I once picked up a hitchhiker during my college years and it
turned out to be one of the weirdest days of my life.
I was born and raised in the same town for 19 years and only
moved away for college to the big city about an hour and 20
minutes away. After completing my freshman
year, I packed up my dorm and hit the road for home, where I
plan to spend the next couple of months relaxing and maybe
working before the next semester began.
In the fall, the highway stretched out before me like a
familiar friend, it's twists and turns etched into my memory like
a well worn map. I had driven this route
countless times, from my hometown to the city and back
again, the miles blurring together like a well rehearsed
script. But on this particular trip,
something different stood out. A lone figure standing on the
side of the road, thumb outstretched in a futile bid for
attention. He was almost standing on his
tippy toes, really waving that arm out into the road.
I had never seen anything like it, so I figured it was just his
method of waving down a car. At first I thought nothing of
it, assuming he was another hapless soul trying his luck on
the busy highway. But as I drew closer, something
about the guy's demeanor struck a chord with me.
He looked lost. Not just stranded, but genuinely
adrift, like a ship without an anchor or rudder.
His clothes were clean, if not a little rumpled, and his eyes
held a hint of desperation that tugged at my sympathies.
He couldn't have been much older than me, and for a moment I
envisioned myself out there, desperate in the sun, hoping a
kind soul might stop, even just for a second.
Before I knew it, I was pulling over, tires crunching on the
gravel shoulder. The hitchhiker's eyes lit up
with gratitude as he approached my window.
As he got closer, I could start to see some finer details.
Young, right around my age, very clean, as if he had showered
that morning, but also very fidgety.
Something was a little off about his demeanor.
Hey, thanks for stopping, man. He said, his voice laced with
relief. I'm just trying to get to the
next town over. Had this stupid fight with my
girlfriend. I need to get home before she,
well, before she does something stupid.
I raised an eyebrow, intrigued despite myself.
Sorry to hear that. I said, trying to sound non
committal. But I guess I am headed that way
so I can give you a lift. His face relaxed into a grateful
smile. Thank you man, I owe you one.
As he climbed into the passenger seat, I couldn't help but notice
the faint scent of sweat and anxiety clinging to him like a
shroud. His eyes darted around my car,
taking in the familiar surroundings with a mixture of
curiosity and unease. He looked like an animal caught
in a trap or something. I didn't really know what to
make of it. So, what's your name?
I asked, trying to break the tension.
John. He replied, his voice a little
hesitant. And you are?
I gave him my name, and that seemed to put him at ease, at
least a little bit. As we pulled back onto the
highway, the silence between us grew thick and heavy, like a fog
that refused to lift. I glanced over at John, his eyes
fixed on the road ahead, his jaw clenched in a tight line.
Something about this guy just didn't add up, but I quickly
pushed that thought aside. It's the worst thing that could
happen, right? It's only an hour away.
So what happened with your girlfriend?
I asked. John just looked over at me with
pure disdain. It's not really any of your
business. He said back.
I nodded and bit my lip, already feeling like this was a huge
mistake. Why the hell did I bother to
pick him up anyway? I was a young man with
relatively new age ideals and I thought I was doing a service
for my fellow man by just giving him a ride.
Looking back, it was stupid because I know I only picked him
up because he was young, figuring young people were
safer. The reality was there was no one
more dangerous or unpredictable than some 19 or 20 year old kid.
We rode in silence for a bit. I felt put off, like I had lost
control of the interior of my own car.
I felt like I was being held hostage by this guy's weird
brooding presence. So I did the one thing I was
good at. I kept talking.
So your girlfriend, what's she going to do if she beats you
home? John scoffed and shook his head.
What won't she do, crazy lady? He said, looking out the window.
She'll flip the whole place upside down, steal all my crap,
even the dog, and then break anything she doesn't see as
valuable enough to take. Damn.
Was all I could say. Yeah, so if you could hurry the
hell up, that'd be great. John said, a little louder than
necessary. I settled into my seat, rolled
my new problem around in my head, and wondered how the hell
I was going to deal with all this.
There was probably no way to get him out of the car now that he
was inside it, and it's not like I could call the cops to my car
out here in the middle of nowhere over a person I
voluntarily allowed to get in my vehicle.
I had very limited options to deal with this crap, but I
fancied myself a college student, a pretty smart guy, so
I resolved just to figure it all out.
As I punched the gas pedal, cruising from 65 to 75, the
answer hit me. Do exactly as he said.
Just hurry up. We were already 15 minutes into
the drive, well outside city limits with less than half an
hour of driving left. I dropped him off the 2nd we hit
town and called it a wash. No harm, no foul.
As I started hauling ass, he got a bit more normal.
It was almost like I was on his level now.
We started talking a little bit. He told me that he and his
girlfriend were from Washington or somewhere far away, but had
been scoping out my state to see if they'd enjoy living here.
They were staying with John's cousin in some small town out
near where my hometown was. While checking out the
neighborhoods in the city, they had their disagreement.
John's girlfriend left him on the side of the road, he walked
to the edge of the city where the heat and nothingness took
over, jammed his thumb out and that's where I found him.
I pressed a little further for some juicier details as I could
tell this guy was a chronic jerk, wondering if he had done
something to warrant being left behind.
Sure enough, he totally copped to it.
He said that while they were looking around at houses, they
ran out of drugs, meth I would assume, and she had a desire to
re up the supply. John wanted to keep looking at
houses, still riding his high. And that's when it all started.
Within an hour they were having a shouting match and apparently
John slapped his girlfriend around a bit because she knew
what she was saying. It was really unclear, kind of
very vague, but the gist was that John claimed his girlfriend
had some secret way of talking crap to him because it was so
hurtful. He had a good reason to put
hands on her. It was some of the most craziest
stuff I'd ever heard. The guy sitting next to me was
like Joe Cool, literally bragging about smacking around a
girl. I suddenly felt very guilty for
bringing him closer to her at all.
Still, I ponied up at a cool 80 mph, rocketing to my hometown
and hopefully away from this crazy situation.
I didn't do much more talking those last 20 miles, just
gripping and ripping the wheel as fast as my car could allow.
I was going so fast that John was literally sliding around in
the seat, gripping the handle above his head.
We blew into town and I drove to the 1st place I could think of,
the local Police Department. It was an old brick building on
the corner of Main Street, very inconspicuous, so I just talked
a bit to distract John as I pulled in.
I shifted into reverse and quickly gestured to the
building. Here you are, I said.
The hell is this? He asked me.
I thought you said you'd take me to my house.
This isn't even the right town. Sorry man, this is where I live
so it's as far as I'm going to go.
I figure you might be able to get a ride or use a phone here.
The hell is this even a police station?
He questioned. I nodded.
I am not getting out of the car. He said with a smile.
