October 31, 2012 • 24 mins
In the winter of 1873, Alferd Packer led gold prospectors into the Rockies, but harsh conditions soon set them off course. Packer was the only survivor, and he looked oddly well-fed. He claimed he'd killed in self-defense. But was he guilty of murder?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from hot
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
to bring a truck reporting and I'm fair Dowdy. And
if you're a regular listener of this podcast, you probably
know that we've covered our fair share of historical murders,
(00:22):
serial killers, and similar topics, especially during this time of
year October series tradition. Yes, but it's rare that we
talk about killers who have taken their crimes a step
further to include an act that some considered to be
even more disturbing, and that's cannibalism. We've actually never really
(00:42):
explored this topic, though Candice and Josh did back in
two thousand and eight when they talked about the infamous
Donner Party, a wagon train that got trapped by the harsh,
snowy winter weather in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in eighteen
forty six. Now, with that story, out of the eighty
seven people who set out on that trip, only forty
even lived to tell about it, and some of those
people did resort to cannibalism in order to survive. So
(01:05):
our story today is somewhat similar, and in fact, it's
often confused with the Donner Party story. It involves a
man named Alfred Packer who was among a group of
prospectors who went into the San Juan Mountains in the
Colorado Rockies near the end of eighteen seventy three and
also ran into some pretty treacherous winter weather on his trip.
(01:27):
Unlike the Donner Party situation, though, when the thaw came
the following spring, Packer was the only guy from his
party to emerge from the mountains alive. A little more suspicious,
and it certainly adds to the mystery of the story.
It does and what kind of set up this mystery
was a series of suspicions, accusations, and confessions that didn't
(01:48):
really match up that followed Packer emerging from the mountains.
According to Michael Mayo in his book American Murder, all
of this led to Packer becoming the American West only
convicted cannibal quite a distinction exactly, But it also created
one of the great mysteries of the American West because
to this day people still debate about whether Packer was
(02:12):
guilty as charged. So we're going to look into that
a little bit. And in order to do that, of course,
we have to start where the story begins. So it
all started in November of eighteen seventy three, when a
group of about twenty or so would be a prospector
set out from Bingham Canyon, Utah, and headed toward Breckenridge, Colorado,
(02:33):
in the Rocky Mountains in search of what else gold
and serving as a guide on this expedition was Alfred Packer.
And just a little note before you start writing your
email thing you were pronouncing it incorrectly. There is some
debate about Alfred Packer's name, even though he's generally known
as Alfred like with the r D e r D
(02:55):
official documents list his name as the more traditional Alfred,
and it's supposed that he might have started going by
Alfred when a careless tattoo artists misspelled the name on
his arm. Even though that's just kind of a rumor,
I do like that idea. Though you know your tattoos
spelled wrong, You're just gonna go with it. Alfred legend.
(03:16):
According to information from the Alfred Packer Collection of the
Colorado State Archives, Packer was born in Pennsylvania on November
twenty one, eight forty two, and during the Civil War
he enlisted in both the sixteenth U. S. Infantry of
Minnesota and the eighth Regiment Iowa Cavalry, but he was
discharged from both of these due to epilepsy. The rest
(03:37):
of the details of his life are a little bit sketchy.
The next real evidence that we have of his whereabouts
is from when he joined up with those miners in Utah.
He wanted to be a part of their prospecting party,
but he didn't have a lot of money for provisions
to make the trip, so, according to an article by
Diana to Stephano in the Journal of Social History, he
offered up twenty five bucks and his services as a
(03:59):
guide to join them in their journey, and he told
them that he knew Colorado's high country well, so his
offer was accepted. They didn't know their way around, and
he did, so it seemed like a good match, he
claimed he did, because, according to de Stefano's article, it
didn't take long for Packer to really robe his traveling
companions the wrong way, and there were a few reasons
(04:20):
for that. First of all, there was a rumor going
around that Packer had served some hard time back in
Salt Lake City because he was suspected of murdering his
trapping partner, so not the kind of guy you might
want with you out in the wilderness. Second, he was
also inappropriately interested in the amount of cash that the
other men were carrying with them. He would apparently ask
(04:41):
them outright, how much money do you have on you?
And Then, thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, especially considering that
the group was making this track with limited provisions and
really relying on Packer's expertise, he seemed to have exaggerated
his skill as a guide. According to the article we
just mentioned, he got them lost more than once, not
(05:03):
something that would endear him to his traveling companion. So
they're getting lost, they're running out of food, and the
weather just keeps getting worse and worse. By the time
they make it to the winter camp of Chief Uray
along the on Campagre River in Colorado in mid December,
they were starving pretty much. The chief made it really
clear to them that he thought it was a really
(05:24):
bad idea for them to continue on with their journey.
