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In 1863, a widow named Mary Surratt was running a tavern in a small town in Maryland, just
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outside of Washington D.C. There was a post office in the same building. Her youngest son, John, was the
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postmaster. He was also a spy for the Confederate Army. How much did she know of what John was
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doing? >> [music] >> Oh, I think she knew everything. This is historian Kate Clifford Larson.
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You know, some people say, "Oh, she couldn't have known what he was doing." Of course, he was like 18 years old. She
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knew everything he was doing. >> [music] >> And um and she approved of it because
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she did not want uh the Union to win. >> Mary grew up in Maryland on a tobacco farm where her family owned enslaved
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people. Her father died when she was two. >> [music] >> And after, her mother ran the farm. She
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never remarried. Mary grew up Episcopalian, but converted to Catholicism when she was a teenager.
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>> [music] >> Mary met her husband, John Surratt, in 1839. They married [music] the next year. They
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had three children. Her husband drank and gambled a lot. He racked up a lot of debt.
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But eventually, he saved up enough money to build the tavern. >> So, he opened this tavern and it became
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very busy very quickly. They had a wheelwright that would take care of people's carriages and you know, barns
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for horses. And so, it was very very successful. Um the bar and the inn itself. And um sadly, John became the most um
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frequent customer of the bar in the tavern. >> In 1862, John Surratt died. By that point, Mary was already doing
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most of the work running the tavern. It was always busy and often full of Confederate supporters who knew they
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were safe there. A family friend said that Mary earnestly and conscientiously defended
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and justified the Southern cause. What was it like in Maryland at that time during the Civil War?
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>> So, Maryland um stayed in the Union. There was a lot of negotiating to make that happen because Maryland was a slave
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state. Um now, Southern Maryland, the the part of Maryland that's closest to Washington
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D.C. had the most enslaved people out of any region of um Maryland at the time. So, it was a mixed state. Northern
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Maryland, north of Baltimore, had very few enslaved people, more northern kind of sympathies. And then Southern
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Maryland uh had very strong Confederate sympathies. So, the the the the state was split, but
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you know, Lincoln and his um administration were able to keep it in the Union. But that didn't mean that
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people with Confederate sympathies were not trying to thwart the efforts of Lincoln and his administration during
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the war. >> The Surratts had also owned enslaved people. One of them had allegedly burned down
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the Surratts' house and then ran away. >> Several of them fled uh the tavern and
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um took off. So, that was very upsetting to Mary. As a white woman, she had more
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status than an enslaved person or a free black person, and she liked that. She was a racist and she was a
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um she was a Confederate. She wanted slavery to continue. >> In 1862, Mary's oldest son, Isaac, left
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to join the Confederate Army. And her younger son, John, started delivering messages for the Confederacy.
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John used his position at the post office to move coded messages that were sent to him there.
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When he got certain letters, he would take out a hidden envelope and bring it to the person it was for.
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Sometimes he would hide messages between the wooden boards of his carriage, other times in the heel of his boot.
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He'd sneak out to Confederate boats on the Potomac River with information about where the Union Army was going. [music]
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>> The Union could not patrol, you know, 24 hours a day every mile of that river all
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the time. So, people had a great business taking uh Confederate sympathizers, spies, etc.
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back and forth across the Potomac [music] and the other rivers. So, um you know, it was wartime. It was
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difficult to watch everybody and keep an eye on everybody. >> But, one day in November 1863,
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John was caught by federal investigators. He was fired from his job as postmaster
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for disloyalty. He spent a few days in jail, but was released. A new postmaster was hired who was not a
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Confederate supporter. John decided to start carrying the secret letters himself full-time,
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bypassing the post office. He would travel to the Confederate capital in Richmond, pick up messages,
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and then take them north to Canada where the Confederacy had established a base.
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Spies like John hid coded messages and photographs in buttons, shoes, and clothing in case they were searched.
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In 1864, Mary decided to move with John and her daughter Anna to Washington D.C.