No way. OK, fair enough, I wouldn't
either if I was a woman beater. Piece of crap.
I said, adrenaline in my voice, chest pumping hard.
I'd never spoken to a stranger this way and honestly thought it
was going to come to blows. What is that what this is about?
He questioned. I told you to mind your
business. I am minding my business now get
the hell out of my car. I demanded.
John nodded and looked around for an option of any kind.
All he found was the door handle.
You're lucky you're smart too. If you pulled this crap anywhere
outside of town, I'd saw your head off and steal your car.
He said with a smile. It's what I did to the last guy.
At this point my legs were shaking.
He was out of the car, so I wanted to quickly create that
distance. I looked behind him at the
police station, doing something of a pump fake to make him think
that there were cops coming up behind us.
It totally worked. He whirled around and I punched
the gas, backed up and rolled onto the street, not even
checking for traffic behind me. I drove off, did circles through
town for a bit just to make sure there was no chance this guy saw
the direction I went home in. He didn't really tell me or do
anything crazy after that. He was in a police parking lot
after all. He just stared me down and that
was the last time I ever saw him.
The weirdest part of it all to me was that he didn't look or
even really act like a drug addict.
He could have passed for a totally normal guy totally
sober. It probably helped him when he
needed to lie about whacking his girlfriend around.
I honestly hope that jerk never made it home.
I spent 16 years in the Marine Corps and when I got out around
the 2017 holiday period I felt kind of lost.
I drove Uber for a while, helped an old platoon mate get his
landscaping business up and running, and then dipped my toe
into celebrity bodyguarding. But if working those jobs taught
me anything, it's that I'm just not a people person.
Working with Marines is different.
There was structure to it, discipline, and no offence to
the general civilian population, but y'all are animals.
Not that Marines aren't, but driving people around, dealing
with paparazzi and having suburban housewives demand more
respect than most Marine Corps officers was a whole other level
of ass pain. It got to the point where I was
seriously considering moving into private security, which was
something I promised myself I'd never get into.
But then funnily enough, the ex Marine I spoke to who had a link
to the industry ended up suggesting something completely
different. Once I heard it, I couldn't keep
my mind off it. He said he knew a guy that had
been in a similar situation needed to transition back to
civilian life, but more conventional jobs just weren't
clicking for him. The guy worked a ton of
different jobs, hated every one of them.
Then almost at random, he decided to try being a
wilderness guide for a little while.
That was four years ago. His buddy had been a guide ever
since up near Marble Mountain and said it was the best
decision he ever made. I asked the ex marine guy a
whole bunch of questions about it and he told me what he knew.
He said his buddy basically worked for himself, set his own
hours, and had the freedom to pick his own clients.
Then all he did for a living was hike with folks, camp with them,
and impart all the survival skills he'd learned in the
military in the process. People paid him handsomely, too.
It wasn't just some minimum wage thing.
I guess his veteran status helped him out in that respect,
but he was making great money all the same.
We talked about the whole private security thing too, but
after we went our separate ways, it was the wilderness guide
thing that really stuck in my mind.
About three months later, I was driving up to Fresno for a job
interview at a small, veteran owned wilderness tours company.
The interview went great. I impressed the boss enough to
get me hired, and I've been at that place ever since.
I guess the reason I'm telling you all of this is because I
thought working up in Fresno would be the beginning of my
quiet and peaceful life as a civilian.
I'd done 2 tours in Iraq, one tour in Afghanistan, saw my fair
share of casualties, and lost count of the number of times
I've been shot at. I'll always be a Marine, but I
was happy not to have that life anymore.
I didn't want the violence, the craziness, or the danger.
But in taking one particular job at this wilderness guiding
company, I somehow ended up having a brush with something
far stranger and far more frightening than anything I ever
came across in the Marine Corps. It all started when my boss got
a call from a solo hiker that we'll just call Chuck.
Chuck wasn't the guy's name, but for a whole bunch of reasons,
Internet crazies being just one, I'm going to change the names of
some people and places to protect the affected.
Chuck wanted to hire a wilderness guide to take him to
a certain hilltop out in one of the forests east of Fresno.
He wanted to hike out there, camp overnight, and then head
back the way he came. The easiest route to the place
was about 18 miles off road, and since Chuck wasn't an
experienced hiker, I figured we could do around 9 miles the
first day, then make camp, then walk the other 9 miles the next
day before getting to the place he actually wanted to camp.
He was in his mid 30s, wiry and not the most athletic of people,
so when we met for the first time to walk him through the
journey we'd laid out for him, I knew that I'd made the right
decision to take it easy on him. We'd be gone for three nights.
We'd provide everything he needed in terms of food, water
and equipment. All he needed to do was show up
in suitable clothing and we'd take care of everything else.
That first meeting was a Tuesday afternoon, and it was an
important one too, because if either of us decided that we
wouldn't be comfortable guiding someone into the wilderness,
then the hike was a no go. We never took anyone we figured
would be in danger to themselves while out in the wilderness, not
just because we were afraid of lawsuits, but because it's
straight up irresponsible. But then, when Chuck stopped by
the little strip mall office that we were operating out of,
he seemed fine. He paid attention during the
briefing, respected the fact that I had the final say when it
came to keeping him safe, and was polite and well spoken.
While he agreed to our other terms too, there wasn't a single
warning sign that gave us any indication of what might happen
or what he might do. And so that Friday morning, I
met Chuck at the office and we drove down towards our line of
departure together in my truck. We set off just after 6:30 in
the morning, so neither of us were in the mood for talking on
the drive out to the park. But after we got going on the
hike, we got into a little small talk.
Chuck asked about my time in the Marine Corps, and I told him a
story or two. PG 13 Of course, so as not to
freak him out or anything. After that, I asked what Chuck
did, and he told me that he was some kind of professor.
Not the teaching kind, though. He was like the researching kind
at a university. He told me he specialized in
physics, but I'll be damned if I could tell you exactly what he
said. It was something like something
something theory, and I actually laughed out loud when he asked
if I'd heard of it or not. He didn't figure I had, but he
asked all the same. Then he gave me a little
breakdown of the kinds of things he researched.
Again, I can't say that I could ever recall any of it.
It all sounded like mumbo jumbo to me, but you could tell that
he was a seriously intelligent dude and that the work that he
did was pretty important. Not long after, we got on to why
he wanted to go out onto this particular hilltop, and for the
sake of ease, I'll just call it Beartooth Mountain.
Generally speaking, we didn't ask exactly why people wanted to
visit this or that mountain because the answer was usually a
variation on We heard It's got nice views.
Beartooth was no different. It had awesome views and was
definitely much easier to get to than most other peaks.
But I guess I just found myself curious if it had some kind of
deeper significance to him. I feel like Chuck was open and
honest with me right up until we hit that point of the
conversation, because for the first time I felt like his
answer was a little dodgy. He said an uncle used to take
him camping out that way when he was a kid, which on the surface
sounded like a good enough reason.
