Hey everyone, Jody here with a quick word about the episode you're about to hear.

It's one of our favorite episodes from the last year or so about the man who killed the man who killed

Abraham Lincoln.

And we're bringing it to you today because all of us on the team keep talking about how wild of a story it is and also because there's this new series on Apple TV called Manhunt, which is all about the aftermath of the Lincoln assassination.

It's as good an excuse as any to bring you one of our favorite recent episodes.

Maybe you haven't heard it, maybe you've heard it and want to hear it again.

So let's take a listen. We'll be back with brand new episodes next week for now enjoy

Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, 1894, Thomas H. Boston Corbett is presumed dead in Minnesota.

He is the victim of what came to be known as the Great Hinckley Fire.

This was a massive forest fire which wiped out the town of Hinckley, Minnesota, and the surrounding

forest, somewhere between 450, 500 people died in that fire and among the names listed was Boston Corbett.

Now, what makes Boston Corbett notable?

Why wasn't he just another relatively anonymous death in this tragic fire?

Well, he'd faded a bit into obscurity by time he got to Minnesota but in the previous decades

Corbett had come to be known and call himself Lincoln's Avenger.

Boston Corbett was the man who killed John Wilkes Booth, days after Booth had assassinated

Abraham Lincoln.

Corbett was part of a regiment that cornered Booth on a Virginia farm.

If you know this story, they had orders not to kill Booth, but Corbett claims at least that he

nevertheless took a fatal shot and thus became the man who avenged

Abraham Lincoln's death and in the years and decades since that act really seemed to consume him for better and really mostly as we'll discuss for worse.

...