Garfield Guiteau
A failure as a college student, as a member of the utopian religious sect known as the Oneida Community (he will be nicknamed Charles Gitout for how much the inhabitants desire his company), at running a newspaper called the Oneida Theocrat, as a lawyer (he somehow manages to pass a Chicago bar exam), as an author (he plagiarizes almost an entire book by John Humphrey Noyes), as a town hall speaker on religious topics, as a political operative (he writes a speech called Garfield vs. Hancock, cropped from a speech called Grant vs. Hancock, that he believes is instrumental in Garfield's narrow victory in the presidential election of 1880), Guiteau finally snaps (no surprise to his family, who try to get him committed to an insane asylum in 1875 ... a place he belongs, but escapes from using an open window) when his efforts to receive a diplomatic post in either Vienna or Paris come to naught despite meetings with Garfield, Secretary of State, James G. Blaine, and various members of Congress and the Republican Party (no help at all to himself, jobless, he roams Washington D.C. for months looking for political support in the same slovenly outfit every day, the only clothes he owns).
Madman
Believing God has told him to kill Garfield, Guiteau borrows $15 and buys an ivory-handled .44 Webley British Bulldog revolver to accomplish his mission ... a selection made for the gun's power, and because Guiteau believes it will look nice in a museum exhibit about the assassination someday (and sure enough, in the early part of the 20th Century the weapon is put on display at the Smithsonian). Armed and ready for mayhem, Guiteau then begins stalking his prey (not totally crazy, the assassin prepares for his adventure in murder by checking out the District of Columbia jail where he knows he will be held and writing a letter in advance of the deed to Commanding General of the United States Army, William Tecumseh Sherman, asking for mob protection during his incarceration) through the month of June (a real sweetheart, he decides to postpone the assassination once because Garfield is with his wife ... and he doesn't want to upset her seeing her husband's death ... though that is what ends up happening anyway with her at the dying president's bedside).
British Bulldog
As the president is about to leave town for his summer vacation (and to give a speech at his alma mater, Williams College in Massachusetts), at 9:30 in the morning of 7/2/1881, Guiteau finds Garfield totally unprotected (despite the Lincoln assassination of 1865, presidents at the time did not use security details or bodyguards) in the waiting room at the Washington D.C. Sixth Street Station of the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad and strikes.
Scene of the crime
Firing two shots at almost point-blank range into Garfield's back, the president throws his arms in the air and asks, "My God, what is that?" ... then he staggers forward and collapses, wounded with a bullet to the shoulder and one that lodges behind his pancreas. Fleeing his accomplishment, Guiteau is arrested by a policeman as he attempts to make it outside to the cab he has waiting (the cop, Patrick Kearney, is so excited about the collar, that he forgets to relieve Guiteau of his weapon until they arrive at the police station ... and in his defense, he gets a little busy protecting the assassin from a mob looking to lynch Guiteau).
Ouch!
In shock and unconscious, Garfield is taken to the White House, where doctors do not expect him to make it through the night ... but he does, and then hope becomes that the president will survive his wounds ... and he might have, had all the doctors who examined him not used their unsanitarized hands and dirty instruments probing for the bullet that caused the pancreas wound (one doctor will puncture Garfield's liver searching for the bit of lead). Fade to dark, in extreme agony, Garfield will go from weighing over 200 pounds to being a stickman of 135 at his death 11 weeks later ... official causes being committed to history as a ruptured splenic artery aneurysm brought on by blood poisoning and bronchial pneumonia ... he is 49 years old at his death (trying to make the president comfortable in the summer heat, a Navy engineer creates one of the world's first air conditioner's ... an air blower and filters installed over six tons of ice).
Lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda
At his trial, Guiteau puts on a show that displays his insanity ... frequently cursing and insulting the judge, witnesses, the prosecution, and even members of his own defense team, giving testimony in the form of epic poems, inquiring for a woman with a personal ad in the New York Herald, planning a lecture tour for after the trial, soliciting legal advice from random spectators, and throwing his hat in the ring for the 1884 presidential race. Bed-bug nuts, he is deemed sane anyway, found guilty of murder, and sentenced to death ... a sentence which is carried out on 6/30/1882 with an unsurvivable neck stretching. Looney tunes to the end, Guiteau's last words are to recite a poem he has written entitled I am Going to the Lordy (a small sample so as to not ruin any nearing meals: I am going to the Lordy, I am so glad, I am going to the Lordy, I am so glad, I am going to the Lordy, Glory Hallelujah, Glory Hallelujah ... Bob Dylan he ain't!).
Political Cartoon of Guiteau - 1881
The maniac is 40 years old when he goes Lordy looking for eternity!
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