But if that was me and I wanted to take my little nephew
somewhere camping to introduce him to the great outdoors,
Beartooth Mountain is so isolated and such a tough hike
that it's just about one of the last places I'd think to take
him. Between Stanislaus, Yosemite,
Sierra, and Sequoia, the parks and forests around Fresno got to
be home to at least 1000 different campgrounds, most of
which are very family friendly. So for the guy's uncle to March
him all the way out to Beartooth, I figured that he was
either ex military or verging on abusive.
But no, they got along great and he wasn't any sort of veteran.
Chuck just said that he and his family enjoyed the outdoors.
Enjoying the outdoors is one thing, but making your kids
March out into the deep woods over difficult terrain?
That's like survivalist level kind of stuff.
And like I said, Chuck didn't strike me as any survivalist.
But you see, while I might have been thinking all of that, I'm
not dumb or rude enough to just come out and say it.
If a client doesn't want me to know why they want to go
someplace and they decide to make something up on the fly to
protect their privacy while remaining polite, then what kind
of jerk would that make me to go and pry any further?
So the way it went was more like him saying the thing about his
uncle, me just being like, cool, all right?
And then the topic of conversation just kind of
naturally flowed onto other things.
Chuck was pretty good company actually, at least for that
first day and night anyway. Like I said earlier, he
definitely wasn't used to the physical strain of hiking long
distances, but he showed a heck of a lot of character at times.
I was in no doubt that we'd hit our nine mile goal by day's end,
and when we did, he was about ready to sleep standing up and
was snoring by 9:30. And that was fine by me.
I'd rather get an early night than stay up talking or drinking
like some clients want to and end up paying for it in the
morning. So after dousing the fire and
setting up a few bear alarms, I decided to get myself an early
night too, thinking that the next day was going to be some
more relaxed hiking. But I could not have been more
wrong. The next morning Chuck was awake
and ready to roll before I was, which was great.
And as the day went on, he seemed to get more and more
keyed up the closer we got to our destination.
He was like a kid in the back seat of a car on the way to
Disney World, basically asking me, are we there yet?
Every half hour or so until finally we hit the Crest of a
hill, broke through some trees and there she was.
Beartooth Mountain. Like I said, I've switched up
some of the names here to save you any trouble, but Beartooth
really did look like a big old bear's tooth.
Just this badass looking mountain with a sharply curved
rocky peak. It's pretty common for clients
to get excited about arriving at their destination.
And if Chuck's story was true, then I understand why he was
psyched to be reunited with a place that had all kinds of
nostalgia about it for him. But to me, that's not how he
acted. It was more like a religious
thing, like how I imagine a person would act if they saw
something sacred. I kind of feel like if that was
me, I'd have done a little vocal reminiscing or something, you
know? Like I remember this one time
Uncle Bob said X. Or, this reminds me when Uncle
Bob did Y. But that whole time Chucky never
once brought up any kind of memory or story from his
childhood. I was so curious at that period
that I even asked him if any memorable trips came to mind or
if he had any particular treasured memories or anything
like that. Not in a confrontational way,
just, you know, making conversation.
He gave me some wishy washy answers like oh I guess it just
feels good to be back. But by then I could tell
something was kind of off. Not so off I wanted to turn
around or anything. Like I said earlier, a client is
entitled to their privacy, you know.
I just hope that things wouldn't get any weirder.
But boy, they did. I figured Chuck might have a
particular place that he wanted to camp, so on the approach, I
asked him if he had any place in mind.
It turns out he did have a place in mind, a very specific place.
And to find it, he pulled out a laminated computer print out
that had a bunch of notes written on it in Sharpie.
I could read maps well enough to know that I was looking at
Beartooth Mountain and the surrounding area.
But then I had no idea what all the notes and stuff said.
Some of it looked kind of like math.
Other parts look like some kind of shorthand.
And before I could ask what any of it meant, Chuck pointed to a
spot on the map that had a colored dot on it.
There was a bunch of these colored dots all over the map,
maybe 10 or 12 of them, all spread out about a mile or two
apart. But Chuck pointed to just one
and said that he wanted to camp somewhere around there.
I told him I could take him to any spot he wanted, give or take
about 50 yards, but I also wanted to know what all the
colored dots meant. Chuck replied that they were all
places he and his uncle used to camp back when he was a kid.
And that was the point that I actually started buying into
Chuck's story a little. I got an ex whose kid was real
quiet and shy but very organized and hyper focused on whatever he
was doing. I can't remember if there was a
specific name for what he had, but I know that he was probably
on the autism spectrum. My point is, I figured Chuck
might have been the same way and that's why he seemed a little
off. But once again, I was there in a
professional capacity so to get paid I just had to get him to
Beartooth and get him out again. If it wasn't impacting our
safety then it didn't really matter to me.
So I got chucked to the campsite he wanted, then, after studying
his map a little to make sure that we were in exactly the
right place, we set up our tents, made a campfire and then
made dinner once he knew we were in the right place, whatever the
hell that meant. Chuck seemed to calm down a
little bit, but unlike the first night when he crashed almost
straight after dinner, he was still up around sunset when I
myself was starting to get drowsy.
We just talked till then and not about anything in particular
either, just this and that. And like I said, he seemed
chilled out again, nothing he did or said gave me any cause
for concern. I felt like a new step dad or
something telling him not to stay up too late, but he said he
wanted to enjoy the night sky a little and wouldn't be too tired
come sun up. I said all right, climbed into
my tent and then went to sleep. A couple of hours later I woke
up to hear the sound of a tent unzipping.
I remember sitting up just to make sure that it wasn't my own
tent being unzipped, and then realized that the noise must
have been coming from Chuck's. Now, I cannot overemphasize how
common it is for dudes to wake up in the middle of the night
and need to take a leak, So 99 times out of 100, hearing
someone's tent opening up after dark is no reason to be
concerned. But Even so, I called out to
Chuck to see if all was good and he replied that he was fine
before saying thanks. Man, I know this might sound
kind of cheesy or whatever, but the way he said it, it sounded
real heartfelt, you know? Like he really appreciated me
looking out for him like that. I was half asleep at the time so
I just told him no problem buddy and then went back to sleep
thinking it was nothing more than what it was nowadays.
I think he was thanking me for a whole lot more.
The next morning I woke up, put my boots on, and then the first
thing I always do each morning when I'm on a trip like that is
check on the client. I never just stick my head into
their tent or anything, and I don't unzip their tent if it's
zipped up neither. I'll just stand outside gently
trying to wake them up. I called Chuck's name once,
twice, then three times, and nothing even moves inside the
tent. At that point, I'm starting to
worry that Chuck has had some kind of medical emergency, so I
kneel down, unzip his tent, and open up the flap to find that
it's empty. I'm still trying to rationalize
things, so I assume Chuck has gone for a walk or something.
