Throughout the history of the United States of America, four American presidents have been killed by the assassins' bullets, so, who were these assassins? What were their motives? and what molded them into what they became?

A week later, Friday 21, while still on the run, a depressed and dismayed Booth added:

        “After being hunted like e dog through swamps, woods…with every         man’s         hand against me, I am here in despair. And why? For doing what Brutus         was honored for-what made Tell a hero. And yet I, for striking down a         greater tyrant than they ever knew, am looked upon as a common cut-        throat.” 

Discussion

        John Wilkes Booth fits the profile of an individual with a narcissistic-antisocial personality disorder. His actor-father was away from home most of the time, so Booth experienced an absence of consistent discipline because his mother pampered him. In addition, while growing up, Booth occasionally engaged acts of cruelty to animals, another feature of an antisocial behavior.

        While still in his teens he took up acting, but was received with unsatisfactory reviews. For Booth, who had always been told that he was special, this reception did not sit right and an everlasting jealousy was born-between him and his older brother Edwin.

        After his tours in the South were well received, Booth started to develop somewhat grandiose sense of self worthand adopted the South’s cause against the North; after all it was the South that was going to make him famous, probably more famous than his brother.

        Booth was promiscuous and his only meaningful relationship was with a prostitute. He was a moderate drinker and somewhat impulsive. With the war raging on and favoring the South, Booth saw a possible end to a way of life that he enjoyed.  Besides he had to be better than his brother and he could be the hero to turn the tide of the war. Booth tried twice to kidnap President Lincoln, but both times failed. His plans were grandiose and he was the main player.

        Even after the surrender of General Lee, which basically signaled the defeat of the South, Booth still persisted in neutralizing President Lincoln, but this time shooting him. He was sure that his actions were going to bring him fame and he was going to be the hero.

        On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot dead President Lincoln.  

James McKinley in his book Assassination in America states:

        “The assassin misunderstands the nation in whose cause he thinks he         kills. He is a poor historian, though he believes otherwise. In his linear and         insular reasoning, things must proceed as fantasized in his own         delusions.”

        Booth would probably agree if he was alive. In his diary, found after his death, while he was running through the swamps of Maryland to escape his follower, Booth made an entry expressing his shock and dismay that instead of being declared a hero he was treated as a criminal.

Charles Julius Guiteau (1841-1882)

        Charles J. Guiteau was born on September 8, 1841, in Freeport, Illinois. His mother died, due to a brain disease, when Charles was seven years old, living behind her husband, Luther, a very religious man, and Charles’ older sister and brother.

        In the Guiteau family there was a history of mental illness. Guiteau’s uncle had died insane and his first two cousins were placed in asylums.

        Charles had a very difficult childhood. His father would beat him and his siblings for the slightest mistakes. By the time he was twelve years old, and because Luther could not control or discipline him anymore, Charles was sent to live with his older sister and her husband. 

        Even though Guiteau was plagued by a speech impediment he learned to read and write very quickly. Having an aversion to physical labor, at the age of eighteen, Charles tried to enter the University of Michigan, at the objections of his father, who wanted him to enroll at the utopian, Oneida Community in New York.          Guiteau never was able to enroll because he did not have enough credits. Left frustrated and aimless he decided to join the Oneida Community, where all the men were considered married to all women in the group. Very soon after his arrival Charles openly stated that he was divinely ordained to lead the community. Every person in the community shared equally and had to work hard in the farm and to produce the various items that would be sold to the general public. Charles had an aversion to physical labor, so pretty soon tensions began to build. He was also getting very frustrated because the young women in the community were not responding positively to his sexual advances. 

        Charles Guiteau left the Oneida Community, in April 1865, after he was completely alienated from the other members. Charles went to New York City with the intention of establishing a daily religious newspaper to promote the Kingdom of God without the restrictions of the Oneida Community. After only three months, Guiteau failed because he was unable to secure financial backing, and returned to Oneida Community. As he still was not a very desirable person to the community members, Charles left after a very brief period, but this time requesting a reimbursement of $9000 from the Community. He never received any money and in 1868, left for Chicago where he married Miss Annie Bunn and opened his own legal practice. Not being able to get any clients, in a very short period of time, he gave up practicing law and was reduced to debt collection. Coincidently, Charles Guiteau was also known to be much of the time in debt himself, and very often left rented rooms without paying.          

        By 1874, Charles business ventures and marriage came to an end, the latter as a result of his rendezvous with prostitutes and the beatings he used to inflict on his wife.

