The killer’s killer

A look at the man who killed John Wilkes Booth

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This month, the media will be peppered with articles, books and newscasts during the sesquicentennial commemoration of the assassination of President Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth. Many of those news accounts will repeat long held myths and rehash assassination conspiracy theories.

Most will recall the facts history classes drilled into our heads: On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth snuck into Lincoln’s private box at Ford’s Theatre in Washington and fired the fatal shot. Fewer know, however, how Booth met his end. History has recorded that Booth was killed by Sgt. Boston Corbett, a member of the 16th New York Cavalry. Corbett was a member of the 29-man hunting party charged with capturing Booth alive.

Ten days after the assassination, the hunting party trapped Booth, along with co-conspirator David Herold, inside a barn near Port Royal, Va. The soldiers set fire to the barn in an attempt to flush them out. At this point however, Corbett shot Booth through a hole in the barn’s wall. It was there that myth and fact begin to blur.

Among the leaders of the hunting party was Lt. Luther Byron Baker, who would later move to Lansing. Baker’s description of the fateful ending has Booth dying in his arms.

Corbett denied Booth his likely date with the hangman, but, unlike the more contemporary Jack Ruby — killer of John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald — Corbett would be mostly forgotten by history. When his name is recorded, it is often repeated with the myth that Corbett had been court martialed earlier in his life and was pardoned from a firing squad by Lincoln — thus pardoning the man who would later kill his assassin.

Author and journalist Scott Martelle’s new book, “The Madman and the Assassin: The Strange Life of Boston Corbett, the Man who Killed John Wilkes Booth,” not only debunks that myth, but also fills in some of the blanks around this enigmatic footnote in American history.

“Separating the fact from fiction about Corbett was difficult,” said Martelle, a former reporter for The Detroit News.

For example, Martelle was not able to verify a common claim that Corbett had been saved from a firing squad by a presidential pardon.

“There’s no record that ever happened,” he said.

Nevertheless, the Boston Corbett story is one of the most unusual tales surrounding a presidential assassination.

So does Corbett qualify as a madman? Martelle cites numerous historical records showing Corbett was a religious zealot, including Corbett’s self-castration after being approached by two prostitutes.

Further compounding his madness was Corbett’s chosen profession. He had taken up the trade of hatter, working with toxic mercury to finish silk hats. (The phrase “mad as a hatter” comes from the mercuryinduced mental illnesses associated with the profession.) In his book, Martelle documents Corbett’s descent into madness.

For a time after the assassination, Corbett was able to parlay his fame into a career as an itinerant lecturer and various other jobs, eventually moving to Kansas where he was employed as an assistant doorkeeper for the Kansas House of Representatives.

There he continued his unsettled life. In one episode, he locked the doors to the building and brandished a firearm, threatening elected officials.

Shortly thereafter, Corbett was declared legally insane and placed in an asylum in Topeka. He later escaped and, after brief contact with a lawyer, disappeared never to be seen or heard from again.

As hard as Martelle tried, he could not discover the ultimate fate of Corbett.

“He simply vanishes from documented history,” Martelle writes.

One persisting myth is he was one of the more than 400 victims of the horrific conflagration in Hinckley, Minn., in 1894.

Historian Steve Miller, who has studied the life of Corbett and the other members the search party, said Corbett would have seen that as a fitting end.

“His life would have ended in a fire of biblical proportions,” Miller said.

Miller will continue the discussion of how the lives of Corbett, Baker and others in the search party intertwined when he presents “Luther Baker and the Capture of John Wilkes Booth” April 25 at LCC’s Dart Auditorium. Martelle and Miller’s presentations are two of the 11 events organized by the Historical Society of Greater Lansing to commemorate Lincoln’s assassination and the end of the Civil War. For more information on these events, go to lansinghistory.org.

“A Look at Boston Corbett, the Man Who Killed Booth”

7 p.m. Friday, April 3 FREE Schuler Books, Meridian Mall 1982 W. Grand River Ave, Okemos lansinghistory.org

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