The plot to kill Abraham Lincoln was convoluted, and almost didn’t succeed, according to Jed Magee, who has spent most of his life researching the life of the 16th U.S. President.

Magee will talk about the twists and turns the plot took at 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 19, at the Greene County Historical Museum, 219 E. Lincoln Way in Jefferson.

The public is invited to the free presentation, which is part of the Greene County Historical Society’s 2024 Sunday afternoon program series.

“The amazing thing about the scenario of the assassination is that Abraham Lincoln was the most protected person in the whole country in 1865,” says Magee, “And, yet, one man got to him.”

That man was the infamous John Wilkes Booth, the man who fired the shot that wounded Lincoln during the second act of a play the President and his wife were attending at a Washington, D.C., theater. The President died the next day, April 15, 1865.

There’s a lot more to the story, says Magee, who lives in Jefferson. He is a retired lawyer and a former senior judge in the Second District of Iowa. Appointed in 1992, he retired in 2008.