Thinking Sideways: The Mad Trapper of Rat River

And some of you may have heard of this. Actually, before I forget, I want to mention give a little shout out to our listener Jacob, who recommended this particular little story to us. Yeah, thanks Jacob. Yeah, okay, let's

let's take him from the top. One day in July, a man calling himself Albert Johnson arrived in Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, Canada, and according to some versions of this story, he stayed there long enough to build a boat that he was going to use to travel down the Mackenzie River. Constable Edgar Millan talked to him but didn't get a lot of information from him, I guess for my person

is probably a pretty small place. So when this one and this is way up in the far far north of the Northwest Territories, almost to the Beaufort Sea, which is like, yeah, it's it's well above the Arctic Circle, way up there. Not a lot of people live up there, yeah not not probably a happening spot. Yeah. So anyway, Constable Millen Uh said later that he thought that Johnson had a Scandinavian accent. Yeah, and a coincidence here Johnson eventually killed Milling. But we'll get to that little bit

later on. Yeah, I know exactly. Little did we know at that moment he would see Lie Day like Lie dying at the hands of Albert Johnson, not his real name. Okay. So anyway, so Johnson got his boat and left and went down the Mackenzie River and went up went up the Rat River. I don't know why they named it the Rat River because it had a lot of rats up there, that's true. I don't know about that. Rats live everywhere. Yeah, romans live everywhere. That's a good point.

They're pretty hardy little creatures. Okay. So anyway, he goes uh on the banks of the rat River. He builds himself in a cozy little eight by ten log cabin. Uh and uh, yeah, it's just very cozy eight by ten, Are you kidding me? So he builds this log cabin. As it turns out, it had double log walls for about the first two or three feet of the of the of the wall. On the inside, there's an extra

layer of logs with earth jammed in between layers of logs. Yeah, and a nice and a nice little spot to like hold hunker down behind with your gun if you're gonna get into shoot out. Apparently this guy was looking was expecting trouble from day one, so he not only had these double log walls, but he had he had also cut gun slits all the way around, so you could basically cover you know, everywhere around his cabin through these slits with his rifle. Yeah, paranoid guy, a little bit,

a little bit. Yeah. The local Indians noticed that somebody was messing with their traps, you know, you know how traps work. Put them out there, and some hapless animals steps in him and clump, you know, and clamps onto their leg and then they chewed their leg off and run away and then you know, get eaten by some of the animals because they can't run anymore. So that's

the way trapping works. So they put. Yeah, so they noticed that somebody was tripping their traps and in some cases moving them, hanging, hanging them from bushes, trees, whatever. So somebody's messing with their livelihood. And since he was the only new person around, he was the only thing that they changed over the past year, they immediately decided it probably was him. So they had complained to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Yes, the Mounties in Aquavic. I

don't know if I'm pronouncing that town's name correctly. Which is the nearest town, obviously, And so the day after Christmas nineteen one, two constables left Aquavic and tracked the sixty miles to his cabin. And I said, I don't know. I assuming they did, did the whole dogs led routine, I'm not really sure, but yeah, I can't imagine they walked there. I can't imagine they walked sixty miles on

Christmas after circle. Yeah, there's a lot of snow in there, I know, I know, I think it's I think it's dogs led time. Yeah, so they went to Johnson's cabin again, did I did I mention it? Sixty miles? Yea to question him. Johnson was home, but he refused to talk to them or really even acknowledged them. They were knocking on the door and and and stuff, and he just was pretending like he didn't even hear them, so he didn't let them in, and he wouldn't talk to them.

He didn't hear of them. Yeah, maybe he was deaf, No, because I remember reading one of the accounts that he had windows, and they went to peer in the windows, and here he threw a grainsack in the window. He covered the windows so they couldn't see it. Not a very sociable fella, but you know, really, you know, he probably should have just had a polite conversation with him, because he could have avoided a lot of heartache down

the line. But the constables decided that they needed to go get a search warrant, so they returned to Aklavic st. Yeah sixty how did twenty miles for nothing? Yeah? They made this round trip quite a few times. I think it was miles to find out that he's kind of a skis. Yeah, I know, he's kind of a sketchy character. Five days later they returned with two warm men. Once again, he wouldn't top, wouldn't answer the door or anything like that. But so one of the constables decided to force the door.

