will say that whoever they would brought up and whoever they captured at garrett s farm, that s whose bone fragment they have. that s the best evidence we have. whoever they captured that day is the person we think is john wilke zoo booth. you ll get the answer if dna is good. do you think edwin booth s dna would match that of john wil wilkes dna if it s possible to extract it from these bone fragments? i really do not know, and that s why we would like to continue, you know, looking for the dna samples and my feeling is that whatever the outcome is i would be fine with it. history should be as accurate as possible. brad, i mean, is it possible that john wilkes booth actually got away with it, lived 40 years
i cdid not. i never heard the escape stories. my grandfather never allowed john wilkes s name to be mentioned in the house. our family actually concentrated on edwin s accomplishments. what dig up edwin booth s grave? well, we do not have an unbroken matrilinial line for dna testing, so the next step would be to, you know, have edwin at some point exhumed. it s in the very preliminary stages of pulling the scientific components together, and it s also, you know, very important that our efforts be done properly, scientifically, taking into consideration all the sensitivities involved. so bad, obviously there s enough doubt out there that you dedicated an entire episode to
buried in john wilkes grave in baltimore. to explain it all. brad meltser is here, hosts the history channel s brad meltzer decoded which just aired an episode on john wilks booth and joining us from rhode island is a descendant of edwin booth, lois trebisacci. she appeared on the program learning how she first learned of her blood line from her mother. without skipping a beet she said you re going to be learning this in school. they are going to say that he died in the barn. he did not die in the barn. he lived for many, many years. so she told you that blockbuster piece of information right away? yes, yes. i had no idea that john wilkes booth had survived. lois, did you hear the same story from your family about john wilkes booth?