Alfred Packer

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Alfred G. "Alferd" Packer (born January 21, 1842 in Allegheny County , Pennsylvania, † April 23, 1907 in Deer Creek , Colorado) was an American cannibal . Initially charged with murder , he was eventually sentenced to forty years in prison for manslaughter .

Alfred Packer in prison (1874)

Life

Packer's parents were James Packer and his wife Esther, nee Griner. He originally wanted to be a shoemaker , but the American Civil War intervened. During the Civil War he served briefly in the infantry of the Northern States from April 1863 . Eight months later he was retired for epilepsy . He tried again to be accepted into another unit but was released for the same reason. Eventually he tried his luck as a prospector .

In November 1873 he was part of a group of 21 men who left Provo, Utah , to look for gold in Breckenridge, Colorado . Against express advice, Packer and five other men left for Gunnison on February 9th . In addition to Packer, the group included Shannon Wilson Bell, James Humphrey, Frank “Reddy” Miller, George “California” Noon and Israel Swan.

Memorial to Packer's Victims at the crime scene southwest of Lake City, Colorado.

They got lost and fell into the Rocky Mountains . Packer, who is said to have looked healthier than possible after 66 days as the only survivor, made several different statements: First he claimed to have survived with rabbits and rose hips , but was then confronted with the fact that he had quite a lot of money and personal belongings his companions had carried with him. He then stated that one after the other died and were then eaten by the survivors. Most recently, he said he had returned from a tour of exploration and found Shannon Bell frying human flesh. Because Bell attacked him with an ax, Packer had to shoot him. He insisted that Bell went mad and murdered the others. He himself only survived with human flesh.

On April 16, 1874, Packer reached the Los Pinos Indian Agency at Gunnison alone. He spent a lot of time in the saloon where he met some members of the original group. He pleaded self-defense , but was not believed.

Packer signed a confession on August 5 and was sent to Saguache, Colorado prison , from which he soon broke out. Nine years later, on March 11, 1883, he was found. He had lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming , under the name "John Schwartze" . He signed a second confession on March 16, and was found guilty of manslaughter on April 13 and sentenced to death . This was retroactively repealed in October 1885 and Packer sentenced on June 6, 1886 after another trial to forty years in prison, at that time the longest sentence ever.

On February 8, 1901, he was pardoned and worked from then on at the Denver Post as a security guard. He died of "senility" in Deer Creek, Jefferson County, Colorado.

It is rumored that Packer became a vegetarian before his death . He is buried in Littleton, Colorado . His gravestone is that of a veteran of his old regiment from the Civil War.

Packer in popular culture

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert Jay Nash: Alferd Packer . In: Encyclopedia of Western Lawmen & Outlaws . Rowman & Littlefield, 1989, ISBN 0-306-80591-X , pp. 250, 251 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed June 11, 2016]).
  2. ^ Ancestry of Alfred Packer
  3. ^ A b Alfred Packer. Littleton history, Biographies. In: littletongov.org. Retrieved June 11, 2016 .
  4. ^ Colorado State Archieves: The Alfred Packer Collection
  5. ^ Cannibalism and the Common Law: The Story of the Tragic Last Voyage of the Mignonette and the Strange Legal Proceedings to Which It Gave Rise , Simpson, AWB, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1984 ISBN 978-0-226-75942-5
  6. ↑ Phil Ochs: The Ballad Of Alferd Packer
  7. ↑ a b c d Diana Di Stefano, Alfred Packer's World: Risk, Responsibility, and the Place of Experience in Mountain Culture, 1873-1907 , Journal of Social History, Volume 40, Number 1, Fall 2006, pp. 181-204. ( online )
personal data
SURNAME Packer, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Packer, Alfred G.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American cannibal
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1842
PLACE OF BIRTH Allegheny County , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH April 23, 1907
Place of death Deer Creek , Colorado