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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK Every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 6: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski. In the winter of
Speaker 6: eighteen seventy three, a small band of prospectors lost their
Speaker 6: way in the frozen wilderness of the Colorado Rockies. Months later,
Speaker 6: when the snow finally melted, only one of them emerged.
Speaker 6: His name was Alfred G. Packer, though he would soon
Speaker 6: become infamous throughout the country under a different name, the
Speaker 6: Man Eater, after the butchered remains of his five traveling
Speaker 6: companions were discovered in the secluded valley by the Gunnison River.
Speaker 6: Packer vanished for nine years, becoming the West's most wanted man.
Speaker 6: But followed was a saga of evasion and retribution as
Speaker 6: the Trial of the Century worked to extricate fact from myth,
Speaker 6: and Paul Prye, a once famous pioneering journalist, took on
Speaker 6: the cause of Packer. Man Eater is the definitive story
Speaker 6: of a legendary crime, a gripping tale of unspeakable suffering,
Speaker 6: the desperate struggle for survival, and the fight to uncover
Speaker 6: the truth. Story that we're book that were featuring this
Speaker 6: evening is Man Eater, The Life and Legend of an
Speaker 6: American Cannibal, with my special guests, journalist and author and
Speaker 6: professor Harold Scheckter. Welcome back to the program, and thank
Speaker 6: you very much for greening to this interview.
Speaker 5: Harold Scheckter, Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 7: Thank you very much Harold, for our audience. I just
Speaker 7: got to mention this is Harold Checkter is one of
Speaker 7: the most prolific and important true crime writers period, I
Speaker 7: will say, in America today this period. So I thought
Speaker 7: i'd just say that for all those stuff, and we'll
Speaker 7: talk about at the end how many books you have
Speaker 7: written so far, and it is again prolific. Let's jump
Speaker 7: right into this story. As you introduce in the very
Speaker 7: beginning of the book, you set the stage for the
Speaker 7: very very i guess thorny subject of cannibalism, a subject
Speaker 7: that everyone seems to be horrified yet fascinated by. So
Speaker 7: let's talk about John C. Fremont and the mid eighteen
Speaker 7: hundreds in the American West and tell us who John
Speaker 7: Fremont is and what's the situation, what is the reality
Speaker 7: like in the American West in the mid eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean the West was at that time completely
Speaker 5: unexplored territory, in a very very rugged, very very primitive
Speaker 5: you know, this, a vast, vast unexplored wilderness. Fremont was
Speaker 5: who was known as the Great Pathfinder, was a person
Speaker 5: who was sent out to chart certain pathways through the
Speaker 5: West in the company of Kit Carson, the legendary scout
Speaker 5: and Indian fighter, and his his Fremont's books about his adventures.
Speaker 5: You know, most people today remember Lewis Clark, but in
Speaker 5: the nineteenth century John C. Fremont was at least as
Speaker 5: famous as one of the great pioneering explorers who opened
Speaker 5: up the far reaches of the Western wilderness to white
Speaker 5: settlement and colonization. And Fremont himself became such a celebrated
Speaker 5: figure that he was nominated as the Republican Party's first
Speaker 5: presidential candidate in eighteen fifty six, and one of the
Speaker 5: charges that was brought against him, you know, we we
Speaker 5: think we're living through, you know, a particularly nasty mud
Speaker 5: slinging presidential campaign right now. But back then, as I
Speaker 5: say my book, the charges that were leveled by politicians
Speaker 5: against each other make modern day mud slinging look like,
Speaker 5: you know, the height of civility. And one of the
Speaker 5: charges I was brought against Fremont was that he was
Speaker 5: a cannibal, which unlike some of the other charges that
Speaker 5: he was illegitimate, that he was an adulterer, that he
Speaker 5: was a native born Frenchman back in the mid nineteenth century,
Speaker 5: as today people were, I guess they were kind of
Speaker 5: berthers around. But in any case, as it turns out,
Speaker 5: the cannibal charge was true because on one of his expeditions,
Speaker 5: Fremont and his men became it became trapped in these
Speaker 5: snow choked mountains, and when some of them died and
Speaker 5: the others were starving, they resorted to cannibalism. So a
Speaker 5: part of the beginning of my book, you know what
Speaker 5: I'm trying to. What I do in the beginning of
Speaker 5: that book is put the Packer's story in some kind
Speaker 5: of context, not only the context of, you know, the
Speaker 5: incredibly harsh circumstances that these early frontiersmen and explorer's faced
Speaker 5: in the American wilderness, but just in the context of
Speaker 5: attitudes towards what's called survival cannibalism. You know, situations where
Speaker 5: men in extremely dire circumstances of extreme starvation have resorted
Speaker 5: to cannibalism as their only means of survival. And let
Speaker 5: me just interject, you know, I mean, I've written, as
Speaker 5: you know, about some of America's most notorious cannibal killers,
Speaker 5: most notably Albert Fish, you know, the infamous cannibal pedophile
Speaker 5: of the nineteen twenties and thirties. The book Mannire doesn't
Speaker 5: deal with that kind of psychopathic serial murder. Cannibalism deals
Speaker 5: with a case of survival, analysm and murder, but not
Speaker 5: serial murder.
Speaker 7: Now with this you talk about, it's probably well known
Speaker 7: about the gold rush in California, but as you write
Speaker 7: in the book, within about ten years they said the
Speaker 7: rivers were panned out and disillusioned miners were searching elsewhere.
Speaker 7: So in nineteen fifty eight you talk about William Green Russell,
Speaker 7: where do they resort to and where's the new El Dorado.
Speaker 5: It's actually eighteen fifty eight, and it was in there
Speaker 5: were these various mineral strikes gold and silver in the
Speaker 5: Colorado Rockies and a particularly rich strike or in the
Speaker 5: San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado, and that's set off
Speaker 5: a second gold and silver rush that brought thousands of them,
Speaker 5: you know, get rich copefuls flocking to the mountains of Colorado.
Speaker 5: You know, there was a famous one of them was
Speaker 5: Pike's Peak, and you'd have thousands and thousands of these
Speaker 5: people in covered wagons with Pike's Peaker bust written am
Speaker 5: ba canvas canopies. So, you know, Packer became caught up
Speaker 5: in that, in that kind of hysteria.
Speaker 7: Now with this as well, with this mining craze, we're
Speaker 7: not talking about a place that's not fraught with its
Speaker 7: own problems in terms of accessibility and danger and the elements,
Speaker 7: in terms of the weather in the winter or weather
Speaker 7: in all the seasons. So tell us a little bit
Speaker 7: about that.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, Colorado's you know, a gloriously beautiful place.
