Happy Saturday, everybody. We're once again pulling from a previous October episode. This one comes from previous hosts Sarah and Deblina, dates back to it's on Alfred Packer, also known as the Colorado cannibal who. The end of the episode takes a lighter tone than you might imagine because Alfred Packer has become something of a folk hero in spite of the immense taboos surrounding cannibalism. So as long as you are not too squeamish, enjoyed. Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class. A production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm de Blin a Chuk reporting and I'm Faradali. And if you're a regular listener of this podcast, you probably know that we've covered our fair share of historical murder, serial killers, and similar topics, especially during this time of year October series tradition. Yes, but it's rare that we talk about killers who have taken their crimes a step further to include an act that some considered to be even more disturbing, and that's cannibalism. We've actually never really explored this topic though. Candice and Josh did back in two thousand and eight when they talked about the infamous Donner Party, a wagon train that got trapped by the harsh, snowy winter weather in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in eighteen forty six. Now, with that story, out of the eighty seven people who set out on that trip, only forty seven lived to tell about it, and some of those people did resort to cannibalism in order to survive. So our story today is somewhat similar, and in fact, it's often confused with the Donner Party story. It involves a man named Alfred Packer who was among a group of prospectors who went into the San Juan Mountains in the Colorado Rockies near the end of eighteen seventy three and also ran into some pretty treacherous winter weather on his trip. Unlike the Donner Party situation, though, when the thaw came the following spring, Packer was the only guy from his party to emerge from the mountains alive. A little more suspicious, and it certainly adds to the mystery of the story it does and what kind of set up this mystery was a series of suspicions, accusations, and confessions that didn't really match up that followed Packer emerging from the mountains. According to Michael Mayo in his book American Murder, all of this led to Packer becoming the American West's only convicted cannibal. Quite a distinction exactly, But it also created one of the great mysteries of the American West because to this day people still debate about whether Packer was guilty as charged. So we're going to look into that a little bit. And in order to do that, of course, we have to start where the story begins. So it all started in November of eighteen seventy three when a group of about twenty or so would be a prospector set out from Bingham Canyon, Utah, and headed towards Breckenridge, Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains in search of what else gold And serving as a guide on this expedition was Alfred Packer. And just a little note before you start writing your email thing you were pronouncing it incorrectly. There is some debate about Alfred Packer's name, even though he's generally known as Alfred like with the r D E. R D official documents list his name as the more traditional Alfred, and it's supposed that he might have started going by Alfred when a careless tattoo artist misspelled the name on his arm. Even though that's just kind of a rumor, I do like that idea. Though you know your tattoos spelled wrong, You're just gonna go with it, Alfred. According to information from the Alfred Packer Collection of the Colorado State Archives, Packer was born in Pennsylvania on November twenty one, two and during the Civil War he enlisted in both the sixteenth U. S. Infantry of Minnesota and the eighth Regiment Iowa Cavalry, but he was discharged from both of these due to epilepsy. The rest of the details of his life are a little bit sketchy. The next real evidence that we have of his whereabouts is from when he joined up with those miners in Utah. He wanted to be a part of their prospecting party, but he didn't have a lot of money for provisions to make the trips, so, according to an article by Diana to Stephano in the Journal of Social History, he offered up twenty five bucks and his services as a guide to join them in their journey and he told them that he knew Colorado's high country well, so his offer was accepted. They didn't know their way around, and he did, so it seemed like a good match, he claimed he did, because, according to De Stefana's article, it didn't take long for Packard to really robe his traveling companions the wrong way, and there were a few reasons for that. First of all, there was a rumor going around that Packer had served some hard time I'm back in Salt Lake City because he was suspected of murdering his trapping partner. So not the kind of guy you might want with you out in the wilderness. Second, he was also inappropriately interested in the amount of cash that the other men were carrying with them. He would apparently ask them outright, how much money do you have on you? And Then, thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, especially considering that the group was making this track with limited provisions and really relying on Packer's expertise, he seemed to have exaggerated his skill as a guide. According to the article we just mentioned, he got them lost more than once, not something that would endear him to his traveling companions. So they're getting lost, they're running out of food, and the weather just keeps getting worse and worse. By the time they make it to the winter camp of Chief Uray along the Uncompagre River in Colorado