Workers cleaning out a closet at D.C. police headquarters last week uncovered the handcuffs used to detain the man who assassinated President James A. Garfield.
The discovery came nearly 127 years to the day that Charles J. Guiteau gunned down Garfield at a downtown train station and was quickly seized by D.C. police Pvt. Patrick Kearney.
The anniversary of the 1881 attack is today.
“I had thought these things were lost forever,” said Sgt. Nick Breul, the department historian.
The handcuffs had been part of an old display that unceremoniously had been shoved into a dark corner to collect dust during the 1990s, Breul said. The artifacts were kept in such poor condition that Breul threatened to haul the items over to the Washington Historical Society. Breul was locked out of the room and eventually the boxes of items were hauled to other points. That was more than 10 years ago.
Last week, workers found a box full of metal knuckles, old handcuffs and pen guns used to fire .22-caliber bullets. One of the handcuffs had a tag identifying it as those used to restrain Guiteau, Garfield’s deranged and colorful killer.
Breul doubts the item belonged to Kearney because officers didn’t carry handcuffs back then, instead using billy clubs to subdue suspects. The cuffs were likely used in transferring Guiteau.
Breul plans to add the handcuffs to the police museum that he has helped build on the sixth floor of police headquarters. Earlier this year, the department acquired a historic booking log that they say is one of the first written records of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
It was on this day in 1881 that Guiteau waited for Garfield at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad depot, on the southwest corner of Sixth Street Northwest and Constitution Avenue.
Guiteau jumped from a crowd and shot the president twice with a .44 revolver. One bullet grazed Garfield’s arm; the second bullet lodged in his spine but couldn’t be found. Garfield died 11 weeks later.
Kearney was surprised that Guiteau surrendered so readily at the scene of the shooting. Guiteau was housed at St. Elizabeths Hospital until his hanging on June 30, 1882.
