Some Say John Wilkes Booth Filled More Days

We investigated the story behind Abraham Lincoln's death a little while ago. We posited that it wasn't John Wilkes Booth's weapon that killed the President. Now we wonder if Booth himself may have died another way.

"Pop! A shot was fired and, 143 years ago Saturday, John Wilkes Booth - assassin of Abraham Lincoln - collapsed to the ground, mortally wounded in the neck. That's what history says.

But two Booth family descendants - Joanne Hulme of Philadelphia, and her sister, Virginia Kline of Warminster, Pa. - aren't convinced. They think that another man was killed and that Booth, who they believe was the president's assassin, lived to a ripe old age.

The sisters say that using DNA tests you can prove that Booth escaped on the day he supposedly died. Another researcher has requested for specimen taken from the scenes then in order to investigate the claim. They want to set the record straight.

"It's not too late to set the record straight," added Jan Herman, editor-in-chief of Navy Medicine, the Navy's official medical journal. "This is not a minor footnote in history."

Booth was an actor by trade. We think that even the best actor would have a hard time convincing any audience that he was actually deceased. Even if Booth could somehow have pulled it off, he did so by dragging someone else's reputation in the mud.

[Arizona Republic]

Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Constipation

Today is the 143rd anniversary of Abraham Lincoln being shot at Ford's Theatre. He died a day later, on Tax Day. Every grade schooler knows that it was John Wilkes Booth who killed the 16th President. What you may not know, however, is that may not be true. At least according to Palo Alto physician and amateur historian John Sotos, who says that President Abraham Lincoln was suffering from a lethal genetic cancer syndrome when he was shot.

"Lincoln was a rare man with a rare disease," said Sotos. He has self-published a 300-page book and 400-page database to support his conclusion, based on an exhaustive analysis of Lincoln photographs and historical eyewitness descriptions of the president's health. "This solves a puzzle."

Lincoln's health has fascinated medical sleuths. In 1962, it was suggested that his great height and long limbs were linked to a genetic disorder called Marfan syndrome. Others have proposed alternate ailments - Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, perhaps, or Stickler syndrome. Some say he suffered from depression or exhaustion.
The late president's health had long puzzled Sotos.

Not yet done, Sotos and others speculate about illnesses that other U.S. Presidents suffered from at the time of their deaths.

George Washington may have suffered dementia during his last years in office; James Madison suffered seizures; Calvin Coolidge grew depressed after the death of his son; after a lifetime of heavy drinking, Franklin Pierce died of cirrhosis of the liver...He diagnosed severe sleep apnea in William Taft and graphed the president's weight gains and losses.

After reading an article about thyroid cancer last year, Sotos pieced his theory together. It explained President Lincoln's lanky build, chronic constipation, hooded eyes, asymmetric jaw and the lumps on his lips, he said. Lincoln's health was already weakening at the time of his assassination.

We fear that maybe Sotos is just trying to cover up for President Lincoln's bad looks and chronic constipation. While President Lincoln's ass may have been his primary concern, it was inevitably Lincoln's assassination that brought him down twice as hard.

[San Jose Mercury News]

Circumstances of Bono's Death Not So Sonny

We were pretty certain that Sonny Bono's cause of death was conclusive. He steered into a tree.

But new reports have surfaced that Bono did not die while skiing, rather he was clubbed to death by hitmen on the orders of drug and weapons dealers who feared he was going to expose them.

"It's nonsense for anyone to now try to suggest that Bono died after crashing into a tree. There's zero evidence in this autopsy report...to show such an accident happened. Instead, there's powerful proof he was assassinated.

"This was an evil plot that was carried out to almost perfection by ruthless assassins," Ted Gunderson, now a private investigator, has told the US Globe.

The tree collision, says Gunderson, was staged. He called for authorities to dig up Bono's remains and open a homicide investigation. His claims have reportedly been backed by top forensics experts who fear Nevada authorities were too quick to call the death a skiing accident.

We think that if Dickie Goodman were still alive, he would produce a song about the alleged hit (record). It would go something along the lines of this:

"What did the hitmen think when they saw Bono skiing toward them?"
"I Got You Babe."
"What happened when Bono tried to fight back?"
"And The Beat Goes On."

