But Robert Todd did not attend the play on April 14, nor did Gen. Ulysses S. Grant who arrived in town that day. But Booth had crossed an emotional line and there was no going back. His co-conspirators, directed to kill Vice President Johnson and Secretary of State Seward both failed. Booth escaped into infamy and Lucy disappeared from public view. Although every person who had even a passing acquaintance with Booth was interrogated. The conspirators wre publicly hanged. Even Mrs. Surratt, the woman who owned the house where the conspirators met was hanged. Lucy Hale – the assassin’s fiancée seen talking to him the morning of the murder -- was not even questioned.

Lucy Hale and her father spent the next five years in Spain where the aging senator suffered from depression that one writer has called "National Hotel disease". The country too mourned for years and years. Lucy apparently still carried a torch for the nation’s most despised man. According to Booth’s brother Edwin, also a famous actor, Lucy wrote to him after the assassination, still distraught over the death of her intended.

So let’s carry this version to a strange alternative conclusion. Imagine that Lucy was to John Wilkes Booth like Jodie Foster was to John Hinckley Jr. – and much more. Perhaps she really did love him unconditionally. She was the little girl from New Hampshire, captivated by his ambition, fame, talent and good looks. She was the Senator’s daughter, chaste and unreachable and willing to do anything for love. Maybe what they had was real.

When the soldiers dragged Booth's wounded body onto the porch at the Garrett Farm, he asked that a message be delivered to his mother. Then John Wilkes Booth made a strange request, one that has puzzled historians for over a century. He asked that his hands be lifted up so he could see them. He stared, possibly, not at his paralyzed hand, but at the ring on his hand -- the engagement ring he had kissed hundreds of times.

Then Booth mumbled something that has been misquoted ever since. It sounded like, "Useless, useless." But they were garbled, gurgling sounds, whispered, barely audible according to witnesses. Booth was just repeating what he had said as he kissed the ring in the tavern weeks before, He had probably been repeating this mantra for days as he hid in the Virginia swamp growing colder, hungrier and lonelier.

Think about it. Say the words out loud and you'll know the truth at last. Booth was repeating his lover's name. He said, "Lucy -- Lucy." He moved his dry cracked lips as if to kiss the ring a final time -- and died.

"The New Dying Words of John Wilkes Booth"
Copyright (c) 2005 J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved. May not be reprinted without permission. Originally appeared online here April 20, 1998.