Hungry For Justice

often about cannibals. The term was coined by none other than Christopher Columbus. He wrote in his diaries about his alleged encounters with them, describing cannibals as a dog headed men who ate human beings. Amerigo Vespucci did the same during his explorations of the continents that now bear a derivation of his name, and when Queen Isabella of Spain legalized the enslavement of Native Americans in fifteen oh three, she did so by alleging that they were cannibals too.

What's true is that many cultures have participated in cannibalism long before records existed. We have evidence stretching back over one hundred thousand years that tells us as much. Today, the idea of eating a loved one or enemy might give you the itck like nothing else, But we have to understand that not all cannibalism was created equal across the world. Endo cannibalism has been a grief practice in

which one's community consumed parts of their body. Rather than an act of destruction, it was a profound celebration of a life in which the dead carried on in the living. Exocannibalism is the act of eating those outside of one's community. This flavor of consumption, if you'll forgive the pun, was also marked by community ritual. Seldom was anyone eating someone else without a lot of care. It's very easy to point fingers at people who aren't us, to say, but

we aren't like them. But where do you draw the line and how do you decide what's monstrous? What Queen Isabella and her ilk failed to acknowledge was the widely accepted practice of medicinal cannibalism in Europe, it leaned on the beliefs of sympathetic magic, or that like serves like. For example, drinking from a human skull was said to help with headaches, blood was said to help with bleeding.

Rendered human fat had a number of uses. Executed bodies were the most highly prized, as it was believed that a quick traumatic death gave no time for a life force to slowly seep away. The hypocrisy is glaring. When colonists came to the New World, they were regaled with tales of indigenous cannibals. Cannibalism was practiced in some Native American societies, particularly in some groups in the North and West, but for many it was never simply to fill their

bellies in a stroke of irony. It was likely the English settlers who became the first gastronomic cannibals in that part of the world. The winter of sixteen oh nine to sixteen ten in Jamestown, Virginia has been remembered as the Starving Time. A seven year drought, fractured leadership, and a siege by Powaton warriors had created a fatal predicament for the colony. In that period, about three quarters of

Jamestown ended up starving to death. Of the sixty or so settlers who remained, they scraped by on whatever they could find, including the flesh of their recent debt. Archaeological evidence of these years was discovered as recently as twenty thirteen, when human bones bearing the marks of butchering were discovered in a trash pit. It was one of many pits and one of many bodies that have been found at

the site. America has long been a land of cannibals, but that distinction has never really belonged to one group. Despite what European colonists thought about themselves, they were certainly not above cannibalizing their peers, as the incident in Jamestown proves to us. So what really separates the monstrous from the rest of us? If anything at all? I'm Lorn Vogelbaum, Welcome to American shadows. The promise of hidden riches sang like a siren, and hungry prospectors came from all over

to heed its call. In November of eighteen seventy three, a party of twenty one men left Utah to search for silver in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. In this group was the thirty one year old Pennsylvania born drifter named Alfred Packer. He was a curious man, this Alfred. He was a little bit odd. It was hard to know who he really was. He prided himself on being a great entertainer, but his tall tales often fell short

of convincing. He had a way of contradicting himself and just seemed to try a little too hard to sell himself, often alterating important details about his life in the process. What we also do know as fact is that he was discharged from the Civil War on the account of being a severe epileptic, experiencing bouts of seizure as many as three times every forty eight hours, and he had worked all sorts of odd jobs, but it's likely it was hard for him to hold anything down for a

significant period of time. Taking bromide seemed to help his condition, but they weren't totally curative. This was a part of the story he was always sure to leave out. Packer had volunteered to lead the silver hunting party. He set off with confidence with twenty men in tow into the dense forests and jagged mountains of Colorado. There actually wasn't

even a set path to their destination. Any expedition to that part of the country was sure to be a treacherous one, and it was imperative that the guide knew the land well. What his team didn't know was that Alfred wasn't the expert on the Colorado Mountains that he claimed to be. Even so, the first part of their trip was fairly smooth. Spirits were high, folks were filled with hope. They had big dreams about what they'd find in the mountains and what they'd do with it all