So he's doing and while he's doing that, suddenly a shot rings out. Johnson had fired around through the door, which wounded the constable. There a bit of a shootout. Nobody else got shot, fortunately, except what would have been fortunate if Johnson had gutten shot. Uh. And so they scraped up their wounded comrade and headed back to Aklavik once again sixty miles And next time they came back they had nine men. Where there were mounties, some native

guys and this is the third time. The third trip out were three d sixty miles round trip are three hundred miles round trips so far to bring a bunch more guys. This is a lot of traveling in an age where you can't travel quickly just to talk to some dude ye about trap and it's like, you know, you get a hand to these guys there for their heartiness because not just the length of the trip, but it's this is like December January above the Arctic Circle,

it's freezing cold. Oh yeah, it's cold. It's like so I mean, I've never even experienced these kind of temperatures myself. I don't want to. I don't want to either. I don't need that. Besides the nine men, they also had forty two dogs, and they brought just in case, twenty pounds of dynamite. I love it. That's good planning. I just I just need to blow his ass up, so jects,

we need to blow him up. I remember in the account um, one of the ones that I read, it said that they try they had to warm the dynamite up. They had to put it inside their cones and warm it up to make it even kind of useful, and they got like one usable stick out of however many they had stuck in their jackets. Imagine that, just, I mean, dynamite in that day and age, it's it's nitroglycerin in sawdust essentially, is all it is. So yeah, it freezes, Yeah,

yeah I could. I I personally would not be the one who would want to get to do. Hey Kowalski, stick this stick of dynamite in your armpit and hold it there for five minutes. Did this is a frozen stick of dynamite, So it's like your jacket. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, these guys are these guys are hardy fellows. So they succeed in throwing the dynamite into the cabin and blowing it up. So did they throw it into it or in the front of it? I was never

clear on that. Yeah, I was never entirely clear either. It sounded it seemed to me like they either jimmy the door and threw it in or threw it in through the window. But it might have just like set it on the front because his window was probably open at this point. Yeah, it's such a ball afternoon. Yeah, Yeah, I could never tell him because I'm thinking that a stick of dynamite, because we're going to get into what happens, But stick of dynamite in an enclosed space like that,

he's a pretty concussive blast. Yeah, yeah, that's that's a good point. So it might be that it might be that they just set it at the front door and it just blew the crap out of the whole cabin. Yeah, worse knock knock joke ever, Yeah, that reminds me of a joke. Was just kidding, but it turns out that he was even more paranoid than thought because he had dug like a foxhole in the middle of his living room I guess, yeah, or living room or bedroom or kitchen,

I guess it was all. Yeah, so he dug itself a foxhole. So he he was uninjured. After they blew the crap out of the cabin and they started approaching it, and he started he opened fire again and another firefight took place, this time no casualties. So eventually the posse decides, well, it was about a fifteen hour standoff, and then they just said, well, you know what, it's really cold out here.

So yeah, they left and they went back to Aklavic again, and they came back on January fourteenth, nineteen thirty two. This time they hadn't even bigger posse. I love that this possely just keeps growing and growing. Uh. And this, by the way that I mentioned that this was the biggest man hunt in Canadian history, it would become that. Yeah, yeah, eventually turned into that. When they got back this time,

they found maybe their relief. I'm not sure he'd left the cabin shockingly, I mean they blew it up, he had I was just gonna, you know, take the sticks of logs and just make it into a little lean to. It'll be fine. They're definitely I've got a hole in the ground, so I'm safe. They haven't proven that they're going to come back over and over again. No, very good points. Yeah, I think I think it's a pretty fair about your shoot a cop. They're probably gonna keep coming,

coming and coming and coming until they get you. Yeah. They found when they were turning with that big, huge post that he had left the cabin. So they started tracking him, and they found by the way along the way that he had left a couple of caches of food along his trail. He seemed to be really well prepared for all this stuff. So the route that he used to escape, he was hiding food along that route. Yeah, they found Check out this map. I found food caches

and in these two spots here. Pulled that up to the microphone, would you. Yeah, so as you guys can clearly see, because I mean I I looked at some of the maps of his track. And by the way, anybody who has at this point you need to stop and take a look at this region. This is we've already talked about this a little bit, but it is barren and not a place you want to go to

have a vacation. It is not hospitable. Yeah, that's probably one of those places that you know, just freeze in the wintertime and then summertime comes around and mosquitoes the size of Robbin's come out and suck your plot out of your body. I'm sure it's just not a pleasant place to live. Oh, I don't think so. Yeah, but apparently, yeah, this guy was. This guy was prepared for the apocalypse

because again he left those food stashes there. They followed him, They followed, and they tracked him, and they caught up with him. In January thirtieth ninety two, there was another shot shootout and this is one Constable Edgar Millen, who I mentioned before, was shot and killed. He got shot through the heart, so the posse he can mount you got shot. So anyway, the posse retreated again and and they decided to start recruiting more people. So they got more.

