Michael O'Laughlen

Like his friend Sam Arnold, late in 1864 Michael O’Laughlen was living hand to mouth, employed by his brother’s feed business in Baltimore. He welcomed the invitation extended by his childhood friend, John Wilkes Booth, to rewrite history by joining Booth’s conspiracy to kidnap Lincoln.
Also like Arnold, O’Laughlen was nowhere near Ford’s Theatre the night Lincoln was killed. Later turning himself in to authorities, he received a sentence of life imprisonment in the brutal conditions of Fort Jefferson, some 70 miles west of Key West, Florida. He died there of yellow fever in September 1867.