On April 17, a Surratt neighbor told U.S. military authorities that he overheard one of the Surratt's servants saying that three men had come to the house on the night of Lincoln's assassination and that one of the men had mentioned Booth in a theater. (The servant was mistaken about the date, as John Surratt, Jr. had indeed been in Elmira, New York, on a mission for a Confederate general). Other pieces of information also mentioned the boarding house as a key meeting place of the possible conspirators. Either Colonel Henry H. Wells, Provost Marshal (head of the military police) of the District of Columbia, or General Christopher C. Augur told Colonel Henry Steel Olcott to arrest everyone in the house.