Eat Thy Neighbour (11 page)

Discouraged by two discharges in less than eighteen months, Packer returned to shoemaking until 1871 (or 1872 depending upon the source material) when the itch to travel became too much for him to bear. He headed west to the gold fields of Utah and Colorado where he alternated between prospecting and returning to the cobbler’s last long enough to grubstake himself for another turn at the sluice box. If nothing else, Alf Packer certainly looked the part of a rugged westerner; he was above average in height, had piercing, deep-set grey eyes, a massive head of flowing, dark wavy hair, a large moustache and a goatee. All in all, Alf cut an imposing figure.

The summer of 1873 found Packer in Provo, Utah, again prospecting for gold. As the weather turned cold, he drifted towards Bingham where he fell into conversation with a group of men who were anxious to find a guide to lead them south to the new goldfields at Breckenridge, Colorado. With no immediate prospects in sight, Packer told them he knew the territory well, even claiming that he had driven an ore-wagon in several mining camps in the general area of Colorado Territory. Whether this was true or not remains uncertain, but the men believed him and within a few days a group of twenty-one prospectors had agreed to share the expense of hiring ‘Alferd’ as their guide. By now it was mid-November and any sane man knows that the dead of winter is not the time to trek across the Rocky Mountains – but this fact never seemed to dawn on anyone in the group, including Packer.

For three months the expedition trudged through ever-deepening snow and gale-force winds. With their food supply already running low, when they lost several crates of supplies while crossing a half-frozen river on a raft, the situation became
desperate. But for the moment, luck seemed to be with them. On 21 January 1874 the half-frozen, starving crew stumbled into a camp of Ute Indians near present-day Montrose, Colorado. Shaking his head at the stupidity of the white men, the chief, Ouray, took the men in, fed them and urged them to remain with his people until springtime. Sixteen of the party took Ouray’s advice, thanked the chief for his hospitality, and settled in for the winter. Packer himself was more than happy to stay where he was, but five of the men were determined to press on and offered to pay Packer a hefty bonus if he would guide them over the treacherous, wintry heights of the mountains and on to Breckenridge.

The men, Israel Swan, Shannon Bell, George Noon, Frank ‘the Butcher’ Miller and James Humphrey, wheedled and cajoled until, exasperated and anxious for the extra money, Alf agreed. On 9 February, during the harshest days of winter, the six men left Chief Ouray’s camp and set out into the mountains. Only days later the worst blizzard of the year descended on the Rockies, trapping Packer and the others on a trail somewhere near the site of what is today Lake City, Colorado.

Nine weeks later, on 6 April, Alfred Packer stumbled into the Los Pintos Indian Reservation near Gunnison, babbling incoherently about how he and the others had been trapped in the storm, and while he tried to set up a camp, the others went off in search of firewood and food. He didn’t know if Bell, Swan, Noon, Miller and Humphrey had deserted him, or become lost in the blizzard and died. All he knew was that he was alone and had survived two months of lonely hell out there in the wilderness. Among those who heard Packer’s tale of woe was Chief Ouray, who had brought his people to Los Pintos with the spring thaw. He, along with the others, listened to the tragic tale with awe and wonder. As Packer turned to leave the office of local Indian Agent General Charles Adams, Ouray is reported to have muttered, ‘You too damn fat’. Whether the chief actually
said this is almost irrelevant. The fact was that other than suffering from prolonged exposure to the cold, Packer was as sleek as a beaver.

After a few days spent getting warm, Packer left Los Pintos for the nearby town of Saguache, where he seemed to have an excess of cash to throw around in the local saloon. While whooping it up one evening, Packer was confronted by several men who had been among the original party that had elected to remain at the Ute camp for the winter. Packer told the same story to them as he had told on his arrival at Los Pintos, but some of the men noticed he was carrying the skinning knife and rifle of other members of the tiny group that had disappeared into the wilderness.