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where they owned a townhouse. She started renting out rooms. >> I think it was a strategic move on her
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part and they could have boarders and look like a respectable house, and she would be the woman running the boarding
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house, and I think it made it easier for John to go back and forth and connect with people
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in Washington D.C. who were spies, who were in government. There were Confederate spies who had jobs in the
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government, and they were sending information to Richmond, Virginia. Um so, I think it worked out for him
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very nicely that they moved into Washington D.C. >> [music] >> Soon the boarding house became a meeting
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place for John and his friends, some of whom he had met [music] through his work
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delivering messages. One man started coming over a lot >> [music] >> and became friends with Mary, too.
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His name was John Wilkes Booth. [music] I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. >> [music]
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>> John Wilkes Booth was born in Maryland. He came from a family of actors. His father, Junius, and two of his brothers
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were also actors. John made his own stage debut when he was 17 years old after his father died.
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His brother, Edwin, was known as the more precise actor in the family, but John was considered the more
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passionate one. One actress said, "He has the fire, the dash, the touch of strangeness."
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He was called by some the handsomest man in Washington. Walt Whitman wrote of his acting,
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"I thought of real genius." How famous is John Wilkes Booth at this point? >> He is so famous. He's like the most
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famous actor in the country at the time. He had started acting in the early 1850s. He wasn't very notable at the
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time, but he really worked on his craft and he became quite skilled and he was dashing and
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handsome and really that he was a public person and so he really developed a tremendous following.
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>> In April 1861, when the Civil War began, John Wilkes Booth was performing in Albany.
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He called the Confederates attacking Fort Sumter {quote} heroic. >> He did not believe in equality. He
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thought that um African-Americans were supposed to be slaves. He was devoted to that concept. Which is kind
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of odd cuz his family hadn't been that strongly committed. Particularly one of his brothers was uh more of a northern
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sympathizer or a union sympathizer. But he was obsessed. He really was obsessed.
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>> He had promised his mother that he would not enlist in the Confederate Army. But by 1864, he wanted to do more.
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>> John Wilkes Booth is becoming more and more furious and frustrated and he wants
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the Union to lose. He wants the Confederacy to win. So he starts kind of dreaming up this
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scheme of how they're going to get a group of people together to help him execute on this plan to kidnap Abraham
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Lincoln. >> What did they think they were going to get out of of kidnapping Lincoln?
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>> They were going to ransom him for the freedom of all the um Confederate soldiers in northern prisons.
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And they thought that that would rejuvenate the failing Confederacy at the time because there were [music]
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you know thousands and thousands and thousands of of um Confederate prisoners. I mean it was kind of a wacky plan, but
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they were devoted to it. They thought it would work. It certainly would have shocked the nation.
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John Wilkes [music] Booth's plan was to kidnap President Lincoln in Washington and smuggle him through Maryland to the
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Potomac River. >> [music] >> Then he and several conspirators would put him on a boat. They knew that
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Lincoln was a tall guy. They needed a few guys to help them get him into a boat and get him across
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to Virginia and then ransom him. John Wilkes Booth started spending a lot of time in Southern Maryland meeting
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with Confederate spies and looking for places that could be safe houses along the way to the Potomac.
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He learned that the Surratt's Tavern was known as a safe place for Confederates.
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A mutual friend introduced him to John Surratt. It was December of 1864 that John Surratt Jr. met John Wilkes
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Booth in Washington, D.C. It was around Christmas time. And from then on, the plan really took
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off rather quickly. Um, John Wilkes Booth brought in a couple of his friends from childhood.
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John Surratt brought in some of his friends from childhood. The people that they brought in had no experience really
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with firearms or planning kidnappings. They didn't have much money. Which now when you think about it is
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kind of ridiculous, but these are the people that they trusted and they brought in.