At that point, he advised them to just stay where
they were and wait until spring, and about ten guys
out of the party followed this advice. A small group
of men led by Oliver D. Lutzenheiser was itching to
get started, though, so they set out with directions from
the chief toward the Las Penis Indian Agency on the
(05:45):
other side of the mountain. According to Di Stefana's article,
Packer wanted to be a part of this group, but
Lutzenheiser didn't trust him and threatened to shoot him if
he tried to follow him. So he really did not
like Packer at all, know that maybe that first point
on the jail time and all the lies that he'd
been seeing along the trip not exactly the kind of
(06:06):
guy you want with you and already rough. But another
eager group of men also set out in the same direction,
and Packer again served as their guide. The other men
in this group where Shannon Bell, James Humphrey, George Noon
or perhaps his last name was Moon. We see it
both ways, Israel Swan and Frank Miller. Chief e Ray
(06:28):
gave them supplies and advised them to stay close to
the river. But it's clear from what happened that spring
that things soon went awry. What happened to Balina Well
April six, eighteen seventy four, it was only one disheveled
prospector who stumbled into Las Pinos Indian Agency near Gunnison, Colorado,
and that was, of course Alfred Packer, our old friends.
(06:50):
So the first thing that Packer asked for when he
stumbled in from the wilderness was a drink, specifically a
drink of whiskey, And of course people wanted to know
what happened, what his story was. He told them that
he had set out from Chief Eray's winter camp with
the five other men, but the other men had soon
abandoned him when he wasn't able to keep up due
(07:12):
to snow blindness, and he said that he spent the
rest of the winter after that trapped in the mountains,
living off the land. But many people, and especially those
other members of the Utah Party, the ones who had
opted to wade out the winter with the chief who
finally did make their way to the agency, those guys
especially were immediately suspicious of this story. And there were
(07:34):
a few reasons for that. One. He just seemed too
well fed for somebody who had been existing off the
land off of boiled buds and pine gum all winter,
And according to Mayo, Chief Eray astutely observed this that
he seemed a little too hefty and said you two
damn fat. Another thing that seemed really off, Packer suddenly
(07:56):
had all this cash on him. So not only was
the pack in a few extra pounds, he had all
this money even though he had been pretty much broke before,
to really strange points. So of course people are asking
more and more questions about this, and so, feeling under pressure,
Packer offers up a very different version of events. This
(08:17):
one includes a kind of confession. According to De Stefano's article,
Packer said that just ten days after the six men
left the Chiefs camp, quote one after another, the men
quote had been killed by the remainder to be used
as food by the rest. After the men were picked
off one by one, eventually, of course, there were only
(08:39):
two of them left, and Packer said he shot his
last remaining companion in self defense. So, uh, disturbing story,
but one that sort of spreads the guilt around at least. Yeah,
he's not seen as a murderer, not a murder in
cold blood anyway, the kind of the camps all together.
(09:00):
Later that summer, though, a search party was set out
to look for the bodies of Packer's former companions. Packer
led the search party, interestingly and epic as they needed
him to to try to show where he went, but
they couldn't find anything. Still though, even without any physical evidence,
Packer was arrested under the suspicion of murder anyway, and
(09:24):
the authorities just really had a feeling about this guy.
They had, They had a suspicion that something was up.
And confirmation of those feelings, or at least what seemed
to be a confirmation, came in August of eighteen seventy four,
when an artist for Harper's magazine named John A. Randolph
discovered the bodies of the missing prospectors near Lake City, Colorado.
(09:45):
An article by Andrew Curry and Archaeology includes just a
little snippet from the beginning of the Harper's account of
the find, which read quote, They were lying in a gloomy,
secluded spot, densely shaded by tall trees, at the foot
of a steep hill, near the bank of the Gunnison River.
Marks of violence on each body indicated that a most
terrible crime had been committed there. The bodies lay within
(10:08):
a few feet of each other in their blankets and clothes.
There had been no attempt to conceal the remains, and
Curry's article also mentions that the Harper's account came quote
complete with lurid illustrations of the badly composed bodies lovely, yeah,
pretty graphic. According to Mayo's account, all the bodies were
missing most or at least some of their flesh. DeStefano
(10:30):
says that an inquest conducted after the bodies were found
determined that it looked like the men had been brutally
murdered in their sleep, and as a result of this,
fine Packer was formally charged with the murder of all
five of his former companions. So facing this hefty charge,
Packer somehow managed to escape from jail and was on
(10:50):
the lamb for nine years. After that, he was finally
discovered by a merchant named Frenchy carbon Zone in a
saloon in Cheyenne, Wyoming, picked up March eleventh, eighteen eighty three.
From there, he was sent back to Colorado to stand trial.
But he had a little bit more to say before
that trial. Yeah, March sixteenth, eighteen eighty three, he offered
(11:14):
up his second confession, and this one was the one
that he would more or less stick to throughout his life,
though In later confessions, some of the details did change,
but they were more ancillary details. I mean, this is
I guess sort of not to make a bad pun,
but the meat of the argument stays at the same
warm here on out. Okay, So basically his second story
(11:35):
went like this. He said that he and his party
got lost in the mountains and had to resort to
boiling rosebuds and pine gum as you referred to before,
after their food ran out. After wandering around on ridgelines
for a while, the prospectors made camp on the banks
of the Gunnison River. Packer said he took his gun
and he went off by himself to see if he
(11:56):
could find a way out. But when he returned, he
found four of his companions lying there around a fire,
and they had all taken a hatchet to the head.