Speaker 5: I actually lived in Colorado's for a year myself. But
Speaker 5: you know, the rockies in the winter, and particularly back
Speaker 5: then when it was largely uninhabited by you know, white settlers,
Speaker 5: so excuse me, you know, other than you know, there
Speaker 5: were some cities like Denver and so on, but but
Speaker 5: in terms of the San Juan Mountains, very very few
Speaker 5: outposts of the civilization, and in the winter, the conditions
Speaker 5: were incredibly harsh. You know that there might be three
Speaker 5: or four feet of snow in the grounds. There were
Speaker 5: these you know, precipices and gullies and chasms. I mean,
Speaker 5: it was you really took your life in your hands
Speaker 5: trying to negotiate that landscape in the middle of winter. Uh.
Speaker 5: And you know that's what happened with Packer and his comrades.
Speaker 5: They set off very confidently in the belief that they
Speaker 5: could make their destination in a certain amount of time,
Speaker 5: and quickly found out that, you know, they had seriously
Speaker 5: underestimated the harshness of the environment and the severity of
Speaker 5: the elements.
Speaker 7: Let's talk a little bit about this. Alfred Packer very
Speaker 7: interesting you talk about not is his childhood, but you
Speaker 7: can get it back towards be previous to obviously this
Speaker 7: fateful event where the men die and there's cannibalism. Tell
Speaker 7: us a little bit about how James Packer from Salt
Speaker 7: Lake City comes to the Denver area and under what
Speaker 7: circumstances and why.
Speaker 5: Okay, Alfred Packer kas Packer Well Packer was born in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 5: He always claimed to be related to a very prominent
Speaker 5: Pennsylvania named Asa Packer, who was a railroad magnet and
Speaker 5: the founder of the High University. That was one of
Speaker 5: the many fabrications that Packer indulged in. The family subsequently
Speaker 5: moved to Indiana. Packer left home at a relatively young
Speaker 5: age and in his mid adolescence and enlisted in the
Speaker 5: Union Army during the Civil War. Packer was afflicted again
Speaker 5: from childhood with grandmu epilepsy UH, and so he ended
Speaker 5: up getting a disability discharged. He he was he was
Speaker 5: subject to very very very extreme UH and increasingly frequent
Speaker 5: seizures as a result of that illness. He re enlisted
Speaker 5: a different a different unit. He event was discharged again,
Speaker 5: eventually drifted out West. He claimed again apparently falsely, to
Speaker 5: have served with George Armstrong Custer. But in any case,
Speaker 5: you know many details of his past or shrouded in obscurity,
Speaker 5: but we do know that by the early eighteen seventies
Speaker 5: he had drifted around west again. He was doing some prospecting,
Speaker 5: making his living in various odd jobs. He eventually made
Speaker 5: his way to Utah, and that's really where the saga
Speaker 5: of Alfred Packer picks up.
Speaker 7: Now, tell us the situation you talk about writing the
Speaker 7: introduction of the book, that the circumstances to which people
Speaker 7: would resort to cannibalism. And throughout the book you cite
Speaker 7: examples of not only historic examples and less known examples
Speaker 7: of cannibalism in America, but also the prevailing attitude by
Speaker 7: society at that time towards it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so, well, you know society was sorry, go ahead, no, no, well,
Speaker 5: you know society was you know, in first of all,
Speaker 5: of course, it's always been a subject of incredible fascination
Speaker 5: to people, you know, who respond with a mixture, well
Speaker 5: with kind of titillated horror. You know, the most famous
Speaker 5: case in American history, you know, the Donner Party, which
Speaker 5: happened some years before the Packer case. And you know,
Speaker 5: depending on well, to some extent, depending on the character
Speaker 5: of the people who ended up having having to resort
Speaker 5: to those extremities. You know, the attitude could be fairly forgiving.
Speaker 5: You know. In fact, one thing I do discovered in
Speaker 5: my researches is that cannibalism per se is not really
Speaker 5: illegal in virtually all states of the Union. So uh,
Speaker 5: you know. So so there are many many instances, or
Speaker 5: significant number of instances in American history where people again
Speaker 5: who have been in these unimaginably nightmarish circumstances, uh and
Speaker 5: and driven half crazed by hunger and were near death
Speaker 5: by starvation themselves, and who resorted to surviving on the
Speaker 5: flesh of you know, dead companions that you know, those people,
Speaker 5: you know, have often been been regarded fairly sympathetically by
Speaker 5: the public. Uh. You know, there's a famous case. I
Speaker 5: just made a movie about it, the Welsh of Essex,
Speaker 5: which was one, you know, very very famous case. They
Speaker 5: made him. There was a book in the Heart of
Speaker 5: the Sea and a movie recently released about him. Was
Speaker 5: one of the inspirations for the book Moby Dick, you know,
Speaker 5: where these sailors who were stuck on this life both
Speaker 5: you know, ended up surviving by cannibalizing their dead, dead comrades,
Speaker 5: and you know those people were should not only not punish,
Speaker 5: but again you know, treated very sympathetically.
Speaker 7: Now you also introduced the situation, the circumstances in which
Speaker 7: Alfred Packer joins this group of people. Again, we there
Speaker 7: is a mix of some of the storytelling he does
Speaker 7: about his background and to that testament, he does a
Speaker 7: little bit of this trying to describe himself as a guide.
Speaker 7: So in that with this little tale about him being
Speaker 7: a guide, Yeah, how does he impress these people enough
Speaker 7: so that they can take them on board? Because there
Speaker 7: wasn't amount of fee that was required to be joining
Speaker 7: this journey, So tell us how he circumvented that and
Speaker 7: how he came to be included.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, there was a group of about twenty
Speaker 5: miners who were all living around Bingham, Utah at the time,
Speaker 5: and you know, Packer got wind of the fact that
Speaker 5: they were organizing in an expedition to the San Juan
Speaker 5: Mountains to prospect for silver, and Packer, who as you said,
Speaker 5: had no money at the time, offered his services as
Speaker 5: a guide, claiming that he had spent a lot of
Speaker 5: time in the area, and he had in fact spent
Speaker 5: some of his time in Colorado for sure, and that
Speaker 5: he would be able to lead them to their destiny
Speaker 5: in a very short time. None of the other men,
Speaker 5: among these other twenty miners had ever been to Colorado,
Speaker 5: so they were willing to. Well, this one prospector whose
Speaker 5: name was McGrew, you know, kind of took a shine
Speaker 5: to Packer, was willing to grub stake him as you
Speaker 5: put it, that is, you know, pay his way in
Speaker 5: return for you know, Packer helping him out with his
Speaker 5: horses and zen, but also you know, his services supposedly
Speaker 5: as a guide who could lead them to where they
Speaker 5: wanted to go in a matter of you know, a
Speaker 5: couple of weeks.