I don't see any boots, so I'm assuming that he's wearing them
and that he's off taking an early morning whiz or something.
So off I go, searching for Chuck, having to kind of
mentally talk myself out of a panic.
I circled the camp calling out his name, but Chuck's nowhere to
be found. So I walk a larger circle,
calling out a little louder, and that panicked feeling is coming
back as more and more time goes by.
I keep walking that loop, mentally preparing myself for
some kind of emergency when something catches my eye.
And at first I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing.
Or actually, it was more like I didn't want to believe it.
Between these two trees about 50 yards down the slope was a pile
of clothes, and it looked like they were sitting on a pair of
boots too. As you can imagine, my first
thought that goes through my mind is Chuck's gone nuts,
stripped naked and then walked off into the woods, which was
not something I wanted to have to deal with.
Someone going missing, That's bad.
Really bad. Someone going missing after
taking off all of their clothes. I think we can agree that that's
a whole other level of crap hitting the fan.
So right after I see the clothes, and I'm 100% sure
they're Chucks, I start off on emergency procedures.
So that's call the Rangers, call my boss, call everyone I
possibly can, then get a head start on searching for our
client. Situations like that are always
time critical. But then my situation was even
more so for obvious reasons. So I went running back to where
Chuck's clothes were and started looking for any signs of a
trail. Now here's where I'll admit that
I've never been much of A tracker, so all I really did was
walk off in the direction I figured he might have gone.
But I didn't find anything but empty woods.
I had to wait until the Rangers showed up before we could cover
any real ground. Then by the time the cops and
the search and rescue folks arrived, there was no reason for
me to be there anymore. Once I'd given an officer a
statement, I felt awful. Having a client go missing like
that is the nightmare scenario for any wilderness guide.
It's our one job to keep people safe and when we fail at that
one thing, it's like a punch in the gut.
I talked to my boss at length about the whole thing and he
gave me a week off to get my head straight.
He was closing the office out of respect for Chuck's family and
since he was a big part of the volunteer search parties, there
was only one other person to take on the workload.
So better we just close and help out.
I wanted to be there myself, but my boss, being the wise man that
he is, told me it would be better if I stayed away and put
my faith in the Rangers, the State SAR and everyone else they
had out there looking for Chuck. I was just one, and what was one
guy versus all kinds of helicopters, sniffer dogs and
specially trained trackers who'd put even Force Recon guys to
shame. I was told over and over again
that it wasn't my fault, that I'd done everything right and
that I had nothing to feel guilty over.
But then came the day when, even with the cops being so cool and
respectful, I could tell people were starting to doubt my
innocence. The day the cops came to ask me
a few questions, I figured it was just all follow up stuff or
questions they hadn't thought to ask me yet or whatever.
But then there came a point during the questioning where I
realized that I wasn't being looked upon as an innocent party
anymore. I guess the detectives were just
eliminating potential suspects, but it was pretty damn chilling
knowing that they were considering the possibility that
it was me that was to blame for Chuck going missing.
I actually said to them at one point, look, I'm an open book, I
got nothing to hide and I'll come help with the search effort
if you want me to. They acted innocent, like they
were only there to ask a few questions and nothing more.
But I could tell that they were putting on the good cop routine
in hopes that I'd slip up and change my story.
That way they could justify focusing on me as their number
one suspect. I told my boss what was
happening or what I thought was happening and he just told me to
sit tight and ride it out. After that I got pretty much all
my info from him directly and over the weeks that followed,
this is what he told me. I was only completely eliminated
as a suspect when the cops found no DNA but Chucks on his
abandoned clothes, which suggested that he just got up in
the early hours of the morning, walk down the hilltop a little,
and then walked off into the woods before taking off all of
his clothes. The search and rescue tracker
dogs followed his scent trail to a shallow stream, then lost it,
suggesting that he washed himself in the water for some
reason. Some suggested this was
deliberate, as in he knew it would confuse the tracker dogs
when it came time to look for him, but that made it seem like
Chuck was in his right mind when he was walking off through the
woods without a stitch of clothing on him.
And to the likes of me and my boss, Chuck must have totally
lost his mind if he thought that he could do something like that
and not be in real danger. I asked my boss if the cops must
have known something that we didn't about Chuck's state of
mind. He said he had no idea that he'd
been involved in a couple of missing person cases before, and
that Chuck's made no sense to him whatsoever.
In the other two cases, the person was found safe and fine
within 24 hours, and both involved were hikers who got a
little too confident after wandering off the trails.
People figured that the same thing would happen with Chuck,
as without any suitable shoes, there's no way that he couldn't
have gotten so far that the search teams wouldn't pick him
up. But that's the thing, no one
found a single trace of him anywhere in the surrounding
area. It was like he just dropped off
the face of the earth. After a few weeks, the search
was called off, and although California's Park Service
promised that they continue to keep an eye out for him, people
eventually just accepted that Chuck was gone.
I tried to move on. I tried to just file it away
with all the other bull crap I filed away over the years, but
all the unanswered questions almost drove me crazy.
I got a lot of closure with the stuff that I went through in the
Marine Corps, and at least before I separated, the top
brass were pouring a ton of money into counseling
psychologists and all kinds of things to fix the mental wounds.
And not just the physical ones. But that whole process of
reconciling what's happened to you, that's all way easier when
you have some actual answers. X was in a certain place, and
then Y happened and Z was the result.
But with the Chuck thing, nothing made sense.
There were no answers. His disappearance was never
solved, and thinking about it caused me a hell of a lot of
grief for a long, long time. And on top of that, Chuck's not
the only person to have gone missing in that area of the
forest. There have been a bunch of
unexplained disappearances in that area, and sometimes I can't
help but wonder if they're somehow connected to Chuck's.
On January 21st, 1842, James and Esther Packer welcomed the first
of their three children into the world.
He was born in Pennsylvania's Allegheny County, not far from
the city of Pittsburgh, and they named him Alfred.
When Alfred was around 10 years old, his father moved the family
to Orange County, Indiana, where he found work as a cabinet
maker. Alfred was slow to adjust to the
sudden relocation, struggled to find friends among the local
children, and developed profound melancholy.
As a result, familial relationships became strained,
and during his 16th or 17th year, Alfred left home in the
middle of the night, leaving a note which read Never Coming
Back. He rode to Minnesota and worked
as a Shoemaker for a few years, but in April 1861, the eruption
of the fiery Civil War would forever alter Alfred's fate.
He enlisted in the Union Army during April of the following
year and was assigned to Company F of the 16th Infantry Regiment,
but was eventually discharged after just two years of service
following a diagnosis of epilepsy.
