Harkin teamed up with Jay Gould's Million Dollar Spectacle, which displayed "John" for 25 cents admission. It was eventually seized as collateral for debt repayment. In the 1950s, "John" was stored in a Philadelphia basement. R. K. Verbeck purchased "John" from a female landlord who had held it as collateral from a man who had died owing her rent. Verbeck paid $15.00 and in 1958, traveled back to Philadelphia to claim it, but when he arrived, the entire neighborhood had been razed, and "John" was gone. It was last seen in a midwestern carnival in the late 1970s. The 1937 short film The Man in the Barn by Jacques Tourneur revisits the story of David E. George as Booth. The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth (1907) In 1907, Finis L. Bates published The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth to support his claim that the mummy of George was, in fact, the corpse of Booth. The book was published as The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth with several variations of the following subtitle, The First True Account of Lincoln's Assassination, Containing a Complete Confession by Booth Many Years After the Crime, Giving in Full Detail the Plans, Plot and Intrigue of the Conspirators, and the Treachery of Andrew Johnson, then Vice-President of the United States. Written for the Correction of History. Memphis publishers Pilcher Printing Company, Bates Publishing Company and Historical Publishing Company; J. L. Nichols & Company of Naperville, Illinois, Atlanta, Georgia; etc.; the Retail Druggist Journal of Detroit; and G.M. Smith of Boston all published various editions of Bates' book in 1907. Bates, Henry Ford and Fred L. Black In order to understand how and why Henry Ford became involved with Finis L. Bates and the controversy over the alleged escape of John Wilkes Booth, it will be necessary to set forth here a little background information on some of Ford's activities in the 1916-1925 time period. Ford v. The Chicago Daily Tribune In May 1916, the Chicago Daily Tribune published an interview between journalist Charles Newton Wheeler and Henry Ford which contained Ford's now famous statement: "History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today...." About a month later the Chicago Daily Tribune printed an editorial