The one remaining, who was Bell, was by the fire
roasting a piece of meat which was supposedly yes flesh
from one of the men. Upon spotting him, Packer said,
(12:19):
Bell immediately came after him with a hatchet, and Packer
shot him in self defense and then hit him over
the head with his own hatchet. He had then eaten
the flesh of the men to survive the harsh winter.
So he admitted to cannibalism it was just, and to
killing Bell in self defense, but he wanted it to
be I mean, murder was the thing that people were
(12:40):
really up in arms about here murdering five men. It
suggested when you read these accounts that people would have
pretty much understood the cannibalism. You know, you have you
gotta do what you gotta do to survive when you're
out there and in these harsh conditions. But it was
the fact that Packer was also suspected of murdering these
(13:02):
guys that for their money as well, it seemed. So.
The Journey apparently didn't buy this new confession though, because
Packer was found guilty and was sentenced to hang. When
the judge, who was Judge Melville B. Gary, handed down
his sentence on April thirteen, three, legend has it that
(13:23):
he said something to the effect of quote, there was
seven Democrats in all of Hinsdale County, and you ate
five of them. I sentence you to be hung by
the neck until you are dead, dead, dead, as a
warning against further reducing the democratic population of this county. Yeah,
this is act worrying about the Democrats. It doesn't seem
to be in the version of sentencing that's in the
(13:44):
Colorado State Archives. The dead dead dead part is. But
according to Curry's article, during the New Deal, Colorado Republicans
did form these Alfred Packard clubs, and members of these
clubs swore to quote eliminate at least five Democrats. Oh,
I hope they didn't have like luncheon parties for their
(14:06):
Alfred Packer clubs. But ultimately the Packer was not hanged
due to a technicality. Essentially, the territorial murder laws had changed,
and the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that prosecutions of murders
before May eighty one were invalid. Packer's keith was retried.
He did get forty years in prison, he only ended
(14:27):
up serving eighteen of those. He was finally paroled in
nineteen o one. He died six years later, and according
to the Colorado State Archives, the cause of death, which
was on April nineteen oh seven, was listed as quote senility,
trouble and worry on his death certificate. So a court
(14:48):
decided Packer was guilty of murder, and of course many
people still assume that he was. After all, it does
make for a good grizzly legend, but throughout the years,
what really happened on that mountain has really remained a mystery,
and many have argued that Packer was convicted on pretty
flimsy evidence. George Washington University law professor James starrs who
(15:09):
he's been responsible for the exhimation of many controversial historical figures,
including Lizzie Borden's parents and Jesse James. He was curious
enough about this mystery that he organized a team to
exhume and examine the remains of Packers prospecting party in
nine and they found a lot of things there. They found,
first of all, plenty of evidence of trauma on the bones,
(15:31):
which suggested that almost all of the flesh had been removed. Also,
a lot of the cut marks were on the victim's back,
suggesting that the person removing the flesh didn't want to
look at the victim's faces, which is just kind of
an interesting look into the mind of psychological angle to cannibalism. Yes,
according to Curry's article, Stars concluded that Packer was the
(15:54):
killer because a war wound that was found on Bell's
remains would have supposedly made it too difficult for him
to inflict the wounds that they found on the other men.
But not everyone agrees with stars findings. No. The Museum
of Western Colorado curator and historian David Bailey is one
of those people who has led the charge to prove
(16:14):
Packers innocence. So Bailey started digging into Packers story when
he was working to tie a thirty eight caliber cult
pistol from the museum's collection to the site where the
bodies were found. He was working in the late nineties
the early aughts, so he couldn't exhume the bodies, you know,
which had just been exhumed in nine nine, because they
(16:35):
were sealed off over after the last extimation to protect
them from relic hunters. He did, however, have access to
some soil samples that were left over from the previous excavation,
and by having those tested, Bailey was able to prove
the pistol was at the site because lead found in
the soil was an exact match for the bullets remaining
(16:58):
in the gun, so starting sound kind of like Packer's
story of having to shoot Bell lined up a little bit. Also,
the gun still had three bullets in it. There were
two empty chambers which matched up with some of the
testimony Packer had given. So bell skeleton had some holes
(17:18):
in it, possibly gunshot wounds in the pelvic region. Also,
his wallet or his pocket book whatever he was carrying
with all that cash, the being Packer was interested in
also seemed to have been shot. So this was enough
to convince Bailey and many others that Packer was telling
the truth, that that second confession was real. He held
(17:40):
a mock trial for him in two thousand two, in
which Packer was found innocent. Whether he was guilty or innocent,
one thing that's for certain is that Packer became sort
of a kitchy kind of folk hero in the twentieth century.