Alfred then travelled West in the hopes of finding his fortune
and held a variety of jobs such as hunter, ranch hand and wagon
teamster. Yet wherever he went, Alfred
proved deeply unpopular with his Co workers, allegedly owing to
his argumentative personality, his near pathological lying and
his reputation for theft. By the time Alfred arrived in
Utah Territory, he discovered a profitable profession which
suited his contempt for both authority and discipline, that
of a wilderness guide. For thousands of years, certain
individuals have specialized in guiding unwary travelers across
vast and perilous stretches of terrain, and such people were
mentioned frequently during the earlier chapters of American
history. For instance, Lewis and Clark's
Eighteen O 4 expedition through the American West relied heavily
on the knowledge of a Shoshone woman named Sacagawea, and the
likes of Jim Bridger and Kit Carson made their names trading
on their knowledge of the western frontier.
A generation later, migrants seeking to flee the aftermath of
the Civil War found that skilled wilderness guides were essential
to surviving the journey West, and as a result a capable guide
could expect to make vast amounts of money.
Alfred rather fancied the idea of becoming a self-employed
wilderness guide, but in truth he was a dangerously inept
navigator. He drew the eye of many a
dissatisfied customer and was responsible for at least two
fully loaded wagon trains becoming lost on their way to
Oregon. He was ignorant, obnoxious, and
incompetent, yet the demand for wilderness guides was so high
that, despite his reputation, he continued to find paying work.
One such group of potential employers was headed by a man
named Robert Mcgrew who intended to prospect for gold near a
place called Breen Ridge, Colorado in the winter of 1873.
The party consisted of 20 men whose journey would take them
from Utah's Salt Lake City to the San Juan Mountains around
300 miles to the southeast. It would prove a hazardous
journey and the men were in dire need of a capable guide, so once
they reached Provo, a man named George TR was sent out to find
one. He returned with a 23 year old
gold prospector who just so happened to know the route to
Colorado like the back of his hand.
Yet this prospector was none other than Alfred Packer.
Packer was not 23 years old, He was actually 31 in November of
1873, and as previously stated, he was relentless in his
fabrication. Although Packer had a small
degree of mining experience, he was no prospector, nor had he
ever been to the San Juan Mountains.
But sensing the desperation of Mcgrew's party, he saw an
opportunity to profit. Packer told them that for the
price of $25, around $700 in today's money, he could lead
them to the gold country South of the Colorado territory.
The group accepted, and off they went.
Almost immediately, Packer's incompetence became painfully
obvious to Mcgrew and his companions.
Those who made it to Colorado later said that Packer was not
once but twice caught stealing rations from other travelers,
but since it appeared that his services were indispensable, he
was shown mercy each time. The group's slow progress also
meant that by the time they reached the more hazardous
sections of their route, they were beset by harsh winter
weather. Heavy snow hid the path ahead,
forcing the party to rely almost entirely on their compass for
direction, and due to Packers inexperience, it wasn't long
before they became lost completely.
When their rations ran out, the men ate horse feed.
When the horse feed ran out, they ate their horses.
But in the third week of January 1874, the party came across an
isolated island of salvation in the form of a Native American
encampment. Chief Uray, also known as the
White Man's Friend, made his winter encampment in the
Uncompagra Valley near modern day Montrose.
He was famous for his generosity to needy travelers and supplied
Mcgrew's party with food and lodgings by which they could
regain their strength for the journey to come.
However, Chief Oray strongly recommended that the party
postpone their expedition until spring, since they were likely
to encounter dangerous winter weather as they reached the San
Juan Mountains. The natives knew that to
undertake such a journey would be to risk certain death, and
Chief Oray offered to shelter their party until early spring,
whereupon they could continue their venture in relative
safety. The party of 20 convened to
discuss their options, but eleven of them refused to accept
the chief's offer. In their view, delaying their
expedition until early spring would roll out the red carpet to
other less risk averse prospectors.
Delay their journey and they miss out on the lion's share of
the gold. A few days following his arrival
at Chief Oray's camp, Robert Mcgrew approached him with their
final decision. 11 of them would continue on towards the Los
Pinos Indian Agency, which was the closest outpost to the camp,
and proceed onward to Breen Ridge from there.
Chief Oray stated that he respected the party's courage
and provided them with food for their journey as well as safe
directions to bypass the mountains.
However, just hours into their journey, Alfred Packer announced
that he had a better idea. Instead of bypassing the
mountains by way of Indian Territory, Packer proposed the
group take a much more direct route through the mountains.
Obviously, most of the party understood Packer was an
incompetent navigator, but at this juncture, it seems their
desire for enrichment outweighed any kind of common sense.
Five of the party continued along the safer route, but six
others, Packer included, decided to risk the snowy passes of the
San Juan Mountains. Aside from Packer himself, the
group consisted of Shannon Wilson Bell.
James Humphrey, Frank Butcher Miller, George California Noon
and Israel Swan Mcgrew and a handful of his loyalists
proceeded to aid Packers group in their initial departure, but
once the snows grew too deep for heavily laden pack horses, they
unloaded Packers supplies and then headed back to Chief Uray's
encampment. Packer and his party then
continued along the Gunnison River and began climbing the
higher paths which led into the mountains.
But this, as many have reasoned, was pure insanity.
The men had less than two weeks rations, no snowshoes, no Flint
to light a fire, and wore clothing that was thoroughly
unsuited to the intense Colorado winter.
Finally, on April 16th, 1874, a full 65 days following the
departure of Packer's party, a lone figure stumbled out of the
woods near modern day Saguache, Colorado.
As they sat eating breakfast, a group of Ute tribesmen spotted
the man limping towards them. He carried with him a rifle, a
knife, a steel coffee pot, and a satchel.
When they rode out to meet him, they found a man on the verge of
total starvation. It was Alfred Packer, who had
somehow survived the journey into the mountains.
The men sat him down at the table and gave him some food,
but upon attempting to chew and swallow it, Packer promptly
vomited. The tribesmen feared that Packer
was ill with some kind of infectious disease, but he
assured them that his condition was the result of prolonged
starvation and that he was of no danger.
The tribesmen then asked Packer what had happened to lead him to
starvation, and this is what he told them.
Packer explained that he had been hired by 5 prospectors to
guide them to Breckenridge. However, during the course of
their journey, he began to suffer a terrible bout of snow
blindness and began to lag behind.
Packer then claimed that when it was clear that he could not
continue, his employers abandoned him, leaving him with
nothing but a rifle, a few rounds of ammunition, and two
cans of preserves. From then on, he had been forced
to find his way back to civilization alone, and after
exhausting his meager rations, had eaten roots, rosebuds, and
even the leather of his own shoes to escape death by
starvation. It made for one hell of a story,
and most who heard it displayed a great deal of sympathy for the
haggard looking wanderer yet two other more senior members of the
tribe. Packer's story did not match his
condition. Packer had not been the first
unwise traveler to have erred under the might of the Colorado
winter, but others who'd emerged from the forests of the San Juan
foothills had been so malnourished they appeared
skeletal. Alfred Packer on the other hand,
looked relatively healthy and the bloating around his cheeks
and chin suggested that he'd been binging on cheap whiskey.