in mid December, they were starving pretty much. The chief made it really clear to them that he thought it was a really bad idea for them to continue you on with their journey. At that point, he advised them to just stay where they were and wait until spring, and about ten guys out of the party followed this advice. A small group of men led by Oliver D. Lutzenheiser was itching to get started, though, so they set out with directions from the Chief toward the Las Penos Indian Agency on the other side of the mountain. According to Di Stefana's article, Packer wanted to be a part of this group, but Lutzenheiser didn't trust him and threatened to shoot him if he tried to follow him. So he really did not like Packer at all, know that maybe that first point on the jail time and all the lies that he'd been seeing along the trip not exactly the kind of guy you want with you and already rough journey. But another eager group of men also set out in the same direction, and Packer again served as their guide. The other men in this group where Shannon Bell, James Humphrey, George Noon or perhaps his last name was Moon we see it both ways is real Swan and Frank Miller. Chief Eray gave them supplies and advised them to stay close to the river. But it's clear from what happened that spring that things soon went awry. April sixteenth, eighteen seventy four, it was only one disheveled prospector who stumbled into Las Pinos Indian Agency near Gunnison, Colorado, and that was, of course Alfred Packer, our old friend. So the first thing that Packer asked for when he stumbled in from the wilderness was a drink, specifically a drink of whiskey. And of course people wanted to know what had happened, what his story was. He told them that he had set out from Chief Eray's winter camp with the five other men, but the other men had soon abandoned him when he wasn't able to keep up due to snow blindness, and he said that he spent the rest of the winter after that trapped in the mountains, living off the land. But many people, and especially those other members of the Utah Party, the ones who had opted to wade out the winter with the Chief who finally did make their way to the agency. Those guys especially were immediately suspicious of this story. And there were a few reasons for that. One, he just seemed too well fed for somebody who had been existing off the land off of boiled buds and pine gum all winter. And according to Mayo, Chief Ray astutely observed this that he seemed a little too hefty and said, you too damn fat. Another thing that seemed really off. Packer suddenly had all this cash on him. So not only was he packing a few extra pounds, he had all this money even though he had been pretty much broke before. Two really strange points. So, of course people are asking more and more questions about this, and so, feeling under pressure, Packer offers up a very different version of events. This one includes a kind of confession. According to De Stefano's article, Packer said that just ten days after the six men left the chiefs camp, quote one after another, the men quote had been killed by the remainder to be used as food by the rest. After the men were picked off one by one. Eventually, of course, there were only two of them left. Packer said he shot his last remaining companion in self defense. So, uh, disturbing story, but one that sort of spreads the guilt around. At least he's not seen as a murderer, not a murdering cold blood anyway. They were all trying the cannibalism together. Later that summer, though, a search party was set out to look for the bodies of Packer's former companions. Packer led the search party, interestingly enough. I guess they needed him to try to show where he went, but they couldn't find anything. Still though, even without any physical ence, Packer was arrested under the suspicion of murder anyway, and the authorities just really had a feeling about this guy. They had, They had a suspicion that something was up. And confirmation of those feelings, or at least what seemed to be a confirmation, came in August of eighteen seventy four, when an artist for Harper's magazine named John A. Randolph discovered the bodies of the missing prospectors near Lake City, Colorado. An article by Andrew Curry and Archaeology includes just a little snippet from the beginning of the Harper's account of the find, which read quote, they were lying in a gloomy, secluded spot, densely shaded by tall trees, at the foot of a steep hill, near the bank of the Gunnison River. Marks of violence on each body indicated that a most terrible crime had been committed there. The bodies lay within a few feet of each other in their blankets and clothes. There had been no attempt to conceal the remains, and Curry's article also mentions that the Harper's account came quote complete with lurid illustrations of the badly composed bodies. Lovely, yeah, pretty graphic. According to Mayo's account, all the bodies were missing most or at least some of their flesh. DeStefano says that an inquest conducted after the bodies were found determined that it looked like the men had been brutally murdered in their sleep, and as a result of this fine Packer was formally charged with the murder of all five of his former companions. So facing this hefty charge, Packer somehow managed to escape from jail and was on the lamb for nine years. After that, he was finally discovered by a merchant named Frenchy Carbon Zone in a saloon in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and picked up March eleventh, eighteen eighty three. From there, he was sent back to Colorado to stand trial. But he had a little bit more to say before that trial. Yeah, March sixteenth, eighteen eighty three, he