May 4, 2024 • 21 mins
(Host: Josh)
Alfred, or sometimes Alferd Packer, is one of the most infamous villains in Colorado history. As the story goes, Packer, a trail guide, led his party into disaster and then killed them one by one before consuming their bodies in order to survive. He was arrested, tried, convicted, and then escaped. Once reprehended Packer changed his story once again. And now more recent evidence has emerged that seems to have exonerated him. We’ll try to sort of this out on this week’s episode of Footnoting History.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
On April 16th, 1874, Alferd Packer walkedout of the woods near Sagauche, Colorado.
He told a story of survival.
But his legacy as being the “Colorado Cannibal”deserved?
Find out on this episode of Footnoting History.
(00:24):
Hey Footnoters, Josh here with a harrowingstory of adventure, murder, and cannibalism.
Or maybe not.
I’m going to tell you the story of the infamousAlferd Packer, who, at the time, was one of
the most notorious killers not just Coloradohistory, but American history, too.
But this story may not be all that seems tobe, because we’re honestly unsure if Packer
(00:50):
committed the murders he’s accused of.
We’re sure that he ate human flesh to survive(he readily admitted doing so), but the rest
of the story doesn’t have definitive evidenceone way or another.
First of course, some background.
Maybe you’ll find this hilarious.
Maybe you’ll find it disturbing.
Maybe you’ll find it hilariously disturbing.
(01:11):
I first heard of Alferd – or Alfred – Packerwhen I was in elementary school.
Alferd Packer is buried in my hometown – Littleton,Colorado.
If that southern suburb of Denver Coloradois familiar to you, it’s for another reason.
And, I realize some listeners might be thinkingof that event.
(01:31):
So let me answer some questions real quick.
Isn’t that where...
Yes, it is.
You didn’t go there, did you?
Yes, I did.
You weren’t there when it happened, wereyou?
Yes, I was.
But we’re not here to talk about that transformativeevent, we’re here for a little true crime
as history.
When we were told Packer’s story duringthose elementary school years, we also were
(01:53):
treated to a “history of Littleton fieldtrip.”
We went to the Littleton History Museum, wetook a walk through downtown Littleton, which
included touring the historic theater on themain street, and a visit to Alferd Packer’s
grave.
The late 1980s and early 1990s were a heckof a time, man.
Look kids, a MURDEROUS CANNIBAL!
(02:14):
Isn’t that neat!
Oooooooooooh, we all said, I’m sure.
Honestly it feels like something out of TheSimpsons the more that I think about it.
But before we get to Packer and his lost party,I’d like to make a couple of notes on the
word “cannibal” and the idea of cannibalismitself.
It’s difficult to divorce the word “cannibal”from a European colonial context.
(02:38):
As I found out through my research for thisepisode, it was Christopher Columbus who seems
to have heard “canib” when the Carib peopletold him their names.
And quite frankly, whether any peoples ofthe Caribbean world ate the remains of their
fellow humans is still a hotly debated topicand quite controversial.
(03:00):
The other thing that I want to point out isthat cannibalism is also a part of the Europeans’
own stories in America.
Cabeza de Vaca (a Spanish conquistador, whoI will be doing an episode on soon) and his
crew ate the remains of their dead compatriotsinstead of going ashore and negotiating with
(03:21):
the native peoples they encountered (out offear of cannibalism, ironically enough).
If you know the story of the early Jamestown,VA colony, you know about the so-called “starving
time,” when those first settlers ran outof food and turned to the flesh of the dead
to survive.
But the important thing is that the storyof American colonization includes cannibalism
(03:44):
by the colonizers themselves; even as theyfear the cannibalism of native peoples.
It’s just something to.
keep in mind.
So now let me introduce you to our most ineligibleof bachelors, Alfred Packer.
Alfred G. Packer was born on January 21, 1842,near Pittsburgh, PA.
(04:05):
He did not have a particularly great childhood,and fell out with his parents before moving
to Minnesota to try and eek it out as a shoemaker.
From what I gathered from research, he decidedto slightly alter his name to Alferd because
he hated the name that his parents gave him.
If I use Alferd and Alfred interchangeably,I apologize.
(04:28):
It’s the same guy, I promise.
When the American Civil War broke out in 1861,Big Al...
Can I call him Big Al?
Hungry Al seems a bit...
macabre.
In any event, Big Al enlisted in the UnionArmy in 1862.
