This Feels Criminal: A True Crime Podcast (Formerly Killer Queens)

E444 - Charles Guiteau: "I Merely Shot Him" | James Garfield Assassination- Pt. 2

Published: July 9, 2026

Duration: 38:39

"I did not kill the president. The doctors did. I merely shot him." That was Charles Guiteau's defense.

In 1881, a failed lawyer and preacher convinced himself he'd single-handedly won James Garfield the presidency — and that the president now owed him a job. When the reward never came, he decided Garfield had to die. In Part 2 of Founding Felons Week, Tyrella and Nikita get into who Guiteau really was and how he got there: the Oneida free-love commune that rejected him, his pattern of latching onto powerful men and then turning on them, the ten-week media circus of a...