Captain John Henry Boyle was an officer of the Confederate Army who found himself in conflict with the law on several occasions, being arrested or captured at least five times and eventually being named as a suspect in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at war's end.
[2] On Jan 20 1863, Boyle had been captured in-uniform at his mother's house in Marlborough, Maryland, and spent five months in the Old Brick Capitol prison awaiting possible execution.
Watkins' wife Julia and infant daughter Margaret were unharmed, as the attackers stole three more horses and departed just as another doctor arrived on-site and spotted them.
[7] While it was Lewis Powell, of the Confederate Secret Service and Mosby's Rangers, who stabbed Seward, reports by War Department investigator Lt. David D. Dana initially named Boyle as the attacker.
[3][1] Pearson, the husband of Boyle's sister, was also briefly named as a suspect by A. I. Fisher following a report by an unknown man identifying himself as the fictitious officer John Lyon.
[3] Boyle actually ended up working as a detective for the Chicago, St. Louis and New Orleans Railroad until he was accused, and acquitted, of passing counterfeit money, and settled with his family in Tougaloo, Mississippi.