John Wilkes Booth
Less than two weeks after he assassinated Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., John Wilkes Booth died of a gunshot wound in a Virginia barn. The public flooded the War Department with suggestions about what to do with body — some wanted Booth buried at the threshold of Ford’s Theatre, so everyone entering would step on him; others called for dissection and public display. Instead authorities staged a burial at sea, then buried the body in a secret location before releasing it to the family in 1869. Today Booth is buried in his family’s plot in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore.