Finis L. Bates
Finis L. Bates was a Memphis, Tennessee, lawyer who wrote The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth.
In this book, Bates claims to have met in Granbury, Texas during the 1870s a John St. Helen, who had a particular tendency toward the theatrical and could recite Shakespeare from memory. Being his lawyer, St. Helens told Bates that he was in realiy John Wilkes Booth. Much of the book recounts how St. Helens/Booth escaped the Garrett farm and how he came to be settled in Granbury. The details that Bates provided were:
- that the leader of the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln was Andrew Johnson.
- that the identity of the man killed in the Garrett Barn was a plantation overseer by the name of Ruddy
- that St. Helens/Booth asked Ruddy to fetch his papers that had fallen out of his pocket while crossing the Potomac, and that while in possession of these papers, Ruddy was shot to death in the Garrett Barn, thus proving the identity of the body as Booth.
Bates claims not to have believed the story and both left Texas shortly thereafter. Years later, Bates read a story in a Memphis, Tennessee, newspaper about a David E. George, who had killed himself in Enid, Oklahoma and had also claimed that he was John Wilkes Booth. Bates quickly visited the place, identified the body as that of his old friend John St. Helens, and had the body embalmed. Bates interviewed many locals in order to verify the connection between George and Booth (George was a drifter and morphine user). Bates then wrote the book in order to validate the authenticity of mummy of George as Booth. He toured the mummy in circus sideshows until after World War One when he tried to interest Henry Ford in buying the mummy. Ford had a secretary investigate Bates's claims and concluded that they were complete bunk. The articles were published in the Dearborn Independent.
Bates died between 1921 and 1923.