They especially wanted to get natives since they're very familiar with the area. So they got well, and they recruited people from two different tribes. Yeah. I don't know if tribes is the right, but yeah too. Yeah, but they did two different groups. Yeah, and also like just it was just a militia at this point, right practice they referred to it as I think the local militia just coming out and yeah, coming out to go out to

this Albert Johnson Villa his real name. Uh. So it looked like from his tracks that he was headed west to the Yukon territories. So one of the first things that Matis did is they blocked the passes over the Richardson Mountains, which lay between Albert Johnson and the Yukon. So there were two passes there. And which way is is that mean he's going He's going west west? Okay? So he's heading west. Yeah, so headed west kind of southwest actually in too Alaska, kind of towards Alaska. Yeah,

into the Yukon. And then if he kept going at the rate that he was going, he would have reached Alaska and about another two days. Yeah, the guy traveled fast. He covered a lot of ground. That's amazing, especially with snow shoes, although they were he figured out a way to not use his snow shoes. We'll talk about that in a minute. So he's heading for the Yukon. They blocked the passes. So in order to get around that,

Johnson just climbs over a seven thousand foot mountain. Yeah, yeah, no special gear and it's January above the Arctic Circle and you're at seven thousand feet of altitude. Everything aside of what Johnson did, he was tough. He was super tough dude, you know he and I was just I recently had read about this is he makes me think of there's the what are they call him the uk or the Utah Killer, the Utah mountain Man. Have you

heard of this guy? His name is Troy James Knapp, and he avoided the authorities for six years, living off the land in Utah. I mean he would break into cabins and steal food and booze and stuff. But he just and they were that kid in Washington, just like a couple of years ago, Washington State. Do you guys remember this. I can't remember what they called him, the Barefoot bandit maybe, And he was like stealing people's planes and stuff, and like it took him like three or

four years to find him. And he was just like was living up in the forests in Washington, chilling out in the woods. Yeah, and he was laid out eighteen or nineteen at the oldest. So yeah, I think there are some people like this in history that it takes quite the constitution. Yeah, it really does. But none of them have climbed over a seven thousand foot mountain. I'm assuming he didn't climb seven thousand feet. He just went over a mountain that was seven thousand feet tall. Yeah,

he might not have actually summited. The mountain has probably a couple of thousand feet, but still that's a couple of thousand feet in the middle. And I don't know if you know this is in the wintertime or not, when you're sort of up in the mountains and stuff. And he had on an uphill road you'll start I remember this up at Mount Saint Helens some some years back when caving at night with some princes. Don't ask me why. So we had we the road was gated, so we had to park our cars and start walk

hiking up this road. So where we parked our cars and snow was about two inches deep and there was a gentle rise in the in the road. By the time we got to our objective, which was maybe a mile off the road, the snow was a foot deep and we're not talking to changing altitude here, so yeah, I can't imagine how deep the snow must have been up in the in that mountain side. Well, so anyway,

you have to to reiterate he was badass. He was like the nineteen thirties equivalent of the honey badger, because they didn't have honey badgers I think not in the UK the UK. Yeah, okay, one the way back to our tail. So the Mounties hired a pilot named Wop me and I don't know why he was called Whopp. That was a nickname obviously that he had hippies for parents. It was a name. It was a nickname. Was w

P May I think? Yeah, we're his initials. Yeah. So anyway, so WAP was was detailed to scout for tracks and such things from the air. He spotted Johnson's tracks on the far side of the Richardson Mountains, which alerted the Mounties that he had escaped and gotten past the past their guys in the passes and it was in the Yukon. Another thing that May figured out is that the reason they couldn't find tracks for Johnson is that he was traveling on the on the Eagle River, which is of

course frozen solid. And so apparently Cariboo carrible herds like to like to travel on frozen rivers because that gives them a little bit more space from the trees, so they can see predators from a little further away. So I'll travel up and down the river. And so he was just walking in their tracks, and you couldn't spot his tracks and from because all these Cariboo tracks, very clever and not using his to be able to not

use his snowshoes, because those those are very obvious, definite tracks. Yeah, and so yeah, because it's and and so that sped him up of course, because you guys are snowshooting before, right, that's not speedy. The way that what May was able to spot this is he was he was traveling up the river in his plane, and he spotted some tracks

leading from the river up the bank. And so there were some obvious tracks in the snow, so you could travel, but as sooner, you know, he'd have to stop and urinate, or maybe stop and make camp for the night, that kind of thing. I think, yeah, it was for camping. Actually, I don't know why you I mean, you know, if it's if you're the only one out there and you're trying to like hide yourself, you would just like pe on the trail, right, I mean, you would just stop.