once they got home. But it wasn't long before things began to unravel. Into their journey, Packer had an epileptic episode and fell into the campfire. He was saved by a companion, but when he came to he brushed it off, claiming it was the first seizure he had ever experienced. But he soon began to have seizures several times a day, and the other travelers began to suspect that he was lying to them. It soon became clear that there were other things that Packer couldn't hear himself of. He was

outed as an habitual petty thief. He was also quarrelsome whiny and apparently greedy with rations. He was said to be surly and bragged about a jail stint he served after buying the services of frontier sex workers. But Packer was no dummy. He knew his party had grown to disdain him, and he felt the same right back. He called this a cordial hatred and was happy to continue on.

Others didn't share that feeling. By the time they crossed the Green River, about eighty five miles from the Colorado border, the party had come to the mounting realization that Packer had been lying to them about knowing where he was headed. Horror and rage gripped the men. All of the other issues they could live with, this they quite literally could not. On January twenty fifth of eighteen forty seven, the party was surrounded by a group of Ute warriors as they

approached the Colorado border. The party was on reservation land, and one account tells that the Ute took pity on the sorry, hungry prospectors in front of them. Chief Urray, who was present that day, offered to take the men in. He warned them not to continue and offered them his hospitality until the spring thaw came. For a few weeks. The party stayed with the ute, but they soon grew Antsy worried that the riches would be gone if they waited until spring to set out again. They calculated that

they only had forty more miles to go. On February second, five men broke from the park. Alfred tried to join them, but was threatened with a gun. He would get his chance a week later, when five other prospectors decided to leave the Ute encampment. Chief Yurey told them not to go, and that he wouldn't even allow for his own people to try. But the prospectors refused his advice, and Urrey

reluctantly drew them a map in the snow. He illustrated two trails over the mountains, a lower trail which was eighty miles long, and an upper trail, which was only forty miles. The party set out for the upper trail in the dead of winter, without a single snowshoe in sight. Two and a half months later, on the morning of April sixteenth, Alfred Packer wandered out of the mountains and into the Las Pignos Indian Agency. He was alone, with

none of his companions anywhere to be found. The winters in the San Juan Mountains are long, dark and harsh. The peaks are impassable and inhospitable, which are both very bad things if you find yourself stranded among them. By some stroke of luck that felt nothing short of divine intervention, Alfred Packer had made his way out of the mountains with just a backpack and a rifle. He was ragged and ravaged, but otherwise appeared to be in good health.

He'd endured temperatures down to negative fifty degrees fahrenheit in the wild for over fifty seven days, and people were simply impressed. His party was lost. Packer told the folks at the agency, Oh, this surprised no one. What did surprise them, though, was that he didn't appear to be hungry. In fact, he looked rather well fed. According to one story, rather than scarfing down a breakfast upon arrival, he opted to throw back a few shots of whiskey instead. It's

then that a story began to come now. He claimed that soon after he and the other men left Chief Uray's encampment, he began to suffer from frostbitten feet and snow blindness. His traveling companions elected to leave him behind with a rifle and supplies. Where they ended up, Packer said, well, he could only assume that they had died from the cold themselves. But as fate would have it, Parker wasn't the only one who showed up at the agency that day.

A Preston Nutter, a doctor Cooper, and a fellow by the name of Italian Tom, all members of the crew who stayed behind at the ute camp, appeared just hours after Alfred did. This did not please him. In fact, Parker grew visibly upset at their arrival. Nutter asked where the rest of his party was, and Packer repeated his story. Packer began to move quickly. He started talking about returning home to Pennsylvania and sold his Winchester rifle for ten dollars.