offered up his second confession, and this one was the one that he would more or less stick to you throughout his life, though in later confessions some of the details did change, but they were more ancillary details. I mean, this is I guess sort of not to make a bad pun, but the meat of the argument stays the same from here on out. Okay, So basically his second story went like this. He said that he and his party got lost in the mountains and had to resort to boiling rosebuds and pine gum as you referred to before, after their food ran out. After wandering around on ridgelines for a while, the prospectors made camp on the banks of the Gunnison River. Packer said he took his gun and he went off by himself to see if he could find a way out, but when he returned, he found four of his companions lying there around a fire, and they had all taken a hatchet to the head. The one remaining, who was Bell, was by the fire roasting a piece of meat which was supposedly yes flesh from one of the men. Upon spotting him, pack said Bell immediately came after him with a hatchet, and Packer shot him in self defense and then hit him over the head with his own hatchet. He had then eaten the flesh of the men to survive the harsh winter, So he admitted to cannibalism it was just, and to killing Bell in self defense, but he wanted it to be I mean, murder was the thing that people were really up in arms about here murdering five men. It suggested when you read these accounts that people would have pretty much understood the cannibalism. You know, you have you gotta do what you gotta do to survive when you're out there and in these harsh conditions. But it was the fact that Packer was also suspected of murdering these guys that murdering for the for their money as well, it seemed. So the jury apparently didn't buy this new confession, though, because Packer was found guilty and was sentenced to hang. When the judge, who was Judge Melville be Gary, handed on his sentence on April three, legend has it that he said something to the effect of, quote, there was seven Democrats in all of Hinsdale County, and you ate five of them. I sentence you to be hung by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead, as a warning against further reducing the democratic population of this county. Yeah, this looks act worrying about the Democrats. It doesn't seem to be in the version of sentencing that's in the Colorado State Archives. The dead, dead, dead part is. But according to Curry's article, during the New Deal, Colorado Republicans did form these Alfred Packard clubs, and members of these clubs swore to quote eliminate at least five Democrats. Oh, I hope they didn't have like luncheon parties for their Alfred Packard clubs. Ultimately, the Packer was not hanged due to a technicality. Essentially, the territorial murder laws had changed, and the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that prosecutions of murders before May eighteen eighty one were invalid. Packer's case was retried. He did get forty years in prison, he only ended up serving eighteen of those. He was finally paroled in nineteen o one. He died six years later, and according to the Colorado State Archives, the cause of death, which was on April nineteen oh seven, was listed as quote senility, trouble, and worry on his death certificate. So a court decided Packer was guilty of murder, and of course many people still assumed that he was. After all, it does make for a good grizzly legend. But throughout the years, what really happened on that mountain has really remained a mystery, and many have argued that Packer was convicted on pretty flimsy evidence. George Washington University law professor James starrs who he's been responsible for the exhimation of many controversial historical figures, including Lizzie Borden's parents and Jesse James. He was curious enough about this mystery that he organized a team to exhume and examine the remains of Packers prospecting party in nine and they found a lot of things there. They found, first of all, plenty of evidence of trauma on the bones, which suggested that almost all of the flesh had been removed. Also, a lot of the cut marks were on the victim's back, suggesting that the person removing the flesh didn't want to look at the victim's faces, which is just kind of an interesting look into the mind of psychological angle to cannibalism. Yes, according to Curry's article, Stars concluded that Packer was the killer because a war wound that was found on Bell's remains would have supposedly made it too difficult for him to inflict the wounds that they found on the other men. But not everyone agrees with stars findings. Now, the Museum of Western Colorado curator and historian David Bailey is one of those people who has led the charge to prove Packers innocence. So Bailey started digging into Packers story when he was working to tie a thirty eight caliber cult pistol from the museum's collection to the site where the bodies were found. He was working in the late nineties the early aughts, so he couldn't exhume the bodies, you know, which had just been exhumed in nine nine, because they were sealed off over after the last exhimation to protect them from relic hunters. He did, however, have access to some soil samples that were left over from the previous excavation, and by having those tested, Bailey was able to prove the pistol was at the site because lead found in the soil was an exact match for the bullets remaining in the gun. So it's starting to sound kind of like Packer's story of having to shoot Bell lined up a little bit. Also, the gun still had three bullets in it. There were two empty chambers, which matched up with some of the testimony Packer had given, So