Charles Guiteau: "I Merely Shot Him" | James Garfield Assassination- Pt. 2

"I did not kill the president. The doctors did. I merely shot him." That was Charles Guiteau's defense.

In 1881, a failed lawyer and preacher convinced himself he'd single-handedly won James Garfield the presidency — and that the president now owed him a job. When the reward never came, he decided Garfield had to die. In Part 2 of Founding Felons Week, Tyrella and Nikita get into who Guiteau really was and how he got there: the Oneida free-love commune that rejected him, his pattern of latching onto powerful men and then turning on them, the ten-week media circus of a trial, and the 1882 execution where he asked for an orchestra.

It ends on the grim irony of a man who spent his whole life desperate to be remembered — and got his wish, as a brain on display at the Mütter Museum.

New here? Start with Part 1 (the shooting and the nearly 80 days) before this one.

Content warning: this episode discusses an assassination, capital punishment, child abuse, and preserved human remains.