He and three other men to hit the road and head to the nearby town of Swatch. During their trek, Nutter poked at Packer. He had long been suspicious of him, and the intervening months apart did nothing to change that. Why he asked Parker did he have the knife that had belonged to Frank, one of their lost prospectors, and Packer quickly said that Frank stuck it in a tree and left it there, which of course made no sense. Once they arrived in Sewatch, Packer aroused even more suspicion.

For a guy who was constantly broke, he seemed to have suddenly, somehow come into some serious money. He ended up spending almost two thousand dollars in today's money at a local saloon over a two week period. With every passing alcohol soaked night, Packer's story got more dramatic and more unbelievable. The inconsistencies were glaring, and the looks began

to fly. But Packer wasn't wholly oblivious. He noticed that his companion were growing uneasy as soon he began to make plans to depart to Watch, but once again timing was not on Packer's side. As he prepared to leave, he ran into the general of the Las Pignots Agency, a fellow by the name of General Charles Adams, And even if he wasn't completely oblivious, he also couldn't resist sharing his story again, so he sat down for breakfast with the general's wife and told her all about his

time in the mountains. While his wife was occupied. General Adams took it upon himself to do some digging. He was quickly informed about the suspicious Packer and soon formed a plan of his own. General Adams decided that a party would be formed to go search for Packer's men, and Packer, it was decided, would be their paid guide. What Alfred Packer, General Adams and all the men in Sewatch didn't know was that at that very moment, more men from Packer's original party were arriving at the Las

Pinos agency. When General Adams and Packer returned, these prospectors did not give their former guide a warm welcome. Instead, it ended up being an interrogation. They wanted to know what really happened up in those mountains. It didn't take long for Packer to crack. He broke down, it suffered a short seizure, and then confessed the journey was harder than they thought. He admitted that they had been foolhardy, and over confident. The conditions were unlivable, with snow above

their head for miles at some points. Soon they began to run out of food, so they began to forage, but that was no good. They grew hungry enough to start eating their leather shoes and then one by one they died. The first to go was old man Swan. They decided to eat him right then and there. The survivors ate their dead as they each slowly perished through their journey, and when they were down to two men, Packer and a man called Bell, they made a pact

to not kill and eat the other. But Bell eventually went back on his word and came at Parker with the butt of his broken rifle. So Packer did the only logical thing, he shot Bell dead. While General Adams may have believed Packer's tale, the other men present didn't. They knew and respected Bell and doubted he would have

gone back on his word. The General determined that if Packer's story was true, a Bell's body would be lying with his broken rifle, and if that's what was found, Packer would be set free and sent home to Pennsylvania, all expenses paid. So they all set off. Packer quickly became disoriented. Once he was back on the trail, he was lost and wouldn't be able to lead them to Bell. Perhaps this was disingenuous, of course, he didn't want to be caught, But don't forget that he actually wasn't a

wilderness guide. He didn't have a very good idea of where he was going, and probably where he had gone to begin with. But Parker was taken into custody and installed in the cabin of the Swatch County sheriff for the summer. Three months later, an illustrator from Harper's Weekly stumbled across the mutilated remains of five men near the Gunnison River. Their bodies were all laid within a few feet of each other, covered in blankets and clothes, and

badly decayed. All bodies showed bullet holes and all had flesh cut from bone. The one man's skull was crushed and another's was separated from its body. They were also missing all valuable assets cash included, of course. Finding the remains of all bodies together completely invalidated. Packers claimed that they had all died slowly over time. The artists drew a sketch and brought it to the local authorities. They quickly set off to the mountains to corroborate the story.

