man who fought for the rights to liberty in the Union. It was despicable, but Johnson was that kind of person," Allen says. 

Johnson may have given Booth a password that allowed him to escape from Washington, according to Bates. 

"This could expose an inherent weakness in our democracy that allows our chief executive to be shot and the killer to get away unharmed," Allen says. "There are some noble democratic ideals at stake here." 

University of Colorado Professor Ralph Mann, who teaches Civil War history, says Booth has been one of the more popular subjects for conspiracy buffs. 

"Certainly political opportunism has been at the heart of it," Mann says. Even Secretary of War Edwin Stanton attempted to use Booth to implicate Jefferson Davis in the assassination. 

"People have something to gain by putting blame on a political enemy," Mann said. 

"It has partly to do with selling books and partly to do with politics. You can cash in on national tragedy ... For whatever enemy you want to implicate, you can always take public outrage and redirect it."