Since the nineties sixties. For example, students at the University
of Colorado at Boulder have eaten at the Alfred Packer Grill,
(18:01):
and according to Curry's article that l cannibal burrito is
apparently a popular menu item there. Oh goodness. A bust
of Packer was also placed in the Colorado state capital
in two So he made it into the capital, I
mean like he did. That's pretty official. There are also
a lot of references to Packer and pop culture, and
one of the funniest examples is Trey Parker, who co
(18:22):
created the animated TV series South Park, which we all
know and love, wrote a play about Packer when he
was studying at the University of Colorado called Alfred Packer
the Musical. Later, he turned it into a film called
Cannibal the Musical. And unsurprisingly, Packer has also just made
his way into folk songs too. There's actually been several
songs written about Packer, including nineteen sixty four is the
(18:46):
Ballad of Alfred Packer, which was written by folk singer
Phil Off. The chorus for that song went, they called
him a murderer, a cannibal, thief. It just doesn't pay
to eat anything but government inspected beef. There's even a
cookbook out there called Alfred Packer's High Protein Cookbook. All right, well,
I feel like you may be picking that up. Oh
(19:08):
you you do? After I go try the l cannibal burrito.
I don't know. I don't. Well, you like to cook,
I mean like you like meat, like cooking, but I
usually try to avoid any associations with cannibalism, and to
my cooking as a rule of thumb, that's a pretty good.
It's a pretty thumbs in your daily cuisine. There you go. Well,
(19:33):
I feel much more comfortable sitting in the studio with
you right now. I'm I'm glad I was able to
reassure you I'm not a cannibal alright. So to wrap
up our Spooky Halloween October series, we have a good
piece of listener mail, don't we. We do one that
(19:54):
relates to haunted houses and how every now and then
you can really spook yourself. And we've been hearing from
a lot of listeners who are saying I can't go
to sleep at night now because I listened to podcasts
before bed and I'm having bad dreams. So sorry for that.
You know, maybe you'll feel better in November. But this
(20:15):
is kind of a fun example of just creeping yourself
out a little bit. Yeah, it's a letter from the
listener Phil and he says, I thought i'd write to
you about your recent ghost Stories podcast. As I work
in Cardiff Castle in Wales Capital, we often get requests
for ghost stories during tours from our tourists, and our
go to tail is of the Second Marquest of Butte,
who died at the castle in the chapel, and legend
(20:36):
has it he will walk through the walls of the library. However,
I don't believe in ghosts. Something I've noticed is that
more imagine if people often tell me they see Victorians
in the Victorian house and Romans by the Roman wall,
but never Romans in the Victorian parts or vice versa,
even though they each spent time in those areas. Also,
where are the ghosts from the late eighties? So with
(20:58):
this attitude, I wandered around into the house at all hours,
often working a function or covering for a security guard,
and I never saw anything, apart from one occasion. As
I was heading up the stairs from the entrance hall,
it was about two am. I was on my own
in the house with the majority of the lights out.
As I walked up the stairs, I heard a sound aloud, cough,
(21:22):
ending very abruptly. I froze on the stairs for what
felt like an age, but I could it couldn't have
been more than five seconds. My mind was racing with
all the possibilities of this noise, and the stories of
ghosts and ghoules I tell tourists flashed through my brain.
Then the reality hit me. It was the automatic air
freshener and the toilet going off, But it was humbling
(21:42):
for a cynic like me to be that worried, even
if it was only for a short time. Pretty funny story,
that is, and it just goes to show how these
stories can get to us, whether it's a podcast or
like me doing the research for the podcast, so I
can totally relate to all those people. And I've written
back to a few folks saying like, Okay, well this
is why we don't do too many Colorado Cannibal episodes,
(22:05):
because yeah, once you start, I mean, if you're having
bad dreams listening to it, imagine how we feel. Absolutely
gets to us too, So that's why we will and
do move on to other topics. All we do. We
even when it's not Halloween, we sprinkle in some some
tales of horrors. They're always fun to do, So thank
(22:27):
you Phil for that story. Sometimes those air fresheners startle
me too, I don't know. They can make a funny
noise um. And if you want to suggest more spooky episodes,
like Develina says, we are always open to them. You
can email us that History podcast at Discovery dot com.
We're also on Twitter at mixton History and we are
on Facebook, and I hope everybody has a fantastic Halloween
(22:51):
and you've had a fun time leading up to it.
Send us pictures of your costumes, especially if they are
historically inspired. We'd love to see them on Facebook or
Twitter and get our own ideas from them. I know,
because I got to decide. I'm down to the wire here.
