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| Alfred Packer aprroaching fort |
Alfred Griner Packer, sometimes called Alferd
Packer, was born in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, on July 21, 1842. His
family moved to Indiana in the early 1850s. Packer enlisted in the Union army
in Minnesota in April 1862, listing his occupation as a shoemaker. He received
an honorable discharge at Fort Ontario, New York, Eight months later.
Packer enlisted in the Union army again at
Ottumwa, Iowa, in June 1863. He was mustered out less than a year later. The
discharge papers said Packer had epilepsy in both instances—constantly going in
and out of seizures—which kept him from performing his duties.
The nine years after Packer left the service are
a blur.
Some historians say he traveled up and down the
Rocky Mountains, prospecting and working odd jobs. Others implicate him in
several murders and robberies throughout Colorado, California, and Utah.
However, no documentation shows that Packer was wanted for committing any
crimes. So, we can assume the accusations were more wishful thinking, trying to
make Alfred Packer appear worse than he was.
In November 1873, Packer played a bluff,
pretending to be an experienced guide familiar with mountain travel. Bob McGrue
hired him to guide nineteen prospectors to the newly discovered gold and silver
mines in the San Juan Mountains.
Things went wrong almost from the start. Heavy
snow and freezing temperatures battered the area, making travel nearly
impossible. Finally, after three months, the men stumbled into Chief Ouray’s
camp near present-day Montrose, Colorado.
Ouray told them it was too dangerous to travel and recommended staying at his camp until spring. But unfortunately, the miners were eager to get to their destination. So four of them set off for the government cattle ranch the following week. Packer set off for the Los Pinos Indian Agency with five other miners on February 9.
Alfred Packer appeared at the Los Pinos Agency on
April 16, 1874, sharing a tale of woe.
He told Stephen Dole, the private secretary of
General Charles Adams, that he was part of a party of prospectors headed toward
the San Juan mines. Unfortunately, he went lame about fifty miles from the
agency, and rather than take care of him, the other members of his party
abandoned him. However, they left him some food and a Winchester to shoot game
should he find any. During the last week, he’d eaten some roots and a rabbit he
had killed.
The workers at the agency took Packer at his
word and looked after him. Then, in late April, as the snow melted away, some
Indians came running into camp carrying two strips of what they called “white
man’s meat.” They had found it on a hill, just outside the agency. The white
skin “firmly adhered” to it convinced them it had been cut from the thigh of a
white man.
Packer passed out when he saw the meat. Then, when
he came to, he promised to tell General Adams the true story of what happened.
The six members of his party were hungry. So rather
than starve, they killed Israel Swan, the oldest of them. Then they carved him
up like a side of beef, cutting large strips of meat from his calves, thighs,
and breasts. Next, they divided his money, several thousand dollars, among the
five survivors.
Two days later, they were out of food again and
decided Frank “Butch” Miller’s time was up. He was the fattest man among them
and had plenty of flesh to satiate their hunger. One man hit Miller over the
head with a hatchet while he was bending over to grab some firewood.
James Humphrey and George “California” Noon died
next. Bell and Packer got them when they weren’t expecting it.
That left just Packer and Shannon Wilson Bell.
They made a “solemn compact” not to kill one another for food and make the best
of things, even if it meant starving to death. But their pact didn’t last long.
Bell went crazy. He started screaming that he
couldn’t stand it anymore. “One of us must make food for the other,” he said, “right
here.” Then, he attacked Packer, trying to club him with his rifle. Packer
fended off the blow and killed him with his hatchet.
He cut Bell’s body up and continued his
journey. Then, when he saw the Los Pinos Agency, he threw away the remaining
meat.
Alfred Packer with Chief Ouray
Finally, Packer confessed that he’d grown quite fond of the taste of human flesh. “The breasts of the men were the sweetest meat he had ever tasted.” Or at least that’s what the papers said. It seems unlikely that Packer would have confessed to enjoying human flesh.
After listening to Alfred Packer’s story,
General Adams sympathized with him, saying it wasn’t the first time a starving
group of travelers turned to cannibalism to survive. Still, he decided to
perform his due diligence and check it out. Adams sent a scouting party to
search for Bell’s body, but they returned empty-handed. Packer got confused and
couldn’t remember where he had camped. And then, when it looked as if Packer
would walk away scot-free, John Randolph, an illustrator for Harper’s Weekly
Magazine, discovered five bodies near Lake San Cristobal.