You wouldn't. I would probably just wet myself because you're you're as warm. It's warm util that starts evaporating freezes and then get rid of your legs. So what may figured this out, And so the mounties started following him up the Eagle River, and he was he was a crafty guy. He to do stuff like backtrack to throw them off and throw them off the trail, and he

was he was. He was all over the place. They calculated at the end of this whole thing, and he traveled like, I forget, what, a hundred plus miles in three days something. We're diating some huge yeah, an amazing amount of yeah, and over a mountain and over a mountain and up frozen rivers. They were following off the river for quite a while, and then they caught up with him on February seventeenth, nineto. It came around a

bend in the river and there he was. One of the one of the constable spotted him first, grabbed his rifle and the other ones eventually figured out where he was, where he was hiding. There was a big firefight. Uh, one of the Mounteins was wounded, but luckily not fatally, and then Johnson got killed. And did you did you read the accounts of how the how the guy actually managed to get the lucky shot, the shot that killed him.

Is they when they came around the bend and everybody's there and Johnson, I guess what he did is he just laid flattened the snow, make you know, smaller target obviously, and he's shooting back and everybody's shooting at him from the edge of the river so that they're not as

easy to get. But they dispatched one guy to go around him in the woods and he and he basically got you know, where Johnson's laying in the snow, got at about a forty five degree or a ninety degree angle away from him, came over a small rise and saw him and just took a shot. And that's what ended up being the shot that killed him. But it was just one guy that somebody had the fourth foresight say go flank him, just try and flank him, and

it worked obviously enough. Yeah, that's actually, when you think about it, kind of an obvious thing to do. Yeah, but either way, they so they finally bagged their man, because amounts he's always bagged there man. So they searched his body and they found a little over in currency US and Canadian, which is the equivalent of about sixty too. It's a lot of cash. Yeah. They found miscellaneous said of stuff too, like a dead bird, a dead squirrel.

And the food. Yeah that's food. Yeah, sure, that's definitely food. Yeah, or maybe just lucky charms. I don't know. He had some gold and he also had a small jar that had gold teeth in it, which led some people don't wonder if maybe perhaps he wasn't a serial killer on the top of being all around nice. So they were his Yeah, I wasna that they thought it was his teeth. Maybe his teeth were falling out. He probably living in that cabin. He probably got scurvy and his teeth fell out. Well.

And the other thing that I heard is that, Okay, in this how long was he on the round? A month? Yeah, a little over a month, a little over a month. And at times he's he was burning The estimate the equivalent of about ten tho calories a day with all the exertion, and if he's not eating right, and the photos that they have of him, he's obviously emaciated. Yeah, seriously, not a pounce of fat on him. So I just

wonder if his tea started falling out. I mean, the other thing that they talk about is that you know he had guns, but obviously he's on the lamb. He can't shoot guns to hunt because it'll give away his location. So he like either hand kill or with a knife or trap everything that he got. And I don't know that he was in particularly fertile land. Yeah, there's not that many critters. And you know, you can't really tackle a caribou because they're big. They're really big. They're big.

This guy was. This guy was tough. But you know the other thing about it is at least kind of an obvious sign because caribou ways so much. Even if he succeeded in bringing it down and slitting its throat and you get some nice cuts of meat, you have to leave it sitting right there in the open where it would be found by your trap. With the other

problem is, of course he wasn't lighting fires. He couldn't light a fire at night to warm himself up or cook his food, because that would again give aways that not brings some of the mystery about this whole thing, right, is that how to he survived? How long? And whether that cold? I mean, you can make a snow fort and that'll keep you kind of warm, but you'll survive. You will not be comfortable. It's gonna take its toll. Yeah, I'm sure he probably did hold up in snowcaves, but

snow castly. He just didn't sleep. I mean, he traveled enough that it's totally possible that, Yeah, he just didn't sleep. It's nothing about this guy that's a little bit superhuman, you know. Yeah, it's a lot of weirdness. Yeah. I think you're probably going to cover some of that stuff. I don't want to disturb our listeners. Yeah, so I'll let you cover that. About his physical stuff that was going on with him. Were talking about, well, he has scoliosis,

like severe scoliosis, and like weird feet. Yeah, one ft was bigger than the other one, stuff like that, so he was a little bit deformed. Yeah, which again, okay, if if i'm me and I'm in I'm in fit or shape than any of today, because I'm not that fit. But if I have scoliosis in one foot that's bigger than the other, that would make it so hard to be trooping through the snow and doing all of that. I mean, as a normal person that's not easy. But then to have these uh, these handicaps lack of a

better phrase, how did he do that? I don't know. It's like he was just tough. Just don't make him like that. No more fat mystery. Yeah, okay, Well, speaking of mysteries, there there actually is a longstanding mystery about this guy because nobody ever was able to figure out

who he really was. They found his body and they fingerprinted it, that didn't turn up anything, and they this this thing got quite a bit publicity, and so there were a few people who came up with with theory is there was a family in Nova Scotia, for example, who believed that he might have been a relative of theirs.