I need an idea for my baby. Still, it's coming
down to the wire for sure, all right, So ideas
(23:13):
for Deplina's baby, ideas for us and your own costs
we want to fa Yeah, And if you want to
learn a little bit more about some of the things
we talked about on this podcast, we do have an
article called how the Donner Party Worked, and you can
find that by searching on our homepage at www dot
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
(23:36):
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
(24:00):
The Patus
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from hot
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
to bring a truck reporting and I'm fair Dowdy. And
if you're a regular listener of this podcast, you probably
know that we've covered our fair share of historical murders,
(00:22):
serial killers, and similar topics, especially during this time of
year October series tradition. Yes, but it's rare that we
talk about killers who have taken their crimes a step
further to include an act that some considered to be
even more disturbing, and that's cannibalism. We've actually never really
(00:42):
explored this topic, though Candice and Josh did back in
two thousand and eight when they talked about the infamous
Donner Party, a wagon train that got trapped by the harsh,
snowy winter weather in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in eighteen
forty six. Now, with that story, out of the eighty
seven people who set out on that trip, only forty
even lived to tell about it, and some of those
people did resort to cannibalism in order to survive. So
(01:05):
our story today is somewhat similar, and in fact, it's
often confused with the Donner Party story. It involves a
man named Alfred Packer who was among a group of
prospectors who went into the San Juan Mountains in the
Colorado Rockies near the end of eighteen seventy three and
also ran into some pretty treacherous winter weather on his trip.
(01:27):
Unlike the Donner Party situation, though, when the thaw came
the following spring, Packer was the only guy from his
party to emerge from the mountains alive. A little more suspicious,
and it certainly adds to the mystery of the story.
It does and what kind of set up this mystery
was a series of suspicions, accusations, and confessions that didn't
(01:48):
really match up that followed Packer emerging from the mountains.
According to Michael Mayo in his book American Murder, all
of this led to Packer becoming the American West only
convicted cannibal quite a distinction exactly, But it also created
one of the great mysteries of the American West because
to this day people still debate about whether Packer was
(02:12):
guilty as charged. So we're going to look into that
a little bit. And in order to do that, of course,
we have to start where the story begins. So it
all started in November of eighteen seventy three, when a
group of about twenty or so would be a prospector
set out from Bingham Canyon, Utah, and headed toward Breckenridge, Colorado,
(02:33):
in the Rocky Mountains in search of what else gold
and serving as a guide on this expedition was Alfred Packer.
And just a little note before you start writing your
email thing you were pronouncing it incorrectly. There is some
debate about Alfred Packer's name, even though he's generally known
as Alfred like with the r D e r D
(02:55):
official documents list his name as the more traditional Alfred,
and it's supposed that he might have started going by
Alfred when a careless tattoo artists misspelled the name on
his arm. Even though that's just kind of a rumor,
I do like that idea. Though you know your tattoos
spelled wrong, You're just gonna go with it. Alfred legend.
(03:16):
According to information from the Alfred Packer Collection of the
Colorado State Archives, Packer was born in Pennsylvania on November
twenty one, eight forty two, and during the Civil War
he enlisted in both the sixteenth U. S. Infantry of
Minnesota and the eighth Regiment Iowa Cavalry, but he was
discharged from both of these due to epilepsy. The rest
(03:37):
of the details of his life are a little bit sketchy.
The next real evidence that we have of his whereabouts
is from when he joined up with those miners in Utah.
He wanted to be a part of their prospecting party,
but he didn't have a lot of money for provisions
to make the trip, so, according to an article by
Diana to Stephano in the Journal of Social History, he
offered up twenty five bucks and his services as a
(03:59):
guide to join them in their journey, and he told
them that he knew Colorado's high country well, so his
offer was accepted. They didn't know their way around, and
he did, so it seemed like a good match, he
claimed he did, because, according to de Stefano's article, it
didn't take long for Packer to really robe his traveling
companions the wrong way, and there were a few reasons
(04:20):
for that. First of all, there was a rumor going
around that Packer had served some hard time back in
Salt Lake City because he was suspected of murdering his
trapping partner, so not the kind of guy you might
want with you out in the wilderness. Second, he was
also inappropriately interested in the amount of cash that the
other men were carrying with them. He would apparently ask
(04:41):
them outright, how much money do you have on you?
And Then, thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, especially considering that
the group was making this track with limited provisions and
really relying on Packer's expertise, he seemed to have exaggerated
his skill as a guide. According to the article we
just mentioned, he got them lost more than once, not
(05:03):
something that would endear him to his traveling companion. So
they're getting lost, they're running out of food, and the
weather just keeps getting worse and worse. By the time
they make it to the winter camp of Chief Uray
along the on Campagre River in Colorado in mid December,
they were starving pretty much. The chief made it really
clear to them that he thought it was a really
(05:24):
bad idea for them to continue on with their journey.