        Charles Guiteau even tried to make his living as a preacher and in 1877, wrote a speech on the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, which was totally plagiarized from the Oneida Community sermons.  Over the next two years Guiteau continued to give religious speeches. Referring to one of his lectures, a newspaper reporter wrote:

        “Is There a Hell? Fifty Deceived people [are] of the opinion that there         ought to be. The man Charles J. Guiteau, if such really is his name, who         calls himself an eminent Chicago lawyer, has fraud and imbecility plainly         stamped upon his countenance…” 

        In 1879, Guiteau self-published his talks in a book entitled The Truth: A Companion to the Bible. Even these shallow attempts at bringing him the fame and wealth he desired, turned out to be futile. Guiteau was arrested several times between 1877 and 1880, for swindling people, at which times he was even jailed for short periods. But, Guiteau still did not give up his quest for fame. This time he decided to become a politician. He switched party affiliation and became a Republican, even supporting General Ulysses S. Grant of the Stalwart faction, who was running against James A. Garfield of the Half-Breed’s faction, for the Republican nomination for president. When Garfield won, Guiteau switched sides and became a Garfield supporter. It was at this time that Guiteau wrote an unsolicited speech, opposing the economic policies of the Democratic candidate, General Winfield Scott Hancock, hoping, in his own mind, he would help Garfield win the election. Guiteau even tried to get hired by the Garfield campaign as a political speaker, but was refused. He still, on his own accord, printed copies of his speech and passed them out to voters, who basically ignored them. When Garfield won and became President, Guiteau was convinced that he and Garfield had “vanquished the Democrats.” 

        Guiteau now felt that he deserved to be named counsel in Vienna, Austria or Paris, France, for basically helping Garfield become president. He sent numerous letters to Garfield and Secretary of State James G. Blaine, and went several times to the White House to secure his counsel position, but was ignored, at one point even told by Blaine “Never bother me again about the Paris consulship as long as you live!” After being rejected, time and again, Guiteau grew more and more angry.

        Then, President Garfield made a controversial political appointment that drew criticism from newspapers and fellow republicans as well. When Guiteau heard these attacks he decided that the president had to die, and then is when, on June 16, 1881, he wrote:

        ”I conceived the idea of removing the President four weeks ago…I read         the newspapers carefully, for and against the administration, and gradually         the conviction settled on me that the President’s removal was a political         necessity, because he proved to be a traitor…This is not a murder. Is a         political necessity.”

        On July 2, 1881, Charles J. Guiteau, dressed in his best clothes, walked into the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station, and shot President Garfield from behind, first in the back, then in the arm. Guiteau was apprehended at the scene. As he was taken into custody, he said: “Arthur is President, and I am a Stalwart.”  President Garfield died to complications from the shooting, on September 19, 1881. Efforts, by Guiteau’s defense to declare him insane failed and he was hanged on June 30, 1882.

Discussion

Albert Ellis and John Gullo in their book Murder and Assassination said:         “Although on the surface assassination may seem to be a cold-blooded         result of political partisanship; it is our contention that it rarely is.         Contemporary assassins…almost always prove to be exceptionally         deranged individuals. Some of them, in fact, appear to have few or no         political motives.”

        In the case of Charles J. Guiteau, he was a psychopath, mean and vicious who committed his antisocial acts with deliberation and intensity. Confused, yet mentally competent if given support and guidance, had the potential of becoming psychotic if his needs were ignored too long. Guiteau did not have a political motive for shooting President Garfield; if anything his motive was for being denied a cherished diplomatic assignment.

        Growing up, Guiteau suffered frequent beatings at the hands of his father. From an early age he was delusional and barely capable of distinguishing fantasy from reality. He wanted to be important, imagined himself to be a succession of great persons, and the more he would think about it the more he would believe it to be true.

        When he joined the Oneida Community, Guiteau openly stated that he was ordained to be in charge and lead, clearly manifesting a delusional state of mind, to say the least. During most of his life, Guiteau tried to devise schemes to achieve greatness, only to fail miserably and be considered a lunatic. Even though resourceful and canny, he never managed to carry out a project for too long. He went from seeing himself as a lawyer, to being a preacher, a political speech-writer, an ambassador to Vienna or Paris, to ultimately the savior of the Republican Party, the Stalwart of Stalwarts.