The family was the name was Johnson. Hey go figure, Uh, they had a relative named Owen Albert Johnston, and they thought it might have been him because he had he had reportedly gone west, gone to British Columbia, and the last they heard from him was a letter they got in early nineteen thirty one from a town called rebel Stoke in British Columbia, which is always south, but it's it's about in the middle of British Columbia. Um, so

there was there were those guys. An author named Richard North came up with the theory saying that that Albert Johnson and another guy named Arthur Nelson, and you had another guy named John Johnson. We're all one of the same. Yeah, yeah, uh, he said. And so Arthur Nelson apparently traveled from Lower

BC up into the Yukon in n ninety one. He owned similar guns, Savage M thirty caliber lever action rifle and also twenty two although those were really common guns, so I don't know that that really means that much, but so, yeah, it's similar guns. And uh so he thinks they were the same guy. And there was another guy named John Johnson from North Dakota, and he believes that John Johnson, Arthur Nelson, and Albert Johnson were all

the same person. John Johnson did time in prison. Um, Sam Quentin and Fulson, right, yeah, yeah, luxurious places especially that here is just a really really wonderful play well, Johnny Cash liked it. Yeah. So this author, Richard North North trace john Johnson's or some people call him Johnny Johnson,

traced him back to Norway. He was born Johan Codrad Johnson in in northern Norway, also north of the Arctic Circle, which would explain why he's so easily able to Yeah, it's then able to deal with this kind of stuff. Uh So that was a that was a long standing theory, and that was that was a nice theory. But did I mention No, I know I didn't. But in two thousand and seven they exhumed Albert Johnson's corpse and did

some DNA test. Was the Discovery Channel, right, Yeah, that it was sponsored by I think they paid for the whole thing. And so they dug him up and everything, did a bunch of lab tests and DNA and stuff and stuff. And so if anybody has the time for any of our listeners, that this is available on the internet to watch, and it's about a fifty minute video and it gets a reenactment of the whole chase and all of that's very dramatic. Oh and he took a shot.

But what's really interesting is how hard it was to dig him up, like this guy was so hard to catch and kill, and he and after he died and they buried him and they went to digging back up. He was so hard to dig up. It was like he was fighting though everything that people did well because were they didn't know. They had a marker for his grave, but they weren't sure that that was exactly the right spot, and it was within fly feet, but we're talking in

the Arctic circle, so we got permafros. It's frozen, and they had a bacco in there, and they I think they broke the bucket on the back of like first of doing it with shovels and picks and axes, and then they get a bacco in there, and the bacco is having trouble it. I think they were allotted let's say three days. It's been a while since I watched the video. There were a lot of a couple of days. And they only got in there because they said, we will dig him up and then we will bury him again.

Everything will be respectful and according to traditions of the local people, so we will. We won't disturb anymore than we have to. But they had this very small window. I think it actually was twenty four hours now that they think about it, and they were freaking out because they couldn't get to the body did deep enough and they couldn't find him. He was just y, I just see that, you know this, this guy's goes to be

like No. Yeah, I think they used they used ground pen and trading radar to actually actually make pinpoint the location of his body before they started digging. Not what I saw, but I mean it's hard to say. I mean I watched it, but again it's been a little bit since I've seen it, but I just remember them frantically trying to find it. Yeah, I believe I can't remember the precise date when they did that, but I believe it was summer, like July something like that. But yeah.

Still still yeah, and what crossed by definition is always frozen. Yeah, so in wintertime you can just forget about it. The PERMA stands for permanently. Yeah, in case somebody was unclear about that. You know, it took me a long time to figure it out. Yeah. So yeah. So anyway, so so they exhumed him, and that gave that gave everybody a chance to retire a lot of these theories because they took DNA because I took DNA from the body.

And then so they were able to find relatives of Johan Conrad Johnson, and well it turns out no, no DNA match. Same for the Johnston family in Nova Scotia. Uh, there was another writer named Mark fremer LYD. Sorry Mark, if I mispronouncing your name. Is that Johnson was actually a guy named Sigvald Petterson Hans Hanks Jold. I think something like that. I mispronounced that. I'm sure now, yeah, And and that was he. He had a lot of

interesting reasons to back the theory up. So he was kind of a paranoid person who debates innovaded service in World War One. He was worried he was still gonna be capped, going to be caught and punished for that. He apparently did take up residents in British Columbia, built himself a little fortress cabin just like the kind of cabin that Albert Johnson built, and some somewhat further south in British Columbia, and then and then left and disappeared.