Speaker 7: Now with this, these people had seen people perish before
Speaker 7: because of starvation. So these people set out to calculate
Speaker 7: and then acquire enough supplies that they wouldn't starve. Great
Speaker 7: tell us how it was that with the supplies, But
Speaker 7: also was this a dangerous or not dangerous time to
Speaker 7: be going? And did anybody advise against leaving at that time?
Speaker 5: Well, when they initially set out from being a Utah,
Speaker 5: you know, they left Trying to remember exactly, I think
Speaker 5: they set out in November eighteen twenty one men, including Packer,
Speaker 5: set out from Utah in November eighteen seventy three, and
Speaker 5: again Packer assure them that they could make their journey
Speaker 5: well within certainly within a month, so that they would
Speaker 5: arrive there, you know again before you know, well they're
Speaker 5: according to him, you know, the harshest part of the winter.
Speaker 5: In the event they didn't, they didn't get to the
Speaker 5: area if three months, because they rapidly became clear that
Speaker 5: Packer had no idea how to get where they were going.
Speaker 5: But but yeah, so so you know, so the numbers,
Speaker 5: so the supplies that they equipped themselves with, you know,
Speaker 5: we're all based on this estimated time that Packer had
Speaker 5: given them, which was you know, severely severely uh, you know, underestimated.
Speaker 5: But yes, and then also they felt that they could
Speaker 5: probably you know, supplement their supplies by killing game along
Speaker 5: the way. But again the weather was so much harsher
Speaker 5: than they had anticipated that they encountered very very very
Speaker 5: little game to kill.
Speaker 7: Important part of this story, too, is the fascinating history
Speaker 7: that's included in this amazing story and about if I'm
Speaker 7: pronouncing it right, the UT's Uti Indians and Utes and
Speaker 7: the Utes Indians of Colorado. And you also include the
Speaker 7: incredible history of the negotiation and how much land that
Speaker 7: they that they had owned and negotiated successfully for, but
Speaker 7: also their experience in living and surviving this often harsh area.
Speaker 7: So tell us a little bit about that story, about
Speaker 7: these unique Indians and their connection to this story.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, the Youthes were this loose confederation of
Speaker 5: different tribes who were populating this really vast area of
Speaker 5: the Colorado Territory. And of course, you know, we all
Speaker 5: know that you know, very very sorry history of you know,
Speaker 5: of of white American expansion into those into that frontier. Uh.
Speaker 5: You know, as soon as any valuable resource you know, gold,
Speaker 5: silver or whatever was discovered uh on you territory, there
Speaker 5: would be this incredible incursion of of of wide American settlers.
Speaker 5: Uh and you know, increasing uh conflict between the whites
Speaker 5: and the Native Americans, and uh, you know, the the
Speaker 5: the the Indians were constantly forced into this position, you know,
Speaker 5: of having to negotiate these treaties which would guarantee them
Speaker 5: supposedly in perpetuity, you know, all this land, you know,
Speaker 5: but as soon again, you know, again, as soon as
Speaker 5: somebody discovered more gold or silver on the Indian reservation. Uh,
Speaker 5: there would be another invasion of white settlers and you
Speaker 5: know the Indians, uh, you know, this land that had
Speaker 5: been promised to them forever, they suddenly had to be renegotiated,
Speaker 5: and you know, their reservations became smaller and smaller and
Speaker 5: smaller and smaller. Uh. They there was a very very
Speaker 5: remarkable figure named Chief Uray who became sort of the
Speaker 5: designated chief of the youth nation. Uh and who you know, Uh,
Speaker 5: it was a figure that you know, the white white
Speaker 5: America and some of his own people had somewhat different
Speaker 5: feelings about. You know, some of his own people, I
Speaker 5: guess saw him kind of as what later came to
Speaker 5: be called an Uncle Tom who was betraying them, you know,
Speaker 5: to the whites. He was you know this, no, you
Speaker 5: know this well he was called a friend to the whites.
Speaker 5: But you know, he was kind of a visionary person.
Speaker 5: I mean he understood that, you know, he was between
Speaker 5: the proverbial rock and a hard place. I mean he
Speaker 5: understood that, you know, without negotiating these these treaties, his
Speaker 5: people are just going to be totally exterminated. So yeah,
Speaker 5: so those were the that was the native population that.
Speaker 5: You know that Packer and his companions and all the
Speaker 5: all the white prospectors and settlers to the area, you know,
Speaker 5: had to confront and deal with.
Speaker 7: Now, let's talk about how he gets down to its
Speaker 7: five companions and himself, including George Noon and alatzen Heiser
Speaker 7: and his friend McGrew, who really was pretty sympathetic and
Speaker 7: sort of the attitude what what do they think about
Speaker 7: Alfred Packer after they realized he really wasn't much of
Speaker 7: a guide and they were didn't have much to eat
Speaker 7: at all.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, some of the men. There's a guy
Speaker 5: named Laussenheiser, as you mentioned, another guy named Nutter in particular.
Speaker 5: You know, some of the men had this antipathy towards
Speaker 5: Packer from the beginning. You know, I don't think Packer
Speaker 5: had the most winning personality, and according to against some
Speaker 5: of the people he was traveling with, you know, he
Speaker 5: seemed to be displaying kind of suspicious interest in the
Speaker 5: amount of money they were carrying with them, and you know,
Speaker 5: they also felt that he was hogging much of their
Speaker 5: increasingly diminishing provisions. So there were a few of the
Speaker 5: men there who really bitterly disliked and distrusted Packer even
Speaker 5: before it became clear that he had completely misled them
Speaker 5: into thinking that he could serve as a god the
Speaker 5: people he was traveling with. This guy McGrew in particular,
Speaker 5: you know, fell much more warmly towards Packer and felt
Speaker 5: sorry for him. The other thing, again, were these terrible
Speaker 5: seizures that that Packer was subject to, you know, which
Speaker 5: some of the men you know, were really really really
Speaker 5: put off by, unsettled by in a very very deep way.