But Packer was an epileptic and struggledwith seizures, so he received an honorable
(04:50):
discharge about 8 months after his initialenlistment.
He enlisted in the Union Army again in 1863,but again, his seizures struck again and he
received a second honorable discharge in 1864.
Now Big Al was a bit stuck.
He could have gone back to his shoemakinggig, but, the dude wasn’t exactly a sneakerhead.
(05:12):
Not that they had sneakers back in 1864 likewe do, but, come on, work with me a little
bit here.
I know YOU want a pair of Air Alferds.
I’d worry about the leather though.
Yup.
So Alfred Packer did what anyone in the post-CivilWar era would do when they had no real direction
(05:33):
in life.
He went out west in search of his fortune.
Now, we have this image in our minds of theseintrepid men out on their own in the West,
finding veins of silver or gold, strikingit rich, and living the good life.
But, folks, the reality of the West does notmatch those expectations.
The West, such as it was, had been quite corporatized,especially in agriculture and mining.
(05:57):
So when Packer got out there, that’s thereality that he found.
Don’t think of the prospector standing inthe river with his pan and sifting for gold.
Most miners were wage workers who worked longhours in incredibly dangerous conditions.
Packer ended up taking a series of odd jobs,but spent a good amount of time working in
a copper mine in Utah.
(06:19):
Big Al would catch the prospecting bug inthe early 1870s, when a new gold and silver
rush began in the San Juan Mountains in southwesternColorado.
If you’ve ever been to Silverton or Tellurideor even Ouray – you've been in the San Juans.
A quick note (06:35):
Before the massive influx of miners into the San Juans in search of gold
and silver, this was land that belonged tothe Ute people.
The Ute had made deals with the United Statesgovernment for sale of land, but the US government,
as it so often did (and does) with indigenouspeoples, broke that agreement.
(06:57):
In the case of the San Juans, the governmentsent Felix Brunot to negotiate with Ouray,
one of the Ute leaders in the area (and aquite controversial figure to put it mildly)
to keep out the prospectors who were trespassingon Ute lands.
Ouray and Brunot struck a deal.
The US would get the land in question so thatthey could mine it, but they were supposed
(07:20):
to give it back when they had finished.
And guess what the US Government has neverdone.
I sure you’re surprised.
So what does this have to do with Alfred Packer?
Well, it was the San Juan gold and silverrush that lured Alfred Packer out of Utah
and into Colorado.
Alfred Packer was many things.
But one thing we’re pretty sure of is thatPacker was a pathological liar.
(07:44):
From all the records of the people who traveledwith him emerges a theme: the dude sucked.
He lied.
He was argumentative.
And he apparently had a distinctive high squeakyvoice that just annoyed everyone.
Before working in the mines, Packer had triedto make it as a scout for traveling parties.
But unfortunately for Al, he was a terribleguide.
(08:07):
He always got lost.
But now that there were men who were readyto leave Utah for Colorado in search of gold
and silver, Good Ole Al met a group of themon their way out of Utah and was like, “Dearest
Bros, I am a scout who will definitely notget you lost, let me take you to Colorado,
the place I know like the back of my hand.”
(08:29):
For better or for worse, this group of 20men agreed to let Packer take the wheel and
head out to Colorado.
And to Al’s credit, he got them to Colorado(because it’s not that hard), but it took
way longer than expected.
Winter was coming and the wild Rocky Mountainsare probably the last place you want to spend
(08:50):
the dead of winter without central heating.
The party found out Packer was full of itquickly.
Many of them commented on how annoying hewas, how he had overstated his knowledge of
the San Juans, was greedy with the rations,loved to argue, and other such shortcomings.
The dude sounds like a real peach!
Well, in January of 1874, Packer and his partyreached the camp of Chief Ouray.
(09:16):
Ouray was gracious enough to let the men intohis camp, and he told them they were welcome
to stay there throughout the winter.
Going any further into the mountains at thistime of year was dangerous, and Ouray said
that not even a Ute would dare try to traversethe mountains in the dead of winter.
A few weeks afterwards, word got to Ouray’scamp that there had been a major find in Breckenridge,
(09:42):
Colorado, and now the prospecting party hadmajor FOMO.
About half the party still had their wagonsand other provisions, so they weren’t going
anywhere.
But 11 of them, including Packer, did nothave much to carry with them and decided that
they were going to make a go for it.