Under the assumption that Packer was dead broke, the Indian
agencies Justice of the Peace purchased his Winchester rifle
for the generous price of $10. The filthy pre owned rifle could
have been purchased for considerably less, but the money
was partly intended to help poor Packer get back on his feet.
Having seen enough horrors to last a lifetime, Packer claimed
his days as a wilderness guide were over and that he intended
to return home to Pennsylvania. But upon his arrival in the
nearby town of Saguache, Packer began a veritable spending
spree. He purchased a horse for $70.00,
spent $78 on whiskey and tobacco and Auto Mir's General store,
then dropped $100 to book the finest hotel room at Dolan
Saloon for the foreseeable future.
The amount of money Packer spent is the equivalent of thousands
upon thousands of dollars today, which raised the question, just
where exactly did an apparently destitute man get so much money?
Packer remained in Segwatch, spending like a sailor in Dolan
Saloon, until one day three men walked through its swinging
doors. Packer recognized them in an
instant. It was Preston Nutter, one of
the nine men who had chosen to winter at Chief Oray's camp
rather than face certain death on the trail to the San Juan
Mountains. And behind him stood two other
members of Robert Mcgrew's original party.
Nutter approached Packer at his table and asked where the other
members of his group were. Packer recounted his story of
abandonment, but Nutter was skeptical.
It would have been extremely unwise for men so unfamiliar
with the region to have abandoned their only guide, even
if they did display signs of incompetence.
Sure, the men had been foolhardy to try and brave the Colorado
winter, but they were not insane.
Nutter also found it odd that Packer was given one of only two
rifles the group was in possession of, even though he
was already armed with a revolver.
Yet the final straw came when Nutter noticed a skinning knife
hanging from Packer's belt. It was a knife belonging to a
man named Frank Butcher Miller, one of the five party members
that accompanied Packer on their final leg of the journey.
When Nutter asked how Packer had come to be in possession of it,
he claimed that Miller had simply stuck it in a tree, then
walked off without it. Packer then claimed that after
asking Miller if he wanted the knife, he was told he could have
it. But Nutter didn't believe a
word. He'd spent enough time with
Frank the Butcher to know that he prided himself on his ability
to cleanly and efficiently butcher an animal.
He'd carried that same skinning knife with him on hundreds of
hunts, and to say it was a precious possession would be a
major understatement. Nutter knew something was wrong,
terribly wrong, and in the face of Packers obvious deceptions he
became irate. He was said to have lunged at
Packer demanding he speak the truth, and since he was quite
visibly the aggressor, he was tossed out of Dolan's, then
barred from entry until the week's end.
Meanwhile, back in Colorado, the five man splinter group who rode
on towards the mountains rather than winter with Chief Oray,
arrived at the Los Pinos Indian Agency.
They were greeted by the agency's administrator, General
Charles Adams, who told them he'd already met with a man
named Packer who claimed to have been abandoned by his fellow
travellers. Oliver Len Hyzer, who headed the
five Man Group that did not contain Packer, claimed this was
impossible. The prospectors Packer had been
riding with were good, decent men who would have never
abandoned one of their number, no matter how much of A burden
they were. Suspecting some kind of foul
play and knowing Packer to be a compulsive liar, Len Hyzer
convinced General Adams to have Packer arrested, but the general
himself chose a far shrewder course of action.
Adam sent a trio of soldiers out looking for Alfred Packer, but
after finding him in Saguachi, they didn't Simply put him in
cuffs. The lead soldier initially
consoled Packer regarding his recent tribulations and
complimented him on the survival skills it must have taken to
make it down from the mountains alive.
Packer was accustomed to such treatment by that point and
welcomed it graciously. The soldier then informed Packer
that they wish to hire him at a very generous rate to help
recover the missing members of his party.
Packer seemed reluctant at first, but following a reminder
that proving his innocence to the authorities was a far
superior option than vigilante townsfolk assuming his guilt, he
agreed to join the search party. When he arrived back at the
agency, Packer was immediately brought before General Adams,
who had allowed Len Heiser's party to witness his
questioning. Adams demanded an explanation
for the conflicting stories, but an indignant Packer repeated his
claim that he'd been abandoned while snow blind and professed
deep surprise upon learning his fellow travelers were missing.
Adams then questioned him regarding his Sagwache spending
habits, but Packer defended himself by claiming the money
was a loan from a sympathetic citizen.
Upon hearing this, General Adams dispatched another group of
writers to Sagwache, who learned that not only had Packer not
received any loan, but he'd been spotted with several different
wallets during his stay in town. Following the rider's return and
confirmation that Packer was lying, General Adams and Len
Heiser's party began discussing what should be done.
Yet as they debated, the arrival of two Ute tribesmen prompted an
uproar in the camp. The two tribesmen had been
hunting just a few miles from the Indian agency and after
reaching the Crest of a hill, had come across strips of dried
human flesh they'd found lying on a rock, and nearby was the
exact same trail Alfred Packer had used during his March for
Survival. When confronted with the strips
of flesh, Packer appeared to break down completely and began
begging General Adams for mercy. He then promised to make a full
and frank confession after reportedly stating it would not
be the first time that people have been obliged to eat each
other when they were hungry. Packer claimed that after his
party ran out of food, they began and I quote, eyeing each
other in a most unsettling manner.
A few days after this dreadful leering commenced, Packer
claimed he left camp to gather dry firewood and return to find
four of his traveling companions standing around the lifeless
body of the 5th Israel Swan, who was said to be the oldest of the
five men, was killed instantly when he was struck from behind
with a hatchet. In the process of dismembering
Swan's body, Packer claimed the group found several thousand in
cash on his person, and after dividing the money between them,
they began roasting and eating chunks of the dead man's flesh.
The men ate well that night, so well that just two days later
they were once again completely out of food and wracked by
ravenous hunger. They tried hunting and set
snares for rabbits and other small game, but after fresh meat
eluded them, a conspiracy was struck.
Since Frank Butcher Miller still had a great deal of fat on him,
Packer claimed Shannon Bell, James Humphrey, and George Noon
convinced him that it was the butcher's turn to be carved up.
He too was murdered with a single hatchet blow to the
skull. Ambushed while stooping to pick
up firewood, it was then that Alfred Packer acquired the
Butcher's skinning knife, fastening it to his belt before
he feasted on its owners still warm cadaver.
Packer then claimed that as the four remaining Travelers pushed
on towards Los Pinos, they became lost in a Blizzard.
