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Chapter 11. |
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Chapter 11. |
Accused No. 7: A carpenter and handyman at Ford's Theater, new BOOTH for years. He was not hard to find - there were two places to look since he slept where ever he felt like in the FORD theater each night and took his meals in an Boarding House several blocks away. Detectives found him at the Boarding House on Monday morning, April 17, 1865 and captured him and his carpet bag which had an 80 foot piece of rope in it, probably stolen from the theater for his favorite sport of Crab fishing. SPANGLER was first put in the Old Capitol Prison, but when it began to be remembered that after BOOTH rode crazily away on his horse down the back alley that night, SPANGLER had called out "Don't say which way he went!" - he was quickly transferred to the hold of one of the two gunboats laying off in the Navy Yard, the special confinement Secretary STANTON had ordered for the ones he felt to be guilty. He was accused of helping BOOTH get out of the back door of the theater after the murder. [REF: #5 pg188 Brought to Trial: EDWARD SPANGLER, the Ford Theater scene shifter; During the trial he was labeled as having cleared the back passageway off the stage for BOOTH to escape, perhaps having whittled the wooden bar to place from the box door across to the mortise in the wall; Who for months had been caring for BOOTH's horse in the alley stable; Appeared to everyone to be a hard drinker whose features had been coarsened by his intemperance, and to be surly by nature; He looked terrified during the trial; Often trembled visibly. Also his appearance was not endearing, his face was continually covered with a dingy stubble of beard. [REF: #1. pg198 Trial Sentence: EDWARD SPANGLER was sentenced to "Six Years of Hard Labor" on 30 June 1865; spent 4 years in Dry Tortugas, Florida Prison; Was Pardoned by President ANDREW JOHNSON in 1869. End of Chapter 11.
E-Mail:
Paul R. Sarrett, Jr., Auburn CA.