        Clark, reports that when Guiteau bought the murder weapon, a pearl-handled pistol, he paid with ten dollars of borrowed money, and rejected a less expensive hard-rubber-handled model, saying that his choice would look better in a museum.” 

        He always wanted to be someone else, but this time he thought he found the way to achieve greatness and be remembered for it.

      

Leon Czolgosz 1873-1901

        Leon Czolgosz was born in 1873, in Detroit, Michigan, to a Polish-Russian couple of who had immigrated to America during the 1860s. Leon grew up in poverty as the fourth of eight children. His mother died when Leon was twelve, while giving birth, to still another child. Leon’s father, a very stern man, was frequently out of work.

        The Czolgosz family, in 1892, eventually made its way to Cleveland, Ohio, after first moving from one Michigan town to another, and later to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Wherever they went Leon and his brothers had to work to help support the family. When in Cleveland, Leon and two of his brothers got jobs at a Cleveland wire mill. It was here where Leon became interested in the socialist and anarchist philosophies. Here he attended socialist meetings and in 1893, participated in a socialist-inspired labor strike to increase wages. All the workers who participated in the strike were fired, including Leon. Leon returned to the mill, six months later, using the alias Fred C. Nieman [“No Man” or “Nobody” in German] and got his job back. 

        Czolgosz’s deep interest in anarchistic ideas made him question his faith. Born and raised as a Roman Catholic, Leon stopped going to church and opted instead to attend meetings of radical groups.  Leon came to believe that there was a great injustice taking place in American society and that people were better off without any sort of government whatsoever.

        In 1897, coinciding with the Lattimer Mines Massacre, where during a peaceful protest, nineteen miners from the Slavic community were killed, Leon Czolgosz suffered an emotional and physical breakdown, diagnosed as depression,  and refused to seek medical help. “There is no place in the hospital for poor people; if you have lots of money you will get well taken care of” he told his brother Waldek, on this occasion. Leon would spend long hours in his room, reading mainly anarchist newspapers.

        For a long time thereafter Czolgosz was morose and hardly spoke to anyone. He did not go back to work, and in July 1900, became very excited by the assassination of King Umberto I of Italy, by an Italian-American anarchist named Gaetano Bresci. Bresci had been praised by the international anarchist press around the world and Leon clipped out a newspaper article describing the event and kept it with him continuously. During this time Czolgosz suddenly decided that he had to get away from his family, so in 1901 he left for Chicago wanting to meet Emma Goldman, a well-known anarchist of the time. Upon arrival in Chicago, Leon tried to establish contact with Goldman and other anarchists, but they thought he was a spy, due to his strange behavior and refused to associate with him. 

        The refusal of the anarchists to accept him, must have pushed Leon to take drastic measures to get acceptance, because only a few days after trying to meet Goldman, Czolgosz went to Buffalo, New York, the place where President McKinley was to attend an Exposition. On August 31, Leon rented a room in Buffalo under the name Joe Doe, while on September 2, he bought a revolver.

        On September 6, 1901, while President McKinley was shaking hands with the public, at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, Leon Czolgosz shot him twice. Czolgosz was arrested on the scene. President McKinley died on September 14, 1901, due to complication from the shooting.

        Czolgosz, pleaded guilty, tried to dismiss his court-appointed attorneys and refused to plead insanity. He told his investigators that it was his duty to shoot the President and that he did not believe “one man should have so much and another should have none….I though it would be a good thing for the country to kill the President.” Leon Czolgosz was executed in the electric chair on October 29, 1901.

Discussion

        Leon Czolgosz was an individual fitting someone with a paranoid-schizophrenic personality disorder. Czolgosz was an introvert, internally focused, socially insensitive, and socially inept. He was not always schizophrenic. Earlier in life he was reasonably adjusted.

        After the age of twelve, with his mother dead, Leon had to work to earn his living. His father was a very stern man that did not provide a stable home for his children and moved his family frequently.

        Working at such an early age and later on conducting hard manual labor, like in the wire mills, set the stage for Leon to embrace the socialist and anarchist ideology. After being fired for participating in a strike and being cognizant of his Slavic background, Leon felt that he was being prosecuted. These were the beginnings of his paranoid traits. 

        Leon continued to read anarchist literature and attend their meetings on a regular basis. He even stopped going to church, a drastic change for someone of Slavic descent who was raised as a Catholic all his life. This represents the phase of him avoiding other people and withdrawing from social activities. 