Bells skeleton had some holes in it, possibly gunshot wounds in the pelvic region. Also, his wallet or his pocket book whatever he was carrying with all that cash the theme Packer was interested in, also seemed to have been shot. So this was enough to convince Bailey and many others that Packer was telling the truth, that that second confession was real. He held a mock trial for him in two thousand two, in which Packer was found innocent. Whether he was guilty or innocent, one thing that's for certain is that Packer became sort of a kitchy kind of folk hero in the twentieth century. Since the nineteen sixties, for example, students at the University of Colorado at Boulder have eaten at the Alfred Packer Grill, and according to Curry's article, that l Cannibal burrito is apparently a popular menu item there. Oh goodness. A bust of Packer was also placed in the Colorado state capital in two So he made it into the capital. I mean he did. That's pretty official. There are also a lot of references to Packer and pop culture, and one of the funniest examples is Trey Parker, who co created the animated TV series South Park, which we all know and love, wrote a play about Packer when he was studying at the University of Colorado called Alfred Packer the Musical. Later he turned it into a film called Cannibal the Musical. And unsurprisingly, Packer has also just made his way into folk songs too. There have actually been several songs written about Packer, including nineteen sixty four is the Ballad of Alfred Packer, which was written by folk singer phil Ochs. The chorus for that song went, they called him a murderer, a cannibal of thief. It just doesn't pay to eat anything but government inspected beef. There's even a cookbook out there called Alfred Packer's High Protein Cookbook. Al Right, well, I feel like you may be picking that up. Oh you do, after I go try the l cannibal burrito. I don't know. I don't know. Well, you like to cook, I mean like you like meat, like cooking, but I usually try to avoid any associations with cannibalism. And as to my cooking, as a rule of thumb, I guess that's a pretty good it's a pretty good rule of the thumbs in your daily cuisine. There you go. Well, I feel much more comfortable sitting in the studio with you right now. I'm I'm glad I was able to reassure you I'm not a cannibal. Thank you so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you have heard an email address or a Facebook you are l or something similar over the course of today's episode, since it is from the archive that might be out of date now, you can email us at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com, and you can find us all over social media at missed in History, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcast, the I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H

Happy Saturday, everybody. We're once again pulling from a previous October episode. This one comes from previous hosts Sarah and Deblina, dates back to it's on Alfred Packer, also known as the Colorado cannibal who. The end of the episode takes a lighter tone than you might imagine because Alfred Packer has become something of a folk hero in spite of the immense taboos surrounding cannibalism. So as long as you are not too squeamish, enjoyed. Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class. A production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm de Blin a Chuk reporting and I'm Faradali. And if you're a regular listener of this podcast, you probably know that we've covered our fair share of historical murder, serial killers, and similar topics, especially during this time of year October series tradition. Yes, but it's rare that we talk about killers who have taken their crimes a step further to include an act that some considered to be even more disturbing, and that's cannibalism. We've actually never really explored this topic though. Candice and Josh did back in two thousand and eight when they talked about the infamous Donner Party, a wagon train that got trapped by the harsh, snowy winter weather in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in eighteen forty six. Now, with that story, out of the eighty seven people who set out on that trip, only forty seven lived to tell about it, and some of those people did resort to cannibalism in order to survive. So our story today is somewhat similar, and in fact, it's often confused with the Donner Party story. It involves a man named Alfred Packer who was among a group of prospectors who went into the San Juan Mountains in the Colorado Rockies near the end of eighteen seventy three and also ran into some pretty treacherous winter weather on his trip. Unlike the Donner Party situation, though, when the thaw came the following spring, Packer was the only guy from his party to emerge from the mountains alive. A little more suspicious, and it certainly adds to the mystery of the story it does and what kind of set up this mystery was a series of suspicions, accusations, and confessions that didn't really match up that followed Packer emerging from the mountains. According to Michael Mayo in his book American Murder, all of this led to Packer becoming the American West's only convicted cannibal. Quite a distinction exactly, But it also created one of the great mysteries of the American West because to this day people still debate about whether Packer was guilty as charged. So we're going to look into that a little bit. And in order to do that, of course, we have to start where the story begins. So it all started in November of eighteen seventy three when a group of about twenty or so would be a prospector set out from Bingham Canyon, Utah, and headed towards