In February.
In the Rocky Mountains.
After the native leader said that you reallyshouldn’t do that.
(10:05):
Packer made it worse.
Ouray told the 11 men that if they absolutelyhad to go right now, they should follow the
Gunnison River.
5 of the 11 men agreed.
But Shifty Al was like, “Nah, bros, we shouldgo through the mountains!
I know this area pretty well and it’s faster.”
5 men went with Packer, the other 5 stuckto Ouray’s directions and stuck to the river.
(10:31):
Ouray gave the men food enough to keep themfed for 14 days.
It turned out that they’d be out there formuch longer than 14 days.
They had no heavy clothing, minimal supplies,and only a handful of weapons.
Alfred Packer finally emerged from the woodson April 16th, 1874, over two months after
(10:53):
his party had set out.
He had arrived at the Los Pinos Indian Agency,which, after begging for help, Packer was
given food and shelter.
He told everyone at the agency that he hadbeen with a party of five other men, but that
they had turned on him and left him abandonedon the side of the mountain, though they did
(11:13):
leave him with a rifle.
Packer had that rifle with him when he arrivedat the agency.
Packer sold the rifle and headed to the nearbytown of Saguache, where he arranged a hotel
room at some expense and started throwingmoney around generally.
Not long after Packer had arrived in Saguache,a few of the original party members who had
(11:36):
stayed back with Chief Ouray also came intotown.
They saw Packer – well, I imagine they probablyheard him – and they approached him and
they asked where their other companions hadgone.
Packer told his former companions that thefive other men who were with him left him
behind to go searching for food.
He presumed that they had abandoned him andhe was forced to leave them behind and go
(12:00):
search for help.
He claimed to not know their fate.
His former companions were like, “uh, bro,that doesn’t track at all.
You look well fed, and why would those brosabandon their scout when they don’t know
the terrain?”
There were arguments, threats made, and Packerdecided that he needed to leave Saguache.
(12:21):
Back at Los Pinos Indian Agency, the fivemen who decided to stick to the river route
now showed up there too.
They heard that Packer had been there, andthey discredited everything that Packer had
told those he encountered at the Agency.
Then the man in charge of the Agency, GeneralCharles Adams, got involved.
(12:42):
They brought Packer back to the Agency.
When he arrived back at the Agency, Packerfaced General Adams and it wasn’t long before
Packer gave his first official statement.
Packer told General Adams that his party hadbegun to starve and subsisted on rosebuds
and the occasional rabbit.
Eventually, Packer claimed, their hunger ledone of the men to hit another, Israel Swan,
(13:08):
in the head with a hatchet and killed himwhile Packer was out gathering firewood.
Packer and the remaining four party membersbutchered Swan’s body and consumed his flesh.
As they ran out of meat, the remaining fourparty members plotted the next to die and
be consumed, until only two men were left,Packer and Shannon Bell.
(13:31):
Packer claimed that Bell had tried to attackand kill him, and that he had killed Bell
in self-defense.
Packer admitted to butchering Bell and remarkedthat he found Bell’s pectoral muscles to
be the most delicious part.
Gross.
The first attempt to find the bodies of themissing men ensued and during this first attempt
(13:53):
at locating the remains, Packer tried to staban agency clerk who had come with the search
party.
So, General Adams rightly threw him in jail.
In the following summer, a writer for Harper’sWeekly discovered the bodies.
And what the reporter discovered completelycontradicted Packer’s account of what had
transpired.
(14:14):
And suspicions about Packer increased exponentially.
Packer, still in jail for attempted murder,escaped his incarceration.
The rumor was that someone passed him a keyand then he ran off.
Nobody found him.
Not for 9 years.
One of the original party members who hadstayed behind at Ouray’s camp eventually
(14:37):
found Packer in, of all places, Cheyanne,Wyoming.
This former party member alerted General Adams,and soon Packer was back in Saguache to face
trial for capital murder, though the trialwould take place in the next county over.
By this time, the court of public opinionhad already decided a verdict.
(14:57):
Packer was guilty.
And now Packer was claiming that Shannon Bellhad killed all the other men after Bell had
sent Packer to go search for food.
And Packer also claimed that when he returned,Bell had tried to attack him, and so he had
shot Bell below the belly before grabbinga hatchet and burying it in Bell’s head.
(15:21):
The self-defense uh... defense...
didn’t work.
Packer was found guilty of murder and sentencedto death.
