Ray Neff

Who is Ray Neff?

Dr. Ray Neff, a retired health sciences professor at Indiana State University with a chemistry background, is a leading proponent of an alternative history theory about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and his killer John Wilkes Booth.

Neff is the co-author of Dark Union along with Leonard Guttridge. The book proposes an alternative view to the conventional version of Lincoln's assassination. While it mentions the theory that Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton was involved in the assassination conspiracy, the book dismisses it and suggests that John Wilkes Booth took on the role of assassin largely for personal reasons. Dark Union also contends that Booth escaped, eventually settling in India, as it was James W. Boyd who was actually shot in the barn at Garrett's farm. Indiana State University houses a collection of materials, some of which has been digitized and been made available for online viewing. This theory is in marked contrast with the version of the assassination proposed by Edward Steers, Jr.

Neff is also one of many historians who traces the roots of Lincoln's assassination to the Dahlgren Affair—-one of very few areas where he and Steers agree.