Breckenridge, Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains in search of what else gold And serving as a guide on this expedition was Alfred Packer. And just a little note before you start writing your email thing you were pronouncing it incorrectly. There is some debate about Alfred Packer's name, even though he's generally known as Alfred like with the r D E. R D official documents list his name as the more traditional Alfred, and it's supposed that he might have started going by Alfred when a careless tattoo artist misspelled the name on his arm. Even though that's just kind of a rumor, I do like that idea. Though you know your tattoos spelled wrong, You're just gonna go with it, Alfred. According to information from the Alfred Packer Collection of the Colorado State Archives, Packer was born in Pennsylvania on November twenty one, two and during the Civil War he enlisted in both the sixteenth U. S. Infantry of Minnesota and the eighth Regiment Iowa Cavalry, but he was discharged from both of these due to epilepsy. The rest of the details of his life are a little bit sketchy. The next real evidence that we have of his whereabouts is from when he joined up with those miners in Utah. He wanted to be a part of their prospecting party, but he didn't have a lot of money for provisions to make the trips, so, according to an article by Diana to Stephano in the Journal of Social History, he offered up twenty five bucks and his services as a guide to join them in their journey and he told them that he knew Colorado's high country well, so his offer was accepted. They didn't know their way around, and he did, so it seemed like a good match, he claimed he did, because, according to De Stefana's article, it didn't take long for Packard to really robe his traveling companions the wrong way, and there were a few reasons for that. First of all, there was a rumor going around that Packer had served some hard time I'm back in Salt Lake City because he was suspected of murdering his trapping partner. So not the kind of guy you might want with you out in the wilderness. Second, he was also inappropriately interested in the amount of cash that the other men were carrying with them. He would apparently ask them outright, how much money do you have on you? And Then, thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, especially considering that the group was making this track with limited provisions and really relying on Packer's expertise, he seemed to have exaggerated his skill as a guide. According to the article we just mentioned, he got them lost more than once, not something that would endear him to his traveling companions. So they're getting lost, they're running out of food, and the weather just keeps getting worse and worse. By the time they make it to the winter camp of Chief Uray along the Uncompagre River in Colorado in mid December, they were starving pretty much. The chief made it really clear to them that he thought it was a really bad idea for them to continue you on with their journey. At that point, he advised them to just stay where they were and wait until spring, and about ten guys out of the party followed this advice. A small group of men led by Oliver D. Lutzenheiser was itching to get started, though, so they set out with directions from the Chief toward the Las Penos Indian Agency on the other side of the mountain. According to Di Stefana's article, Packer wanted to be a part of this group, but Lutzenheiser didn't trust him and threatened to shoot him if he tried to follow him. So he really did not like Packer at all, know that maybe that first point on the jail time and all the lies that he'd been seeing along the trip not exactly the kind of guy you want with you and already rough journey. But another eager group of men also set out in the same direction, and Packer again served as their guide. The other men in this group where Shannon Bell, James Humphrey, George Noon or perhaps his last name was Moon we see it both ways is real Swan and Frank Miller. Chief Eray gave them supplies and advised them to stay close to the river. But it's clear from what happened that spring that things soon went awry. April sixteenth, eighteen seventy four, it was only one disheveled prospector who stumbled into Las Pinos Indian Agency near Gunnison, Colorado, and that was, of course Alfred Packer, our old friend. So the first thing that Packer asked for when he stumbled in from the wilderness was a drink, specifically a drink of whiskey. And of course people wanted to know what had happened, what his story was. He told them that he had set out from Chief Eray's winter camp with the five other men, but the other men had soon abandoned him when he wasn't able to keep up due to snow blindness, and he said that he spent the rest of the winter after that trapped in the mountains, living off the land. But many people, and especially those other members of the Utah Party, the ones who had opted to wade out the winter with the Chief who finally did make their way to the agency. Those guys especially were immediately suspicious of this story. And there were a few reasons for that. One, he just seemed too well fed for somebody who had been existing off the land off of boiled buds and pine gum all winter. And according to Mayo, Chief Ray astutely observed this that he seemed a little too hefty and said, you too damn fat. Another thing that seemed really off. Packer suddenly had all this cash on him. So not only was he packing a few extra pounds, he had all this money even though he had been pretty much broke before. Two really strange points. So, of course people are asking more and more questions about this, and so, feeling under pressure, Packer offers up a very different version of