At that point, he advised them to just stay where
they were and wait until spring, and about ten guys
out of the party followed this advice. A small group
of men led by Oliver D. Lutzenheiser was itching to
get started, though, so they set out with directions from
the chief toward the Las Penis Indian Agency on the
(05:45):
other side of the mountain. According to Di Stefana's article,
Packer wanted to be a part of this group, but
Lutzenheiser didn't trust him and threatened to shoot him if
he tried to follow him. So he really did not
like Packer at all, know that maybe that first point
on the jail time and all the lies that he'd
been seeing along the trip not exactly the kind of
(06:06):
guy you want with you and already rough. But another
eager group of men also set out in the same direction,
and Packer again served as their guide. The other men
in this group where Shannon Bell, James Humphrey, George Noon
or perhaps his last name was Moon. We see it
both ways, Israel Swan and Frank Miller. Chief e Ray
(06:28):
gave them supplies and advised them to stay close to
the river. But it's clear from what happened that spring
that things soon went awry. What happened to Balina Well
April six, eighteen seventy four, it was only one disheveled
prospector who stumbled into Las Pinos Indian Agency near Gunnison, Colorado,
and that was, of course Alfred Packer, our old friends.
(06:50):
So the first thing that Packer asked for when he
stumbled in from the wilderness was a drink, specifically a
drink of whiskey, And of course people wanted to know
what happened, what his story was. He told them that
he had set out from Chief Eray's winter camp with
the five other men, but the other men had soon
abandoned him when he wasn't able to keep up due
(07:12):
to snow blindness, and he said that he spent the
rest of the winter after that trapped in the mountains,
living off the land. But many people, and especially those
other members of the Utah Party, the ones who had
opted to wade out the winter with the chief who
finally did make their way to the agency, those guys
especially were immediately suspicious of this story. And there were
(07:34):
a few reasons for that. One. He just seemed too
well fed for somebody who had been existing off the
land off of boiled buds and pine gum all winter,
And according to Mayo, Chief Eray astutely observed this that
he seemed a little too hefty and said you two
damn fat. Another thing that seemed really off, Packer suddenly
(07:56):
had all this cash on him. So not only was
the pack in a few extra pounds, he had all
this money even though he had been pretty much broke before,
to really strange points. So of course people are asking
more and more questions about this, and so, feeling under pressure,
Packer offers up a very different version of events. This
(08:17):
one includes a kind of confession. According to De Stefano's article,
Packer said that just ten days after the six men
left the Chiefs camp, quote one after another, the men
quote had been killed by the remainder to be used
as food by the rest. After the men were picked
off one by one, eventually, of course, there were only
(08:39):
two of them left, and Packer said he shot his
last remaining companion in self defense. So, uh, disturbing story,
but one that sort of spreads the guilt around at least. Yeah,
he's not seen as a murderer, not a murder in
cold blood anyway, the kind of the camps all together.
(09:00):
Later that summer, though, a search party was set out
to look for the bodies of Packer's former companions. Packer
led the search party, interestingly and epic as they needed
him to to try to show where he went, but
they couldn't find anything. Still though, even without any physical evidence,
Packer was arrested under the suspicion of murder anyway, and
(09:24):
the authorities just really had a feeling about this guy.
They had, They had a suspicion that something was up.
And confirmation of those feelings, or at least what seemed
to be a confirmation, came in August of eighteen seventy four,
when an artist for Harper's magazine named John A. Randolph
discovered the bodies of the missing prospectors near Lake City, Colorado.
(09:45):
An article by Andrew Curry and Archaeology includes just a
little snippet from the beginning of the Harper's account of
the find, which read quote, They were lying in a gloomy,
secluded spot, densely shaded by tall trees, at the foot
of a steep hill, near the bank of the Gunnison River.
Marks of violence on each body indicated that a most
terrible crime had been committed there. The bodies lay within
(10:08):
a few feet of each other in their blankets and clothes.
There had been no attempt to conceal the remains, and
Curry's article also mentions that the Harper's account came quote
complete with lurid illustrations of the badly composed bodies lovely, yeah,
pretty graphic. According to Mayo's account, all the bodies were
missing most or at least some of their flesh. DeStefano
(10:30):
says that an inquest conducted after the bodies were found
determined that it looked like the men had been brutally
murdered in their sleep, and as a result of this,
fine Packer was formally charged with the murder of all
five of his former companions. So facing this hefty charge,
Packer somehow managed to escape from jail and was on
(10:50):
the lamb for nine years. After that, he was finally
discovered by a merchant named Frenchy carbon Zone in a
saloon in Cheyenne, Wyoming, picked up March eleventh, eighteen eighty three.
From there, he was sent back to Colorado to stand trial.
But he had a little bit more to say before
that trial. Yeah, March sixteenth, eighteen eighty three, he offered
(11:14):
up his second confession, and this one was the one
that he would more or less stick to throughout his life,
though In later confessions, some of the details did change,
but they were more ancillary details. I mean, this is
I guess sort of not to make a bad pun,
but the meat of the argument stays at the same
warm here on out. Okay, So basically his second story
(11:35):
went like this. He said that he and his party
got lost in the mountains and had to resort to
boiling rosebuds and pine gum as you referred to before,
after their food ran out. After wandering around on ridgelines
for a while, the prospectors made camp on the banks
of the Gunnison River. Packer said he took his gun
and he went off by himself to see if he
(11:56):
could find a way out. But when he returned, he
found four of his companions lying there around a fire,
and they had all taken a hatchet to the head.
