John Wilkes Booth

Touring actor earning $20,000 a year. He invests in oil fields. He's a vocal Confederate sympathizer in a border state. His first plan isn't assassination. It's kidnapping Lincoln and trading him for Confederate prisoners of war.

Enters the presidential box at Ford's Theatre during the third act of Our American Cousin. He knows the play. He waits for the line that always gets the biggest laugh. Fires a .44 caliber derringer into the back of Lincoln's head. Jumps to the stage, breaking his left leg. Shouts 'Sic semper tyrannis.'

Lincoln dies at 7:22 a.m. in a boarding house across the street from the theater. His body is too long for the bed. They lay him diagonally. Booth is already miles away, crossing into Maryland with a broken leg and a doctor named Samuel Mudd.

Cornered in a tobacco barn in Port Royal, Virginia. Soldiers set the barn on fire. Sergeant Boston Corbett shoots him through a gap in the wall. The bullet severs his spinal cord. He dies on the farmhouse porch at dawn, paralyzed. He's 26. His last words: 'Tell my mother I died for my country.'