But as unfortunate as Packer had been (I suppose),his lawyers were able to find a loophole.
When Packer allegedly committed these murders,Colorado did not yet exist.
(15:42):
So, because the Colorado government did notexist when the crime occurred, the Colorado
government could not try Packer for the crime.
Kinda sounds like the Chewbacca Defense tome.
Regardless, the death sentence was thrownout.
And Packer could not be tried for murder asecond time.
But he could be tried for voluntary manslaughter,which he was.
(16:04):
And he was found guilty.
Then he was sentenced to 30 years in ColoradoState Penitentiary in Canon City.
Not a place you want to go, by any means.
I have family there.
Not – not – in the prison, in Canon City.
And it’s grown, but you gotta go there fora reson.
Throughout his imprisonment, Packer appealedthe verdict several times and eventually exhausted
(16:29):
his appeals when the Colorado Supreme Courtupheld the verdict and the punishment.
16 years later, Packer had caught the attentionof Polly Pry, a journalist at the Denver Post.
Pry, like many women journalists of the era,wrote on sensational stories like the interviews
of convicted murderers.
(16:51):
Pry took an interest in Packer’s case andbegan writing about him.
Eventually, she traveled to Canon City tomeet with him.
And despite finding him completely repulsive,she came to think that Packer might, in fact,
be innocent.
She continued to write about Packer and eventually,the governor of Colorado agreed to parole
Packer only 18 years into his sentence.
(17:15):
It was important to the governor that Packerbe paroled and not pardoned.
It was his final condition before he agreedto it.
The governor also wanted to make sure thatPacker would never profit from his story and
barred him from doing so.
Packer then went to work for the Denver Postas a guard.
(17:37):
And he always referred to Polly Pry as his“liberator.”
Packer eventually retired to Littleton, Colorado,where he died in 1907.
By all accounts, he had a good reputationwith his neighbors, who remarked that he was
kind, built dollhouses for children, and hadbecome – ironically – a vegetarian.
(17:58):
In 1989, the bodies of the five men that Packerallegedly killed, were exhumed and the researcher,
James Starrs from Georgetown University, concludedthat Packer had, in fact, killed all five
men with a hatchet, done and dusted.
But about a decade later, another historian,David Bailey, discovered what turned out to
(18:22):
be the pistol Packer that claimed to haveused.
It was hanging out in the somewhat-far-awayGrand Junction, Colorado museum, and Packer,
well, he might have been telling the truth.
Packer had later claimed that he had shotBell twice.
The gun had a capacity of five rounds, andwhen David Bailey discovered it in that museum,
(18:47):
only three were left.
Though he could not exhume the bodies, Baileydid study the photographs taken by Starrs,
and noticed that there was a bullet-sizedhole in the pelvis of Shannon Bell, the man
Packer claimed to have killed in self-defense.
Soil analyses were done in 2001, and the resultsshowed that there were lead fragments that
(19:09):
were a match for the pistol and the bulletsPacker claimed to have used.
So the theory these new researchers landedon was that Packer was telling the truth that
he had shot Bell, but whether it was in self-defense,they just didn’t know.
Starrs, for his part, rebuffed this theory,saying that the hole in Bell’s pelvis could
(19:32):
just have easily have been made by an animal.
So what do we do with the story of AlfredPacker besides take a lurid fascination with
it?
A couple of things, I think.
First, Packer’s story tells us about theperils of the west and the brutal nature of
prospecting in the Rocky Mountains.
It’s also an interesting counterpoint tothe more heroic tales of the so-called Mountain
(19:55):
Men like Kit Carson (who quite frankly ismaybe more of a monster than Alfred Packer).
I also think Packer’s story tells us somethingabout ourselves, as do many stories that involve
cannibalism.
These stories make us confront a terrifyingquestion: Would we eat human flesh to survive?
Could hunger drive us do to the unimaginable?
(20:18):
The answer to those questions is often terrifying.
Also, I gotta end it here.
I need you to know that the University ofColorado at Boulder student body named a new
cafeteria it opened in 1968, and they namedit “The Alferd Packer Grill.”
It’s still open.
(20:38):
Today.
Link in the episode description.
Its tag-line – I kid you not – is “Havea Friend for Lunch!”
Now you know.
Thank you for joining me for this episodeof Footnoting History.
Don’t forget to head over to FootnotingHistory.comfor visuals,
links, and sources related to Alfred Packer.