The one remaining, who was Bell, was by the fire
roasting a piece of meat which was supposedly yes flesh
from one of the men. Upon spotting him, Packer said,
(12:19):
Bell immediately came after him with a hatchet, and Packer
shot him in self defense and then hit him over
the head with his own hatchet. He had then eaten
the flesh of the men to survive the harsh winter.
So he admitted to cannibalism it was just, and to
killing Bell in self defense, but he wanted it to
be I mean, murder was the thing that people were
(12:40):
really up in arms about here murdering five men. It
suggested when you read these accounts that people would have
pretty much understood the cannibalism. You know, you have you
gotta do what you gotta do to survive when you're
out there and in these harsh conditions. But it was
the fact that Packer was also suspected of murdering these
(13:02):
guys that for their money as well, it seemed. So.
The Journey apparently didn't buy this new confession though, because
Packer was found guilty and was sentenced to hang. When
the judge, who was Judge Melville B. Gary, handed down
his sentence on April thirteen, three, legend has it that
(13:23):
he said something to the effect of quote, there was
seven Democrats in all of Hinsdale County, and you ate
five of them. I sentence you to be hung by
the neck until you are dead, dead, dead, as a
warning against further reducing the democratic population of this county. Yeah,
this is act worrying about the Democrats. It doesn't seem
to be in the version of sentencing that's in the
(13:44):
Colorado State Archives. The dead dead dead part is. But
according to Curry's article, during the New Deal, Colorado Republicans
did form these Alfred Packard clubs, and members of these
clubs swore to quote eliminate at least five Democrats. Oh,
I hope they didn't have like luncheon parties for their
(14:06):
Alfred Packer clubs. But ultimately the Packer was not hanged
due to a technicality. Essentially, the territorial murder laws had changed,
and the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that prosecutions of murders
before May eighty one were invalid. Packer's keith was retried.
He did get forty years in prison, he only ended
(14:27):
up serving eighteen of those. He was finally paroled in
nineteen o one. He died six years later, and according
to the Colorado State Archives, the cause of death, which
was on April nineteen oh seven, was listed as quote senility,
trouble and worry on his death certificate. So a court
(14:48):
decided Packer was guilty of murder, and of course many
people still assume that he was. After all, it does
make for a good grizzly legend, but throughout the years,
what really happened on that mountain has really remained a mystery,
and many have argued that Packer was convicted on pretty
flimsy evidence. George Washington University law professor James starrs who
(15:09):
he's been responsible for the exhimation of many controversial historical figures,
including Lizzie Borden's parents and Jesse James. He was curious
enough about this mystery that he organized a team to
exhume and examine the remains of Packers prospecting party in
nine and they found a lot of things there. They found,
first of all, plenty of evidence of trauma on the bones,
(15:31):
which suggested that almost all of the flesh had been removed. Also,
a lot of the cut marks were on the victim's back,
suggesting that the person removing the flesh didn't want to
look at the victim's faces, which is just kind of
an interesting look into the mind of psychological angle to cannibalism. Yes,
according to Curry's article, Stars concluded that Packer was the
(15:54):
killer because a war wound that was found on Bell's
remains would have supposedly made it too difficult for him
to inflict the wounds that they found on the other men.
But not everyone agrees with stars findings. No. The Museum
of Western Colorado curator and historian David Bailey is one
of those people who has led the charge to prove
(16:14):
Packers innocence. So Bailey started digging into Packers story when
he was working to tie a thirty eight caliber cult
pistol from the museum's collection to the site where the
bodies were found. He was working in the late nineties
the early aughts, so he couldn't exhume the bodies, you know,
which had just been exhumed in nine nine, because they
(16:35):
were sealed off over after the last extimation to protect
them from relic hunters. He did, however, have access to
some soil samples that were left over from the previous excavation,
and by having those tested, Bailey was able to prove
the pistol was at the site because lead found in
the soil was an exact match for the bullets remaining
(16:58):
in the gun, so starting sound kind of like Packer's
story of having to shoot Bell lined up a little bit. Also,
the gun still had three bullets in it. There were
two empty chambers which matched up with some of the
testimony Packer had given. So bell skeleton had some holes
(17:18):
in it, possibly gunshot wounds in the pelvic region. Also,
his wallet or his pocket book whatever he was carrying
with all that cash, the being Packer was interested in
also seemed to have been shot. So this was enough
to convince Bailey and many others that Packer was telling
the truth, that that second confession was real. He held
(17:40):
a mock trial for him in two thousand two, in
which Packer was found innocent. Whether he was guilty or innocent,
one thing that's for certain is that Packer became sort
of a kitchy kind of folk hero in the twentieth century.
