Finis L. Bates

Finis Langdon Bates was a Memphis, Tennessee, lawyer and author of The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth . In this 309page book, Bates claimed that John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, was not killed by Union Army Soldiers on April 26, 1865, but successfully eluded capture altogether, and lived for many years thereafter under a series of assumed names, notably John St. Helen and David E. George.

Bates was born on a plantation in Itawamba County, Mississippi, in 1848. He was the ninth ofchildren of planter Henderson Wesley Bates and Eliza Elvira Jarratt Bourland . Finis Bates studied law in Carrollton, Mississippi, and in the 1870s he and his family moved to Texas, where he met John St. Helen. Bates returned to Mississippi, then moved to Memphis, Tennessee, after the death of his first wife and his subsequent marriage.

Source: Wikipedia