D.C. Police Discover Booking Log From Lincoln Assasination

The Metropolitan Police Department has recovered a historic booking log that is one of the first written records of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Call Nicholas Cage, and alert the Masons! Could this be a real live Book of Secrets? From the Examiner:

Local lore has it that in the 1960s or ’70s, someone found the book in a police trash bin with other discarded files. The book circulated among retired police officers for years, until a former police chief recently convinced the previous owner to donate it to the Police Department.

In flowery prose, the writer reports on the actions and the mood of the members of the then-8th Precinct at E and Fifth streets southeast. It appears to have been written between the time of the assassination — around 10:30 p.m., April 14, 1865 — and the next day’s first arrest. John Wilkes Booth was already a suspect, and Lincoln had not yet succumbed to the gunshot wound.

Department historian Sgt. Nick Breul plans to place the book in a hermetically sealed case in the department’s museum on the sixth floor of police headquarters. No word on whether the National Treasure film franchise can also be placed under a hermetic seal.