The four-part miniseries Death By Lightning tells the story of two men that most of history has forgotten. Like Lucretia Garfield says at the end of the series, her husband wasn’t in office long enough to be remembered, and Charles Guiteau didn’t give Garfield long enough before assassinating him to really matter.
This is one of those shows that offers to teach something to everyone watching, and certainly when it comes to the absolutely bonkers moments that leave you believing they’re added in purely for entertainment value. The wild thing is, some of the craziest moments are based on truth. Here are three moments from the Death By Lightning series finale that you would think are too bonkers to be true.
Charles Guiteau really did sing that song
At the very end of Death By Lightning, we see Charles executed for murdering President James Garfield. Just a few men were there to witness the hanging, but that didn’t deter Charles from going through with his plan to make his name memorable. He sang an absolutely bonkers song.
Sure enough, that song was real. It was a poem that he had written himself, and he had intended to sing it. In the end, his singing didn’t quite come out, and it was more of a childlike falsetto. In fact, he wanted an orchestra to play the tune while he sang but was ultimately denied at his execution.
To add to this, there was an agreement between Charles and the executioner. Charles would drop the paper he held with the words on as the signal to allow the execution to open the trap door.
Alexander Graham Bell did try to find the bullet in Death By Lightning
During the finale, we get a quick visit from Alexander Graham Bell, who does his part in trying to save the president. He brought a rudimentary version of the metal detector in an attempt to find the bullet. This would initially seem like something added to the show just for a bit of fun to bring another notable person into the story.
Well, it turns out that it was a true event. It was a primitive version of a metal detector that he had made himself, but the springs in the metal bed Garfield was lying in made it impossible to find the bullet as they interfered with the search. Bell was sure that the bullet was on the left side of the president, but the doctors thought that the springs were just making him believe that.
Well, it turned out that the bullet was closer to where Bell believed. Had the doctors moved Garfield to another bed without metal, Bell would have likely been able to find the bullet. Whether that would have saved his life or not is debatable, considering the unsterile equipment.
Charles Guiteau wanted a pearl-handled pistol to be a museum piece
Charles was sure that the assassination of a president would make him a star. After all, isn’t that what happened after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln? With that in mind, he was sure that his murder weapon would go into a museum, and he planned for that by buying a pearl-handled pistol.
While the purchase actually happened at the end of Death By Lightning episode 3, it was used in the fourth episode. And it just seems bonkers that he would even care about something like this. Sure enough, though, he did. He wanted to plan everything out, and that included what would happen afterward.
Charles was immediately arrested after shooting Garfield, which was at a Washington DC train station! After all, there wasn’t a Secret Service back then, so it was much easier to stalk and kill a president.
Death By Lightning is available to stream on Netflix.
Get the latest historical fiction updates and more with Claire and Jamie.