Lincoln’s last turd refers to a purported piece of human waste attributed by a closed Pennsylvania museum of 1800s circus-freak-show artifacts to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, on the theory that Lincoln defecated in the Ford’s Theatre men’s room on the evening of April 14, 1865, immediately before he was shot. The artifact was auctioned for $5,000 following the museum’s liquidation and later proved by DNA analysis to be of more recent origin. John Kiriakou is publicly associated with the artifact as a failed bidder; his telling of the story on the Julian Dorey Podcast in early 2025 (episodes 278 and 279) is the anecdote that, recirculated in early 2026, made him an internet meme figure.[1]
The museum
The artifact was displayed in a shadow box, mounted on a wall, in a Pennsylvania museum of 1800s circus-freak-show items. The accompanying card read:
When he arrived at Ford’s Theatre he had to drop a deuce. So before he got seated he went to the men’s room and he dropped a deuce in the chamber pot, and then he went back to watch the play, and he got shot. So he had the presence of mind for the sickness.[2][3]
The auction
Approximately six months before the auction, Kiriakou — a collector of Lincoln material — read in the Washington Post that the museum was closing and would liquidate its collection. He told his wife of his intention to bid. “My wife and I actually have strong disagreements about this.”[3]
Kiriakou bid up to $1,200 at the auction. The artifact ultimately sold for $5,000 to a different buyer.[4]
DNA analysis
The successful buyer subsequently submitted the artifact to a laboratory for DNA analysis. The analysis identified microscopic fragments of a NECCO wafer in the sample. NECCO wafers were not commercially manufactured until 1880, fifteen years after Lincoln’s assassination, ruling out a presidential provenance. “That is one of my better stories.”[4]
Cultural afterlife
The anecdote was originally told by Kiriakou on The Julian Dorey Podcast episodes 278 and 279, recorded approximately a year before its viral resurfacing. By early 2026 a clip in which Kiriakou recounts the story — “yeah, I was trying to buy Lincoln’s last turd” — had achieved approximately 15 million views. Black Twitter audiences in particular adopted Kiriakou as a recurring subject. “Yo, this John crazy. Yo, this shit out here just saying straight cat, but it’s real.”[1][5][6]
The Lincoln’s-last-turd anecdote is, alongside Kiriakou’s commentary on rectal feeding with hummus, one of the two stories most responsible for his current public identity as an internet meme figure.