[Australian]

Remembering the Assassination of Martin Luther King for a Day

Four decades after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. fell to an assassin's bullet, colleagues and biographers offer many answers to the question: What if he had lived?

Instead, history moves on, remaking the world in myriad ways. The nation has grappled with issues of race and inequity without the benefit of King's evolving wisdom. A generation has come of age celebrating him in a national holiday, like other figures of the frozen past.

But given the trajectory of his life — from his appearance on the national scene during the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott of 1955 to his death on a second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968 — some of those closest to him have a good idea what King might be doing now, and where we might be as a country.

The conjecture is that if King was aroudn today, he'd be speaking out against the Iraq War, says King biographer David J. Garrow. Garrow and others believe that King would not have sought elective office.

He felt, they say, that he could make more of a difference outside the political arena. Yet some question whether King would have continued to have much influence at all beyond the 1960s, believing instead that King's time in the National spotlight had already come and passed.

"The painful truth is that in his last two months or so before he was killed, King was so exhausted — emotionally, spiritually, physically — that a lot of the people closest ... to him were really worried about his survival, his survival in the sense of would he have some sort of breakdown," Garrow says. "It would be expecting something truly superhuman, literally superhuman, for King to have continued the pace of life he had lived over those 12 years for another 12 years, never mind for another 20 or 40 years."

So while King's life was definitely cut short, there's room to wonder if his Civil Rights career was upended too. or if it had run its course. What's evident though is that one man, James Earl Ray thought King had to be stopped, for whatever reason. A CNN investigative report tackled these issues.

Ray's brother believes in his innocence; so, more startlingly, does the King family. We see footage of King's son Dexter visiting Ray in prison in 1997 and pledging solidarity. Ray died in jail in the next year, but we hear from lawyers who took up his cause and from those who opposed it. Your opinions when watching are likely to bounce about: convinced first that he was guilty, then that he was framed, then that he was involved but was part of a conspiracy (involving, it's alleged, the FBI, the Memphis police and the U.S. military).

The hotel switchboard operator who found King's dead body in his hotel room suffered a fatal heart attack fromt he shock of it. We can't help but wonder what he would have amounted to had he lived.

[AP]
[National Post]

Cleopatra and the Scary Snake Mystery

Being that it's April Fools' Day, it seems only fitting to debunk some myths about the way some famous people died. Mama Cass by way of a sandwich? Hardly. How about Cleopatra? That thing about the snake...is it true?

Popular lore holds that in Cleopatra's last moments, the distraught queen -- who had just lost her kingdom and learned of her lover's demise -- smuggled a poisonous snake into her locked chamber and died, along with two ladies-in-waiting, of a self-inflicted snake bite.

Such a scenario is next to impossible, according to Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley, who shatters the "snakebite suicide" myth in her new book, Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt, just published in Europe and slated for an upcoming U.S. release. "It seems to me that the snake theory is just too difficult to sustain, as it leaves too many loopholes," Tyldesley said.

Tyldesley acknowledges that portion sof the story are likely to be true, but there are other ways that Cleopatra could have committed suicide if that was her intention. The myth probably got started because Cleopatra died without a prior illness.

So how did Cleopatra really die? There are other theories. Some say it was self-administered poison; others believe that she was murdered by Octavian.

Popular legend also states that in 31 BC when she saw that Mark Antony's poorly equipped and manned ships were losing to the Romans' superior vessels, Cleopatra took flight and that Antony followed her. We can't help but wonder if this flight led to this contemporary retelling of the historic event

[Phoenix New Times]
[Discovery News]

Ruling Finds That Princess Diana Died from Natural Car-ses

The coroner at the inquest into the death of Britain's Princess Diana in a car crash said on Monday there was no evidence that Queen Elizabeth's husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, had "ordered Diana's execution." Diana died in a car crash in Paris in 1997 along with Dodi al-Fayed, whose father Mohamed al-Fayed has accused Prince Philip, Diana's father-in-law, of being behind her death.