(20:59):
Don’t forget that allof our episodes are now on YouTube, complete
with closedcaptions.
Go visit our channel, like our videos, andsubscribe if you love it.
If you’d like to interact with us, we areon Facebook, Instagram, and
Pinterest @Footnoting History.
We’d love to hear from you,and remember: the best stories are always
in the footnotes.
See you next time.
On April 16th, 1874, Alferd Packer walkedout of the woods near Sagauche, Colorado.
He told a story of survival.
But his legacy as being the “Colorado Cannibal”deserved?
Find out on this episode of Footnoting History.
(00:24):
Hey Footnoters, Josh here with a harrowingstory of adventure, murder, and cannibalism.
Or maybe not.
I’m going to tell you the story of the infamousAlferd Packer, who, at the time, was one of
the most notorious killers not just Coloradohistory, but American history, too.
But this story may not be all that seems tobe, because we’re honestly unsure if Packer
(00:50):
committed the murders he’s accused of.
We’re sure that he ate human flesh to survive(he readily admitted doing so), but the rest
of the story doesn’t have definitive evidenceone way or another.
First of course, some background.
Maybe you’ll find this hilarious.
Maybe you’ll find it disturbing.
Maybe you’ll find it hilariously disturbing.
(01:11):
I first heard of Alferd – or Alfred – Packerwhen I was in elementary school.
Alferd Packer is buried in my hometown – Littleton,Colorado.
If that southern suburb of Denver Coloradois familiar to you, it’s for another reason.
And, I realize some listeners might be thinkingof that event.
(01:31):
So let me answer some questions real quick.
Isn’t that where...
Yes, it is.
You didn’t go there, did you?
Yes, I did.
You weren’t there when it happened, wereyou?
Yes, I was.
But we’re not here to talk about that transformativeevent, we’re here for a little true crime
as history.
When we were told Packer’s story duringthose elementary school years, we also were
(01:53):
treated to a “history of Littleton fieldtrip.”
We went to the Littleton History Museum, wetook a walk through downtown Littleton, which
included touring the historic theater on themain street, and a visit to Alferd Packer’s
grave.
The late 1980s and early 1990s were a heckof a time, man.
Look kids, a MURDEROUS CANNIBAL!
(02:14):
Isn’t that neat!
Oooooooooooh, we all said, I’m sure.
Honestly it feels like something out of TheSimpsons the more that I think about it.
But before we get to Packer and his lost party,I’d like to make a couple of notes on the
word “cannibal” and the idea of cannibalismitself.
It’s difficult to divorce the word “cannibal”from a European colonial context.
(02:38):
As I found out through my research for thisepisode, it was Christopher Columbus who seems
to have heard “canib” when the Carib peopletold him their names.
And quite frankly, whether any peoples ofthe Caribbean world ate the remains of their
fellow humans is still a hotly debated topicand quite controversial.
(03:00):
The other thing that I want to point out isthat cannibalism is also a part of the Europeans’
own stories in America.
Cabeza de Vaca (a Spanish conquistador, whoI will be doing an episode on soon) and his
crew ate the remains of their dead compatriotsinstead of going ashore and negotiating with
(03:21):
the native peoples they encountered (out offear of cannibalism, ironically enough).
If you know the story of the early Jamestown,VA colony, you know about the so-called “starving
time,” when those first settlers ran outof food and turned to the flesh of the dead
to survive.
But the important thing is that the storyof American colonization includes cannibalism
(03:44):
by the colonizers themselves; even as theyfear the cannibalism of native peoples.
It’s just something to.
keep in mind.
So now let me introduce you to our most ineligibleof bachelors, Alfred Packer.
Alfred G. Packer was born on January 21, 1842,near Pittsburgh, PA.
(04:05):
He did not have a particularly great childhood,and fell out with his parents before moving
to Minnesota to try and eek it out as a shoemaker.
From what I gathered from research, he decidedto slightly alter his name to Alferd because
he hated the name that his parents gave him.
If I use Alferd and Alfred interchangeably,I apologize.
(04:28):
It’s the same guy, I promise.
When the American Civil War broke out in 1861,Big Al...
Can I call him Big Al?
Hungry Al seems a bit...
macabre.
In any event, Big Al enlisted in the UnionArmy in 1862.
But Packer was an epileptic and struggledwith seizures, so he received an honorable
(04:50):
discharge about 8 months after his initialenlistment.
