Four U.S. presidents have been assassinated while in office, and their assassins died soon after. All four of the killers' bodies were buried, but, for three of them, that wasn't the end of the story.
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00:00Four U.S. presidents have been assassinated while in office, and their assassins died
00:04soon after. All four of the killers' bodies were buried, but for three of them, that wasn't
00:08the end of the story.
00:10On April 14, 1865, five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union
00:15General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, anti-abolitionist John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln
00:20in the back of the head at Ford's Theater. Afterward, he jumped to the stage, breaking
00:24his leg, and escaped on horseback. Booth evaded authorities for 12 days over 90 miles until
00:29April 26, when he and co-conspirator David Herold were surrounded in a tobacco barn.
00:35Sergeant Boston Cobert shot Booth in the neck and paralyzed him. He died shortly thereafter,
00:39but not before allegedly offering some last words to Lieutenant Conger, one of the men
00:43who had helped lead the manhunt.
00:44I put my ear down close, and finally I understood him to say, tell mother I die for my country.
00:53Booth's body was shipped to the USS Montauk offshore from Washington, D.C., for identification
00:58and autopsy purposes. A doctor who had removed a tumor from the killer identified the scar
01:02from the surgery, a hotel clerk identified one of his tattoos, and a photographer came
01:06to take pictures. As Harper's Weekly reported at the time,
01:09"...the lips of the corpse were tightly compressed. His face was pale and wore a wild, haggard
01:14look, indicating exposure to the elements in a rough time generally in his skulking
01:18flight. His hair was disarranged and dirty, and apparently had not been combed since he
01:22took his flight."
01:24Booth's body was then transported to the Arsenal Penitentiary, a military prison during the
01:28Civil War, and buried there. His remains were exhumed and reburied in a warehouse at the
01:32site in 1867. Finally, in 1869, his remains were once again exhumed, handed over to his
01:38family, and reburied in the Booth family plot at Green Mountain Cemetery in Baltimore.
01:43There was, indeed, the burial of John Wilkes Booth's body in the Booth plot somewhere.
01:51Somewhere.
01:53Wilkes is commonly believed to be buried beneath an unmarked white headstone in the family
01:57plots, where people go to place pennies on his grave to this day.
02:01Charles J. Gouteau assassinated James A. Garfield in 1881, only 16 years after President Abraham
02:06Lincoln's assassination.
02:08"...you would think that after the Lincoln assassination, people would have decided that
02:14there should be guards around the president."
02:16Gouteau was a failed evangelical preacher who got a lot of attention for his bizarre
02:20courtroom behavior during his trial. It seems pretty clear by today's medical standards
02:25that he was suffering from some form of mental illness. Gouteau considered the murder of
02:29Garfield a holy act, compared himself to Moses, and even wrote poetry about it.
02:33"...I conceived the idea of removing the president, because he has proved a traitor to the men
02:38that made him."
02:40The tipping point that led to the assassination came when President Garfield's administration
02:43rejected his application for a position at the U.S. Consulate in Paris. Gouteau then
02:47caught up with Garfield on July 2nd at the Baltimore and Potomac train station and shot
02:52him.
02:53Gouteau was hanged on June 30, 1882, nearly one year after the assassination. The medical
02:58examiners who conducted Gouteau's autopsy found minor evidence of either malaria or
03:02syphilis in his brain, but nothing conclusive. Gouteau was buried in the cemetery at the
03:06Washington, D.C., jail where he had been held, but his body was later exhumed and transported
03:10to the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Maryland for scientific study. Scientists
03:15there were trying to discover, quote, "'moral insanity' that could be found in his brain."
03:19The body was dissected and his brain and spleen removed. In fact, Gouteau's brain still exists,
03:25preserved in a 70% alcohol, 30% water solution in a jar on a shelf in Philadelphia's Mütter
03:30Museum. They never did find the moral insanity they were looking for. It's unclear what happened
03:35to the rest of his body.
03:37It only took 20 years after President James A. Garfield's assassination for Leon Cholgosh
03:42to shoot and kill President William McKinley in 1901. As Susan Burfield explained in The
03:47Hour of Fate, Cholgosh's parents had moved from Poland to the United States in search
03:51for a better life, but they and Leon both had gotten crushed by a struggling economy
03:55in the Panic of 1893.
03:57Does it make sense in a land of opportunity where the voice of the average person was
04:03not being heard in the halls of Congress?
04:06Jobless, aimless, hopeless, and having no prospects or particular talents, he did what
04:11any sensible person would do in that situation. He became an anarchist. Shockingly, anarchy
04:16didn't help his situation. Who knew, right?
04:19After calling himself Fred Niemann, which in German means Fred Nobody, Cholgosh bought
04:23a .32-caliber automatic revolver from a hardware store in Buffalo for $4.50 in late August
04:281901. About a week or so later, on September 6th, at the technology-focused Pan-American
04:34Exposition, President McKinley agreed to meet any member of the public who dropped by to
04:38shake his hand. Cholgosh waited in line, and when he reached McKinley, the president
04:42held out his hand. Cholgosh raised his gun and shot him twice.
04:46Cholgosh's trial lasted less than two days, after which the jury deliberated for a mere
04:5030 minutes. By October 29th, he was executed via electric chair in Auburn, New York.
04:56But for some unknown reason, Cholgosh's body was dissolved in sulfuric acid before whatever
05:00was left was buried in Seoul Cemetery in Senate, New York. The grave is marked Fort Hill Remains.
05:07There's a bit of a Camelot revisionist history when it comes to the John F. Kennedy presidency.
05:11He wasn't as widely beloved as we're led to believe today, but it doesn't change the fact
05:15that his assassination came as a complete shock.
05:17On November 22nd, 1963, assassin Lee Harvey Oswald took aim with a rifle from the Texas
05:22School Book Depository near Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. At around 12.30 p.m., he opened
05:28fire, hitting JFK twice as the president's car passed by. A Marine veteran who was court-martialed
05:33twice during his military career for violent behavior, Oswald moved to the Soviet Union
05:37when he left the service, returned to the U.S. in 1962, and developed sympathy for Communist
05:42Cuba. One year later, JFK was dead.
05:45No, sir, I am not a communist. I have a steady Marxist philosophy, yes sir, and also other
05:51philosophers.
05:52This time, the presidential assassin in question didn't get the chance to face trial or execution.
05:56Rather, he faced vigilante justice at the hands of nightclub owner Jack Ruby. Just two
06:01days after the Kennedy assassination, Ruby shot and killed Oswald.
06:04Was that the man that shot the man, or do you know?
06:07That is the man that shot the man.
06:09Oswald was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Fort Worth, Texas. Conspiracy theories sprang
06:13up almost immediately. It doesn't help that the Warren Commission in 1964 said Oswald
06:18acted alone, whereas 15 years later, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations
06:23officially declared the JFK assassination a conspiracy.
06:27The murders of Oswald and JFK remain an arguably open question to this day. In an effort to
06:31put the matter to rest, Oswald's body was exhumed in 1981 to determine that it was indeed
06:36Oswald and not a Soviet body double in the grave. After authorities confirmed that it
06:40was Oswald, his body was returned to the grave. Officially, we know it's Lee Harvey Oswald
06:45buried there in Fort Worth. Everything else is up for debate.