All Episodes

January 8, 2025 15 mins

Join us today to learn the story of The Mad Trapper of Rat River, Canada's largest and most intense manhunt.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
H ii am, welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh.
There's Chuck. Jerry's here too, sitting in for Dave, and
the three of us are on the run through the
Canadian Arctic recreating the story of the Mad Trapper, and
it's not going very well for us.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
That's right, the Mad Trapper of rhet River aka perhaps
I don't even know about, perhaps almost certainly Canada's most
infamous unknown person on the Lamb, and the largest manhunt
in Canada's history conducted to try and get this guy.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yeah, this is a I saw it referred to as
like an iconic Canadian story. This guy just tore us
up in nineteen thirty one, made international headlines and died.
It's still to this day, no one knows who he is,

(00:54):
and not one of those things where like we're pretty
sure it's this guy, we just can't prove it. They
have no idea who who this guy is. They're starting
to kind of chew around the edges of it. But
the fact that he is still unidentified just makes it
that much more interesting. But even if you were identified, Chuck,
his story is still just totally fascinating on its own.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, it's not like Somerton Man, because that was the
most interesting thing about that was the mystery of who
he was. It wouldn't care, it wouldn't matter if this
guy was indeed Albert Johnson, who was his alias. It's
a remarkable story that started in July nineteen thirty one
when this guy Albert Johnson came and moved there. They

(01:40):
think he may have come from Sweden, according to certain
people who talk to him here and there. But he
was a man of very few words, as we'll see,
when he arrived in the vast remote area of the
Northwest Territories near Fort McPherson and built a little eight
by ten foot cabin near the Rat River.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, and we're talking like the northern most parts of Canada,
like basically along the Arctic Ocean.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
In the thirties.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, he was essentially living where the guys from the
Terror and the Arebus that we talked about were trying
to get to when they were like on their march
down toward Canada. They had they done this in nineteen
thirty one, they might have run into Albert Johnson. He
was that far up right. So this is a really
really rugged, wild, dangerous place to live and like you

(02:29):
said he arrived in July. In a few months after that,
I think in November December of nineteen thirty one, okay,
December of nineteen thirty one, a couple of trappers from
the First Nations who lived up there, got in touch
with one of the local police and said, Hey, there's
this guy. His name's Albert Johnson, and he's messing with
our trap lines and he's not supposed to do that,

(02:51):
so can you go tell him to stop doing that?
And three days later, a couple of cops just knocked
on Johnson's cabin door, assuming that they were just going
to talk to him and tell him to stop doing that,
and that would be that, right.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, I mean, these are the Mounties, so these guys
are not messing around. The story is a little confusing
because everywhere you look it's a little different. But from
what I gathered, there were three total visits. One visit
when he basically said get the heck out of here
and pointed a gun at them. A second visit when
two guys came back, and this time he supposedly refused

(03:27):
to talk at all, and when they went to look
through his windows, he just covered his windows up and
ignored them and then.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Smasher.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
I guess four total, because the third one was when
those two guys plus two more I think it was
Alfred King and Joe Bernard and two more guys came
back with warrants, forced the door over and he shot
King and a brief firefight ensued. And then finally the
fourth visit when they brought a bunch of guys with
dynamite and camped out for three days outside his cabin.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, they threw Dinah on his roof to flush him out,
and it certainly blew up the roof as expected, it
also took down some of the walls of the cabin,
and amazingly, Albert Johnson survived, and even more amazingly, he
still refused to come out and engaged in a gunfight
with this posse that the Mounties had assembled to go

(04:19):
take this guy out because like, he shot at an
officer who just wanted to tell him to stop messing
with trap lines, like shot and tried to kill him. Right,
So this guy was already a big deal by this time,
and he managed to hold off this posse from taking
him alive. They actually had to get out of there
because they were running low on food, and the weather

(04:40):
was terrible. This is this is December in the northernmost
reaches of Canada along the Arctic. Now the time you
want to be outside. Apparently the temperature was a negative
forty five. And this guy's holding these guys down in
a gunfight. And then they leave, and four days later
they come back, and now they find that this destroyed
cabin is now empty. He's fled, and a blizzard has