Once again they became ravenously hungry, and this time
it was James Humphrey's turn to be ambushed, butchered and
consumed. Packer added that George Noon
was murdered before Humphrey's corpse had even been stripped of
all meat, and the killing was wanton.
Now they had a taste for human flesh.
Once the Blizzard had cleared, Alfred Packer and Shannon Bell
continued their journey towards Los Pinos.
They agreed never to speak of their ghastly hunger, nor the
manner in which it was sated. They would say that their
companions died of exposure and that each was afforded a
Christian burial. Packer also claimed that, being
the only two survivors of the five man party, he and Bell made
a pact that neither man would murder or consume the other.
According to Packer, it took just days for this pack to
unravel. After three more days of
trudging through the mountains, frostbitten and exhausted,
Packer claimed that he and Bell set up camp next to a lake near
a large Grove of hemlock trees. The two men managed to light a
fire, but after a few hours of lying under their blankets and
trying not to freeze, Shannon Bell went berserk.
Packer claimed. Bell threw off his blankets,
screaming that he couldn't take it anymore.
Then, after snatching up his rifle, he lunged at Packer and
attempted to bash in his skull. Packer described how he
deflected the blow before striking Bell in the head with
the hatchet. Then, fearing that he might
starve to death before reaching civilization, Packer
cannibalized Bell's corpse and continued on his journey with
the dead men's accumulated wealth.
Following another day's walking, Packer claimed he mounted the
Crest of a hill upon spotting the Los Pinos Indian Agency in
the distance. He threw away the remaining
strips of human flesh, but admitted that he did so with,
quote, a fair degree of hesitation.
After listening to Packer's version of events in full,
General Adams called for a discussion of the matter between
the surviving prospectors and agency officers.
This prospector stated they didn't believe a word of
Packer's story and asked the general to aid them in the
formation of a search party so that the truth might be
uncovered. With agency clerk Hermann Lauder
at the lead, the five Utah prospectors followed a handful
of agency officers for 50 miles across the hills, ironically
with Packer acting as their guide.
Then, after two weeks of searching the snow drifts near
Lake Fork, Packer announced that he was lost, forcing a
frustrated Lauder to order the return to the agency.
However, at some point during the journey back, Packer armed
himself with a knife and attempted to murder Hermann
Lauder. Fortunately, Lauder was able to
defend himself and after the other members of the search
party restrained him, Packer was arrested.
The failed attempt snuffed out any and all doubt that Packer
was an innocent man, with General Adams ordering his
immediate transportation to Sagwachi's jailhouse.
During this period of detention, Packer changed his story.
He now claimed that after days of hiking with virtually nothing
to eat, Israel's swan could go no further.
They found a pine shaded Gulch next to a lake and set up camp.
A short time after this. Packer asserted that Swan passed
away from a combination of hunger and exposure.
The following is an extract from his signed confession.
Old Man Swan died 1st, and was eaten by the other five persons
about 10 days out of camp. Four or five days afterward
Humph died, and was also eaten. Sometime afterward, while I was
carrying wood, the butcher was killed, as the other two told me
accidentally, and he was also eaten.
Bell shot California with Swan's gun and I killed Bell.
I covered up the remains and took a large piece of his meat
along and traveled 14 days into the agency.
Bell wanted to kill me with his rifle, struck a tree and broke
his gun. Yet while he was in jail,
observers challenged his credibility and noted that
Packer, far from being a victim of cold or starvation, had set
some kind of diabolical trap. Finally, in August of 1874, an
illustrator from Harper's Weekly was hiking near a place known as
Slumgullion Pass, just two miles southeast of Lake City, Co.
Upon spotting a pine shaded Gulch surrounded by hemlock
trees, John A Randolph believed he'd happened across a prime
spot to rest. But as he got closer, he made a
horrifying discovery. 5 rotting corpses lay strewn around the
Gulch. Randolph made a quick sketch of
the scene, then rushed to alert the sheriff in nearby Lake City,
who now naturally was only too happy to receive news of the
discovery. There was just one problem.
From its description, the Gulch was the site of the final
confrontation between Packer and Shannon Bell.
But according to his story, Packer and Bell were alone.
In which case, how had the bodies of the murdered and
cannibalized men all come to rest in the same spot?
The Lake City sheriff rode out to what became known as Dead
Man's Gulch with around two dozen volunteers in tow.
The scene that greeted them was the stuff of nightmares.
One deputy noted that it appeared as if extreme violence
had befallen the men. Frank Miller and Israel Swan's
bodies were little more than skeletons, with almost every
strip of flesh having been carved from their bones.
The bodies of James Humphrey and George Noon lay rotting and
flayed, with their legs having been butchered entirely.
Both had received blows to the head, with the shape of the
wounds indicating a hatchet had been used to dispatch them.
Shannon Bell lay with his arms to his sides, his hands skinned
with skeletal legs splayed out beneath him.
Someone had smashed open the top of his skull and removed his
brain entirely. No attempt had been made to
consume bone marrow, nor had any of the men's organs been
consumed. Packer had simply gone from man
to man, stripping the soft, sweet, nutrient rich muscle from
their bones before eating it. The remains of the fallen
prospectors were buried where they lay, and when word reached
the Sagwachi County Sheriff, he sent half a dozen deputies to
the jail to confront Packer with their new found evidence.
But when they arrived at the makeshift prison cell on the
outskirts of Sagwach, Packer was nowhere to be found.
In order to prevent his summary execution by bloodthirsty
vigilantes, the town sheriff decided that Packer would be
held in a makeshift cell on a ranch owned by the county.
The cell was little more than a dilapidated log cabin.
At the time of Packer's arrival, it was almost completely unfit
for human habitation. Prior to the discovery of the
missing prospectors, Packer had been held there for months with
no evidence, no bodies, and no formal charges levied against
him. Yet while there were many who
were only too happy to see Packer under lock and key, just
as many saw his detention as unjust.
Some bemoaned the extensive tax bill Packer's imprisonment
racked up, while others argued it was unconstitutional to
incarcerate a man merely suspected of a crime.
Such talk among the townsfolk appeared to have generated a
great deal of sympathy for Alfred Packer, because when the
deputies arrived in late August of 1874, they found the cabin
unguarded and deserted. Someone had helped Packer
escape. As Sagwachi's sheriff organized
both professional and volunteer tracking teams, local citizens
discussed theories on what had motivated Packer to murder and
consume his travelling companions.
Many believed that he simply attached himself to the party
under the false pretence of being familiar with the area,
and that ultimately the men had died because of his
incompetence. However, a much more popular
theory involved Packer leading the party of five into the
mountains with a premeditated plan to kill and rob them.