He enlisted in the Union Army again in 1863,but again, his seizures struck again and he
received a second honorable discharge in 1864.
Now Big Al was a bit stuck.
He could have gone back to his shoemakinggig, but, the dude wasn’t exactly a sneakerhead.
(05:12):
Not that they had sneakers back in 1864 likewe do, but, come on, work with me a little
bit here.
I know YOU want a pair of Air Alferds.
I’d worry about the leather though.
Yup.
So Alfred Packer did what anyone in the post-CivilWar era would do when they had no real direction
(05:33):
in life.
He went out west in search of his fortune.
Now, we have this image in our minds of theseintrepid men out on their own in the West,
finding veins of silver or gold, strikingit rich, and living the good life.
But, folks, the reality of the West does notmatch those expectations.
The West, such as it was, had been quite corporatized,especially in agriculture and mining.
(05:57):
So when Packer got out there, that’s thereality that he found.
Don’t think of the prospector standing inthe river with his pan and sifting for gold.
Most miners were wage workers who worked longhours in incredibly dangerous conditions.
Packer ended up taking a series of odd jobs,but spent a good amount of time working in
a copper mine in Utah.
(06:19):
Big Al would catch the prospecting bug inthe early 1870s, when a new gold and silver
rush began in the San Juan Mountains in southwesternColorado.
If you’ve ever been to Silverton or Tellurideor even Ouray – you've been in the San Juans.
A quick note (06:35):
Before the massive influx of miners into the San Juans in search of gold
and silver, this was land that belonged tothe Ute people.
The Ute had made deals with the United Statesgovernment for sale of land, but the US government,
as it so often did (and does) with indigenouspeoples, broke that agreement.
(06:57):
In the case of the San Juans, the governmentsent Felix Brunot to negotiate with Ouray,
one of the Ute leaders in the area (and aquite controversial figure to put it mildly)
to keep out the prospectors who were trespassingon Ute lands.
Ouray and Brunot struck a deal.
The US would get the land in question so thatthey could mine it, but they were supposed
(07:20):
to give it back when they had finished.
And guess what the US Government has neverdone.
I sure you’re surprised.
So what does this have to do with Alfred Packer?
Well, it was the San Juan gold and silverrush that lured Alfred Packer out of Utah
and into Colorado.
Alfred Packer was many things.
But one thing we’re pretty sure of is thatPacker was a pathological liar.
(07:44):
From all the records of the people who traveledwith him emerges a theme: the dude sucked.
He lied.
He was argumentative.
And he apparently had a distinctive high squeakyvoice that just annoyed everyone.
Before working in the mines, Packer had triedto make it as a scout for traveling parties.
But unfortunately for Al, he was a terribleguide.
(08:07):
He always got lost.
But now that there were men who were readyto leave Utah for Colorado in search of gold
and silver, Good Ole Al met a group of themon their way out of Utah and was like, “Dearest
Bros, I am a scout who will definitely notget you lost, let me take you to Colorado,
the place I know like the back of my hand.”
(08:29):
For better or for worse, this group of 20men agreed to let Packer take the wheel and
head out to Colorado.
And to Al’s credit, he got them to Colorado(because it’s not that hard), but it took
way longer than expected.
Winter was coming and the wild Rocky Mountainsare probably the last place you want to spend
(08:50):
the dead of winter without central heating.
The party found out Packer was full of itquickly.
Many of them commented on how annoying hewas, how he had overstated his knowledge of
the San Juans, was greedy with the rations,loved to argue, and other such shortcomings.
The dude sounds like a real peach!
Well, in January of 1874, Packer and his partyreached the camp of Chief Ouray.
(09:16):
Ouray was gracious enough to let the men intohis camp, and he told them they were welcome
to stay there throughout the winter.
Going any further into the mountains at thistime of year was dangerous, and Ouray said
that not even a Ute would dare try to traversethe mountains in the dead of winter.
A few weeks afterwards, word got to Ouray’scamp that there had been a major find in Breckenridge,
(09:42):
Colorado, and now the prospecting party hadmajor FOMO.
About half the party still had their wagonsand other provisions, so they weren’t going
anywhere.
But 11 of them, including Packer, did nothave much to carry with them and decided that
they were going to make a go for it.
In February.
In the Rocky Mountains.
After the native leader said that you reallyshouldn’t do that.
(10:05):
Packer made it worse.
Ouray told the 11 men that if they absolutelyhad to go right now, they should follow the
Gunnison River.
5 of the 11 men agreed.
But Shifty Al was like, “Nah, bros, we shouldgo through the mountains!
I know this area pretty well and it’s faster.”
5 men went with Packer, the other 5 stuckto Ouray’s directions and stuck to the river.
(10:31):
Ouray gave the men food enough to keep themfed for 14 days.
It turned out that they’d be out there formuch longer than 14 days.
They had no heavy clothing, minimal supplies,and only a handful of weapons.
Alfred Packer finally emerged from the woodson April 16th, 1874, over two months after
(10:53):
his party had set out.
He had arrived at the Los Pinos Indian Agency,which, after begging for help, Packer was
given food and shelter.
He told everyone at the agency that he hadbeen with a party of five other men, but that
they had turned on him and left him abandonedon the side of the mountain, though they did
(11:13):
leave him with a rifle.
Packer had that rifle with him when he arrivedat the agency.
Packer sold the rifle and headed to the nearbytown of Saguache, where he arranged a hotel
room at some expense and started throwingmoney around generally.
Not long after Packer had arrived in Saguache,a few of the original party members who had
(11:36):
stayed back with Chief Ouray also came intotown.
They saw Packer – well, I imagine they probablyheard him – and they approached him and
they asked where their other companions hadgone.
Packer told his former companions that thefive other men who were with him left him
behind to go searching for food.
He presumed that they had abandoned him andhe was forced to leave them behind and go
(12:00):
search for help.
He claimed to not know their fate.
His former companions were like, “uh, bro,that doesn’t track at all.
You look well fed, and why would those brosabandon their scout when they don’t know
the terrain?”
There were arguments, threats made, and Packerdecided that he needed to leave Saguache.
(12:21):
Back at Los Pinos Indian Agency, the fivemen who decided to stick to the river route
now showed up there too.
They heard that Packer had been there, andthey discredited everything that Packer had
told those he encountered at the Agency.
Then the man in charge of the Agency, GeneralCharles Adams, got involved.
(12:42):
They brought Packer back to the Agency.
When he arrived back at the Agency, Packerfaced General Adams and it wasn’t long before
Packer gave his first official statement.
Packer told General Adams that his party hadbegun to starve and subsisted on rosebuds
and the occasional rabbit.
Eventually, Packer claimed, their hunger ledone of the men to hit another, Israel Swan,
(13:08):
in the head with a hatchet and killed himwhile Packer was out gathering firewood.
Packer and the remaining four party membersbutchered Swan’s body and consumed his flesh.
As they ran out of meat, the remaining fourparty members plotted the next to die and
be consumed, until only two men were left,Packer and Shannon Bell.
(13:31):
Packer claimed that Bell had tried to attackand kill him, and that he had killed Bell
in self-defense.
Packer admitted to butchering Bell and remarkedthat he found Bell’s pectoral muscles to
be the most delicious part.
Gross.
The first attempt to find the bodies of themissing men ensued and during this first attempt
(13:53):
at locating the remains, Packer tried to staban agency clerk who had come with the search
party.
So, General Adams rightly threw him in jail.
In the following summer, a writer for Harper’sWeekly discovered the bodies.
And what the reporter discovered completelycontradicted Packer’s account of what had
transpired.
(14:14):
And suspicions about Packer increased exponentially.
Packer, still in jail for attempted murder,escaped his incarceration.
The rumor was that someone passed him a keyand then he ran off.
Nobody found him.
Not for 9 years.
One of the original party members who hadstayed behind at Ouray’s camp eventually
(14:37):
found Packer in, of all places, Cheyanne,Wyoming.
This former party member alerted General Adams,and soon Packer was back in Saguache to face
trial for capital murder, though the trialwould take place in the next county over.
By this time, the court of public opinionhad already decided a verdict.
(14:57):
Packer was guilty.
And now Packer was claiming that Shannon Bellhad killed all the other men after Bell had
sent Packer to go search for food.
And Packer also claimed that when he returned,Bell had tried to attack him, and so he had
shot Bell below the belly before grabbinga hatchet and burying it in Bell’s head.
(15:21):
The self-defense uh... defense...
didn’t work.
Packer was found guilty of murder and sentencedto death.
But as unfortunate as Packer had been (I suppose),his lawyers were able to find a loophole.
