From Ford's Theatre to the Burning Barn: the 12-Day Manhunt and Booth's End

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Booth’s corpse was sewn into an army blanket, lashed to a wooden board, and carted to Belle Plain, where it was transferred to the federal monitor USS Montauk anchored in the Anacostia River. There, Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes and Dr. Joseph Janvier Woodward performed the official autopsy under heavy armed guard.

The forensic protocol was thorough. Dr. John Frederick May, a Washington surgeon who had removed a benign fibroma from Booth’s neck years earlier, examined the body and verified the unique scar tissue. Personal acquaintances who knew Booth from the theatrical circuit confirmed his facial structure. The initials "JWB," which Booth had tattooed between his left thumb and forefinger as a boy, were documented and sketched. Sections of his shattered third, fourth, and fifth cervical vertebrae were excised and transferred to the Army Medical Museum, where they remain today in the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

Fearing Confederate sympathizers would transform Booth's grave into a shrine, Edwin Stanton ordered the body buried beneath the flagstones of a storage room in the Old Penitentiary at the Washington Arsenal. The extreme secrecy fueled persistent folklore. For decades, sensational claims alleged that Booth slipped out of the barn and that another man was shot in his place. Independent historical reviews have systematically debunked every alternative claimant, including the well-traveled mummy of "John St. Helen" from Enid, Oklahoma. The physical evidence, medical records, and contemporary eyewitness identifications confirm Booth died exactly where the Union cavalry trapped him.