And so you know, that's an attractive theory that there could have been this guy. But now, uh, ha. The DNA defeated that theory too. And the other thing that I remember, correct me if I'm wrong, Joe, is that when they exhumed the body and they examined his teeth, they figured out that he grew up somewhere where they

corn all the time. Is that right? Apparently? Yeah, So they decided that they found isotopes in his teeth that led them to believe that he couldn't be of Canadian origin, and he either was from the midwest of the US, the corn belt, or from Scandinavia. Now, I don't remember a lot of corn being grown in Scandinavia. That's what I never understood. I have no idea what either there. But uh, I mean it might be pickled fish or

something filthy fish or something like that. Yeah, and potatoes lots, Yeah, But it's the corn thing is when I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't put a bead on that because, Okay, I can see the Midwest, the girl our corn there, but Candindia, maybe they imported a lot of corn. I don't know, maybe I and I don't know, I know, I don't know that exactly as the corn. It might be that they said they believe he might be from the corn belt.

Oh okay, So I was thinking when they said corn, it was based on like, you know, people who corn a lot like the I think was was the asd actually knew the corn all the time because the way their teeth were worn down, and so I I presumed that it was that same. But if it's an isotope, that's very isotopes. Yeah, and so it might be that certain minerals in the ground. I don't know. That explains why I was completely wrong. And that's you know, I mean,

it could be right. I don't know that with water usually because less with the ground, because I guess in the thirties it was less though, but now we can tell from the water because you don't import water from anywhere, whereas our food comes from everywhere. Good point. But I think in the thirties that was probably not so much of a thing. Yeah, not nearly as much food swapping as we had today. Well so anyway, Yes, So after his exhumation, all all the so far known candidates were

ruled out, and again they did. They did figure out that little bit about his origins from his teeth. That's the mystery. We still don't know who Albert Johnson really was. And they released some pictures, right, released pictures, but he didn't look that hot. Yeah, you guys should go look at the pictures of that are because it's it's just so interesting. Honestly, I don't know. If somebody were like, hey, can you idea this person, I would say it's a human.

I think I the human man probably, But the pictures aren't a great quality, and he's not looking so great. And I'm guessing that they carried his body for weeks. Yeah, I don't know how long he was dead before they managed to get pictures of him, so that might have been part of it too. Well. I was I was earlier saying to you guys that, you know, I thought he just kind of looked like a demon or something

some kind. And you know, we've looked at death pictures before, um specifically with the Tom and Shrewd case, but with others. We've looked at pictures of people who are dead, and they do look different than they do when they're alive. But this guy creepy. Yeah, now he is creepy. Creepy, and that's why it was anti socially got tired of being rejected. Maybe he actually was that creepy. Yeah, maybe it wasn't. He didn't talk to anybody. Yeah, you know

what he talked to me people? Oh didn't they say at one point, sorry that that nobody in the Mounties actually heard him speak throughout the entire time. The only time. The only noise they heard him make was when he laughed when he shot somebody. Yeah, and he shot Constable Miller and he ely laughed. Yeah, and that's what they heard from him. Yeah, that's so weird. Yeah, it's for creepy. Yeah. He didn't yell anything like come and get me coppers if you can, or nothing like that. I just wantn't

be left alone. Yeah, you know it kind of it makes me wonder if he wasn't mentally handicapped. Yeah, well

here this is a terrible example. But I just recently watched again sling Blade, and if you've ever watched that movie, okay, well, in that movie, Billy Bob Thornton plays guy who's mentally handicapped, and he doesn't talk a lot, and it's very short, it's very simple, and he talks kind of funny, but he didn't talk a lot, and so I it I as I was watching that after having read about this, It's like, I wonder if maybe he had a mental condition and so he was very bad with language, so

he just didn't talk or just some people just don't respond. Talking is not their way to communicate. They just don't don't talk to people. And that would explain why nobody liked him. The locals who were saying it was him because they came up to him and they said, hey, did you mess with my trap? And he just stared at him, didn't say a word, tries to you know, the guy that was Willis? Is that who tried to talk to him? Is that the guy when Millan tried

to talk to him. Yeah, when Millan, when he tried to talk to him he first came to town, got almost nothing out of him because he just didn't talk to him him. I just looked at him and probably didn't understand what was going on. He said. Nolan said that he spoke that that that that they spoke, and then he he said that he had a slight He appeared to have a skin in the Avian accent. He thought, but it doesn't sound like they really communicated a lot.