Speaker 5: I mean, they found it very very disturbing. You know,
Speaker 5: McGrew was much more sympathetic and would really tend to
Speaker 5: Packer when he was in the throes of one of
Speaker 5: these seizures. But but Packer definitely, you know, even again
Speaker 5: before it became queer that he really had no idea
Speaker 5: where he was going, had made had made enemies among
Speaker 5: those men.
Speaker 7: So in fairly short order, certainly a lot sooner than
Speaker 7: they thought, they were already considering eating one of their horses.
Speaker 7: So we're talking about they went from a completely different
Speaker 7: made of mind and mode in if they're considering their horses.
Speaker 7: So tell us about the first decisions to eat something
Speaker 7: other than and and you talk about eating things other
Speaker 7: than animals as well.
Speaker 5: So well, you know, as I said, a packer had
Speaker 5: promised he would get them, you would get them to
Speaker 5: the their their destination of the San Juan Mountains, you know,
Speaker 5: from utah in in less than a month. Uh. And
Speaker 5: they had they had, you know, equipped themselves accordingly with provisions.
Speaker 5: It Uh, it's a little unclear. I mean even they
Speaker 5: probably you know, were undersupplied even even to that extent. Again,
Speaker 5: they were hoping to encounter much more game than they did.
Speaker 5: So yeah, by by the time they were by the
Speaker 5: time they actually finally did reach the San Juan Mountains
Speaker 5: of Colorado, they had been reduced to eating the horse feed.
Speaker 5: I mean, they had eaten their horses grain. They were
Speaker 5: really in a state of near starvation. They were, yes,
Speaker 5: as he said, on the brink of killing their own
Speaker 5: horses and eating their own horses. And then they were
Speaker 5: saved by there by a sudden encounter with Chief Ray
Speaker 5: and a band of his Indians, who then very hospitably
Speaker 5: invited them into Uri invited them into his camp. Uh.
Speaker 5: And the men set up their quarters there and engaged
Speaker 5: in some trade with the Indians. And Ray invited them
Speaker 5: and advised them to remain with him at the Indian
Speaker 5: camp until springtime and the snow melted.
Speaker 7: And what did they do with that advice? After almost
Speaker 7: the combing to starvation? What did they They They took
Speaker 7: that hospitality and they strengthened themselves. And what did they
Speaker 7: do with that advice?
Speaker 5: Well, a number of them. First, this guy, well he
Speaker 5: was his people call him Lot, his name was Lauds
Speaker 5: Adviser A Lot and four other prospectors really after just
Speaker 5: about a week or so, began to get very very
Speaker 5: antsy and decided that they were going to set out
Speaker 5: and try to make it to this nearby Indian agency. Uh.
Speaker 5: And so they did that. I mean or A strongly
Speaker 5: advised them not to do it, and in fact, you know,
Speaker 5: communicated to them very emphatically that he thought that they
Speaker 5: would never make it there alive. But they ignored him.
Speaker 5: You know, I mean Greed. I guess he's a great,
Speaker 5: great motivating force in human behavior. You know, these guys
Speaker 5: were very very eager, uh to you know, to make
Speaker 5: it to this, you know, to this to this mining
Speaker 5: spot and get started. Uh. So they set out into
Speaker 5: the wilderness. Packer actually tried to follow them, you know,
Speaker 5: but a Lot was one of these people who was
Speaker 5: so hostile to Packer that he actually drew a gun
Speaker 5: and threatened to kill Packer of Packer followed them. So
Speaker 5: so Lot in these four other guys uh set out,
Speaker 5: you know, set out in the snow. Uh, and then
Speaker 5: a few days later, Packer and five other men followed
Speaker 5: in their wake. Incredible.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so this is they set out from that beauty
Speaker 7: camp in the second week of February and so and
Speaker 7: as you mentioned, they've got the youngest and the oldest
Speaker 7: of prospectors Israel Swan is a man in his sixties.
Speaker 7: Have sixteen year old George California noon. You've got a
Speaker 7: butcher named Frank Ready Miller. And you've got a woman
Speaker 7: named Shannon Wilson Bell.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, Shannon Wilson Bell is not a woman.
Speaker 7: Oh pardon me, sorry? Y Yes, and also James Humphrey. Yeah,
Speaker 7: so tell us about their plight. What happens early on
Speaker 7: in this journey that and what are the conditions that
Speaker 7: they know that there may be snow, but what are
Speaker 7: the real snow conditions.
Speaker 5: In this well? Again, you know, they have to imagine
Speaker 5: trying to trape through a completely uncharted mountainous wilderness basically
Speaker 5: in you know, like two two or three feet of snow,
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, snow coming up to your thighs,
Speaker 5: sometimes snow coming up to your waist. You know, it's
Speaker 5: really only the vaguest sense of all you know of
Speaker 5: where you're going, you in what direction you're heading, you know,
Speaker 5: and again equipped with enough provisions, you know, to maybe
Speaker 5: last for a few days. You know, they they very
Speaker 5: very rapidly, you know, ran out of food. They were
Speaker 5: you know, frozen, they were starving, you know, they were
Speaker 5: they were basically vulnerable, you know, to the most you know,
Speaker 5: to the harshest kinds of you know, winter environmental conditions
Speaker 5: imaginable and so yeah, so that was the position they
Speaker 5: found themselves in very very rapidly. And of course, you know,
Speaker 5: the way, the way the story unfolded, and the way
Speaker 5: I tell the story in my book is you know,
Speaker 5: pat Ray and the other men who remained at Oras camp,
Speaker 5: you know, you know, saw Packer and these five other
Speaker 5: people you mentioned heading off into the wilderness on their
Speaker 5: way supposedly to this Indian agency which was supposedly they
Speaker 5: were going to reach them less than a week. And
Speaker 5: then the next sighting of Packer. The next time anybody
Speaker 5: saw Packer was three months later, you know, three months
Speaker 5: later in April, when he emerged from the wilderness by
Speaker 5: himself and made his way to this Indian agency, and
Speaker 5: the other five men that he was with were not
Speaker 5: there and in fact never seen alive again.
Speaker 7: You also have a chilling part of your book when
Speaker 7: you talk about in late March or early April that again,
Speaker 7: a small party of Uds with some women among them,
Speaker 7: said they came upon a white man camped by the
Speaker 7: Gunnison River cooking his dinner meat on a stick. And
Speaker 7: then apparently they went to see what he had thrown
Speaker 7: on the river bank or in the river and tell
Speaker 7: us what it was that they found.
