President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, at 11 p.m. while attending a performance at Ford's Theatre. This police blotter captures the reaction of a Washington Metropolitan Police Dept. officer on duty the night of the assassination. The police immediately identified actor John Wilkes Booth as the assassin. Booth fled Ford’s Theatre and went on the run and was tracked down in Virginia by a platoon of New York Cavalry. The investigation and trial papers relating to the assassi