[A]fter almost six months listening to more than 250 witnesses, Lord Justice Scott Baker told the jury in his summing up: "There is no evidence that the Duke of Edinburgh ordered Diana's execution and there is no evidence that the security intelligence service or any other government agency organized it."

The inquest was delayed for 10 years because Britain had to wait for the French legal process and then a British police investigation to run their course before it could begin. Both police inquiries decided it was a tragic accident because chauffeur Henri Paul was drunk and driving too fast.

It sounds to us like the Princess and Dodi were a modern-day Romeo and Juliet...

[Reuters]

Yuri Gagarin's Time Cut Short on Space

Flying in space posed no risks for Yuri Gagarin, the first man to orbit the Earth. Yet a ride in a fighter plane would lead to his death on this day in 1968. Even four decades later, we're still unsure what led to the crash and to Gagarin's death.

Soviet officials made no official announcement as to the cause of the crash and all the details of the accident were archived and marked "Top Secret." On Thursday, a Russian Air Force official rejected suggestions that a new probe should be launched into Gagarin's death, saying: "No additional investigation is necessary." The Kremlin also turned down an appeal for the case to be reopened in 2007.

However, despite top-level reluctance to look into the causes of the accident, even during Soviet times there were whispers and rumors that the cosmonaut's death was due to something more than a routine training flight gone wrong. Although Gagarin was in the process of retraining as a fighter pilot when his plane went down, both he and his instructor, Vladimir Seryoghin, were hugely experienced pilots.

Because of this important experience factor, many theories have surfaced. Some say it's a machinery failure stemming from the afterburners of a passing jet. Others claim it was an order of deliberate sabotage by a jealous Soviet leader.

And then there are the really far-fetched ones. Aliens. And some say it was all a cover-up to misleading propaganda; these were efforts to cover up that Gagarin never made it to space.

We think it was the poor weather conditions that did Gagarin in. It doesn't rain in Space the way it does in Spain.

[RIA Novosti]

Jesus Shocked Anyone Would Dare Cross Him

Leading up to Easter Sunday, many Christians' thoughts are focused on Jesus' Crucifixion and resurrection. A new book explores the cause of Jesus' death.

In his book, "The Crucifixion of Jesus: A Forensic Inquiry," Frederick T. Zugibe, a New York medical examiner who is an expert on the Crucifixion, said there were two causes:

• hypovolemic shock, marked by significant blood loss and dehydration; and

• traumatic shock, caused by the physical abuse to Jesus.

Others agree with Zugibe's assessment. Zugibe says that the scripture supports his theory that Jesus experienced hematidrosis, an excretion of blood or blood pigments in the sweat. But scourging was the major reason for Jesus' death.

In his book, Zugibe, chief medical examiner of Rockland County, N.Y., for more than 30 years, concludes that Jesus died from "cardiac and respiratory arrest, due to hypovolemic and traumatic shock, due to crucifixion."

Sounds like another case solved by the crime scene investigators on CSI: Nazareth. And just in the nick of time to make the streets a little bit safer on Easter Sunday.

[Wichita Eagle]

Wait a Minute, That's Not Old Ma(rily)n Monroe...

Every once in a while, we here at Best Death Pool Ever will gather up our magnifying glasses, constable hats, trench coats, and scooby snacks and pack into the Mystery Van. (In case you were wondering, Fine Fellow is our Velma. Same bowl haircut.)

In today's episode, our gang helps psychiatrist Jack Hattem investigates a ghost that won't leave society alone, even popping up and spooking people in magazines (NSFW-ish): The ghost of Marilyn Monroe.

Jack Hattem has set out to answer a simple mystery: What really happened to Marilyn Monroe?

In true Mystery Van style, we gathered the clues.

Clue #1 - Toxic Relationships
Joe Dimaggio, Arthur Miller, and the Kennedy Brothers

(Hatten) came to the conclusion that, in the right circumstances, with the right people, a toxic relationship gives someone the power to coax suicide. "The perfect murder," he says, "with words and feelings as the weapon."