Speaker 5: Yeah, these this band of ud Indians say, you know,
Speaker 5: this white guy roasting something on a fire, and when
Speaker 5: he saw the approach, he tossed it into the river
Speaker 5: and and and ran away, and they fished out of
Speaker 5: the river and it was a cooked human arm. So yeah,
Speaker 5: So that was the only reported sighting of Alfred Packer
Speaker 5: in the three month period from the time he had
Speaker 5: his five companions left Chief Lore's camp and when he
Speaker 5: showed up at the Indian Agency in April.
Speaker 7: Now it's interesting, it's fascinating and against truths, much stranger
Speaker 7: than fiction. You talk about the Indian Agency, Los Pinos,
Speaker 7: and by the time he gets there shortly after, it's amazing.
Speaker 7: You write in a book who is he met by?
Speaker 7: And then right away there is some initial suspicion and
Speaker 7: there is a story demanded from Packer almost immediately after
Speaker 7: arriving there. Tell us about this altercation and incident.
Speaker 5: Well, as you said, when Packer, Packer reached uh, you know,
Speaker 5: Packer reached Los Pinos, and and almost immediately afterwards, Preston
Speaker 5: another who is one of the guys who had uh,
Speaker 5: you know, been hostile to Packer from the from the
Speaker 5: very very start, suddenly showed up. Suddenly showed up another
Speaker 5: and three other men had very wisely taken Chief Ray's
Speaker 5: advice and remained at the Indian camp until snow melted,
Speaker 5: and then uh set out and just by happenstance, two
Speaker 5: weeks later they arrived at the Las Pinos agency just
Speaker 5: hours after Packer showed up. And as I said, Nutter
Speaker 5: was one of these fole who had you know, it
Speaker 5: was always very very suspicious of Packer from the beginning,
Speaker 5: of his motives. Uh, and you know Packer, and he
Speaker 5: wanted to know where these other five guys who had
Speaker 5: set off that Packer were. And Packer told him that
Speaker 5: that he Packer had developed frost spite in his feet
Speaker 5: and had become snowblind and was holding the other guys up.
Speaker 5: So they had left him, and they had left him
Speaker 5: behind with a rifle and and and they had set off.
Speaker 5: They had set off into the wilderness, and he had
Speaker 5: never seen them again. He had just somehow managed to
Speaker 5: survive by himself for all that time, and you know,
Speaker 5: and then made his way back and made his way
Speaker 5: to Los Pinos. But he claimed that he had no
Speaker 5: idea where the other five guys were. Right away.
Speaker 7: This Nutter is Preston Nutter is the suspicious, skeptical of
Speaker 7: the story itself. And you can tell us about what
Speaker 7: some people for the other journey were the unusual questions
Speaker 7: that he was asking about money. But also what Preston
Speaker 7: Nutter notices as a possession of Packer at this Indian
Speaker 7: agency was he noticed, well, he noticed.
Speaker 5: That that Packer had in his possession of a big,
Speaker 5: a big skinning knife that had belonged to the German
Speaker 5: Butcher uh was known as well Frank Ready. They called
Speaker 5: him Ready Miller. And you know, Packer had some story
Speaker 5: about that. He said that Packer had just stuck it
Speaker 5: into a tree and left it behind. When when the
Speaker 5: when the five other guys had had gone off into
Speaker 5: the wilderness, that seemed, you know, seemed again a very
Speaker 5: very dubious story to Nutter, that Miler would leave his
Speaker 5: knife behind.
Speaker 7: So now, in terms of the story that he he
Speaker 7: does say, and of course this story is an evolving story,
Speaker 7: he isn't immediately really suspected of much until some things happened.
Speaker 7: So tell us how the story proceeds in terms of
Speaker 7: any kind of holes to this story.
Speaker 5: Well, after spending a little time at Los Pinos, Packer
Speaker 5: and the other men went to this nearby town named Sewatch,
Speaker 5: where a Packer holed up in a saloon and h
Speaker 5: you know, proceeded to look kind of high on the hog.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, spending a bunch of money gambling
Speaker 5: and drinking and and you know, treating themselves to various
Speaker 5: delicacies like canned oysters. You know, this struck the other
Speaker 5: man is very very suspicious because you know, they knew
Speaker 5: Packer had been so broke to begin with that, you know,
Speaker 5: he'd had to he had to basically barter his services
Speaker 5: in order to in order to accompany the men. So
Speaker 5: they became very very very suspicious of Packers free spending
Speaker 5: ways again given how poor he had been before, and
Speaker 5: began to wonder where all this he had come from.
Speaker 5: And eventually, well, you know, very quickly, you know, another
Speaker 5: in particular, came to be convinced since there was no
Speaker 5: sight of these other men, you know, became convinced a
Speaker 5: lot by a lot in his companions who had set
Speaker 5: off before Packer and could also run into a lot
Speaker 5: of trouble, you know, but they had finally made it
Speaker 5: to the Indian agency. So so the only ones missing
Speaker 5: and unaccounted for were Packers five companions, and again Packer
Speaker 5: suddenly seemed to be, uh, you know, inexplicably prosperous. So
Speaker 5: Nutter became convinced that Packer had murdered these other five guys,
Speaker 5: had stolen their money.
Speaker 7: And as a result, what does what does he do
Speaker 7: and what does Packer doka?
Speaker 5: Well, you know, I mean Packer, you know, Packer was
Speaker 5: really afraid that you know, he was in danger of
Speaker 5: being lynched. And just around that time, while they were
Speaker 5: in Sawatch, the head of the Los Pinos Indian Agency,
Speaker 5: a gun named General Charles Adams, showed up and uh
Speaker 5: and another in another uh conveyed his suspicions to Adams.
Speaker 5: Uh and uh, you know, and and and Packer at
Speaker 5: that time was you know, was uh. He's still insisting,
Speaker 5: you know, on on his original story. But then finally uh,
Speaker 5: you know, Packer's story changed.
Speaker 7: Now, this questioning by Adams gets what initial admissions from
Speaker 7: Packer regarding the death of these five men.
Speaker 5: Well, what came to me, that is Packer's first confession was.
Speaker 5: You know, it's important to keep in mind because if
Speaker 5: you look up, you know, if you if you google
Speaker 5: Alfred Packer, you come across a lot of these websites
Speaker 5: that claim that he was the only American ever convicted
Speaker 5: of cannibalism, uh in in the history of the United States,
Speaker 5: which is which is not not true. You know, Packer
Speaker 5: never denied well except for his initial you know, his
Speaker 5: initial claim that these five guys had had left him
Speaker 5: in the wilderness and that he'd never seen them again.