        Vulnerable “to collapse”, the incident that served as a trigger for a psychotic episode, for Leon, was the Latimer Mines Massacre, where nineteen Slavic miners were shot dead. Leon suffered an emotional and physical breakdown in the form of anxiety, panic attacks, and depression.   Lacking the ingredients for psychological independence and self-preservation he became confused and aimless.

        When Leon tried to contact with the anarchist groups he was rejected and branded a spy. This refusal, representing another stress factor, brought about the paranoid-schizophrenic in him-an unrealistic, self-centered, suspicious, and hostile individual very bizarre and irrational in assessing who the cause of his misery was. Leon decided that the person in question was President McKinnley. On September 6, 1901, with a handgun disguised under a bandage he shot dead President McKinley. Albert Ellis and John Gullo in their book Murder and Assassination, write:

        “with few exceptions, public assassins of outstanding political figures tend         to be psychotic. They generally have long histories of emotionally aberrant         behavior; they often suffered specific life crises right before they kill; and         they murder in a senseless manner as far as their political beliefs and         aspirations are concerned.”

Lee Harvey Oswald 1939-1963

        Lee Harvey Oswald was born in New Orleans on October 18, 1939, and was the third son of Marguerite Oswald. Lee’s father died right before he was born. The death had a devastating effect on the Oswald family. Oswald’s mother, had to work to support the family, and there was no one left to care for the children. Lee’s brothers were sent to an orphanage and two years later, at the age of three, he joined them as well.  One year latter Oswald was reunited with his mother, who remarried soon thereafter.  

        The family stability did not last long and four years later his parents divorced. After the divorce, Lee’s mother moved her family between Dallas and New Orleans, holding odd jobs to support everyone, until her older sons enlisted in the service. In 1952, Lee and his mother moved again, this time to New York. It was here where Lee would be subject of ridicule from his peers, who found his mannerisms and southern accent funny. Due to this environment Lee started to skip classes until he was charged with truancy and recommended for a psychiatric evaluation. The report of the thirteen-year-old Lee stated:

        “ Lee has to be seen as an emotionally, quite disturbed youngster who         suffers under the impact of really existing emotional isolation and         deprivation, lack of affection, absence of family life and rejection by a self         involved and conflicted mother.”

        Oswald was likable and charming when he wanted to be, and scoring an I.Q of 118, he was elected president of his eight grade class when he returned to school, in 1953. But very soon Oswald reverted to being easily distracted, unruly, and disruptive, at one point even refusing to salute the flag with his classmates.         Around this time the Rosenberg case was the major political issue of the day. Actually, the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case was nowhere more vigorously debated than in New York City. A Marxist pamphlet was handed to Oswald, sometime around Mother’s Day and after reading about the “injustices” at the trial of the Rosenberg’s it stirred his interest in Marxism.  From this point on Lee began to identify himself as a victim of capitalist oppression. Not long after the psychologists of the New York School System requested Lee’s mother to present her son for another evaluation, she and Oswald moved to New Orleans. Here, Oswald got acquainted with two landmark Marxist-Communist works, Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto. Oswald would talk to one of his friends, Palmer McBride about Communism and about how the workers of the world would one day rise and break their chains of slavery. At one point Lee told his friend that he would have liked to kill President Eisenhower for exploiting the working class.

        Soon after he joined the Marines, in 1956, Lee realized he had made a mistake. Even though he would score above average on his aptitude test and proved to be good for radar work, he started to get in trouble early on. By the time he had only two years in the service, Lee had been court-martialed twice; the first time for shooting himself in the arm, with a handgun, and the second time for assaulting a fellow Marine. Oswald, throughout his time in the Marines would express his admiration for the communist way of life and for the injustices inflicted upon the common men by the capitalist system. By the time he requested and was approved an early discharge from the Marines, Oswald had learned to speak Russian. Oswald had admired the Marines, but failed miserably at being one.

        Almost immediately after leaving the Marines, Oswald left for the Soviet Union, hoping to denounce his US citizenship and become a Soviet citizen.

He thought for sure that he was going to get a warm reception in the Soviet Union. But even after denouncing United States, he was still treated with indifference and skepticism by the Soviets. To top it off, he was told that he was not welcome to remain. A shocked Oswald tried to commit suicide by pressing a razor over the tendons of his left wrist. 

        Eventually, the Soviet Union officials agreed for him to remain and he made friends, date pretty girls, even married one of them. Yet, the initial trauma of rejection and the boring Soviet daily routine, proved to be a difficult challenge for Oswald. In June 1962, almost three years after his arrival in the Soviet Union, he returned to the United States with his Russian wife, Marina and their infant daughter.  