After the authorities buried the remains of Packer's victims, the team returned to the jail to confront him. However, the cabin was empty. Packer had escaped, Alfred Packer took to the road again. It was easy to be anonymous in those days. For the better part of a decade, Packer stayed out of the hands of the law. He had gotten lucky. Though his digs at the watch hadn't been so bad. He was still being held without any evidence of wrongdoing. He maintained his innocence, and not everyone was

as quick to blame him. It would later be revealed that two men not only helped Springham loose, but gave him food for the journey. They were upset the town's resources were going to behold a man convicted of nothing, and so they quietly released him, and just days before the bodies of Packer's party were discovered. His luck couldn't last forever, though, and he was recognized by a fellow

prospector in Cheyenne, Wyoming in eighteen eighty three. The man wrote to General Adams, who made quick work of getting to town. There he found an apprehended Packer taking him down to Denver by train. A Packer tried to work a deal. If General Adams could protect him from the angry mob that surely awaited him back in Colorado, he would provide the real truth about what had taken place in the mountains all those years ago. The men made an agreement. Flanked by a sheriff and a deputy, a

Packer made his confession. Packer claimed that his party fractured one day when one of the men, Swan, sent Packer ahead to scout into the mountains in order to find their way. A Packer claimed he was gone a whole day, and on his return saw something wildly frightful. There sat his companion Bell, hunched and wild eyed, over a fire and roasting a piece of meat. Four other men lay dead around him, all in various states of mutilais. Some were shot, and some were slashed, and some had hunks

of flesh cut from their bones. It's then that Bell jumped up and came for Packer, and reacting quickly, Packer shot him in the stomach and then whacked him over the head with a hatchet. Bell was dead, and now Packer was alone. He tried and tried again to get out of camp, but the snow was impassable, so for sixty days he stayed, making fires and living off the flesh of his companions. As the spring pain he grew hopeful who cooked the last of the meat, took what

he could and left the camp. This time he had make it out. His first confession. He told the men was crazed and he couldn't be held responsible for what he had said. He had been through quite an ordeal, and they had to understand. The news broke in papers from the mountains to the sea. It was a sensational story, and this man, after all, had just admitted to eating his friend. There was certainly a pantalizing drama to that story, but the question remained how much of it was true.

Many thought Packer killed his companions in cold blood. Swan's family said that he had left home with six thousand dollars in cash and gold, which would have provided Packer with plenty of motivation for murder. Others suggested he had knocked out members of his party with morphine, which he had also used to treat his epilepsy, before killing them. In their minds, he had this particular condition and used it to aid in cold blooded murder. Packer's trial began

on April ninth of eighteen eighty three. He was only charged with the murder of Swan. This was strategic for the prosecution. Team and hopefully an easy sell to the jury, and if he got off well, they could bring more charges against him in the deaths of the other four men. For the first two days, men testified against him. On the third day he took the stand. He told his story once again about finding Belle at a campfire, surrounded by his dead companions. He admitted to taking their money,

he admitted to eating them. He denied killing anyone. But bell Packer left the courthouse that day feeling confident in his performance. He looked forward to being a free man. But even if he was telling the truth where it mattered, he lied about other things on the stand, his age, his military service, his epilepsy. He just couldn't stop himself from lying. He was convicted in the death of old

man Swan and sentenced to hang. But once this verdict came down, his team petitioned since the crimes happened on the Ute reservation, it was out of the state court's jurisdiction, and they were right legally on the grounds of territory, Packer couldn't be charged with murder. They were also right about something else. Murders took place. Colorado was not yet a state that meant that they could not legally apply the laws of the state to the crime which had

been made after the crime occurred. There had been a law allowing the state to prosecute murders that had happened in the territory, but that law had since been repealed and rewritten. Packer could not legally be tried for murder, but he could still be tried from manslaughter the laws allowed for that. Packer won his rights to a second trial, which took place in eighteen eighty six under the new Colorado legislation. He was tried for a voluntary manslaughter of

all five men instead of the murder of one. His second trial was almost identical to the first. The same witnesses appeared and the same evidence was presented. A verdict was quickly reached. A Packer was guilty of killing his companions and sentenced to forty years in prison, the longest custodial sentence in American history at that point. By all accounts, he was a model prisoner. It was even said that he used his pension to help the formerly incarcerated get

back on their feet. After sixteen years behind bars, he petitioned for the fifth time to be paroled. His request was denied yet again, but he caught the attention of a curious reporter from the Denver Post named Polly Prye. She began a media campaign for his release, and the tide of public favor slowly began to turn towards him. It was revealed that he had largely been convicted on