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This is how the plan started to grow. Soon, John Wilkes Booth began arranging for people to stay at the Surratt's
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boarding house in Washington as they made plans. Some of them stayed for just a night and
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others for weeks. One of John Surratt's childhood friends, who also lived at the boarding house, a
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man named Louis Weichmann, asked Mary who all these new people were. She told him that John was hiring them
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for dirty work. When asked what she meant, she said, "To clean his horses." Kate Clifford Larson says that John
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Wilkes Booth came to the boarding house almost every day. If John Surratt wasn't home, he would
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sit with Mary. One of the boarders in the house said that Mary Surratt and John Wilkes Booth
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would talk for hours together. Mary's daughter, Anna, kept a photo of Booth. Her brother complained that when Booth
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came to visit, he would always hear the women scampering to get ready. >> It's kind of remarkable when you think
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about it, the most famous actor in the country is showing up at this boarding house in Washington,
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D.C. And you know, I it's just everybody the boarders in the house, and not all of them were Confederate sympathizers in
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the house, but they just they loved him, and they thought this is the coolest thing that John Wilkes Booth is coming
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and having dinner with us and entertaining us. >> At the beginning of 1865, John Wilkes Booth started tracking
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President Lincoln's schedule. President Lincoln often went to see plays, especially at Ford's Theatre.
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John Wilkes Booth had performed there many times, and [snorts] he asked the owner to let
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him in to look around. He proposed kidnapping Lincoln the next time he went to see a show there.
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But two of his friends didn't like the idea. They said it could not be done without someone getting killed.
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On March 16th, John Wilkes Booth heard from a friend that President Lincoln was going to see a show the next day at an
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army hospital. Booth planned to intercept Lincoln's carriage. John Surratt would take over and drive
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it to Maryland. Kate says on the 17th of March, everyone met at Mary's boarding house.
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And John Wilkes Booth told them where to go and what to do once they'd captured Lincoln.
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So, Booth and his co-conspirators set themselves up along this road on the day that Lincoln was supposed to be
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there, and it turns out that at the last minute Lincoln changed his mind and didn't go.
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And it just infuriated um the co-conspirators, but it particularly John Wilkes Booth himself.
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When John Surratt Jr. came home, he went to his friend Louis Weichmann, who lived
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at the boarding house. Louis Weichmann said that John was waving a gun around and told him,
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"I will shoot anyone that comes into this room. My prospect is gone. My hopes are blighted."
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15 minutes later, John Wilkes Booth came in looking for John Surratt. They went into another room to talk.
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Louis Weichmann said, "That's when he began to suspect that they had, quote, [music] some hidden purpose."
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John Wilkes Booth stayed in Washington for one more day. He was scheduled to perform the next day
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at Ford's Theatre. After the show, he left for New York City, >> [music] >> but he hadn't given up on trying to help
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the Confederacy, which was about to lose the war. >> [music] >> He just was in a complete panic and so
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angry that he'd started planning and scheming um what his next step was going to be.
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>> [music] >> And that turned out to be a plan to assassinate Lincoln, and it involved
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getting Mary to help. >> [music] >> We'll be right back. To listen without ads, subscribe to
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Criminal Plus. Historian Kate Clifford says when John Wilkes Booth came back to Washington, D.C.
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he began gathering supplies for his new plan to assassinate the president. >> John Wilkes Booth decided he needed
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spyglasses and he wanted liquor, money, and food and things like that and war weapons
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stored at the Surratt Tavern for the evening when he decided he was going to assassinate uh Lincoln.
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>> John Surratt had gone to Canada. Before he left, he'd taken weapons and ammunition to his family's tavern in
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Maryland. He hid them in the walls and under the floorboards. >> [music] >> Mary started making lots of trips to the
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tavern, too. >> [music] >> Once she asked her son's friend, Louis Weichmann, who also lived at the
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boarding house, to take her there. She told him she was going to collect on a loan to a neighbor.
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But on the way, they stopped on a road just outside of town to talk to a man named John Lloyd.
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He had rented the tavern from Mary when she moved to Washington. Mary asked John Lloyd about the weapons
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hidden at the tavern and told him someone would be coming to get them soon. And then, on April 14th, John Wilkes
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Booth went to pick up his mail at Ford's Theatre and he heard that President Lincoln
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would be attending a play there that night. John Wilkes Booth met with two other men
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to go over their plans. >> Part of the conspiracy was to kill Lincoln, um his Vice President Andrew Johnson,
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Secretary William Henry Seward, and then um General Grant. He wanted to make sure
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that the leadership of the Union was completely decimated. And on that day, where was Mary Surratt?