Speaker 5: But from the time of his earliest confessions, he never
Speaker 5: denied that he had engaged in cannibalism. What he did claim, however,
Speaker 5: is that he was completely innocent of murder. According to
Speaker 5: his first confession. After a short time, Israel Swan, who
Speaker 5: was the as you pointed out, the oldest of this
Speaker 5: group of six people, died of exposure, and the other
Speaker 5: five men, you know Packer. You know, Packer gave a
Speaker 5: very very harrowing and probably pretty accurate description of the
Speaker 5: state of near starvation that they were in. They had
Speaker 5: been reduced to the point of boiling their own moccasins
Speaker 5: and eating them. Uh you know, they were trying to
Speaker 5: gather tree sap from the from the roots and eat that.
Speaker 5: They were eating whatever stray rosebuds. I mean, they were
Speaker 5: scrounging around the rivers for snails, which they actually couldn't find.
Speaker 5: So they were they were in an extremely, extremely you know,
Speaker 5: dire straits and uh, you know, Packer said that Humphrey
Speaker 5: had died of exposure, and the other five men had
Speaker 5: eaten his flesh and then left the corpse where it
Speaker 5: lay and proceeded on. And then after a little while
Speaker 5: a second man, I think Humphrey had also collapsed and
Speaker 5: died of exposure, and then the remaining four men had
Speaker 5: dined on his flesh, and so on and so forth,
Speaker 5: and finally Packer claimed that Shannon Shannon Wilson Bell killed Get,
Speaker 5: which one probably California Noon. And then Packer had, you know,
Speaker 5: kind of ahead and eaten the Noon's flesh. And then
Speaker 5: at the end, Packer and Bell made a pact that
Speaker 5: they wouldn't neither would try to kill the other. But
Speaker 5: then in fact Bell tried to kill Packer, and Packer
Speaker 5: had killed Bell in self defense. So that was his
Speaker 5: first confession. In other words, he freely admitted cannibalism, denied
Speaker 5: that he had committed murder, admitted that he had killed Bell,
Speaker 5: but only in self defense. And he also claimed very
Speaker 5: importantly that each one of the four guys that had
Speaker 5: been successively cannibalized, that their bodies had just been left
Speaker 5: in the places where they had died.
Speaker 7: Now, and you talk about in eighteen seventy four they
Speaker 7: find the five bodies, and so what is proven or
Speaker 7: disproven or proven and disproven at that time with that
Speaker 7: discovery those five bodies.
Speaker 5: Well, what you know, eventually what happened was Packer, by
Speaker 5: the way, in the inter Packer was you know, put
Speaker 5: in jail. You know. Packer said he would lead a
Speaker 5: lot and other in this other group of guys, you know,
Speaker 5: to the places where these bodies were, and to the
Speaker 5: place where he had killed Jenne Wilson Bell, and then
Speaker 5: he started out. Then he refused to do it, and
Speaker 5: they brought him back and locked them, locked them up,
Speaker 5: and well what passed for jail, it was just really
Speaker 5: a little shack and he actually escaped and remained at
Speaker 5: large for nine years. Anyway, not too long after he escaped,
Speaker 5: there was an illustrator for a very very popular publication
Speaker 5: at a time called Harper's Weekly, who was on assignment
Speaker 5: doing sketches of the of a Colorado mining area, and
Speaker 5: he came upon what had been a campfire with five
Speaker 5: horrendously decomposed and mutilated corpses, still all lying in their
Speaker 5: in their you know, sleeping blankets and so on, and uh,
Speaker 5: you know, it became and immediately became clear that these
Speaker 5: were the five men that Packer had stood out with.
Speaker 5: So an examination of the corpse has showed that their
Speaker 5: skulls had all been crushed, they'd all you know, they'd
Speaker 5: all been they'd all been u uh. Flesh had had
Speaker 5: obviously been removed in their bodies. They could tell, you know,
Speaker 5: by the knife marks on the bones and so on.
Speaker 5: So you know Packer's story that these you know, these
Speaker 5: guys had died one after another, these natural deaths, and
Speaker 5: they'd eaten their bodies and had left them where they lay.
Speaker 5: It was obviously a complete lie. All these guys had
Speaker 5: been well, the four of them anyway, had clearly been
Speaker 5: killed in their sleep. One of them, Shannon Bell Uh,
Speaker 5: apparently his body was a little farther off that his
Speaker 5: scope had also been crushed. So it was very, very
Speaker 5: evident that these five men had been horribly murdered, at
Speaker 5: least for them in their sleep, and you know, and
Speaker 5: and then butchered for their flesh. And obviously the leading
Speaker 5: suspect in the case was the only person who had survived,
Speaker 5: Alfred Packer, and he immediately became the most wanted man
Speaker 5: in the west. Uh. And you know who was known
Speaker 5: as the man eater.
Speaker 7: What were a couple of the other names for him
Speaker 7: that were just as interesting or more so?
Speaker 5: Oh, I think they called them the human hyaena. You know,
Speaker 5: they called them a ghoul, you know, in how it is,
Speaker 5: I mean whenever, you know, whenever there's some horrific murderer
Speaker 5: at large, the press immediately comes up with great, colorful,
Speaker 5: often you know, kind of you know, gothic, supernatural, horroring
Speaker 5: nicknames for them. So yeah, human Hyaena sticks in my memory,
Speaker 5: and I'm sure they called them a ghoul. I can't remember.
Speaker 5: Maybe you remember some of the others, but.
Speaker 7: Those are the ones, the human Hyaena and the ghoul.
Speaker 7: How is it that he comes to be captured? Who
Speaker 7: recognizes him? And what is he doing at that time
Speaker 7: while there's this huge manhunt?
Speaker 5: Well, you know, yeah, well, you know he uh, well,
Speaker 5: first of all, he assumed a pseudonym, uh Swarps, and
Speaker 5: you know, he was roaming around the West. He was
Speaker 5: at in Wyoming. He was supporting himself in various ways.
Speaker 5: He was you know, doing some well, he continued to
Speaker 5: do some mining. He uh you know Packer actually he
Speaker 5: had been trained as a leather worker and so he
Speaker 5: was you know, did some saddle making and so on
Speaker 5: and so forth. But nine years after the events just related,
Speaker 5: in eighteen eighty three, one of the former members of
Speaker 5: the original twenty one man party that Packer had been
Speaker 5: part of, un named Frenchy Cabazon, who at that time
Speaker 5: was working as a you know, kind of a drummer
Speaker 5: or a traveling salesman. Was stopping at a boarding house
Speaker 5: in Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, and he heard in the adjacent
Speaker 5: room somebody speaking of this weirdly high pitched voice that
Speaker 5: was one of the distinguishing characteristics of Packer. Apparently it's
Speaker 5: a not uncommon symptom of severe grandma. See that some
Speaker 5: of the you know, some of the people afflicted with
Speaker 5: it have these very high pitched voices. Anyway, Yeah, Cabizon
Speaker 5: recognized this guy who was calling himself Schwartz as as Packer,
Speaker 5: and he notified the authorities, and Packer was arrested and
Speaker 5: taken back to Colorado for trial. And of course this
Speaker 5: is a great, great, great sensation, not only locally but
Speaker 5: really nationally. You know, the capture nine years after his
Speaker 5: escape of a notorious man eater.
