SYMHC Classics: The Case of the Colorado Cannibal, Alferd Packer

It's an unsettling 2012 episode! 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

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, everybody. We're once again pulling from a previous
October episode. This one comes from previous hosts Sarah and Deblina,
dates back to it's on Alfred Packer, also known as
the Colorado cannibal who. The end of the episode takes
a lighter tone than you might imagine because Alfred Packer

(00:22):
has become something of a folk hero in spite of
the immense taboos surrounding cannibalism. So as long as you
are not too squeamish, enjoyed. Welcome to Stuff you missed
in History Class. A production of I Heart Radios How
Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm de

(00:48):
Blin a Chuk reporting and I'm Faradali. And if you're
a regular listener of this podcast, you probably know that
we've covered our fair share of historical murder, 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

(01:10):
include an act that some considered to be even more disturbing,
and that's cannibalism. We've actually never really 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

(01:32):
set out on that trip, only forty seven lived to
tell about it, and some of those people did resort
to cannibalism in order to survive. So 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

(01:55):
the end of eighteen seventy three and also ran into
some pretty treacherous winter weather on his trip. 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

(02:17):
and what kind of set up this mystery was a
series of suspicions, accusations, and confessions that didn't 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's only convicted cannibal.
Quite a distinction exactly, But it also created one of

(02:40):
the great mysteries of the American West because to this
day people still debate about whether Packer was 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

(03:03):
from Bingham Canyon, Utah, and headed towards Breckenridge, Colorado, 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

(03:25):
as Alfred like with the r D E. R D
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 artist 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

(03:46):
spelled wrong, You're just gonna go with it, Alfred. According
to information from the Alfred Packer Collection of the Colorado
State Archives, Packer was born in Pennsylvania on November twenty one,
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

(04:09):
these due to epilepsy. The rest 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 trips, so, according to an article by Diana to
Stephano in the Journal of Social History, he offered up

(04:31):
twenty five bucks and his services as a 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 Stefana's article, it didn't take long for
Packard to really robe his traveling companions the wrong way,

(04:53):
and there were a few reasons for that. First of all,
there was a rumor going around that Packer had served
some hard time I'm 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

(05:14):
with them. He would apparently ask 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

(05:36):
lost more than once, not something that would endear him
to his traveling companions. 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 Uncompagre River in
Colorado in mid December, they were starving pretty much. The
chief made it really clear to them that he thought

(05:58):
it was a really bad idea for them to continue
you 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 Penos Indian

(06:19):
Agency on the 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

(06:40):
the kind of guy you want with you and already
rough journey. 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 is real Swan and

(07:01):
Frank Miller. Chief Eray 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. April sixteenth,
eighteen seventy four, it was only one disheveled prospector who

(07:24):
stumbled into Las Pinos Indian Agency near Gunnison, Colorado, and
that was, of course Alfred Packer, our old friend. 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
had happened, what his story was. He told them that
he had set out from Chief Eray's winter camp with

(07:46):
the five other men, but the other men had soon
abandoned him when he wasn't able to keep up due
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

(08:09):
finally did make their way to the agency. Those guys
especially were immediately suspicious of this story. And there were
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 Ray astutely observed this that

(08:29):
he seemed a little too hefty and said, you too
damn fat. Another thing that seemed really off. Packer suddenly
had all this cash on him. So not only was
he packing a few extra pounds, he had all this
money even though he had been pretty much broke before.
Two really strange points. So, of course people are asking

(08:51):
more and more questions about this, and so, feeling under pressure,
Packer offers up a very different version of events. This
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

(09:13):
as food by the rest. After the men were picked
off one by one. Eventually, of course, there were only
two of them left. 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

(09:34):
he's not seen as a murderer, not a murdering cold
blood anyway. They were all trying the cannibalism together. 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 enough. I guess they needed him
to try to show where he went, but they couldn't

(09:56):
find anything. Still though, even without any physical ence, Packer
was arrested under the suspicion of murder anyway, and 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