        Upon arrival in the United States, Oswald expressed to Marina his dismay that his arrival had not attracted media attention. After their first days, the routine Oswald remembered quite well, started again, increasing his anger and frustration. At the slightest provocation he started to physically and sexually abuse his wife. With little hope and plenty of despair toward the future, Oswald wrote:

        “No man, having known, having lived, under the Russian Communist and         American capitalist system, could possibly make a choice between         them…There are two world systems, one twisted beyond recognition by its         misuse, the other decadent and dying in its final evolution.”

        By March 1963, Oswald had become obsessed with Cuba and Fidel Castro. In Oswald’s mind Cuba represented a fresh and new revolutionary venture, a place where he would be appreciated and welcomed. He tried to find time, between his dead- end jobs, that he kept being fired from, and his family to establish his credentials in order to impress his new communist friends. This opportunity presented himself in the form of retired Major General Edwin A. Walker, a right-winger and a militant anti-communist who advocated the overthrow of the Fidel Castro regime, through extreme measures. Sometime in March, 1963, Oswald decided that Walker should die, so he ordered, the infamous 6.5 millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. On April 10, 1963, Oswald went home and tearfully revealing to his wife that he had lost his job because of FBI harassment. Later that evening, Lee shot and barely missed Walker as he was working in his study. In the months that followed Lee accelerated his political activity by distributing “Hands Off Cuba” handbills and by appearing on two radio programs, objecting the Kennedy administration’s policy on Cuba.

        On September 27, Oswald walked into the Cuban Embassy, in Mexico City and requested to visit Cuba, on his way to the Soviet Union. After being denied a visa Oswald started to cry and plead with the Embassy officials, but was asked to leave. 

        Upon returning from yet another failed political venture, he complained to his wife about the Cuban bureaucrats who “were as stupid and uncooperative as the Russians.” 

        At home the, the insensitive way Lee had treated Marina since their arrival from the Soviet Union, had only gotten worse by the difficult economic situation in America. It was only, two days before his birthday, on October 16, Oswald had managed to find another job at the Texas School Book Depository, making $1.25 per hour.  The inability of her husband to provide full time support for the family and the need to continuously change residences had turned Marina into a bitter person, who at times would show her resentment through ridicule and indifference. On one such occasion, the evening after Lee’s birthday, Marina made the comment that she had had a dream about a former lover and how well he kissed, “Anatoly kissed so well it made me dizzy. No one ever kissed me like that”, “I wish I did,” Lee told her, to which Marina replied, “It would take you your whole life to learn.” 

        On November 1, the FBI special agent James Hosty went to the Oswald residence to interview Marina, being that the FBI had a file on Lee and because of his recent travel to Mexico. Hosty returned four days later to talk to other household members. When Lee heard about the visit he became enraged and wrote a letter addressed to the FBI. He walked to the Dallas FBI office and delivered the letter himself. The letter said:

        “Let this be a warning. I will blow up the FBI and the Dallas Police         Department if you don’t stop bothering my wife.”

On the days that followed, according to Marina, Oswald was trying his best to be good to her and the children and begged her to move back with him, from Irving to Texas.

        On the day of November 22, 1963, after a sleepless night Oswald left his wedding ring and all the money he had, $170, and went to work at the Texas School Depository as usual.

        At around 12:30 P.M, as President Kennedy’s motorcade drove below the windows of the depository, Lee Harvey Oswald fired several rounds from the sixth floor window, with his scoped rifle, striking President Kennedy twice. The President was rushed to the hospital but the doctors could not save his life. Oswald was arrested later that day, only to be shot dead by Jack Ruby while in police custody.

        

Discussion

        Lee Harvey Oswald was an individual fitting the paranoid personality disorder type and somewhat delusional. John Douglas in his book Anatomy of Motive writes:

        ”Oswald was a paranoid individual who did not fit in with any group he         tried to become a part of…he was too unreliable, too unpredictable…he         went from job to job, from group to group, cause to cause, looking for         something to believe in , something to make him significant.”

        In Oswald’s case the seeds of his personality can be traced back from his childhood. Since the age of three he experienced neglect and abandonment, when sent to an orphanage by his single mother. Later on everything was compounded by the lack of a stable home and becoming a target of ridicule and hostility by his peers [New York]. As far as the emotional element, Oswald was diagnosed at the age of thirteen as being “emotional, quite disturbed youngster who suffers under the impact of…emotional isolation and deprivation.”