The men voiced their suspicions to General Adams, who subsequently called Packer into the Los Pintos Agency to make a formal statement. In this, the first of two confessions, Packer abruptly changed his story. On 5 May 1874, he made the following statement:

Old man Swan died first and was eaten by the other five persons, about ten days out from camp; four or five days afterwards Humphrey died and was also eaten; he had about a hundred and thirty dollars [on him]. I found the pocket-book and took the money. Some time afterwards while I was carrying wood, the Butcher was killed, as the other two told me, accidentally, and he was eaten. Bell shot ‘California’ [Noon] with Swan’s gun, and I killed Bell; shot him – covered up the remains. Bell wanted to kill me, struck at me with his rifle, struck a tree and broke his gun. I took a large piece of meat along. Then I travelled fourteen days into the ‘Agency’.

The confession was sworn to and witnessed by the local Justice of the Peace, James Downer.

Packer was arrested and taken back to Saguache where he was jailed, pending formal charges. There he languished until 8 August. That day, the remains of the all-too-dead Packer party were found in a valley known as Slumgullion Pass. The discovery was made by John Randolph, a writer for
Harper’s Weekly
, and his Indian guide. As a journalist, Randolph was already familiar with the story as well as Packer’s conflicting claims. The grisly campsite was almost exactly where Packer claimed it would be, but contrary to Packer’s statement, the carcasses were not scattered out along miles of trail. They were clustered together at a single site – and there was evidence of terrible violence. Most of the men’s heads had been split open with a hatchet and large chunks of flesh had been carved from the bodies, particularly in the upper chest and thigh areas.

That same evening, before word of the discovery was brought back to Saguache, Packer managed to escape from his cell. He made it all the way to Arkansas where, for the next nine years, he lived under the name of John Schwartze. His movements and activity during this time remain clouded in mystery but it is certain that by March 1883 he was staying in Wyoming. Here again, exactly where in Wyoming seems to be in dispute. Some sources say Douglas, others insist it was Fort Fetterman and still others claim Cheyenne. What is not in dispute is what happened to him while he was drinking in the local saloon on the evening of 11 March.

By yet another odd twist of fate, Frenchy Carbazon, a member of the original party of twenty-one miners, happened to be in the same watering hole and recognised Packer’s laugh. Hours later, Packer was arrested and hauled to Denver where he was confronted by General Adams for a third time. Again, Packer made a confession and, again, it conflicted with his previous statements. The only details that seemed to remain the same were the claims that whatever he had done was in self-defence and that he had taken money and a rifle from the dead men’s bodies.

The new confession, dated 16 March 1883, runs, in part, as follows:

When we left Ouray’s camp we had about seven days of food for [each] man . . .

When I came back to camp after being gone nearly all day I found the redheaded man [Bell], who [had] acted crazy in the morning, sitting near the fire roasting a piece of meat which he had cut out of the leg of the German butcher [Miller], the latter’s body was lying the furthest off from the fire, down the stream, his skull was crushed in with the hatchet. The other three men were lying near the fire, they were cut in the forehead with the hatchet, some had two, some three cuts – I came within a rod of the fire, when the man [Bell] saw me, he got up with his hatchet [came] towards me when I shot him sideways through the belly, he fell on his face, the hatchet fell forwards. I grabbed it and hit him in the top of the head . . .

I tried to get away that very day but could not, so I lived off the flesh of these men the better part of the 60 days I was out.

I cooked some of the flesh and carried it with me for food.

The confession also explained just how he managed to escape from the Saguache jail. ‘When I was at the Sheriff ’s in Saguache I was passed a key made out of a pen-knife blade . . .’ The name of the friend who smuggled him this key was never divulged.

If there had been some original doubt as to what, if anything, Packer would be charged with, it had long since disappeared. The horrific find at the campsite nine years earlier, along with Packer’s constantly shifting confession, led the authorities to charge him with the single murder of Israel Swan, presumed to have been the first of the party to be killed. Packer was clapped
in irons and hauled back to Lake City to await trial for first-degree murder.

The courtroom of Judge Melville Gerry – Hinsdale District Court, Lake City, Colorado – was packed on the morning of 6 April when case number 1883DC379, the case of the ‘Colorado Cannibal’, went to trial. The trial lasted a week, but when the jury returned from deliberation on the afternoon of the 13th, the verdict was no surprise. Alfred Packer had been found guilty of murder.