Clue #2 - The Case of the Faulty Garage Door

Decades later, (Hatten) would find echoes of (calls for help) in Monroe's death. What, he thought, would stop one or more of the people in Marilyn's life – a Kennedy, perhaps? – from convincing her to fake a suicide attempt for attention? And what would stop that "fake" suicide from going wrong, like the woman in the garage?

Like all good mysteries, this one might surprise you:

"I set out to prove it was a suicide. But I came to the wrong conclusion. But in a mystery, there's always a surprise."

So who killed Monroe? Hattem, in his book (SPOILER ALERT), helps us unmask the real killer.

Wait a minute... underneath this mask... it's not Marylin Monroe committing suicide... it's Bobby Kennedy!...and he would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for us meddling kids.

[O.C. Register]

Deciphering True From Falsetto in Mozart's Death

Those of us who have seen the Academy award-winning film Amadeus remember one Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. During the second half of the movie, we witness the man's failing mental and physical health. As with any story adapted from real-life events, the movie leaves the audience wondering what aspects of the story were factual and what was fictional. Australian composer Gordon Kerry looked for answers.

He began by examining the real circumstances of Mozart's death, and how he came to begin his requiem. The Schaffer version, Kerry says, bears no resemblance to the truth. Far from being destitute, morally corrupt and gravely ill when he was approached by the "dark stranger", Mozart was actually incredibly creative and reasonably prosperous.

"He really was very busy in the last months of his life. He really only fell ill a few weeks before he died. It looks like he had severe renal failure, and that may have given him paranoid delusions. That may be when he started to say 'I'm writing the requiem for my own death'. But it certainly wasn't like that when he began it."

"It's just coincidence that he died in the middle of writing a piece about death - and in circumstances that leant themselves to being mythologised."

We're beginning to wonder whether the Mozart music our mothers played to us while we were fertilizing has actually made any difference in our lives after all.

[Sydney Morning Herald]

SPOILER: Joseph Stalin Dies at the End

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was 74 years old when he died in 1953. No cause of death has ever been reported, and some speculate that his death came under some unfriendly terms.

“There are myths surrounding Stalin’s death due to the mentality that someone that great and powerful can’t die naturally; therefore he must have been murdered,” Svanidze said. The night Stalin died he was surrounded by his closest political circle, including KGB Chief Lavrenty Beria and his successor Nikita Khrushchev. There is a theory that he was poisoned by Beria.

From our 21st century perspective, it looks like Soviets then saw Stalin in much the same way Cubans - particularly those living now in America - view Fidel Castro. The uncertainty of what the future will hold for their relatively unstable nation could drive a person mad. And Stalin seemed to know that he'd rubbed some people the wrong way. It even drove him to be a bit paranoid in his waning years.

Bolshakov was right to sweat: life and death was decided during the showings. When a projectionist broke his machine, spilling mercury, he was arrested and accused of trying to poison Stalin. If Stalin was in a bad mood, Bolshakov would show an old favourite or, even better, a foreign film.

We know then that Stalin would have loved 2007's Best Picture winner. If only he was alive today to see it...

[Russia Today]
[Telegraph]

Julie Christie Remembers the Time She was Nominated

We figured with this being Oscar weekend, we'd get in on the active coverage of the Academy Awards. Each year at the event, there is a retrospective montage celebrating all of those entertainers who passed away during the previous year. It's our favorite part of the ceremony.

But the awards themselves are of keen interest, too. Actress Julie Christie is among the nominees this year and pretty much the favorite to take home a statue. When she won at last month’s Screen Actors Guild Awards show, Christie made an insensitive remark about Alzheimer's disease, an illness she staged for her performance in Away From Her.

Christie drew laughs when she concluded: “And if I’ve forgotten anybody, well, it’s just that I’m still in character.”

With two movies – “Away From Her” and “The Savages” – dealing with Alzheimer’s and dementia, respectively, up for Oscars on Sunday, Alzheimer’s experts host Jon Stewart and the celebrity presenters and winners will avoid any humor about the disease. "It is no laughing matter,” said Peter Braun, chief executive of the California Southland chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association. “People don’t laugh about cancer; people don’t laugh about AIDS."