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She was busy trying to help. She went to the tavern to deliver the last items that Booth needed.
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Booth did come by and see her at least once during that day and then he took off.
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He was busy making plans throughout the day with people at Ford's Theatre who didn't know what he was planning on
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doing. Um but he was such a famous actor and he could go in and out of the theater and
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do whatever he wanted and talk to whoever he wanted to because he was so famous.
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>> That night, one of the men working with John Wilkes Booth, a man who went by the name Lewis Powell,
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went to Secretary of State William Henry Seward's house. >> Seward was recovering from a horrific
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carriage accident and he had broken his shoulder and his jaw. So, he was bedridden.
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And um Lewis Powell appeared at the door claiming that he was a delivery person from the pharmacy with medication for
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the secretary and um the servants there in the house and Seward's sons were there and they didn't
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want um Powell to come in, but he pushed his way through. He stabbed a few people
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and then he got into uh Seward's bedroom and started attacking him. But Seward >> [music]
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>> fell off the bed between the bed and the wall and um it was difficult for Powell
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to keep attacking him. And the brace he had this large metal brace around his head and neck and shoulder to keep it
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all in place cuz he had broken so many bones. That prevented the the blade from the
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knife that um Powell was using from penetrating him enough to kill [music] him. So, Powell thinking he had killed Seward
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uh fled the house and went to hide in a cemetery until things had calmed down. Another man was supposed to assassinate
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Vice [music] President Andrew Johnson. It also didn't go as planned. That co-conspirator got drunk [music] at
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the bar and didn't wait around to try to kill the Vice President who was staying
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at a local hotel. >> [music] >> When John Wilkes Booth arrived at Ford's Theatre, a stagehand held his horse for
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him. Booth goes in the theatre as the performance is going on and he goes up to the private [music]
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box where Lincoln and his wife and other people are seated watching the play. And he sneaks in
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and starts attacking the president, shoots him um in the head. And then he yells out to the audience
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and he leaps from the box and um jumps down to the stage. Now he had spurs on his boot and it caught the American flag
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decoration that was spread across the box and he crashed sort of on the stage. And you know, everyone is in shock,
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they're not sure what's happening. Um Booth broke his leg, but he limps off, he goes behind and out into the
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alley and Booth jumps on his horse and races away. And inside they realize that Lincoln has
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been shot and other people have been hurt. >> Lincoln was badly wounded. Doctors took
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him to a boarding house across the street from the theatre >> [music] >> to treat him.
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That night Mary Surratt [music] was at home. Some of the boarders noticed she seemed
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nervous. >> She just seems odd and she says strange things and finally she tells everybody
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they must go back to their rooms that she needs quiet. [music] So they all go to bed.
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Now, once Lincoln has been shot, the police are out looking for any clues and who these people were that caused this
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and where's John Wilkes Booth because people did recognize him when he jumped down on the stage. [music]
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So, um the police actually come to her door at about 11:30 that night and ask to search the house because they
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had heard that Booth had visited the house and that there might be other co-conspirators [music] there, but they
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found nothing. So, they left. >> But, the next day, >> [music] >> Mary's boarder, Louis Weichmann, who had
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begun to suspect something strange about her friendship with John Wilkes Booth, decided to go to the police.
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>> Louis Weichmann realized, uh-oh, it this is more serious and the following morning, Saturday morning, Lincoln had
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just died and he went and reported what he knew. >> He told police all about the visitors to
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the Surratt's boarding house, including John Wilkes Booth and Lewis Payne. Two days later, the police came back to
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the boarding house. >> And they start inquiring, you know, what was going on here, who were these people
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and she kept saying that she didn't know anything. Well, then there's a knock on the door
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and it's like 11:00 at night. So, one of the detectives opens the door and there's Lewis Payne.
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And he had been hiding out in the cemetery since his attack on Seward two nights before.