Since the nineties sixties. For example, students at the University
of Colorado at Boulder have eaten at the Alfred Packer Grill,
(18:01):
and according to Curry's article that l cannibal burrito is
apparently a popular menu item there. Oh goodness. A bust
of Packer was also placed in the Colorado state capital
in two So he made it into the capital, I
mean like he did. That's pretty official. There are also
a lot of references to Packer and pop culture, and
one of the funniest examples is Trey Parker, who co
(18:22):
created the animated TV series South Park, which we all
know and love, wrote a play about Packer when he
was studying at the University of Colorado called Alfred Packer
the Musical. Later, he turned it into a film called
Cannibal the Musical. And unsurprisingly, Packer has also just made
his way into folk songs too. There's actually been several
songs written about Packer, including nineteen sixty four is the
(18:46):
Ballad of Alfred Packer, which was written by folk singer
Phil Off. The chorus for that song went, they called
him a murderer, a cannibal, thief. It just doesn't pay
to eat anything but government inspected beef. There's even a
cookbook out there called Alfred Packer's High Protein Cookbook. All right, well,
I feel like you may be picking that up. Oh
(19:08):
you you do? After I go try the l cannibal burrito.
I don't know. I don't. Well, you like to cook,
I mean like you like meat, like cooking, but I
usually try to avoid any associations with cannibalism, and to
my cooking as a rule of thumb, that's a pretty good.
It's a pretty thumbs in your daily cuisine. There you go. Well,
(19:33):
I feel much more comfortable sitting in the studio with
you right now. I'm I'm glad I was able to
reassure you I'm not a cannibal alright. So to wrap
up our Spooky Halloween October series, we have a good
piece of listener mail, don't we. We do one that
(19:54):
relates to haunted houses and how every now and then
you can really spook yourself. And we've been hearing from
a lot of listeners who are saying I can't go
to sleep at night now because I listened to podcasts
before bed and I'm having bad dreams. So sorry for that.
You know, maybe you'll feel better in November. But this
(20:15):
is kind of a fun example of just creeping yourself
out a little bit. Yeah, it's a letter from the
listener Phil and he says, I thought i'd write to
you about your recent ghost Stories podcast. As I work
in Cardiff Castle in Wales Capital, we often get requests
for ghost stories during tours from our tourists, and our
go to tail is of the Second Marquest of Butte,
who died at the castle in the chapel, and legend
(20:36):
has it he will walk through the walls of the library. However,
I don't believe in ghosts. Something I've noticed is that
more imagine if people often tell me they see Victorians
in the Victorian house and Romans by the Roman wall,
but never Romans in the Victorian parts or vice versa,
even though they each spent time in those areas. Also,
where are the ghosts from the late eighties? So with
(20:58):
this attitude, I wandered around into the house at all hours,
often working a function or covering for a security guard,
and I never saw anything, apart from one occasion. As
I was heading up the stairs from the entrance hall,
it was about two am. I was on my own
in the house with the majority of the lights out.
As I walked up the stairs, I heard a sound aloud, cough,
(21:22):
ending very abruptly. I froze on the stairs for what
felt like an age, but I could it couldn't have
been more than five seconds. My mind was racing with
all the possibilities of this noise, and the stories of
ghosts and ghoules I tell tourists flashed through my brain.
Then the reality hit me. It was the automatic air
freshener and the toilet going off, But it was humbling
(21:42):
for a cynic like me to be that worried, even
if it was only for a short time. Pretty funny story,
that is, and it just goes to show how these
stories can get to us, whether it's a podcast or
like me doing the research for the podcast, so I
can totally relate to all those people. And I've written
back to a few folks saying like, Okay, well this
is why we don't do too many Colorado Cannibal episodes,
(22:05):
because yeah, once you start, I mean, if you're having
bad dreams listening to it, imagine how we feel. Absolutely
gets to us too, So that's why we will and
do move on to other topics. All we do. We
even when it's not Halloween, we sprinkle in some some
tales of horrors. They're always fun to do, So thank
(22:27):
you Phil for that story. Sometimes those air fresheners startle
me too, I don't know. They can make a funny
noise um. And if you want to suggest more spooky episodes,
like Develina says, we are always open to them. You
can email us that History podcast at Discovery dot com.
We're also on Twitter at mixton History and we are
on Facebook, and I hope everybody has a fantastic Halloween
(22:51):
and you've had a fun time leading up to it.
Send us pictures of your costumes, especially if they are
historically inspired. We'd love to see them on Facebook or
Twitter and get our own ideas from them. I know,
because I got to decide. I'm down to the wire here.
I need an idea for my baby. Still, it's coming
down to the wire for sure, all right, So ideas
(23:13):
for Deplina's baby, ideas for us and your own costs
we want to fa Yeah, And if you want to
learn a little bit more about some of the things
we talked about on this podcast, we do have an
article called how the Donner Party Worked, and you can
find that by searching on our homepage at www dot
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
(23:36):
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
(24:00):
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