After the Shot [audio 29min]

On the night of April 14th 1865, in front of a thousand people at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Shouting ‘Sic semper tyrannis’ -- ‘thus always to tyrants’, Booth believed that he was striking down a tyrant as surely as Brutus struck down Julius Caesar. Twelve days later Booth himself was shot dead in a barn in Virginia. From the moment Booth shot Lincoln, conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination have flourished – and 140 years later, for both historians and ordinary people, they are still very much alive. Some believe Booth was the ring leader of a small group; others are convinced he was simply a pawn in a grand conspiracy plot. While still others believe it wasn’t really Booth who died in that Virginia barn. Jean Snedegar tries to unravel the truth – and a myriad of legends about the assassination of a great American president.