| “ | Now that's odd… because I'm beginning to believe you | „ |
| ~ John Wilkes Booth, in the face of time-traveler Peter Corrigan's insistence that President Lincoln will be shot. |
John Wilkes Booth is a fictionalized version of the man of the same name who, like his real-life historical counterpart, assassinates President Abraham Lincoln. He is the antagonist of The Twilight Zone episode "Back There".
History[]
Booth first appears in the guise of a man named Jonathan Wellington who claims to be a doctor that has an interest in time traveler Peter Corrigan (who has been arrested for disturbing the peace after loudly and repeatedly insisting that President Lincoln will be shot). He offers to take Corrigan into his custody, ostensibly because he is concerned that the man might be a war veteran suffering from shell shock.
However, once Peter Corrigan is in Jonathan Wellington's custody, Wellington gives him drugged wine, pretending while doing so to be sympathetic to Corrigan's efforts to stop the assassination and assuring him that he will do what he can to stop it if Corrigan can prove he is neither drunk nor mad. But then, the drugged wine takes effect, and Corrigan realizes too late to do anything but succumb to its effects. "Wellington" then departs, urging Corrigan to "rest well". By the time Corrigan wakes up and is found by a sympathetic policeman, the disguised John Wilkes Booth has already succeeded in assassinating President Lincoln. The fictionalized Booth presumably suffers the same fate as his real-life counterpart: being fatally shot in a barn two weeks later by the hands of Boston Corbett.