(05:03):
covered up his tracks.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah, I saw that it was like a sixty mile
hike just to get to his place. So the fact
that they came back four times when this guy probably
could have opened the door the first time and said
all right, I won't mess with their traps anymore, and
that probably would have been the end of it. But yeah,
he managed to evade them on this man hunt by
stepping in caribou tracks and from these storms that would

(05:28):
come through, and maybe that's a good time for a break. Yes,
all right, we'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
So I don't think we said yet. Now there's a
man hunt underway. This guy who they want to take
in for shooting at cops is on the run in
the Canadian wilderness, and this man hunt lasted seven weeks
from December to mid February. This guy kept evading them.
They'd catch up to him, he'd shoot at him, they'd

(06:20):
have a firefight. One time he killed a cop, Constable Millin,
who was like a member of this posse that was
hunting him down. And he would manage to fend them
off every time they caught him in a firefight. And
one of the other interesting facts about this chuck is
this is the first time an aircraft was ever used
in a manhunt as far as anyone knows.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
That's right. They got a pretty legendary WW one Canadian
fighter pilot name named Wilfrid Wilfrid wap May to come
in a little side note here, wop May was in
the dogfight that ended the Red Baron's life. So a
very sort of famous Canadian fighter pilot flying above for

(07:02):
the first time seeing if they could see and if
you could just spot trails from above.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
Yeah, I saw a photo that he took from his
aircraft of like this, like he was really high up
and there's a little tiny speck in the middle of
a frozen river and it's identified as Albert Johnson. And
then there's like three more tiny specks coming out of
the woodline, chasing after Johnson and what may got a

(07:29):
picture of it, and it's just when you understand what
you're looking at, it's just astounding what these guys were
running through over the course of seven weeks. It's nuts.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, that's amazing.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
And so people heard about this thanks to the radio,
which was still a pretty new invention, but this story
that was kind of playing out over the news in
real time actually helped sell a bunch of new radios
because people didn't want to miss out.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, supposedly this is one of the really first big
news stories to be broken via electronic media. So you've
got your first search and rescue or I guess not
search and rescue, search and destroy, mission feeding featuring a plane.
You've got the first big news stories breaking on radio
for the first time. One of the weird parts of

(08:17):
this case I said he was a man of few
words is, as the story goes, this guy didn't say
a word the whole time, Like there was never like,
you know, it's my right to be here, you know,
get away. I'm just trying to live. Like supposedly this
guy said nothing to any of them.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
That is so unsettling. It's just totally It's another thing
that just kind of adds to his legend too.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
So yeah, people by this time, this was during the Depression,
and a lot of the public that was following the
story were actually rooting for him because remember this was
a time when the public rooted for like bank robbers
and and other curials and outlaws because the establishment had
basically screwed everything up and taken advantage of everybody. So

(09:05):
there were people who were pulling for him, And even
if you weren't pulling for him, it was just astounding
what this guy was doing with just some I think
he had a rifle and a shotgun, he had his clothes,
and he was like out maneuvering and surviving against this
posse that was on his trail. And I also saw

(09:26):
chuck that one of the unsung or overlooked groups that
was part of this posse were some of the first
Nation members who helped track him. That this posse probably
would have lost his trail in the first few days
had it not been for the trackers that came with him.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah, I think the Loose Show people were the ones
who initially filed the complaint didn't. Did you see which
tribes helped out in the search.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
I didn't. I just saw that one of the members
last name was Rat. So I'm guessing he was named
after the Rat River that the River family was. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
So. Another part of the kind of a fun fact
of this story is, or at least part of the lore,
is that at one point they had him pinned in
a steep canyon and he supposedly scaled a near vertical
wall of ice basically to get out of there.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah. So at this point they're like, this guy is
not human. Yeah, and again another First Nations member comes through.
I think somebody came back and mentioned that they heard
a rifle shot in this like totally desolate area and
the Royal Canadian Mounty posse where like, well, they can
only be Albert Johnson. And they headed that way and

(10:41):
they found his trail and they started chasing him and
they engaged in one last firefight with him, and this
one Albert Johnson didn't come out of alive.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
That's right. They got him finally after this long, long
man hunt, a very successful evasion for a long time,
but yeah, they eventually got him. No one knows I
mean part of the you know, the second part of
this is just the mystery, like not only who was
he literally, but like who was this guy to move

(11:10):
way out there to not you know, they supposedly back,
you know, closer to town, even though I'm sure that was
super small as well. It was like a very friendly place,
and he was known as a loner and very unfriendly,
which was not the norm. And like, who was this guy?
He just moved out to the middle of nowhere and
like didn't speak a word this entire time.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
M hm, right, yeah, why why.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Would he do this?

Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yeah? Yeah, which is just deepens the mystery further. By
the way, one other thing, it was Charlie Ratt, who
was the guy that helped the Mounties find how nice
Albert Johnson.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
What a name.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
So they had a picture of him. There's a very well,
I guess famous if your Canadian picture of his dead
body on like a morgue slab, that.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
Would mess with the guy.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
No, he looks rough and tough, for sure, he does.
He like you could not know his story and see
that picture of his dead body and be like, I'll
bet that guy could survive in the Canadian wilderness for
seven weeks with the cops on his trail.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, for sure, I would would want nothing to do
with this guy.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
So they took this picture because they wanted to circulate.
Everybody wanted to know who this guy was, and it
made it in all the papers in Canada and the
United States, and no one came forward. The details of
his life and demeanor didn't match anything that anybody knew of.
I mean, like, people came forward with tips, but none
of them were legitimate or panned out. And very quickly

(12:38):
this guy just became this anonymous weirdo who did some
crazy stuff in the winter of nineteen thirty one.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, so, like you said, they exhumed his body in
two thousand and seven once DNA sampling was you know,
a viable thing, and that has enabled some genetic comparisons
to possible relatives. They obviously he didn't, you know, no
one has come forward with it like a perfect match
or anything. But they made comparisons with more than two
dozen families and they have some strong, circumstantial evidence that

(13:12):
what family he may have been from and where they
have landed. Now is that they're pretty sure that his
background is Swedish and he has been linked to multiple
descendants of a gentleman named Gustaf Magnuson who died in
eighteen fifty three and Britta sven daughter who passed away

(13:33):
in eighteen forty six, and they are pretty sure that
he's a descendant of them, But nobody from any of
those bloodlines has come forward either.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
No, and this company called Authrom, a genome sequencing company,
they have figured out a few other things about him
that he almost certainly grew up in the Midwestern United States.
His autopsy revealed that he had extensive and expensive dental work,
and then he had scoliosis. Yeah, this guy did this

(14:05):
for seven weeks scale the near vertical face cliff with
scoliosis as well. He was just amazing in a really
kind of specific way.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
I think one foot was bigger than the other one too,
which Lord I thought was a very strange little uh
add on.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah. So, but also if he grew up in the Midwest,
like the stuff he was doing, there's not many places
to learn that. I mean, I guess if you're from
like Upper Minnesota or something, but I'm guessing comparing an
Upper Minnesota winter to in Upper Canada winters like night
and day, so.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
They contend he was never like a Swedish resident.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
They don't necessarily contend that he could have been a
transplant from Sweden who was just raised in like a
Swedish speaking community.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Yeah, so he could just wonder about like ice wall
climbing and stuff. He could probably do that in Sweden.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, apparently based on
and his teeth isotopes that he was born he was
raised or grew up in the mid the middle of Yes. Yeah,
all right, so maybe one day we'll.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
Know maybe, I mean, we found out the Summerton Man's identity, right.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah, but I don't think we ever mentioned it on
the episode on the podcast, do we. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
I think we read a listener mail because we got
like ten thousand Australians.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Great, well, if it ever comes out, who's the mad
Trapper of Rat River? Was everybody? We want to know?
So we can tell everybody else. Sure. Yeah. And in
the meantime, Chuck, I think short Stuff is out. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff You Should Know News

Advertise With Us

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Chuck Bryant

Chuck Bryant

Josh Clark

Josh Clark

Show Links

AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSS

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

The Bobby Bones Show

The Bobby Bones Show

Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.