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And they said to him, "Who are you and what are you here for?" And he tried to lie. He said that he was there to check
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with Mrs. Surratt because he had been hired to do some yard work for her. And so, he thought he'd get an early
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start and of course, the the detectives are like, "Early start? It's like 11:30 at night. What are you doing?" So, they
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make him come in the house and they bring Mary Surratt over into the hallway and they ask her, "Does she
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know him?" And she very dramatically raises up her arm and her hand and says, "I swear to
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God that I do not know who this person is." >> [music] >> And the detectives thought that that was
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so bizarre, her behavior, they knew immediately that she knew who the guy was and she was lying.
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>> [music] >> We'll be right back. >> [music] >> Police took Mary Surratt, her daughter
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Anna, and Lewis Payne to the police station for questioning. When they took Mary in for questioning,
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what did she say? >> She was very defiant and haughty and she was trying to protect her son. So, she
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had no concern that she would be in trouble. So, she obfuscated and she just danced around and um that of course
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infuriated some of the police detectives, but you know, they they just felt the answers weren't adequate.
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>> The police asked her about John Wilkes Booth's visits. She said he didn't discuss politics
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much. She said she was shocked by his attack on President Lincoln. While she was being interviewed, the
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police searched Lewis Payne. They found blood stains on his clothing and that he was wearing boots with the
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name John Wilkes Booth inside. The police brought a servant from Secretary of State William Seward's
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house to the station. >> He sees Payne and he says, "That's the man. That's the man who attacked Secretary Seward." So,
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it just started snowballing from there. >> [music] >> Mary Surratt was arrested and jailed at
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a prison at the old Capitol building. It had been used for military prisoners during the Civil War.
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>> [music] >> The police had arrested six people involved in John Wilkes Booth's
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conspiracy. They couldn't find John Surratt Jr. He was in Canada. John Wilkes Booth had been on the
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[music] run since he shot Lincoln. He had stopped at Mary Surratt's Tavern and picked up a bottle of whiskey,
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spyglasses, and guns. [music] He reportedly said, "I'm pretty certain that we've
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assassinated the president." >> [music] >> Almost 2 weeks later, on April 26th, he
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was discovered hiding in a tobacco barn in Virginia. He was quickly surrounded by federal
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detectives and a cavalry regiment from New York. After 2 hours, one of the detectives
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decided to light the barn on fire. Soon after, a soldier shot him. He died a few hours later.
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3 days later, the government announced that they were going to indict eight people for conspiracy to assassinate the
00:26:08
president. Mary Surratt was one of them. They would be tried together by a military tribunal.
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>> And the argument that the government made was that the war wasn't over even though Lee had surrendered,
00:26:24
there was still fighting going on in Texas and other western states. And so the government used that as an
00:26:30
excuse not to have the trial become a civilian trial, that we were still at war, they said, and so it should be a
00:26:37
military trial. Now, military trials are very different than civilian trials. The
00:26:42
protections for the defendant are not the same, they're not quite as rigorous, um and at that time, defendants still
00:26:49
had a tough time whether it was a civilian court or not, but there were protections for civilian defendants. But
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in a military tribunal, it's the judges and the jury are all the same people. >> The trial was held at Fort McNair in
00:27:04
Washington. In court, Mary wore a black veil over her face. >> And um occasionally she would have to
00:27:11
lift the veil so that people could identify her. And so the press really latched on to
00:27:18
Mary as this vicious, mean, terrible, evil woman. And there was even a a a publication
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that had drawings of all the conspirators. And Mary is at the center of it. It was
00:27:34
like an oval with the different images of the conspirators, the men, but she was center of this drawing. And it was
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very surprising cuz she didn't plan everything. She was not the center of the conspiracy, but the press made it
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sound like she was. >> [music] >> Mary was seated away from the rest of the male defendants.
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She didn't say anything during the proceedings. At that time, defendants weren't allowed
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to testify in their own trials. >> [music] >> Sometimes Mary had to remove her veil so
00:28:05
that a witness could identify her. >> [music] >> A reporter said that her expression for
00:28:10
the several hours she was under our eyes was that of a deeply somber gentleness.