Braun’s organization has praised both films for their sensitive treatment of the illnesses. His hope is that this year's awards will help raise awareness of the disease.

If Ellen Page wins the best actress award over Christie Sunday night, we can only hope she doesn't talk about her morning sickness.

[Journal Gazette]

Stay in Touch With Dead Celebrities Online

MySpace has given a voice to the youth. It's a social networking site, and a public place for a personal journal, photographs, music and video. And anyone can sign up. Even some famous dead people.

Every dead poet, philosopher, artist and past president you can think of has a MySpace page -- and many are presented in the first person, as if Thomas Edison and Joan of Arc are lounging at home in their pajamas, posting pictures and updating their blogs.

Benjamin Franklin recommends that his visitors read a bio that's posted on the site. "Maybe," he writes, "it will help people realize that flying a freakin' kite wasn't my greatest accomplishment." And George Washington asks us: "Who rocked the revolution?...That's right, I did."

Time travel has never been easier, as MySpace users can interact with some of the famous people who lived (and died) before them. It has benefits for the deceased as well. For instance, Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth have apparently settled their differences and are now "friends."

We think this could be a useful tool to educate kids about history. When textbooks don't work as effectively as teachers may hope, they should find ways to reach the students. We're just afraid of what the students might say to Eleanor Roosevelt based on what they've heard of her already.

[Fort Worth Star-Telegram]

Arsenic Poisoning Ruled Out in Napoleon Cold Case

We're always interested in learning about the deaths of the famous people who lived before the inaugural year of DP. After all, their famous deaths paved the way for the famous deaths of 2008.

With some of those deaths come unaswered questions. What were Gandhi's last words? Who did Abe Lincoln leave his possessions to? And what exactly did Napoleon die of?

While we may never know the real answers to the first questions, some Italian researchers have set out to disprove the myth that the French leader died from arsenic poisoning.

"It's not arsenic poisoning that killed Napoleon at Saint Helena," said the National Nuclear Physics Institute (INFN) after what it called a "new meticulous examination" of the emperor's hair, that of his first wife and his son, Napoleon II.

Theories abound about the cause of the emperor's death, aged 51 on May 5 1821, ranging from stomach cancer to arsenic poisoning.

Napoleon did have a detectable level of arsenic in his body, though that was not uncommon at the time of his death in 1821. It was not enough to kill the man.

Might we suggest...alcohol overdose? Or maybe he ate too many of his eponymous pastries.

[News 24]
[Bloomberg]

JFK Blown Away. What Else Do I Have to Say?

For those of us who remember Deathpool1963, we know the shock of seeing President John F. Kennedy assassinated (he was on two rosters: “Cuban Missile Die-sis” and – presciently - “Happy Birthday, Mr. Deadisent”). And we remember the aftermath when we found out that it was the Federal Reserve, the CIA, the KGB, the Illuminati, the Mafia, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Fidel Castro, George H. W. Bush someone behind it.

When it comes to the Kennedy assassination, conspiracy theories abound, including not only who did it, but also how many people did it, the nature of the wound, where there was a decoy hearse. Crazy, right? The thing is… this is not going to help: The Dallas hospital room where JFK died, Parkland Memorial Hospital Trauma Room No. 1, now resides in Kansas.

Parkland modernized their hospital 35 years ago and the entire room- including the examination table, clocks, tiling, lockers, trash cans, surgical instruments, gloves, cotton balls, and a towel dispenser – was bought by the federal government. All of it was placed in a locked vault in a Fort Worth warehouse run by the National Archives and Records Administration where it stayed until September, when they were moved to an archives facility in Lenexa, Kansas.

The question on all our minds: When can we go to Kansas to see it?

"It's in a secure location," Reed Whitaker, the agency's Central Plains Region administrator, confirmed last week. "Basically, it's not to be examined, not to be shown to the press, not to be photographed, not to be exhibited to the public."

I see. Maybe we should un-strikethrough that first paragraph. I guess we will have to track down Dr. Stanley Goodspeed if we ever want to know the truth…

[Dallas Morning News]