events. This one includes a kind of confession. According to De Stefano's article, Packer said that just ten days after the six men left the chiefs camp, quote one after another, the men quote had been killed by the remainder to be used as food by the rest. After the men were picked off one by one. Eventually, of course, there were only two of them left. Packer said he shot his last remaining companion in self defense. So, uh, disturbing story, but one that sort of spreads the guilt around. At least he's not seen as a murderer, not a murdering cold blood anyway. They were all trying the cannibalism together. Later that summer, though, a search party was set out to look for the bodies of Packer's former companions. Packer led the search party, interestingly enough. I guess they needed him to try to show where he went, but they couldn't find anything. Still though, even without any physical ence, Packer was arrested under the suspicion of murder anyway, and the authorities just really had a feeling about this guy. They had, They had a suspicion that something was up. And confirmation of those feelings, or at least what seemed to be a confirmation, came in August of eighteen seventy four, when an artist for Harper's magazine named John A. Randolph discovered the bodies of the missing prospectors near Lake City, Colorado. An article by Andrew Curry and Archaeology includes just a little snippet from the beginning of the Harper's account of the find, which read quote, they were lying in a gloomy, secluded spot, densely shaded by tall trees, at the foot of a steep hill, near the bank of the Gunnison River. Marks of violence on each body indicated that a most terrible crime had been committed there. The bodies lay within a few feet of each other in their blankets and clothes. There had been no attempt to conceal the remains, and Curry's article also mentions that the Harper's account came quote complete with lurid illustrations of the badly composed bodies. Lovely, yeah, pretty graphic. According to Mayo's account, all the bodies were missing most or at least some of their flesh. DeStefano says that an inquest conducted after the bodies were found determined that it looked like the men had been brutally murdered in their sleep, and as a result of this fine Packer was formally charged with the murder of all five of his former companions. So facing this hefty charge, Packer somehow managed to escape from jail and was on the lamb for nine years. After that, he was finally discovered by a merchant named Frenchy Carbon Zone in a saloon in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and picked up March eleventh, eighteen eighty three. From there, he was sent back to Colorado to stand trial. But he had a little bit more to say before that trial. Yeah, March sixteenth, eighteen eighty three, he offered up his second confession, and this one was the one that he would more or less stick to you throughout his life, though in later confessions some of the details did change, but they were more ancillary details. I mean, this is I guess sort of not to make a bad pun, but the meat of the argument stays the same from here on out. Okay, So basically his second story went like this. He said that he and his party got lost in the mountains and had to resort to boiling rosebuds and pine gum as you referred to before, after their food ran out. After wandering around on ridgelines for a while, the prospectors made camp on the banks of the Gunnison River. Packer said he took his gun and he went off by himself to see if he could find a way out, but when he returned, he found four of his companions lying there around a fire, and they had all taken a hatchet to the head. The one remaining, who was Bell, was by the fire roasting a piece of meat which was supposedly yes flesh from one of the men. Upon spotting him, pack said Bell immediately came after him with a hatchet, and Packer shot him in self defense and then hit him over the head with his own hatchet. He had then eaten the flesh of the men to survive the harsh winter, So he admitted to cannibalism it was just, and to killing Bell in self defense, but he wanted it to be I mean, murder was the thing that people were really up in arms about here murdering five men. It suggested when you read these accounts that people would have pretty much understood the cannibalism. You know, you have you gotta do what you gotta do to survive when you're out there and in these harsh conditions. But it was the fact that Packer was also suspected of murdering these guys that murdering for the for their money as well, it seemed. So the jury apparently didn't buy this new confession, though, because Packer was found guilty and was sentenced to hang. When the judge, who was Judge Melville be Gary, handed on his sentence on April three, legend has it that he said something to the effect of, quote, there was seven Democrats in all of Hinsdale County, and you ate five of them. I sentence you to be hung by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead, as a warning against further reducing the democratic population of this county. Yeah, this looks act worrying about the Democrats. It doesn't seem to be in the version of sentencing that's in the Colorado State Archives. The dead, dead, dead part is. But according to Curry's article, during the New Deal, Colorado Republicans did form these Alfred Packard clubs, and members of these clubs swore to quote eliminate at least five Democrats. Oh, I hope they didn't have like luncheon parties for their Alfred Packard clubs. Ultimately, the Packer was not hanged due to a technicality. Essentially, the territorial murder laws had changed, and the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that