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THE LEGEND OF JOHN WILKES BOOTH: MYTH, MEMORY, AND A MUMMY By C. Wyatt Evans University Press of Kansas , $24.95, 224 pages, illus. REVIEWED BY LYN NOFZIGER Was John Wilkes Booth really killed by Sgt. Boston Corbett in the barn on the Garrett farm in southern Maryland, or did he escape and spend the rest of his life as a homeless, friendless wanderer, winding up, finally, as a side show mummy in a traveling carnival? Or, on the other hand did he escape to England and die there? And the second question: Why did he murder Lincoln in the...

A letter written by President Lincoln's assassin two months before the 1865 slaying sold at auction Sunday for a record $68,000. In the letter, dated Feb. 9, 1865, John Wilkes Booth asks a friend to send him one of his favorite pictures of himself, the one that later was used in his wanted poster. The previous high for a Booth letter was $38,000, according to Stuart Whitehurst, vice president of Skinner Inc. auctioneers. There are just 17 Booth letters not owned by institutions, Whitehurst said. This letter was addressed to family friend Orlando Tompkins of Boston. He tells Tompkins he...

N.C. GOP bans gay party members from opening booth at convention 5-19-04 From Staff Reports Posted 2 p.m. RALEIGH (AP) — North Carolina's Republican party has banned gay members from setting up a booth at this weekend's state GOP convention. "I am extremely disappointed that the leadership of the North Carolina Republican Party is attempting to so narrowly define who can be a Republican," Ed Farthing, a retired Hickory lawyer who requested the booth. "It appears to be you must be a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant and married for the Republican Party to pay any attention to you. I think that...