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March 2, 2025 14 mins

Guest host Richard Syrett and author John Koerner discuss the murder of America's 25th president and its mysterious aftermath. 

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from coast to coast, AM on iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
All right, William McKinley, it's interesting. It's like twenty years apart.
You've got first Lincoln in eighteen sixty five, sixteen years
later Garfield is assassinated, and then just what twenty twenty
years later, William McKinley, the twenty fifth president I believe,
is assassinated. This one takes place in Buffalo, New York.

(00:27):
Is it a the World's Fair? That's right, yeah, Pimberg
exposition right, all right, just walk us through what happened
leading up to his death, his murder.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
So a little parallel that I was thinking about.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
It said about Garfield, McKinley, and Jfka. If there was
not a second shot, all three of them would have
survived the assassination. So you have here with Garfield, we
talked about the fact that the first bullet misfires.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
It happens again with McKinley.

Speaker 4 (00:59):
Here's the same happens with the assassin here. So let's
kind of go through the many sins of what took
place here. So I mentioned that the exposition about flowence
May first, November first, nineteen oh one present visiting the
fairground from September fourth to the sixth, and he said,
Temple of music.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
And it's just.

Speaker 4 (01:17):
After four o'clock reading the public and approaches the president.
We've got to public greeting him. In line is the
assassin Leon Schulgos. And he was an anarchist, a steel
worker who.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Lost his job recently. And if you look at.

Speaker 4 (01:36):
My researcher on this, the book about this because of
slained the Truth today, you know, this is the book
I did before about you know this, this assassination.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
That was jfk So actually did.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
What about mckimney was she repought to kill mckimney. Kind
of makes that many books. But there are three things
about this that I think if you look at potential conspiracy,
the money trail, the crime scene, and what happens.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
With the photographer.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
So let's go with you know, money sholf for a cycle,
you know, deep Throat said with watergates. Now Lan Show
ghost comes to Buffalo August of nineteen oh one and
gets a rooming house West Seneca.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
No one's out of money.

Speaker 4 (02:18):
He tells that the proprietor he is that we're mine
to pay his rent. He leaves town and goes back
three days later.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
No knows where he went.

Speaker 4 (02:28):
The stack the fifties one hundred dollar bills he's flashing everywhere.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
So he didn't have a job. Where do you got
all this money from?

Speaker 4 (02:36):
That's not money back at that time periods produced one
hundred dollar bills. The most expensive gun he can sign,
and he also pays for a most expensive hotel.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
By the way his gun. The advises to calvert Ava
Johnson Revolver.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
And Ivor Johnson, Okay.

Speaker 4 (02:53):
Cyber Johnson, and this gun's a great gun to use.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
It's very alive.

Speaker 4 (03:00):
So the money trail had to get this money. They
much so much have paid him for this from the assassination.
Then we get to the crime scene and show Gosh
has a gun wrapped up in a handkerchief. He approaches
the president and in front of show Gosh is someone
the Secret Service calls the Italian. Italian seems a part

(03:23):
of the plot here, and they thought the same thing
at the time. The Italian was very close to shell Gush,
so Gus had the gun tucking in his back. They're
walking back to front the town was winning back forward
to hide the gun. And then when he gets to
the President. The Italian grabs McKinley's hand, turns him to

(03:43):
the left, does not let go for fifteen seconds, won't
let go of the President's hand, keeps shaking it, and
then this forces agents Foster Ireland to take him away
from the scene, and that opens up for a clear shot.
First one is a missfire, as I mentioned. Second one

(04:06):
pinetrates McKinley's chest and then eventually kills him.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
So the Italian basically.

Speaker 4 (04:13):
Does whatever he can to distract agents to move away
from He also disappears in those of where he went to.
I mentioned the photography too unusual as well, Still we
have Here's a photographer of the expedition was Charleshilvy Arnold.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
He follows McKinley everywhere for days.

Speaker 4 (04:33):
He starts out taking photographs and start falls and the fairgrounds,
and he even.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
Is there minised for the assassin eging.

Speaker 4 (04:42):
He takes photographs them to City Rhymes before the shooting.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
The Temple of Music, but he doesn't go in.

Speaker 4 (04:48):
Someone just doesn't let him go inside and take photographs,
or maybe he did take photographs and they were destroyed.
Either way, he should have been there taking photographs. He's
like the money shots you pick for their being, the
public and everything else.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
So no force.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Right. He may he may have captured the assassination on film.
He may have taken a picture of this mysterious Italian man.

Speaker 4 (05:11):
Yeah, I think that's exactly what they would not have
wanted to happen.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
Yeah, so you think you have here.

Speaker 4 (05:16):
Someone must have known ten minutes President gonna get shot.
No photographs are allowed. You don't want to know who
this guy was.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
And once again we have the disappearing weapon, the disappearing
Ivor Johnson revolver, the gun that he was used to
kill McKinley mysteriously vanished.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
What happened?

Speaker 4 (05:40):
Well, you have here, just like with the goat, the
gatel gun is first given to the Buffet Peace Apartment,
like with the DC police apartments, and it disappears for
several years and ends up showing back up in buff
the Christian Museum.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
Worries on display?

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Now, sorry, where is it on display?

Speaker 4 (06:01):
The Buffalo History Resum, his Buffalo's History Museum, the Buffalo
Museum of History.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
Yeah, it's just on display there.

Speaker 4 (06:09):
And if you know, we have a display, they can
see that it was the chains has got chained up
in the and the President is also on display there too,
and you can see the gun itself there on display.
And just like with the Gitow gun, that one gets destroyed,
so it's on display thankfully. But you do see, like

(06:32):
wan I mentioned two with the amnition when I mention
this as well, so.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
We have with the.