In his sentencing of Packer, Judge Gerry said, in part: ‘A jury of twelve honest citizens . . . have set judgement on your case, and upon their oaths they find you guilty of wilful and premeditated murder . . . to the other sickening details of your crime I will not refer . . . On the 19th day of May 1883, you will be taken to a place of execution . . . and you, then and there . . . [will] be hung by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead, and may God have mercy upon your soul.’

The vast and furious mob that had gathered outside the courthouse had no intention of waiting until mid-May. What if Packer escaped again? Rowdy and fuelled by booze, they surged towards the courthouse doors and were only held back by the Sheriff and his deputies, who threatened to shoot the first man who tried to touch Packer. A terrified Alf was bundled through the crowd, shoved into a waiting police wagon and hurtled through the gathering dusk on a wild ride to Gunnison where, rather than having his neck stretched a few weeks later, he remained in jail for the next three years.

Following his conviction, Packer’s lawyers immediately filed an appeal on the grounds that the alleged crime, and the laws governing them, had taken place while Colorado was still a territory. The trial, however, had taken place after it had become a state and certain laws had been changed in the process of statehood, those pertaining to the charges against Packer being a case in point. The appeal was heard in the Colorado Supreme
Court and the conviction overturned in October 1885. If the state still wanted Alf Packer, they would have to try him again – so they did.

Packer’s second trial took place in Gunnison, where he was still being held prisoner. Although he was exonerated of premeditated murder, he was found guilty on five counts of manslaughter. Given a minimum sentence of eight years per charge, Packer was sent to the Colorado State Penitentiary at Cañon City where, considering he was already forty-four years old, he would undoubtedly spend the rest of his life.

Years passed and tales of ‘Alfred Packer the Colorado Cannibal’ had long since ceased to make the news, much less the headlines. But in 1897 Packer wrote yet another version of the horrific events that had taken place in Slumgullion Pass, during the winter of 1874. This new, much longer and improved version of his story was penned at the request of editor D.C. Hatch of the
Rocky Mountain News
out of Denver, who hoped to get a little mileage out of an old story. This time, Packer’s statement ran to more than 3,000 words. He obviously worked hard to generate as much sympathy for himself as possible, as the two-sentence extract below makes clear.

Can you imagine my situation – my companions dead and I left alone, surrounded by the midnight horrors of starvation as well as those of utter isolation? My body weak, my mind acted upon in such an awful manner that the greatest wonder is that I ever returned to a rational condition.

When Packer’s account was published it generated the interest Hatch had hoped for, not only among the general public, but also on the part of a woman who went by the most unlikely name of Polly Pry and worked as a journalist for the
Rocky Mountain News
’s major competition, the
Denver Post
.

Today Ms Pry would be labelled a ‘politically correct’ scandalmonger; at the end of the nineteenth century she was called a ‘sob sister’ and a ‘muck raker’. The terms may have changed over the past hundred years, but the meaning remains the same.

Polly Pry, whose real name was Leonel Campbell, was the sort of journalist who took up causes simply because they were there to be taken up. In her world, there were no bad people, only victims who needed to be cuddled and coddled. To her credit, many of the causes she championed over the years were both worthy and noble. She supported miners and other underpaid workers in their struggle to have their unions recognised. She must have raised a lot of ire over the course of her career, because on at least one occasion an attempt was made to assassinate her in her own home.

In late 1899 Pry, along with the
Denver Post
’s legal eagle, one William ‘Plug Hat’ Anderson, was assigned by the
Post
’s co-publishers and editors, Frederick Bonfils and H.H. Tammen, to get the Packer case reopened and wring as much news out of it as possible. It was a job for which the pair were ideally suited. Polly was a Pollyanna if ever there was one, and ‘Plug Hat’ was the epitome of every nasty lawyer joke ever told.

With Pry taking the lead, they went on the theory that if murderers and rapists could regularly be let out on parole, then a man convicted of five counts of manslaughter was due no less. The fact that he may, or may not, have slain his victims to eat them was, technically, of no legal consequence.