Lunch, got in his car shut the door locked it, cranked up before he pulled off someone was pounding on drivers side window, and mr. East looked and there was a very scary looking individual saying, are you p. D. East, the troublemaking newspaper man . [laughter] and with more courage than he felt, mr. East said is, yes, i am. The man said if you get out of this car, ill beat your brains out. Mr. East, said, if you want me to get out of this car, youve got to give me a lot more incentive than that. [laughter] the regard i have for the Virginia Historical society where, where i spent many, many weeks working on this book for nelson, for graham, for the wonderful work here thats all the incentive i needed to come. And, again, i thank you for the invitation. The book grew actually from a class i taught on great crimes. And in that class we would take a different crime every week the lindbergh kidnapping, haymarket riot the next week, then the lincoln assassination. Hands down the lincoln a
1950s. So when mr. s went out for runs mr. East went out for lunch, got in the door, someone was pounding on the drivers side window, and mr. East looked, and there was a very scary looking individual saying are you p. D. East, the the troublemaking newspaper man . [laughter] and with more courage than he felt, mr. East said, yes, i am. The man said, if you get out of this car, ill beat your brains out. [laughter] mr. East, said if you want me to get out of this car, youve got to give me a lot more incentive than that. [laughter] the roorld the the regard i have for the Virginia Historical society where i spent many, many weeks working on this book for nelson, for graham, thats all the incentive i needed to come. And again, i thank you for the invitation. The booth book grew actually from a class i taught on great crimes. And in that class we would take a different crime every week, the lindbergh kidnapping, haymarket riot the next week, then the lincoln assassination. Hands down, the
Counting on the window and it was a scary individual savoury the troublemaker east newspaperman . He said did you get out of this car i will beat your brains out he said if you and me to get out you have to give me a lot more incentive than that. [laughter] this regard i have for the Virginia Historical society for the wonderful work for what i needed to do and thank you. The book grew from a class that i talked on great crimes for we would take a different crime every week and hands down the lincoln assassination was the favorite the students were the most interested and the characters were great in the characters were substantial. I began to think of a book there is a lot of books on the assassination but not brucine that is a problem because the coconspirator said he alone was the driving force seoul the assassination of books are looking at if you really want to save that vehicle. That was my motivation Going Forward and this was his whole neighborhood born just outside of this pla
Background, the context is the theater. This was an act that occurred in a theater, by an actor, with other actors standing by. And i wanted to look at it through the eyes of those people. And when i was working on the president s book and i was working on the lincoln chapters, i kept coming across this iconic playbill for our american cousin. I looked at it and i kept thinking, these are real people most of whose names have been lost. I mean, if you asked people on the street who the people were involved with the lincoln assassination, certainly people know lincoln, they know booth, maybe 1 in 10,000 would know laura keene. But almost no one would know the names john dyott, harry hawk, billy withers. These were major names in the events of that night. So i started looking even closer to get a sense of, who were these people . I began to find in some cases their names were spelled wrong or the names were a misrepresentation. In some cases its really difficult tracking down actors, beca
Back and forth several times before he actually went up to the box upstairs. So i wanted the readers to feel like, what must they have gone through. Imagine for a moment that the president of the United States has been assassinated in your workplace by one of your most admired, respected colleagues. Fearing for your own safety and the fear of being thought complicit. Reelecting in panic that could be construed as hostile to the president. As well as the times you could be seen socializing with the suspect. The more i start theres a saloon on the south side of fords theater. The star saloon. Theres a saloon next door on the north side, the green back saloon. There were a lot of trips to those saloons that day. Near as i can figure booth alone made seven or eight trips over there in the afternoon or evening which gives you some feeling about working up his courage for what he did. From that moment on, your world would never be the same. You would be intear gated, perhaps imprisoned. You