John Wilkes Booth
Booth fled with an accomplice south through Maryland to Virginia. An army troop caught up with him on April 26.  His accomplice surrendered, but Booth refused.  He yelled “I will not be taken alive!”  He was shot while being captured and later died from his wounds.   The bullet struck Booth in the back of the head behind his left ear, passed though his neck, and out into the barn. A low scream of pain like that produced by a sudden throttling came from the assassin, and he pitched headlong to the floor. Corbett and the other soldiers would note a sense of poetic, or cosmic, justice in that Lincoln and Booth were each shot around the same spot of the head. And the damage to Booth was no less severe than that to Lincoln: the bullet had pierced three vertebrae and partially severed his spinal cord, paralyzing him. Their conditions were different as well, as Mary Clemmer Ames summed it up, "The balls entered the skull of each at nearly the same spot, but the trilling difference made an immeasurable difference in the sufferings of the two. Mr. Lincoln was unconscious of all pain, while his assassin suffered as exquisite agony as if he had been broken on a wheel." A soldier poured water into his mouth, which he immediately spat out, unable to swallow. The bullet wound prevented him from swallowing any of the liquid. In a weak voice, Booth asked for water and Conger and Baker gave it to him. He asked them to roll him over and turn him facedown. Conger thought it a bad idea. Then at least turn me on my side, the assassin pleaded. They did, but Conger saw that the move did not relieve Booth’s suffering. Baker noticed it, too: "He seemed to suffer extreme pain whenever he was moved...and would several times repeat, ‘Kill me.’" At sunrise, Booth remained in agonising pain. His pulse weakening as his breathing became more laboured and irregular. In agony, unable to move his limbs, he asked a soldier to lift his hands before his face and whispered as he gazed at them, "Useless ... Useless." These were his last words. A few minutes later, Booth began gasping for air as his throat continued to swell, then there was a shiver and a gurgle and his body shuddered, before Booth died from asphyxia - he literally choked to death.