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She was doing her best to make [music] a favorable impression by dress and aspect
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upon her judges. >> [music] >> But one newspaper called her a tigress. And another said that there was
00:28:28
something repulsive about her. >> [music] >> People in the courtroom were heard saying, "She looks like a devil."
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One woman said, "I hope they'll hang her." >> What is Mary's defense strategy? >> That she didn't know anything. She
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didn't know that that Booth was going to assassinate the president. And Mary [music] was kind of haughty
00:28:53
because she expected that her Victorian womanhood >> [music] >> and her deep Catholic faith would protect her.
00:29:02
That there was no way people would believe that she was involved in a plot to assassinate the president.
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>> Louis Weichmann, Mary's boarder and John Surratt's friend, was one of the first
00:29:14
witnesses called to testify. [music] He described Mary as sweet and caring and someone he was fond of.
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He said he didn't understand why she was friends with John Wilkes Booth. He testified that he'd seen several of
00:29:28
the arrested conspirators at the boarding house. And that he'd been with Mary when she
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went to the tavern in the days before the assassination. Mary's lawyers weren't able to explain
00:29:41
what Mary was doing in the week leading up to the assassination. They also said that Mary had bad
00:29:48
eyesight. That was why she hadn't recognized Lewis Payne. The man who had tried to kill the
00:29:53
Secretary of State when he showed up at the boarding house. But Mary's boarders testified that Mary
00:30:01
didn't seem to have any problems with recognizing people by the dim gas lamps in the parlor.
00:30:09
The prosecution brought several witnesses who remembered how often John Wilkes Booth came to visit Mary. And had
00:30:16
seen Mary delivering messages and supplies for Booth. The man who ran the tavern in Maryland
00:30:22
for Mary testified that she had asked him to get the weapons hidden in the tavern ready to be picked up.
00:30:30
Anna Surratt was called to the stand to testify for her mother's defense. Afterward she fainted.
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She attended every day of the trial after that. The newspapers reported that she had had
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a cheering effect on Mary. Later, Mary's health started to decline, and the court let Anna stay with Mary in
00:30:51
her cell during the day. In their closing arguments, Mary's lawyers called Mary widowed of her natural protectors,
00:31:03
and that her son John was really the one who had been involved. They also argued that the military trial
00:31:09
was unconstitutional. Two days later, the commission decided that all eight defendants were guilty.
00:31:19
Four were sentenced to prison, and the rest were given a death sentence. >> [music]
00:31:24
>> Mary Surratt was one of them. Five of the commissioners from the trial wrote in their decision that they
00:31:31
thought Mary's sentence should be commuted to life in prison >> [music] >> because of her sex and age. She was 42.
00:31:40
Their recommendation went to President Andrew Johnson, who had the final say in approving the sentences.
00:31:47
On July 5th, Andrew Johnson approved the execution of Mary Surratt. He said that Mary's sex did not make her
00:31:56
any the less guilty, and that she kept the nest that hatched the egg. The execution was scheduled for 2 days
00:32:05
later. Do you think Mary ever thought that she would get a death sentence? >> I think Mary never thought in a million
00:32:15
years that she would get a death sentence. I think she thought she might get a couple years in prison, and that's
00:32:21
it. >> Mary's lawyer said, "So sudden was the shock, so unexpected the result, we hardly knew how to
00:32:30
proceed." They went to the White House to try to speak with President Johnson. He
00:32:35
wouldn't see them. They brought in a Surratt to see one of the president's military advisers to see
00:32:42
if he would talk to the president. Later that morning, he told them he had tried, but the president would not
00:32:48
change his mind. He said, "I can do nothing." On July 7th, thousands of people came to
00:32:57
Washington for the execution. Mary was being hanged with three other men. When the executioner put the noose
00:33:05
around Mary's neck, some people in the crowd got upset. It was the first time a woman had been
00:33:11
executed by the federal government. >> Oddly, as soon as the hanging happened, within a couple of days, the public sort
00:33:20
of soured on the idea. And I think it's sort of like trauma from the Civil War to begin with. It would they were just
00:33:28
tired of all of this, and they wanted to move on as a country and to put everything behind them. And everyone was
00:33:35
uncomfortable with the hanging of a woman, particularly because there were photographs available of um the hanging.
00:33:43
And for the people who saw them, it was shocking. >> People began to say that Louis Weichmann
00:33:48
had lied on the stand, that he was actually part of the assassination conspiracy.
00:33:55
Two weeks after her execution, one newspaper reported "The conviction is strengthening that
00:34:02
Mrs. Mary E. Surratt was innocent of any complicity in the murder of Mr. Lincoln.
00:34:08
Everything in her personal character repels the idea that she could have lent her aid to the atrocious deed."
00:34:16
President Johnson was later criticized for signing off on Mary's death sentence.
00:34:22
>> There was so much drama, I think that the newspapers loved printing it all. And so they just kept feeding into this
00:34:29
idea that the government had hanged this innocent woman. And the images are just so appalling
00:34:35
that people, you know, bought into it. >> [music] >> Mary's son, John Surratt Jr.,
00:34:42
had been in hiding in Canada during his mother's trial. After execution, >> [music]
00:34:48
>> he went to Europe. >> He goes to France and then Italy. He joins the Papal Guards.
00:34:54
>> [music] >> He's traveling through Europe trying to escape federal detectives that are
00:35:00
They're getting clues from different people that he's in England, then he's in in [music] Paris, he's in France and
00:35:06
Italy. And then he goes to Egypt. And eventually he does get captured and brought back um to the United States in
00:35:13
uh 1867. [music] >> John Surratt Jr. was tried for treason, but his case ended in a mistrial.
00:35:21
In 1868, [music] the charges were dropped. He began touring the country giving lectures about his mother's innocence.
00:35:29
>> And those who supported Mary, >> [music] >> I mean, they kept campaigning for 40
00:35:34
years until they ended up all dying of old age, etc., to convince the world that she was
00:35:41
innocent and to have her pardoned posthumously, which she never was. And um some of them had the evidence,
00:35:49
but they just would not accept that Mary as a woman was involved. >> Historians have debated about what Mary
00:35:57
Surratt did or did not do for over a hundred years. Kate Clifford Larson says she's looked
00:36:04
at the documents from the trial and at interviews from witnesses and the conspirators.
00:36:10
>> There's no way that a person can come away thinking she was not informed, that
00:36:15
she was not a co-conspirator, that she you know, that she couldn't have helped John Wilkes Booth.
00:36:21
>> After Mary's execution, The New York Times wrote that she had paid the penalty of her crime, and the wisest
00:36:29
thing is to let her name be as far forgotten as the magnitude of that crime would allow.
00:36:37
I think, you know, when it comes to the story of Lincoln and Booth, it's such a neat story. This handsome, wonderful
00:36:45
actor loses his mind over losing to the Union, and he kills Lincoln, and that's it.
00:36:53
It's kind of a complicated story when you realize how many Confederate spies there were, and how many co-conspirators
00:36:59
were there, and how many people hated Abraham Lincoln, who becomes this martyr figure for all of us.
00:37:06
And then to have a woman be part of it, it's such a complicated story, but um I think everyone should know about Mary
00:37:14
Surratt. >> [music] [music] [music] >> Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me.
00:37:37
>> [music] >> Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising
00:37:40
producer. Our producers are Susanna Roberson, Jackie Sajiko, Lilly Clark, Lena Sillison, and Meghan Keneally.
00:37:48
>> [music] >> Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Somenetti. Julian Alexander makes original
00:37:53
illustrations for each episode [music] of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com.
00:37:58
And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com/newsletter. >> [music]
00:38:04
>> We hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program,
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Criminal Plus. [music] You can listen to Criminal, This is Love, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without
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00:38:37
We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. >> [music] >> Criminal is part of the Vox Media
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Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. [music] This is
00:38:52
Criminal.