Lincoln's Grave Robbers: Chapter 15–Epilogue

Other papers either ignored the bizarre story, or called it a hoax.

Tyrrell raced to the telegraph office and fired off a note to the Lincoln city marshal:
“Please telegraph me a quick description of the men arrested in your town for robbing Mr. Sherman’s house. Are they still locked up?”

Kennally stepped out into the dark alley, seething.

To tourists, everything at the monument appeared normal. They looked through the doors of the catacomb, and there was Lincoln’s marble sarcophagus, intact and undamaged.

He was sprawled in a chair by the iron stove, eyes closed.

“The papers have implicated you in the attempted despoiling of Lincoln’s tomb,” the Times reporter said to Hughes and Mullen that night at the police station.

“I’ll make a full statement,” Hughes offered. “And I’ll commence with the time I met this Swegles.”

“In my opinion,” added Hughes, “the whole thing is a scheme to give Washburn and Tyrrell a little notoriety.”

It was riddled with lies, but it sounded believable enough—it might even convince a jury.

Hughes and Mullen were officially charged with two crimes: “conspiracy to steal the remains of Abraham Lincoln” and “attempted larceny in trying to steal the casket...being the property of the Lincoln Monument Association.”

Hughes and Mullen were officially charged with two crimes: “conspiracy to steal the remains of Abraham Lincoln” and “attempted larceny in trying to steal the casket...being the property of the Lincoln Monument Association.”

This was all decent evidence—it exposed lies in the story Hughes and Mullen had told. But none of it was conclusive.

The guard gave it to the sheriff, who gave it to Charles Reed, the lawyer leading the prosecution of Hughes and Mullen.

The inauguration of the new president was set for March 5.

A panicked Congress scrambled to set up a special commission made up of five members of the House of Representatives, five members of the Senate, and five Supreme Court justices.

The Springfield courtroom, said a local reporter, was “crowded to the utmost capacity.”

Mullen’s version was the same, but delivered without Hughes’s brash confidence. He talked so quietly the judge had to keep asking him to speak up.

The next morning at 9:00 A.M., the courtroom was packed again to hear the jury read its verdict: “We the jury find the defendants guilty as charged in the indictment, and fix the term of their confinement in the penitentiary at one year each.”

The next morning at 9:00 A.M., the courtroom was packed again to hear the jury read its verdict: “We the jury find the defendants guilty as charged in the indictment, and fix the term of their confinement in the penitentiary at one year each.”

“There is reason to believe that the actual extent of the plot is not yet exposed, and many think that Mullen and Hughes, though really guilty of complicity in the plot, did not contrive it, but are really the tools of smarter men.”

“There is reason to believe that the actual extent of the plot is not yet exposed, and many think that Mullen and Hughes, though really guilty of complicity in the plot, did not contrive it, but are really the tools of smarter men.”

In the summer of 1877, workers came to renovate one of the monument’s walls.

In the two and a half years since Boyd’s arrest, he and Tyrrell had become friendly. Boyd even offered his former nemesis occasional advice on catching coney men.

“It appeared to me,” Power recalled, “as though half the people of Springfield accosted me on the street, or came to the Monument and inquired if the body of Lincoln was safe. I did not think it was, but evaded their questions as well as I could.”

“It appeared to me,” Power recalled, “as though half the people of Springfield accosted me on the street, or came to the Monument and inquired if the body of Lincoln was safe. I did not think it was, but evaded their questions as well as I could.”

“I cannot adequately thank you,” Robert wrote to the Guard.

“After so many changes,” Power explained, “it was indispensably necessary to identify the body of the President.”

“The remains were somewhat shrunken,” added the Monument Association members in a signed statement, “but the features were quite natural, and we could readily recognize them as the features of the former illustrious President of our Nation, and our former friend and fellow citizen.”

Hopkins then bent the lead back into place, and soldered the seams to make them airtight.

“He is a living personification of what a man can do if he will to regain a footing in society and make an honest living.”