(10:17):
an artist for Harper's magazine named John A. Randolph discovered
the bodies of the missing prospectors near Lake City, Colorado.
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

(10:39):
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
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

(11:00):
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
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

(11:20):
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
the lamb for nine years. After that, he was finally
discovered by a merchant named Frenchy Carbon Zone in a
saloon in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and picked up March eleventh, eighteen

(11:42):
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 up his second confession, and this one was
the one that he would more or less stick to
you throughout his life, though in later confessions some of

(12:03):
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 the same from here on out. Okay, So basically
his second story 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

(12:24):
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 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

(12:46):
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,
pack said 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

(13:08):
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 really up in arms about here murdering five men.
It suggested when you read these accounts that people would

(13:28):
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 guys that murdering for the for their money as well,
it seemed. So the jury apparently didn't buy this new confession, though,

(13:52):
because Packer was found guilty and was sentenced to hang.
When the judge, who was Judge Melville be Gary, handed
on his sentence on April three, legend has it that
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

(14:12):
the neck until you are dead, dead, dead, as a
warning against further reducing the democratic population of this county. Yeah,
this looks act worrying about the Democrats. It doesn't seem
to be in the version of sentencing that's in the
Colorado State Archives. The dead, dead, dead part is. But
according to Curry's article, during the New Deal, Colorado Republicans

(14:34):
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
Alfred Packard clubs. Ultimately, the Packer was not hanged due

(14:58):
to a technicality. Essentially, the territorial murder laws had changed,
and the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that prosecutions of murders
before May eighteen eighty one were invalid. Packer's case was retried.
He did get forty years in prison, he only ended
up serving eighteen of those. He was finally paroled in

(15:19):
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 decided
Packer was guilty of murder, and of course many people

(15:40):
still assumed 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
he's been responsible for the exhimation of many controversial historical figures,

(16:02):
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,
which suggested that almost all of the flesh had been removed. Also,

(16:24):
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
killer because a war wound that was found on Bell's

(16:45):
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. Now, the Museum
of Western Colorado curator and historian David Bailey is one
of those people who has led the charge to prove
Packers innocence. So Bailey started digging into Packers story when

(17:07):
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
were sealed off over after the last exhimation to protect

(17:29):
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
in the gun. So it's starting to sound kind of

(17:49):
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 Bells
skeleton had some holes in it, possibly gunshot wounds in
the pelvic region. Also, his wallet or his pocket book

(18:14):
whatever he was carrying with all that cash the theme
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 a mock trial for him in
two thousand two, in which Packer was found innocent. Whether

(18:35):
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 nineteen sixties,
for example, students at the University of Colorado at Boulder
have eaten at the Alfred Packer Grill, and according to
Curry's article, that l Cannibal burrito is apparently a popular
menu item there. Oh goodness. A bust of Packer was

(18:58):
also placed in the Colorado state capital in two So
he made it into the capital. I mean 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 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

(19:21):
turned it into a film called Cannibal the Musical. And unsurprisingly,
Packer has also just made his way into folk songs too.
There have actually been several songs written about Packer, including
nineteen sixty four is the Ballad of Alfred Packer, which
was written by folk singer phil Ochs. The chorus for
that song went, they called him a murderer, a cannibal

(19:43):
of 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. Al Right, well, I feel
like you may be picking that up. Oh you do,
after I go try the l cannibal burrito. I don't know.

(20:04):
I don't know. Well, you like to cook, I mean
like you like meat, like cooking, but I usually try
to avoid any associations with cannibalism. And as to my cooking,
as a rule of thumb, I guess that's a pretty
good it's a pretty good rule of the thumbs in
your daily cuisine. There you go. Well, 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

(20:27):
not a cannibal. Thank you so much for joining us
on this Saturday. If you have heard an email address
or a Facebook you are l or something similar over
the course of today's episode, since it is from the
archive that might be out of date now, you can

(20:47):
email us at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com,
and you can find us all over social media at
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(21:08):
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