Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America. Her work helped lay the foundation for modern codebreaking today.
I n the summer of , hundreds of wildfires raged across the Northern Rockies. By the time it was all over, more than three million acres had burned and at least 78 firefighters were dead.
It was the largest fire in American history. Images of Abraham Lincoln as he lay dying filled the popular press in the days following the assassination. On April 14, , Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Over the next twelve days, the largest manhunt ever attempted closed in on his assassin. Support Provided by: Learn More.
Now Streaming The Codebreaker Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America.
The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Article Lincoln's Deathbed Images of Abraham Lincoln as he lay dying filled the popular press in the days following the assassination. Local television, newspapers, and radio. A lot of radio. And then, in July , Rolling Stone. Orlowek soon signed on as a consultant for The Lincoln Conspiracy , billed as "a story every American has the right to know.
Even in a post-JFK assassination, post-Watergate era, with audiences deeply cynical about government, the theory had limited popular appeal. Historians were appalled. Afterward, Orlowek found himself drifting away from the work. Because what more could he do? Continue digging through history, hoping to find that one irrefutable piece of half-buried evidence? What were the chances of that? He turned to more tangible goals, petitioning President Carter to clear the name of Dr.
Samuel Mudd. Only after another researcher contacted him a dozen years later, in , did Orlowek again take up his case in earnest. He traveled to Enid, Oklahoma, where locals had tried to interest the wildly popular TV series Unsolved Mysteries in a story about their famous mummy. His zeal renewed, Orlowek signed on to help. Two years later, the segment aired: a full 20 minutes devoted to the now-mysterious body in the barn. Host Robert Stack solemnly intoned, "Those who question the official account believe that in the confusion following the Civil War, critical evidence may have been mistakenly recorded or perhaps covered up.
Other s dismiss these theories as revisionist nonsense. Opposite him, historian James O. Hall cantankerously dismissed this "evidence" as poorly sourced, speculative, or contradicted by more persuasive evidence. He finally scoffed, "I see no mystery about it at all. But a show called Unsolved Mysteries was unlikely to agree. Over an image of the marble stele marking the family plot, Stack pondered, "Perhaps there lies the definitive proof to this unsolved mystery.
Nate Orlowek chose to seize the Booth mystery. Joanne Hulme, however, was born into it. That bloodline meant hearing from an early age that the assassin had escaped Union justice, and that the body buried in Green Mount Cemetery did not belong to her family. She first heard about it in the summer before sixth grade, when her mother told her she was being dramatic, just like her relatives. That meant Edwin Booth, and, yes, his brother, John Wilkes Booth, who Hulme until then had known as a presidential assassin, not a distant relative.
The family had always known it, and Edwin provided money for him. The news astounded her, but most of the family never talked about their infamous relative, leaving her to ponder on her own. Her mother even forbade discussion with her siblings. But like young Nate Orlowek, Joanne Hulme was interested in history.
She was intrigued, both to know that she belonged to a family of actors and to know the mind of someone who could kill a president.
She found a family biography called the The Mad Booths of Maryland and began using stories from it to pry more information out of her relatives. Much of what she heard made her proud, and she tried to share that pride. As for John Wilkes Booth, she heard that after his escape from the barn — where he had stayed, but never been cornered by Union troops — he met up with supporters who spirited him out of the country.
He went to Sri Lanka, India, the Hawaiian islands. After four years or so, he returned to the states. In the legends, he was a romantic figure: the killer doomed to exile, yet still living an enviable adventure.
Joanne Hulme grew up knowing that there was more to history than the official story. There was evidence, much of it unpersuasive to skeptics, including almost all historians. Only after Unsolved Mysteries did another possibility present itself. After appearing on the show in , Nate Orlowek and his new research partner, Arthur Ben Chitty, a historiographer and professor at the University of the South, were contacted by the Smithsonian Institution.
There were no dental records, and after almost years, the skeleton was likely to be severely degraded. But with a technique called video superimposition — essentially overlaying a photographic image on an unidentified skull to check for a match — it seemed possible to prove whether the body in Green Mount Cemetery was John Wilkes Booth.
For the superimposition all they needed was a skull. Everything was going to plan. Four of Booth's co-conspirators were hanged, including Mary Surratt, the first woman executed by the US federal government. Photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress. With media interest in the story at a new peak, Orlowek and his team begin preparing a legal brief to exhume the body of the "John Wilkes Booth" buried in Green Mount Cemetery, in Baltimore, Maryland.
Of the 22 living Booth descendants, 21 support the project, along with the local district attorney. The president of Green Mount Cemetery and a group of historians go to court to block the exhumation, bringing more attention to the case. The judge denies the exhumation request, finding no compelling reason to disturb the grave site. Orlowek and his team begin looking into potential DNA testing.
Orlowek and his team submit their proposal through their local congressman and begin to wait. The NMHM responds that it will not allow any testing of the vertebrae, as it "would significantly deplete the material and destroy both the physical integrity of the object and the evidence of the trauma suffered at the time of injury.
Green Mount Cemetery knew Nate Orlowek. That attracted plenty of media attention, which Green Mount alleged as the true motive behind the case. The cemetery even called Dr. James Starrs, a law professor and exhumation expert already famous for digging up the five victims of "Colorado Cannibal" Alferd Packer, and who would go on to exhume famous outlaw Jesse James and Albert DeSalvo, alleged to be the Boston Strangler.
Other experts agreed, citing unfavorable soil and water conditions. Even if the skeleton was reasonably intact, they said, video superimposition remained an experimental method — Orlowek and his team wanted to test the body for months, with no guarantee of success.
That was, of course, if the cemetery could even find the body. She said it was not buried in the family plot, but in an unmarked grave somewhere on the grounds. The judge took this into consideration. Maryland law does not look kindly on impromptu archaeological expeditions through its cemeteries. Michael W. George with those of Booth. Soon he had the judge pointing out discrepancies: the eyes were wrong, the hair was wrong — despite aging another 40 years, George appeared to have gained hair on his head.
Seward was stabbed by Lewis Paine but survived, while the man assigned to kill Johnson did not carry out his assignment. He landed hard, breaking his leg, before escaping to a waiting horse behind the theater. Many in the audience recognized Booth, so the army was soon hot on his trail.
Booth and his accomplice, David Herold, made their way across the Anacostia River and headed toward southern Maryland. The pair stopped at Dr. This earned Mudd a life sentence in prison when he was implicated as part of the conspiracy, but the sentence was later commuted. Booth found refuge for several days at the home of Thomas A.
Jones, a Confederate agent, before securing a boat to row across the Potomac to Virginia. While staying at the farm of Richard Garrett, Federal troops arrived on their search but soon rode on.
The unsuspecting Garrett allowed his suspicious guests to sleep in his barn, but he instructed his son to lock the barn from the outside to prevent the strangers from stealing his horses.
A tip led the Union soldiers back to the Garrett farm, where they discovered Booth and Herold in the barn. Herold came out, but Booth refused. The building was set on fire to flush Booth, but he was shot while still inside. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! On April 26, , former Liberian president Charles Taylor is found guilty of abetting horrific war crimes, including rape and mutilation in Sierra Leone.
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