But that sounds like he was able to talk well, but he might have, you know, finally gave in and and said five words and it was done. Yeah, it could have been. It's hard to say. Yeah. But there was also the the guy when he stayed in Fort McPherson to build to build that boat, that he hired a local to help him, and so there was some talking going on. So apparently he wasn't totally sociable. But because it was capable of Okay, yeah, I know that,

then that kills my theory. I completely forgot about that part. But here's there's one of the things that puzzles me is that this was very much publicized. It was that that was back in the days of radio and not TV, but the word got out and it was this was a huge media spectacle, at least by the standards of

that day. And so you would think that if he had any family, then you know, they they would have heard about this and they're saying that sounds like uncle Fred, it's a little a little screwy and you know, very very good in the woods and just voted most likely to murder somebody. And so you think more of these families we would be coming forward to saying Hey, I

would think that might be one of our relatives. So but the problem is this is this is in the time of right around the Great Depression, so there are all kinds of people who were on the move, scattering, just trying to find work and to live. So I can I mean, there's there's so many families that just broke apart. They went in every direction under the sun just to try to find something in lost contact. Yeah. I mean, it's also possibly didn't have any family because

you know, people die and all that. Yeah, I supposing he was an only child and his parents were both or something like that. Did they did they ever figure out how old he thought he was? I thought, okay, and then they that was like people identified him as being at that age at the time, and then when they when they exhumed his body, they tested it for for age too, and then they were guessing about mid thirties.

I guess. You know. My thing would be if he had a Scandinavian accent of any kind, that means he had to have lived there for a fair portion of his childhood at least. It's totally possible that he emigrated as a teenager or as a kid on his own and that this story maybe never made it really to Scandinavia and therefore they didn't come forward and say, yeah, that's our kid. It made it to Scandinavia, but it was in Canadian, so they weren't able to understand because

nobody else speaks Canadian. Yeah story, yeah yeah yeah. So anyway, so yeah, it could be that his family was back in Scandinavia and they never really got word of This could be an orphan yeah, probably wasn't more North America and phenomenon in Church of dis coverage. Yeah, uh so it could in our phone or or maybe maybe his family is kind of like him and they don't really want to have contact with the authorities. So anyway, here's

my action plan for solving this mystery. Oh boy, Yeah, let's all get out our phone books and call everybody with the last name Johnson. Everybody wait, well wait, no, we we've talked about this. Yeah, nobody but you has phone books, I know, so nobody else is going to do that. It's all on your shoulders. I'm gonna go out on a limit for your and predict, by the way, that the phone book is going to come back into style. And you know why, have you ever tried to look

at somebody's phone number online? Yeah? Yeah, and you know how they won't give it to you unless you pay them. No, everybody has a Facebook page and nobody knows how to secure it, so you always get that stuff. Yeah, but you know, but seriously, if you're trying to find if you're not Facebook friends with somebody and then they're not on Facebook, try finding their phone number anymore. With what the internet, it drives me nuts. Really, page is dot

com white pages not come? They still totally do it? Yeah, okay, yeah, No, I'm sure there's sites out there, it's just unfortunately the a lot of people figure out how to game Google, and so when you do a search for anything like that, their stuff always comes up first. Because he's never going to give up on the phone book. Ever, I actually don't use the phone book very much at all. It's because he needs to sit on it to reach things. That's right. If I'm gonna reach that top cupboard, change

the light bulb, I needs seventeen phone books. Yeah, so you guys have any other theories. No, I tried to. I tried to find any kind of record of the whole Johnny Johnson which was the fugitive that that had made his way to the Yukon or the northern area. I tried to look up other people like that, and I could never I mean, it's really hard to find people that would fit that bill, let alone record of them.

Sometimes when they disappeared, they just disappeared. You didn't Yeah, and unless it was that day and age and you could talk to the people who are around, it just didn't get recorded. I tried to look up stuff like that, and I just dead end after dead end. I just started giving up. So these guys don't These guys don't go out in the don't go out in the web and just sign up for that that that that user group. That's like in a solitary movie. Loanersize don't have a

special group out there. No, No, they don't do that. I guess in the wood sucks kind of like a special ops officer of some kind from some country or another, maybe the US, maybe the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or whatever they have that is equivalent to special forces or something.

You know, his skill, his drive to like flee, his talent and surviving those are things that usually I think of as somebody who has some training, and I guess it's it's totally plausible to me that somebody, you know, was in the war and then it was discharged and they were like, I just want to go do nothing for a really long time kind of stuff. Yeah, and that that would explain why they didn't want to talk. Maybe they were on the lamb. Maybe he was just

didn't really want to talk to anybody. Maybe he thought he would kill somebody if he talked to them. Maybe he thought he'd hulk out, you know, I mean he did, he hulked out, like that's exactly what happened. Um. So for me, you know a little bit wonder if there's some kind of armed forces background in the mix there. But again, there's just no evidence. There's no good anything, and it doesn't really explain why somebody didn't see that and think, oh, yeah, that's Johnson from you know, the