Speaker 4 (06:40):
The show ghost weapons, they did the same thing analyzing
their many bullets in the chamber and with the ge
Tow gun. Is that what they the show ghost gun.
Uh you usually Buffalo looked at the rest of the
chamber and wise the rest of the bullets and it's
a five shot gun. And to determine that two other

(07:05):
remaining bullets were short of their gunpowder load too, much
like with the Guiteo weapon. So this is and whies
By they say, Buffalo in the nineteen nineties, and they
found out that just like with the Garfie weapon, the
mckillley weapon was the same way mentioned before that we
do know that the first bullet did penetrate McKinley's chest.

(07:25):
Though the first plot was much like the other ones,
effective of their gunpowder.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Loans h and Shull goes by the assassin. McKinley's assassin
by all accounts became radicalized or became an anarchist seemingly overnight.
Do you think he was I don't know, brainwashed or
guided by shadowy figures, unseen handlers.

Speaker 4 (07:53):
Yeah, his influenced by a mc goldman, and you have
him going to meet with her in several occasions Chicago,
goes to Cleveland and meets with other anarchists. So he's
well known in their community that they definitely know who
he is, and he's He's not an intelligent person. He
graduated from high school. The prison's guard of the warden

(08:17):
said he was the most intelligent person he ever had
an aubern if he use to play games with the guards.
He was not this kind of lone crazed nut.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
People have made him out.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
To me.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
He was very well.

Speaker 4 (08:29):
Read, well spoken, and I think he would have been
the right person to do this job if you wanted
to hire him. He was very radicalized to them to
you know, get this job done, to see what he
did his duty as he said, and his confession.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
So McKinley was a bit of I don't know if
I would have used the term isolationist, but some of argued,
you know, had he lived America may not have been
so interventionist, and of course we saw that start to
happen with the Row Well, his vice president was was

(09:10):
Teddy Roosevelt. So after McKinley dies, Roosevelt becomes president and
he's a little more let's say, his foreign policy a
little more adventurous.

Speaker 4 (09:22):
Yeah, that's very true. He Roosevelt ends up having much
more aggressive approach towards foreign policy, and like Panama Canal
for example, he becomes interested in the pressive movement.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
He certainly does things.

Speaker 4 (09:37):
Like trust busting and conservationism, and it is much more
an active president than McKinley would be on It would
have been on all those fronts.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
But again, the I guess the question is had he lived.
Had McKinley lived, do you think that America would have
been less interventionist.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
Yeah, I think only would have been.

Speaker 4 (10:03):
His policies were aligned with a lot of the wealth
or interests of the country. I think in nineteen ninety six,
you look at how he was elected with the backing
of Balkinsoy Morgan and Carnegie.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
They funded his campaign for presidents.

Speaker 4 (10:20):
He was certainly pro gold, pro tariff, you know, he
was pro strike breaking, and he was the classic Republican
pro business approach that I think it would have continued
into his second term. One of the things to think about,
brought about in the book too, is his wife Ida

(10:41):
was very ill and if possible, she may have died
in the second ary. He might have resigned the presidency
because he was really heaving a deed with her. She
almost died in the previous summer. In June, he had
a major stroke in San Francisco, so it's possible with
the stress of a second term, he may have resigned

(11:03):
and Rose may.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
Have come president.

Speaker 4 (11:04):
Anyway, with resignation of mckientley, big had a second or
third years of the second term.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
Do you think McKinley's economic policies might have been a
threat to the elites.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
I think more so Roosevelts were.

Speaker 4 (11:22):
I think his coming into office with his approach towards
trust busting, bringing up stary oil, American tobacco eventually, and
also you know his approach towards conservationism and the idea
of taking on big business and the peer put in
Drug Act and I mean Inspection Act, and just doing

(11:43):
things too. I think helped labor, We helped sell the
mining strength.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
So I think he was.

Speaker 4 (11:52):
I think his approach I gave us more I think
radical policies. And McKinley, one thing we kind of to
talk about down is second augul and dress you worried
about Cuba. He said that could be a problem for
us in the future become a democracy. And he looked
into the future there and said, if they don't become
a democracy, they could be a big problem for us
in the future because the fantasparics of war had been

(12:14):
over and they still were kind of clear whether the
future would have been and he was looking forward to
kind of figure out what might have been a democracy
for them in the future, how that would have turned
out differently if they had been we're seeing to think
of how that would turn out differently, for cash were
coming to power and things like that.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Interesting. Well, getting back to the the economic policies, McKinley
supported goldbacked currency. I mean, he was against major banking monopolies.
Could do you think financial elites maybe have wanted him
eliminated because of that?

Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yeah, I mean, I.

Speaker 4 (12:50):
Think it's possible that if you look at there's a
radical ship. I think ever in US assassinations that maybe
a lot Johnson and kind of this seminal legement policies
with Vietnam War. But it does seem like with Wayne
Roosevelt was looked at at the time, he was a reformer.
He was in New York City politics, he was New

(13:13):
York State governor, and they put him in the vice
president to kind of.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
Just get rid of him.

Speaker 4 (13:17):
He was causing him too much trouble and the thought
that could shut him up and that kind of backfired
on the party leader. Is because he is a war hero.
And I think that that approach worked because of course
he became president by you know, this fascination and then
he did his own thing. He came by and was
kind of this big reform minded approach. New York State politics,

(13:39):
New York City Police commissioner he was, and you click
clean up, you know for people that were that were corrupt.
And I think he had I think his approach was
refreshing at the time or a young president with children
in the White House, and I think he really was
run president fresh air to our country that that's we
needed at the time.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
Into more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one
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