NATION IN BRIEF : MARYLAND : Judge Rejects Plea to Dig Up Booth’s Body
A judge refused to let John Wilkes Booth’s descendants dig up the family plot where Booth is supposedly buried to settle claims that he escaped Union soldiers and lived for 30 more years under the alias David E. George after he shot President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. The history books say Booth was tracked to a Virginia farm and shot in the neck as he tried to escape a burning barn. Citing a reluctance to disturb infant bodies buried above Booth’s coffin in Baltimore’s Greenmount Cemetery, Circuit Judge Joseph H.H. Kaplan said there are no dental records available. Mark Zaid, a lawyer for the Booth descendants, said they were unavailable for comment.
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