flimsy circumstantial evidence. In January of nineteen o one, the Governor of Colorado made it his final act before retiring, to grant Parker parole. He would spend the rest of his days in a quiet flower garden, raising chickens and rabbits. He fought until the day he died in nineteen o seven for a full pardon. According to the telling, his

last words were, I'm not guilty of the charge. Alfred Packer always maintained that he may be guilty of eating the men after they died, he may be guilty of taking their money, but the only one of them he killed was Bell, which was an act of self defense. There have been multiple investigations into the matter to determine whether Packer had lied about the events in those mountains or not. But in the words of James E. Stars,

George Washington University law professor and Packer expert. While there's no question that Packer was a monumental liar, it's likely that he sometimes told the truth. Investigations in recent years continue to focus on what really happened that long cold winter. Physical evidence points to murder, yes, but it doesn't point researchers in the direction of who did the killing. Today case is still being debated, but the general consensus remains

we can't know what really happened. Did the pathological liar lie or did he tell the truth? Who shot first? And what were the specific circumstances around that violence. Was Packer a calculated murderer who led these men to their doom? Or was he a victim of circumstance? Or was the truth somewhere in between. Today, Packer's cannibalism can be just as much of a punchline as it is a horror. The University of Colorado at Boulder, for example, has a

dining hall named after him. Slogan is have your friends for lunch. We remain fascinated by cannibalism, whether in fact or fiction or in some murky space in between. We see it span centuries and cultures of myth and legend, and propped up high on the silver screen, we can't look away. The act represents many different things for each of us. How far we'll go to survive, what it means to be civilized, the link between the known and the other, and fundamentally, what it means to be human.

How far will any of us go to survive? It's a question we can all ask ourselves, but can't ever truly know until we are in the most desperate of circumstances. In the case of Packer, he is the only one who truly knew what happened. There's more to this story. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. The frigid Yukon was once a place for outlaws. It's here that rum runner Louis Lincoln and his Auto

found themselves caught in a blizzard one night. The unfortunate auto accidentally stepped through some ice, soaking his foot and chilling him to the bone. By the time the two brothers made it back to their cabin, they were in pretty bad shape. The frostbite had set into Otto's foot, and it became clear that his big toe in particular, was at risk for developing gangreen, so Louis did what he had to in order to save his brother's foot. He amputated the toe and popped it into a nearby

jar of booze. Why the story doesn't say, but it seems likely that there was a thought that it could be preserved with the hope that it someday might be reattached. Or perhaps it was just a humorous and macabre souvenir. He had done the work of growing it himself, so why throw it out. The toe, though, would never again meet its maker. It languished in its boozy tomb until nineteen seventy three, when it said the local boat captain named Dick Stevenson found the jar of alcohol while cleaning

out a cabin. He was delighted. Stevenson picked up the jar and ferried it down to his local watering hole. There he brought it around the bar, daring patrons to dunk the toe in their drinks, and thus the Sour Toe Cocktail Club was born. Sadly, though, the original toe was not long for this world. In nineteen eighty a miner was going for the sourte cocktail world record, and on his thirteenth glass he swallowed the toe by accident.

Not to be dissuaded by this temporary roadblock, the club carried on and lives on at the Sour Toe Saloon, still in operation in Dawson City today. It's said that plenty of amputated toes have been donated for the cause. One even arrived with a warning, don't wear open toed shoes while mowing the lawn. So if you may make it to Dawson City and are feeling brave, saddle up to the bar. The club is still taking members, and lucky for you, the bartender will make the cocktail with

any alcohol of your choice. You might even get a chance to hear a taunting jingle. You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but your lips must tough that gnarly tow. American Shadows is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was written by Robin Minietter and researched by Alex Robinson, with fact checking by Jamie Vargas. It's produced by Jesse Funk and Trevor Young. The executive producers Aaron Menke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show,

visit griminmild dot com and four more podcasts. My Heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.