Speaker 7: We don't have all the time that we'd love to
Speaker 7: go into this, but tell us about the highlights of
Speaker 7: the trial in terms of the people there that made
Speaker 7: the most damaging testimony and probably and did not probably
Speaker 7: did show an incredible amount of animosity and personal investment
Speaker 7: in the trial and the outcome.
Speaker 5: Well, again, you know Packer. Packer, when he was captured,
Speaker 5: you know, changed his story once again. You know, he
Speaker 5: claimed that and it was something more or less stuck
Speaker 5: to for the rest of his life. You know, he
Speaker 5: claimed that that again all the all of them were
Speaker 5: on the burner starvation. He had gone off one day
Speaker 5: to climb a mountain to do some surveillance, you know,
Speaker 5: see if he could get some glimpse of the agency
Speaker 5: they were heading for. And that when he when he
Speaker 5: returned to the camp at dusk that day, he found
Speaker 5: Shannon Wilson Bell roasting some human flesh on a fire. Uh,
Speaker 5: and the other the other four men lying there dead. Uh.
Speaker 5: And then Bell jumped up and attacked him, and Packer
Speaker 5: killed Bell in self defense. So that was his story.
Speaker 5: That was Bell who killed the other four men and
Speaker 5: uh and then tried to kill him and uh. And
Speaker 5: he had shot and killed Bell in self defense. And
Speaker 5: then he had, you know, made a little lean to
Speaker 5: for himself and in the main there for the next
Speaker 5: few months, living off the flesh of the dead bodies
Speaker 5: that you know again that Bell had killed. At his trial,
Speaker 5: and again there were you know, there was you know,
Speaker 5: this very very very uh uh devastating testimony against him
Speaker 5: by Lad and another. You know, it's it's there was
Speaker 5: so much prejudice against Packer by that point. You know
Speaker 5: that Packer received nothing like a fair trial. Uh. You know,
Speaker 5: one of the interesting things to me about the Packer
Speaker 5: case is I came to believe, although it's still very
Speaker 5: much an open question that people continued to debate, you
Speaker 5: know that Packer probably was guilty of murdering these five guys,
Speaker 5: although there are the people again who feel very strongly
Speaker 5: that he wasn't. But that's my best guess anyway. But nevertheless,
Speaker 5: whether you know he did or not, he definitely did
Speaker 5: not receive a fair trial because you know, he was
Speaker 5: he was being made to prove his innocence, which of
Speaker 5: course is not how American jurisprudence works. You know, there
Speaker 5: are certainly very a lot of reasonable doubt, you know
Speaker 5: that his lawyer raised, but there were so many much
Speaker 5: prejudice against him. The testimony of people like Lot and another,
Speaker 5: you know, who claimed and not only that Packer had
Speaker 5: killed these other people, but that he had deliberately deliberately
Speaker 5: led them into the depths of the wilderness in order
Speaker 5: to slay and rob them. When they were at their
Speaker 5: most vulnerable. And Packer didn't do himself any favors. I mean,
Speaker 5: Packer was very, very very prickly personality at best. Uh.
Speaker 5: And you know, and he gave this long, elaborate testimony
Speaker 5: you know that you know, in which he you know,
Speaker 5: he was barely able you know, to keep his own
Speaker 5: his own ugliest impulses in checks.
Speaker 7: So it is interesting to see how he thought he
Speaker 7: could control the core room, and for the great part
Speaker 7: of it he did. He made a statement that would
Speaker 7: be akin to a lawyer making an opening statement. And uh,
Speaker 7: and again he was indignant throughout.
Speaker 5: Well, he was basically yeah, yeah, he was indignant, that's true.
Speaker 5: And you know, possibly very justifiably indignant, I mean, no
Speaker 5: doubt justifiably indignant because you know, he realized the stacked
Speaker 5: you know, all the cards were stacked against him. Although
Speaker 5: at some point, you know, he seemed to feel in
Speaker 5: the beginning that he was, you know, might get acquitted.
Speaker 5: Who was actually even you know, possibly making plans to
Speaker 5: marry one of the local women. Since you know, his trial,
Speaker 5: like you know, the trial of most people, you know,
Speaker 5: notorious accused killers, attracted a number of I guess you
Speaker 5: know what later came to be called groupies. But yes,
Speaker 5: he was indignant, you know, and you know at the
Speaker 5: charges that were made against and also very indignant that
Speaker 5: you know that nobody in the courtroom could possibly really
Speaker 5: understand the kind of you know, horrendous circumstances that you
Speaker 5: know that he that he and the others were suffering.
Speaker 5: But you know, subsequently, i mean, in the mid twentieth
Speaker 5: century and particularly after the Second World War, you know,
Speaker 5: there were very very famous studies done about the effects
Speaker 5: of starvation on human behavior, you know, and it really,
Speaker 5: you know, drives people crazy and reduces them to a
Speaker 5: state of really kind of primal savagery, and you know,
Speaker 5: it's it's just very very very hard to know ultimately,
Speaker 5: whether you know, Packer's story as he told it was
Speaker 5: true or not. It just seems to me, it's always
Speaker 5: seemed to me very very suspicious that it just seems
Speaker 5: to me that it was a little too convenient that
Speaker 5: Packer would go off of the day and come back
Speaker 5: and find that these other men you know, had been
Speaker 5: killed and we're just lying there, you know, neatly ready
Speaker 5: to you know, serve as four months worth of food
Speaker 5: supply and some other guy had done it, and then
Speaker 5: Packer had just killed this other guy in a way
Speaker 5: you know that also seems not totally impossible but a
Speaker 5: little implausible. So so yeah, so I came to the
Speaker 5: you know, my best guess, which I'm ready to admit
Speaker 5: might be totally wrong, is that Packard was in fact
Speaker 5: guilty of murdering these guys. But again that said, he
Speaker 5: still did not receive anything remotely like a fair trial.