The area’s description meshed with where Packer
said he left Bell’s body. Four of the bodies lay in a row. The fifth lay a
short distance away, with the head wholly severed.
William Shannon Bell, Israel Swan,
James Humphrey, and George “California” Noon had the backs of their heads
bashed in with a hatchet while they slept. Frank “Butch” Miller was shot to
death, most likely with a broken rifle found lying nearby. A close inspection
of the bodies revealed that Miller’s body had been cut up for food. In
addition, the breasts had been sliced off two of the other men.
The obvious conclusion was that Packer had
killed all five men simultaneously, then sliced them up for food.
Packer was in jail in Saguache County when the
bodies were found, but somehow escaped. After that, he disappeared for almost a
decade. Then, in January 1883, a prospector wrote General Adams saying Packer
was working as a rancher and prospector near Fort Fetterman, Wyoming.
Detectives arrested Alfred Packer shortly after
that. He made another confession. It was somewhat closer to the truth, but not
quite.
When they left the Ute Chief Ouray’s camp, Packer
said they had, at best, a week’s provisions for one man. They quickly ran out
of food, the weather turned against them, and all they could see was snow in
every direction.
Packer went up the mountain to scout for food.
When he returned, Bell was roasting a piece of meat over the fire. The German
butcher, Mills (Frank “Butch” Miller), lay dead nearby. His head had been
smashed in with a hatchet.
“The other three men were lying near the fire.
They were cut in the forehead with a hatchet. Some had two, and some had three
cuts. When [Bell] saw me, he got up with his hatchet and came toward me. I shot
him sideways through the belly, and he fell on his face.”
Packer grabbed the hatchet and smacked Bell on
the top of the head. The following day, he searched the men and got roughly
$70. Bell had a $50 bill in his pocket. The others had less than $20 between
them. He didn’t know if there was any more money in the outfit.
Packer fed on the men’s flesh for the next
sixty days while waiting for the weather to break. Finally, he cooked up the
last meat and stuffed it in a bag before starting for the agency. When he
spotted the agency buildings, he threw away the last of the flesh.
Of course, it was all a lie. The bodies had
been discovered nearly a decade ago. General Adams knew Packer’s story did not
match the evidence found at the murder scene.
At his trial, Packer admitted he stopped a
hundred yards short of where the bodies were concealed when General Adams sent
out his scouting expedition in 1874. He was afraid for his life should the
bodies be found.
After escaping jail in Saguache County,
Colorado, Packer said he traveled a bit, settling down in Wyoming Territory,
where he was known as John Schwartze.
Alfred Packer was tried at the Hinsdale
Courthouse in Lake City in April 1883. The jury found him guilty of murdering
his five companions, and the judge scheduled Packer to be hanged by the neck
until dead on May 19. However, his life was spared through a legal technicality.
When Colorado became a state in 1876, it created a new set of
laws. But unfortunately, when they set aside the old murder law, they didn’t
provide for outstanding cases that occurred while it was in effect. So, as a
result, Packer could not be tried for murder.
The Colorado Supreme Court reversed Packer’s sentence in October
1885. They agreed he could not be tried for murder but left open the lesser
charge of manslaughter. Packer was retried in Gunnison County in August 1886.
This time he was convicted on five counts of manslaughter and received a
forty-year sentence—eight years for each man he killed.
Packer tried for a pardon at least five times, but the brutality
and nature of his crimes prevented any governor from signing off on his
release. Finally, in 1899, Leonel Ross
Campbell—Polly Pry— a journalist for the Denver Evening Post, took up
Alfred Packer’s cause.
She visited the Canyon City prison in May 1899,
talked with Alfred Packer, and soon became his champion. And then, after two
years with Packer’s name constantly in the headlines, Governor Charles Thomas granted
him conditional parole on January 7, 1901. It was the governor’s last day in
office, and he could afford to be generous. Governor James B. Orman was
inaugurated the following day.
Alfred Packer, the Colorado
Cannibal, enjoyed the last six years of his life as a free man. He died on
April 23, 1907, after suffering seizures for most of the previous year.
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