prosecutions of murders before May eighteen eighty one were invalid. Packer's case was retried. He did get forty years in prison, he only ended up serving eighteen of those. He was finally paroled in nineteen o one. He died six years later, and according to the Colorado State Archives, the cause of death, which was on April nineteen oh seven, was listed as quote senility, trouble, and worry on his death certificate. So a court decided Packer was guilty of murder, and of course many people still assumed that he was. After all, it does make for a good grizzly legend. But throughout the years, what really happened on that mountain has really remained a mystery, and many have argued that Packer was convicted on pretty flimsy evidence. George Washington University law professor James starrs who he's been responsible for the exhimation of many controversial historical figures, including Lizzie Borden's parents and Jesse James. He was curious enough about this mystery that he organized a team to exhume and examine the remains of Packers prospecting party in nine and they found a lot of things there. They found, first of all, plenty of evidence of trauma on the bones, which suggested that almost all of the flesh had been removed. Also, a lot of the cut marks were on the victim's back, suggesting that the person removing the flesh didn't want to look at the victim's faces, which is just kind of an interesting look into the mind of psychological angle to cannibalism. Yes, according to Curry's article, Stars concluded that Packer was the killer because a war wound that was found on Bell's remains would have supposedly made it too difficult for him to inflict the wounds that they found on the other men. But not everyone agrees with stars findings. Now, the Museum of Western Colorado curator and historian David Bailey is one of those people who has led the charge to prove Packers innocence. So Bailey started digging into Packers story when he was working to tie a thirty eight caliber cult pistol from the museum's collection to the site where the bodies were found. He was working in the late nineties the early aughts, so he couldn't exhume the bodies, you know, which had just been exhumed in nine nine, because they were sealed off over after the last exhimation to protect them from relic hunters. He did, however, have access to some soil samples that were left over from the previous excavation, and by having those tested, Bailey was able to prove the pistol was at the site because lead found in the soil was an exact match for the bullets remaining in the gun. So it's starting to sound kind of like Packer's story of having to shoot Bell lined up a little bit. Also, the gun still had three bullets in it. There were two empty chambers, which matched up with some of the testimony Packer had given, So Bells skeleton had some holes in it, possibly gunshot wounds in the pelvic region. Also, his wallet or his pocket book whatever he was carrying with all that cash the theme Packer was interested in, also seemed to have been shot. So this was enough to convince Bailey and many others that Packer was telling the truth, that that second confession was real. He held a mock trial for him in two thousand two, in which Packer was found innocent. Whether he was guilty or innocent, one thing that's for certain is that Packer became sort of a kitchy kind of folk hero in the twentieth century. Since the nineteen sixties, for example, students at the University of Colorado at Boulder have eaten at the Alfred Packer Grill, and according to Curry's article, that l Cannibal burrito is apparently a popular menu item there. Oh goodness. A bust of Packer was also placed in the Colorado state capital in two So he made it into the capital. I mean he did. That's pretty official. There are also a lot of references to Packer and pop culture, and one of the funniest examples is Trey Parker, who co created the animated TV series South Park, which we all know and love, wrote a play about Packer when he was studying at the University of Colorado called Alfred Packer the Musical. Later he turned it into a film called Cannibal the Musical. And unsurprisingly, Packer has also just made his way into folk songs too. There have actually been several songs written about Packer, including nineteen sixty four is the Ballad of Alfred Packer, which was written by folk singer phil Ochs. The chorus for that song went, they called him a murderer, a cannibal of thief. It just doesn't pay to eat anything but government inspected beef. There's even a cookbook out there called Alfred Packer's High Protein Cookbook. Al Right, well, I feel like you may be picking that up. Oh you do, after I go try the l cannibal burrito. I don't know. I don't know. Well, you like to cook, I mean like you like meat, like cooking, but I usually try to avoid any associations with cannibalism. And as to my cooking, as a rule of thumb, I guess that's a pretty good it's a pretty good rule of the thumbs in your daily cuisine. There you go. Well, I feel much more comfortable sitting in the studio with you right now. I'm I'm glad I was able to reassure you I'm not a cannibal. Thank you so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you have heard an email address or a Facebook you are l or something similar over the course of today's episode, since it is from the archive that might be out of date now, you can email us at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com, and you can find us all over social media at missed in History, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcast, the I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio's How Stuff Works. 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