Seals or whatever. Yeah, they didn't have seals, whatever they have, it doesn't matter Green berets. Yeah. Yeah, but you know, it would think that somebody out there would have made the connection, you know, some families, friends, whatever, But it sounds like this guy didn't have a lot of friends. Yeah. I think the other thing though, is that we all

we I mean, this was highly publicized. But I think that we've got to also remember that our frame of reference for the phrase highly publicized is much different than what it was in nine one, which was radio broadcasts and newspapers. And the radio would cover a story and then they would run it again an hour or two later. But it wasn't like I could just go on to Google and look it up or it was easy to get this. Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't easy to get

that information. So if I'm you know, I see it and then I leave town and I'm up in the woods where I'm out in the field doing whatever I'm doing for work, and then I come back from the apple orchard and oh, well the story's gone, But hey, what happened? Oh yeah, I don't really remember. I mean, I think it's it's much harder to for those things to be as widely known, and I think that frame

of reference is something that we can easily forget. And that's and then it's you know, in the thirties too, there were still people who lived in the wo was no electricity, we were plumbing, and you know, wasn't everywhere no it really wasn't. It was like not in a lot of places. So yeah, so you might have had family who knows, But I don't think. I think we're probably never going to find out unless we round up

every Johnson in the phone book. Yeah, if his name was truly I think you have a fatal flaw in your theory. Well maybe we should like to expand our search to Johnson, not just Johnson's, but Johnston's and jo Hansen's. I don't know, man, if I were going to go into hiding, I would pick Johnson or Smith my name, you know, like something super john Johnson. How generic can

you make it? Yeah, Albert Johnson is pretty generic too, So yeah, I think that it's just a flaw to believe he abbreviated his name when he had it put in the phone book, so he'd be the first Johnson in the book. He was a Johnson, That's why h chose Albert. Okay, well, if we're going to go with Joe's phone book theory, why not Yeah? Yeah, anyway, I don't know. The whole thing is still kind of a

head scratcher. You know, why he didn't just talk to the cops and just say, hey, no, don't don't know what you're talking about, sir, you know, or yeah, I didn't realize that was against the rules. Also, yeah, yeah it was. It was on my property. I thought I could do what I wanted on my property. Yeah, yeah, So yeah, he could have avoid a lot of heartburn if you've just been a little more cooperative and not shot at him. Well that's famous last words for a

lot of people. Unfortunately. I guess I just don't like the man and don't want to cooperate because they don't think they should have to. And I'm kind of getting that's what his mind set. Yeah, well, you never know. I mean I'm kind of going back and forth on this and whether he wanted to commit suicide by cop, because I mean, you have to know that if you shoot, if you shooting't win the policeman, sooner or later, they're going to come back with more guns and more people

and finish the job. Let's be honest, though, if you want to commit suicide by cop, you don't climb over a seven thousand foot mountain in the middle of the winter in the circle to escape. Said. Yeah, that's that's the part that's sort of conscious. But when you think about it. His his shooting of the constable in the beginning of this whole story, it really made no sense. It wasn't necessary at all. They were trying to break into his house, make sense, you know, they were trying

to force their way in. Yeah, he probably freaked out, shot through the door. Yeah. Maybe he was taking a nap and suddenly, oh my god, sleeping through all the ruckets outside of everybody yelling at him and knocking on the door. Yeah, he was a deep sleeper. Yeah, that's what was going on. Okay, another mystery solved, solved. Solved. So you folks are probably wanting to know more more cool stuff about how to find us, how to get

hold of us and everything like that. Well, you can find us on Facebook, and of course you can like us. You really should like us. Like us, yeah, you really like me. Yes. You can also find us, of course, on on Stitcher. If you want to stream this live or if you want to just download and put it in your on your iPod, then you can go to iTunes. You'll find us out there. Send us a message. You can use our email account, which is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. And let's see that I leave

anything out website. Oh yeah, we have a website. Yeah, okay, yeah, our website is thinking Sideways podcast dot com. And we'll have all the links to the story. I think we'll probably have the picture, the post boredom picture there. Yeah, we're gonna have gone so you can find all the links to this story and more you'll find we'll probably have the links of the video. And there's a website that I found that has a very very detailed rundown of the entire man hunt, a lot of details that

I left out. I kind of gave you the glossy overview here. Uh and uh's see maybe yeah, well that disgusting picture of him dead and maybe it is disgusting. Yeah, maybe a kind of a cool little map that shows his little trick that the rout of his little trick that he took. And h I don't know what else are we gonna put out there? Maybe a picture of a kitten? Oh my gosh, yeah, apparently we're just putting out everything. We are. So many pictures this week, so many? Yeah,

can I put a unicorn y? How about a unit kitten? I think that's perfect. Yeah, that's better than the death photo. How about a Uni Avocado Soldier. I haven't seen that. Well, you'll have to show that, Okay, okay, I want to see that one alright. Well anyway, that's it. Like I said, another mystery salt and uh you know, tune in next week when we saw another mystery So for Thinking Sideways podcast, I just want to say ta ta by everybody.