When Packer allegedly committed these murders,Colorado did not yet exist.
(15:42):
So, because the Colorado government did notexist when the crime occurred, the Colorado
government could not try Packer for the crime.
Kinda sounds like the Chewbacca Defense tome.
Regardless, the death sentence was thrownout.
And Packer could not be tried for murder asecond time.
But he could be tried for voluntary manslaughter,which he was.
(16:04):
And he was found guilty.
Then he was sentenced to 30 years in ColoradoState Penitentiary in Canon City.
Not a place you want to go, by any means.
I have family there.
Not – not – in the prison, in Canon City.
And it’s grown, but you gotta go there fora reson.
Throughout his imprisonment, Packer appealedthe verdict several times and eventually exhausted
(16:29):
his appeals when the Colorado Supreme Courtupheld the verdict and the punishment.
16 years later, Packer had caught the attentionof Polly Pry, a journalist at the Denver Post.
Pry, like many women journalists of the era,wrote on sensational stories like the interviews
of convicted murderers.
(16:51):
Pry took an interest in Packer’s case andbegan writing about him.
Eventually, she traveled to Canon City tomeet with him.
And despite finding him completely repulsive,she came to think that Packer might, in fact,
be innocent.
She continued to write about Packer and eventually,the governor of Colorado agreed to parole
Packer only 18 years into his sentence.
(17:15):
It was important to the governor that Packerbe paroled and not pardoned.
It was his final condition before he agreedto it.
The governor also wanted to make sure thatPacker would never profit from his story and
barred him from doing so.
Packer then went to work for the Denver Postas a guard.
(17:37):
And he always referred to Polly Pry as his“liberator.”
Packer eventually retired to Littleton, Colorado,where he died in 1907.
By all accounts, he had a good reputationwith his neighbors, who remarked that he was
kind, built dollhouses for children, and hadbecome – ironically – a vegetarian.
(17:58):
In 1989, the bodies of the five men that Packerallegedly killed, were exhumed and the researcher,
James Starrs from Georgetown University, concludedthat Packer had, in fact, killed all five
men with a hatchet, done and dusted.
But about a decade later, another historian,David Bailey, discovered what turned out to
(18:22):
be the pistol Packer that claimed to haveused.
It was hanging out in the somewhat-far-awayGrand Junction, Colorado museum, and Packer,
well, he might have been telling the truth.
Packer had later claimed that he had shotBell twice.
The gun had a capacity of five rounds, andwhen David Bailey discovered it in that museum,
(18:47):
only three were left.
Though he could not exhume the bodies, Baileydid study the photographs taken by Starrs,
and noticed that there was a bullet-sizedhole in the pelvis of Shannon Bell, the man
Packer claimed to have killed in self-defense.
Soil analyses were done in 2001, and the resultsshowed that there were lead fragments that
(19:09):
were a match for the pistol and the bulletsPacker claimed to have used.
So the theory these new researchers landedon was that Packer was telling the truth that
he had shot Bell, but whether it was in self-defense,they just didn’t know.
Starrs, for his part, rebuffed this theory,saying that the hole in Bell’s pelvis could
(19:32):
just have easily have been made by an animal.
So what do we do with the story of AlfredPacker besides take a lurid fascination with
it?
A couple of things, I think.
First, Packer’s story tells us about theperils of the west and the brutal nature of
prospecting in the Rocky Mountains.
It’s also an interesting counterpoint tothe more heroic tales of the so-called Mountain
(19:55):
Men like Kit Carson (who quite frankly ismaybe more of a monster than Alfred Packer).
I also think Packer’s story tells us somethingabout ourselves, as do many stories that involve
cannibalism.
These stories make us confront a terrifyingquestion: Would we eat human flesh to survive?
Could hunger drive us do to the unimaginable?
(20:18):
The answer to those questions is often terrifying.
Also, I gotta end it here.
I need you to know that the University ofColorado at Boulder student body named a new
cafeteria it opened in 1968, and they namedit “The Alferd Packer Grill.”
It’s still open.
(20:38):
Today.
Link in the episode description.
Its tag-line – I kid you not – is “Havea Friend for Lunch!”
Now you know.
Thank you for joining me for this episodeof Footnoting History.
Don’t forget to head over to FootnotingHistory.comfor visuals,
links, and sources related to Alfred Packer.
(20:59):
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in the footnotes.
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