        As reflected in his relationship with his wife, Oswald was capable of physical and sexual abuse. He was not able to hold a steady job and did not have any long term goals. His glibness and grandiose sense of self worth was clearly displayed at the time when he tried to deflect to the Soviet Union. Oswald’s display of criminal versatility spans from his childhood, with the truancy charges, to the court-martials while in the Marines and continuing with the attempted murder of Walker, to culminate in the shooting death of President Kennedy and Dallas Police Officer Tippit.

        The delusional side of Oswald was manifested in the form of delusion of control and delusion of grandiose He continuously reported to the Russians that the US government, the FBI were following him and had him under surveillance; he even made himself believe that he even lost his job due to FBI harassment. Oswald felt that he would be very well received by the Russians, and that he definitely was valuable, partly due to the knowledge he gained in the Marines.         These delusion of grandiose was also demonstrated when he went to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. He had no doubt that, after shooting Walker, appearing on radio shows, supporting the Communist-Cuba cause, and distributing “Hands Off Cuba” handbills, Cuba and the Soviet Union were going to give him a card-blanche.

        James Clarke in his book American Assassins speculates that it was a string of disillusionments and his failure to get acceptance, like the one in the Soviet Union, where he even attempted suicide, the incident at the Cuban Embassy, or his wife’s remainder of her past lovers, and the FBI visits that brought about the President’s assassination. These definitely were stressors that coupled with Oswald’s personality, the delusional-paranoid type, armed with a scoped rifle and sharing the same place (weapon-range) and time with President Kennedy translated in tragedy.

Conclusion

        As depicted in the profiles of these four presidential assassins, despite their individual differences in personality traits, they share a common set of behavioral and background characteristics.  Their families did not support them, their peers did not accept them, and their efforts to achieve success were not rewarded.

        All four presidential assassins, showed a distinct pattern of inadequacy in dealing with social, intellectual, and occupational challenges and a lack of means for achieving satisfaction or substantial goals. This combination of inadequacy, failure, and chronic inability to be able to do the right thing, or achieve a sense of accomplishment, ultimately made these individuals seriously and fatally dangerous. Overall, their targets symbolized the frustrations they experienced and personified the system that, in their minds, was always keeping them down.

Bibliography

Albert Ellis and John Gullo in their book Murder and Assassination, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1971.

Benn Pitman, The Assassination of President Lincoln and The Trial of the Conspirators: The Courtroom Testimony (1865; reprint ed., New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1954.

Carl Sifakis, Encyclopedia of Assassinations. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001.            

Donald W. Hastings, The Psychiatry of Presidential Assassination, Part II: Garfield and McKinley. The Journal-Lancet 85. 1965.      

Eleanor Ruggles, Prince of Players, Edwin Booth. New York: W. W. Norton. 1953.

Gerald Posner, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK. New York: Random House. 1993.

James F. Kirkham, Sheldon G. Levy, William J. Crotty, Assassination And Political Violence: A Report   to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, New York, 1970

James McKinley, Assassination in America, New York: Harper & Row. 1977.

James C. Clark, The Murder of James A. Garfield: The President's Last Days and the Trial and Execution of His Assassin. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1993.

James W. Clarke, American Assassins: The Darker Side of Politics. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1982.

Jean Davison, Oswald’s Game. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1983.  

Jim Bishop, The Day Lincoln Was Shot, New Yorker: Harper and Row, 1995.

John Douglas & Mark Olshaker, The Anatomy of Motive. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1999.

Maximilian J. Thiel, Advanced Investigations I: Criminal Personalities (Lecture). New Haven. CT. 02/05/2004.

New York Times, Sep. 8, 1901 ; ASSASSIN KNOWN AS A RABID ANARCHIST. p. 4. ProQuest. Historical Newspapers. The New York Times.

Patricia D. Netzley, Presidential Assassins. Lucent Books. 2000.

President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy,  Hearings on the Investigation of the Assassination of President JFK. 1964: R. Hartogs, Deposition 1.  

Priscilla J. McMillan, Marina and Lee. 1977. Reprint. New York: Bantam.1978.

Stanley Kimmel, The Mad Booths of Maryland, New York Dover, 1969.        

Vernon L. Briggs, The Manner of a Man that Kills, Boston: The Gorham Press. 1921.

Wesley A. Johns, The Man Who Shot McKinley. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1970.

        

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