Speaker 7: And then that you do talk about this interesting legal
Speaker 7: development where they fight for another trial and then he's
Speaker 7: convicted of manslaughter, but due to the pressure, he's given
Speaker 7: this unprecedented sentence. And again we don't have that much,
Speaker 7: we don't have all the time to go into this,
Speaker 7: but I'm going to leave the readers and the listeners
Speaker 7: of the show to know that this is just there's
Speaker 7: so much more to this story. And one of the
Speaker 7: things I just want to ask you about, and I
Speaker 7: guess where you could comment about, was the incredible juxtaposition
Speaker 7: between the fascination and he's selling souvenirs in prison, things
Speaker 7: that he's little trinkets he's made, and people want to
Speaker 7: come and visit him. So there's sort of a juxtapision
Speaker 7: between the bloodthirsty media and then society's fascination and almost
Speaker 7: admiration of the guy in a lot of ways. And
Speaker 7: then also that the media wasn't exactly in a concerted
Speaker 7: effort on board in terms of the persecution of this person.
Speaker 7: And that comes to the point where you get Pauli
Speaker 7: Priye sort of going the other way making statements that
Speaker 7: a journalist, responsible journalists wouldn't make. So just tell us
Speaker 7: about that sort of whole incredible dynamic in America at
Speaker 7: that time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you know, I mean, you know, one thing
Speaker 5: you learn when you research these cases going back to
Speaker 5: the eighteen hundred and even earlier, you know, is that
Speaker 5: you know, the fast the public fascination, you know, with
Speaker 5: sensational murders and cannibalism and so on and so forth.
Speaker 5: You know, we sometimes think that that's just a product
Speaker 5: of modern society. And you know, I mean, obviously right
Speaker 5: now we're living at this moment when you know, there's
Speaker 5: all this uh, you know, media obsession with with true crime.
Speaker 5: But you know, the only difference between now and then
Speaker 5: is you know, technological, I mean, you know, now you
Speaker 5: have like podcasts like Sereal covering true crime, you know,
Speaker 5: but they didn't have that back then, you know, but
Speaker 5: the public appetite to read about these kinds of RNDUS crimes,
Speaker 5: you know, and to maybe even you know, get some
Speaker 5: kind of memento of the crime. You know, there's nothing,
Speaker 5: nothing at all new about that. I mean, that's always existed,
Speaker 5: you know, there were there were there was some there
Speaker 5: was always some difference of opinion among journalists about whether
Speaker 5: Packer was the your innocence and how they're a trial
Speaker 5: he received, as you said, was originally sentenced to death.
Speaker 5: He was going to be hanged, and then his lawyer
Speaker 5: managed to get that conviction overturned on a legal technicality,
Speaker 5: and he was retried. He couldn't be retried for murder.
Speaker 5: That would be double jeopardy. So he was tried and
Speaker 5: convicted of five counts of manslaughter and given eight consecutive
Speaker 5: a five consecutive eight year sentences for a total of
Speaker 5: forty years, which was essentially a life term. He was
Speaker 5: in his thirties by then, maybe even a little older.
Speaker 5: But then this very crusading Denver journalist named Polly Pry,
Speaker 5: who was doing an expose on prison conditions in Colorado,
Speaker 5: encountered Packer, and you know, of course knew how notorious
Speaker 5: he was, and interviewed him, and she became convinced that
Speaker 5: the story that he told was the truth. And you
Speaker 5: know that Bell had killed these other guys, that he
Speaker 5: had killed Bell in self defense. You know that he
Speaker 5: had monibilized the corpses. But you know, again there were
Speaker 5: other cases, notorious cases of that kind of survival cannibalism.
Speaker 5: You know, the people had not been persecuted anyway, prosecuted anyway.
Speaker 5: So she set about, she launched this crusade to get
Speaker 5: Packer pardoned, and ultimately he was paroled, uh, and then
Speaker 5: lived out his last few remaining years, you know, kind
Speaker 5: of as a well, sort of something of a little
Speaker 5: local celebrity. You know. By then, you know, the west
Speaker 5: of the Frontier, you know, is already you know, turning
Speaker 5: into a kind of mythic you know, mythic thing. Uh.
Speaker 5: And Packer seemed like one surviving you know, relic of
Speaker 5: this you know past. And you know, when these when
Speaker 5: these brave frontiersmen, you know, would venture into the wilderness
Speaker 5: and deal with these horrible conditions and so on and
Speaker 5: so forth. So you know, and and he died still
Speaker 5: insisting on his innocence and and then you know, entered
Speaker 5: into the realm of American legend.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, And I wanted to say too, for those people
Speaker 7: that they're going to discover this book that you also
Speaker 7: talk about basically and again it is not with there's
Speaker 7: not one shred of anything that happens in this book
Speaker 7: that isn't without controversy. Is there's an exhamation made and
Speaker 7: still and so that would be for the people to
Speaker 7: discover themselves that there is. Again, this case fascinated people
Speaker 7: right from the very beginning, and in various ways, the
Speaker 7: media picked up on it and he went from reviled
Speaker 7: to hero, to reviled to hero to the myth to
Speaker 7: the butt of jokes and curiosity. But again, like you say,
Speaker 7: he has gone on to be an infamous legend in
Speaker 7: American history.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it's a part of the American folklore.
Speaker 7: Absolutely. I want to thank you very much for coming
Speaker 7: on and talking about Man Eater, the life and legend
Speaker 7: of an American cannibal. And for those Harold again you
Speaker 7: how many two prime books do you have under your belt? Now?
Speaker 7: What's this number if you can remember?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna say a dozen but yes, I'm
Speaker 5: gonna say a dozen.
Speaker 7: And for those that are gonna look up your record
Speaker 7: in terms of your work, these you've written about some
Speaker 7: of the if not almost all, of the important cases
Speaker 7: in America in depth and fascinating again definitive accounts of
Speaker 7: some of the most heinous villains in America. So I
Speaker 7: want to thank you very much Harold for coming on
Speaker 7: again once again and joining us for to talk about
Speaker 7: man Eater. I want to thank you very much. Do
Speaker 7: you have a website to do Facebook?
Speaker 5: I don't do Facebook, but there is a Harold Scheckter
Speaker 5: dot com website. I think I do have a Facebook
Speaker 5: page which I ever go on, but that somebody else
Speaker 5: maintains for me so people can contact me say yes.
Speaker 7: Well again, thank you very much, Harold. Good to talk
Speaker 7: to you. Thank you very much, and you have agreed evening.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Thank you very much. I appreciate it. But
Speaker 5: com