Preston Nutter and Oliver Len Heiser were highly vocal in
their condemnations of Packer and did their best to persuade
the Saguache townsfolk that the deaths were not some kind of
tragic accident. Nor was Packer a man of
fortitude who'd simply done what was necessary to survive.
Yet surprisingly, the details of Packers cannibalism were not the
primary issue. By the late 19th century, the
American public was familiar with the tragic tale of the
doomed Donner Party. Delayed by a multitude of
mishaps, the Donners spent the winter of 1846 snowbound in the
Sierra Nevada mountain range. Some of the migrants resorted to
cannibalism to survive, mainly eating the bodies of those who
had succumbed to starvation, sickness, or extreme cold.
But in one case, two Native American guides were
deliberately murdered for this purpose.
News of such ghastliness spread fast among the American
populace, but after a lengthy national discussion, many
expressed a great deal of sympathy for the Donners.
While many argued that they themselves would not have
committed murder, very few were able to categorically state that
they would not have resorted to cannibalism if placed in the
same dire circumstances. So in the case of Alfred Packer,
the most pertinent question was did his companions die as a
result of his incompetence, or was greed the motivating factor?
By early spring of 1883, Packer had been on the run for almost
nine years. Despite being one of the most
infamous individuals in the entire United States, there
wasn't a single reported sighting of him for almost a
decade. That all changed when a man
named Frenchie Kazan arrived in the Wyoming state capital of
Cheyenne. Frenchie was a traveling
salesman who roamed from town to town, plying his trade from the
back of a wagon. But Frenchie also happened to
have been one of the original members of Robert Mcgrew's
prospecting party who'd wintered at Chief Oray's camp during the
winter of 1874. Frenchie's wagon pulled into
Cheyenne in early March of 1883, and on Sunday the 11th, he and
several other traders set up along the thoroughfare to do
business with local townsfolk. Frenchie served dozens of
customers that morning, many of whom were headed home from
church. But when one man stepped up to
his wagon and sought to peruse his goods, Frenchie found his
face to be curiously familiar. Don't I know you?
Frenchie asked. The stranger returned his gaze,
revealing piercing blue eyes that Frenchie was certain he'd
seen before. No, Sir, he replied.
What's your name? Frenchie asked, studying the
man's rough, dark goatee and how his shoulder length hair was
slick with pomade. John Schwarzer, The man replied,
clearly irritated by Frenchie's incessant inquiries.
Frenchie apologized, claiming he'd confused the stranger with
an old acquaintance. Yet in truth, there had been no
such confusion. Frenchie Kazan was quite certain
of the stranger's identity and following the conclusion of
their business, Frenchie rushed to the local Sheriff's Office
and begged them to send a message to General Charles Adams
of the Los Pinos Indian Agency. A dangerous fugitive was present
in Cheyenne, one that had been wanted for murder for the past
nine years, and his name was Alfred Packer.
General Adams and a handful of agency officers rode day and
night until they reached Cheyenne.
Then, following the confirmation of his identity, Packer was
taken to Denver by train on March 16th of 1883.
Packer explained that he'd only escaped from Saguache due to his
fear of imminent vigilante justice, and expressed a desire
to give a second, much more truthful account of how he
survived his ordeal in the San Juan Mountains.
Instead of claiming that the men were gradually eaten as they
died off 1 by 1, Packer now claimed that Bell had killed the
others after ordering him to collect firewood.
Packard departed in the morning, then returned in the late
evening, according to the second of his signed confessions.
This is what he found. I found Belle, who acted crazy
in the morning, sitting near the fire, roasting a piece of meat
which he had cut from the leg of Miller.
His skull was crushed in with the hatchet.
The other three were lying near the fire.
They were cut in the forehead with a hatchet.
Some had two or three cuts. I got closer to the fire and
when Bell saw me, he got up with his hatchet and charged towards
me. When I shot him sideways through
the belly, he fell on his face. I grabbed the hatchet and hit
him on the top of the head. Packer claimed he then dropped
the revolver in a patch of deep snow and lost sight of it.
After that, he constructed a crude shelter out of stray logs
and then hunkered down to wade out a heavy storm, he claimed.
Days went by, his hunger growing ever more intense, until finally
he could bear it no longer. I tried to get away every day,
but could not, Packer said. So I lived off the flesh of
these men for almost 60 days. General Adams then asked Packer
why he hadn't told the truth during his first confession.
I was excited, Packer reportedly replied.
I wanted to say something and the story as I told it came
first to my mind. Finally, on April 6th of 1883,
Packer pled not guilty at the opening of his trial in Lake
City, Co. The prosecution claimed that the
only logical explanation for Packer's actions was that the
killings were premeditated, while the defense argued against
him being a murderer and claimed cannibalism was essential to his
survival. After seven days of testimonies
and examinations, he was found guilty of premeditated murder
and sentenced to death by hanging.
Packer was eventually spared the death penalty due to illegal
technicality. He might have cheated death a
second time, but he was still legally culpable for the deaths
of his traveling companions. A second trial was held in
Gunnison Co in June of 1886, only this time Packer was found
guilty on five counts of voluntary manslaughter and
sentenced to 40 years in prison. At the time, Packer's 40 years
in prison constituted the longest custodial sentence ever
handed down in the United States and had stunned the American
public. He was encouraged to lodge
multiple appeals and sent letters to national newspapers
claiming that he had been, and I quote, unjustly convicted by an
unfair and unsympathetic judicial system and by the
ignorant conclusions and judgments of small minded
people. Eventually, on February 8th of
19, O1 Packer was paroled after serving 18 years of his 40 year
sentence. Upon his release, he expressed a
huge amount of gratitude towards a woman named Polly Pry.
Polly Pry was the pen name of Leonie O'Brien, an ambitious
young reporter with the Denver Post.
Upon learning of Packers military service, she used her
platform to paint him as a courageous former soldier whose
only crime was getting caught up with what she referred to as a
regrettable situation. She called him a victim of
circumstance who did what he had to do to survive, but one who
had been quote crucified for violating civilized
sensibilities by having to resort to cannibalism.
The column inches she dedicated to Packer prompted the launch of
a Petition 1, which made it onto the desk of the Colorado
governor, Charles Thomas. Thomas was initially reluctant
to involve himself in the situation, but after months upon
months of pressure, one of his final acts as governor was to
have Alfred Packer paroled under the condition he would not
attempt to profit from his story.
Six years following his release, on April 23rd of 19 O 7, Alfred
Packer passed away in Jefferson County, Colorado, age 65 years
old. Some have cited his cause of
death as being dementia, others blame a stroke.
And while rumors abounded that he became a vegetarian before he
died, many reported Packer is living modestly and charitably
during his final few years. Buried in Littleton, Co,
Packer's grave is marked with a veteran's tombstone listing his
original regiment from 1862. But while he might well lie in a
soldier's grave, his reputation will always be that of a
charlatan, a murderer and a cannibal.