Speaker: Francis J. Gorman

In 1991, a popular television program, Unsolved Mysteries, promoted a theory postulating that John Wilkes Booth escaped rather than having been shot to death at the Garrett farm in 1865. With growing skepticism about accepted history, a request for the examination of Booth’s remains morphed into a lawsuit to force his exhumation. Frank Gorman represented the cemetery in the resultant 1995 trial. Gorman recounts his trial preparations and strategies, selection of six expert witnesses including anthropologists, a medical examiner, history scholars, and historians, the historical testimony and evidence, and his trial tactics. Relive this fascinating tale as he exposes the fallacy of the theory that spawned the trial as a Lost Cause narrative.

Register: http://www.cwrtcongress.org/events.html