MAN-EATER-Harold Schechter

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way in the frozen wilderness of the Colorado Rockies. Months later, when the snow finally melted, only one of them emerged. His name was Alfred G. Packer, though he would soon become infamous throughout the country under a different name, the Man Eater, after the butchered remains of his five traveling companions were discovered in the secluded valley by the Gunnison River. Packer vanished for nine years, becoming the West's most wanted man.

But followed was a saga of evasion and retribution as the Trial of the Century worked to extricate fact from myth, and Paul Prye, a once famous pioneering journalist, took on the cause of Packer. Man Eater is the definitive story of a legendary crime, a gripping tale of unspeakable suffering, the desperate struggle for survival, and the fight to uncover

the truth. Story that we're book that were featuring this evening is Man Eater, The Life and Legend of an American Cannibal, with my special guests, journalist and author and professor Harold Scheckter. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for greening to this interview.

right into this story. As you introduce in the very beginning of the book, you set the stage for the very very i guess thorny subject of cannibalism, a subject that everyone seems to be horrified yet fascinated by. So let's talk about John C. Fremont and the mid eighteen hundreds in the American West and tell us who John Fremont is and what's the situation, what is the reality like in the American West in the mid eighteen hundreds.

You know, most people today remember Lewis Clark, but in the nineteenth century John C. Fremont was at least as famous as one of the great pioneering explorers who opened up the far reaches of the Western wilderness to white

settlement and colonization. And Fremont himself became such a celebrated figure that he was nominated as the Republican Party's first presidential candidate in eighteen fifty six, and one of the charges that was brought against him, you know, we we think we're living through, you know, a particularly nasty mud slinging presidential campaign right now. But back then, as I say my book, the charges that were leveled by politicians against each other make modern day mud slinging look like,

you know, the height of civility. And one of the charges I was brought against Fremont was that he was a cannibal, which unlike some of the other charges that he was illegitimate, that he was an adulterer, that he was a native born Frenchman back in the mid nineteenth century, as today people were, I guess they were kind of

berthers around. But in any case, as it turns out, the cannibal charge was true because on one of his expeditions, Fremont and his men became it became trapped in these snow choked mountains, and when some of them died and the others were starving, they resorted to cannibalism. So a part of the beginning of my book, you know what

I'm trying to. What I do in the beginning of that book is put the Packer's story in some kind of context, not only the context of, you know, the incredibly harsh circumstances that these early frontiersmen and explorer's faced in the American wilderness, but just in the context of attitudes towards what's called survival cannibalism. You know, situations where men in extremely dire circumstances of extreme starvation have resorted

to cannibalism as their only means of survival. And let me just interject, you know, I mean, I've written, as you know, about some of America's most notorious cannibal killers, most notably Albert Fish, you know, the infamous cannibal pedophile of the nineteen twenties and thirties. The book Mannire doesn't deal with that kind of psychopathic serial murder. Cannibalism deals with a case of survival, analysm and murder, but not serial murder.

You know, there was a famous one of them was Pike's Peak, and you'd have thousands and thousands of these people in covered wagons with Pike's Peaker bust written am ba canvas canopies. So, you know, Packer became caught up in that, in that kind of hysteria.

were incredibly harsh. You know that there might be three or four feet of snow in the grounds. There were these you know, precipices and gullies and chasms. I mean, it was you really took your life in your hands trying to negotiate that landscape in the middle of winter. Uh. And you know that's what happened with Packer and his comrades.

They set off very confidently in the belief that they could make their destination in a certain amount of time, and quickly found out that, you know, they had seriously underestimated the harshness of the environment and the severity of the elements.

Union Army during the Civil War. Packer was afflicted again from childhood with grandmu epilepsy UH, and so he ended up getting a disability discharged. He he was he was subject to very very very extreme UH and increasingly frequent seizures as a result of that illness. He re enlisted a different a different unit. He event was discharged again, eventually drifted out West. He claimed again apparently falsely, to

have served with George Armstrong Custer. But in any case, you know many details of his past or shrouded in obscurity, but we do know that by the early eighteen seventies he had drifted around west again. He was doing some prospecting, making his living in various odd jobs. He eventually made his way to Utah, and that's really where the saga of Alfred Packer picks up.

happened some years before the Packer case. And you know, depending on well, to some extent, depending on the character of the people who ended up having having to resort to those extremities. You know, the attitude could be fairly forgiving. You know. In fact, one thing I do discovered in my researches is that cannibalism per se is not really illegal in virtually all states of the Union. So uh,

you know. So so there are many many instances, or significant number of instances in American history where people again who have been in these unimaginably nightmarish circumstances, uh and and driven half crazed by hunger and were near death by starvation themselves, and who resorted to surviving on the flesh of you know, dead companions that you know, those people, you know, have often been been regarded fairly sympathetically by

the public. Uh. You know, there's a famous case. I just made a movie about it, the Welsh of Essex, which was one, you know, very very famous case. They made him. There was a book in the Heart of

the Sea and a movie recently released about him. Was one of the inspirations for the book Moby Dick, you know, where these sailors who were stuck on this life both you know, ended up surviving by cannibalizing their dead, dead comrades, and you know those people were should not only not punish, but again you know, treated very sympathetically.

so that they can take them on board? Because there wasn't amount of fee that was required to be joining this journey, So tell us how he circumvented that and how he came to be included.

he would be able to lead them to their destiny in a very short time. None of the other men, among these other twenty miners had ever been to Colorado,

so they were willing to. Well, this one prospector whose name was McGrew, you know, kind of took a shine to Packer, was willing to grub stake him as you put it, that is, you know, pay his way in return for you know, Packer helping him out with his horses and zen, but also you know, his services supposedly as a guide who could lead them to where they wanted to go in a matter of you know, a couple of weeks.

In the event they didn't, they didn't get to the area if three months, because they rapidly became clear that Packer had no idea how to get where they were going. But but yeah, so so you know, so the numbers, so the supplies that they equipped themselves with, you know, we're all based on this estimated time that Packer had given them, which was you know, severely severely uh, you know, underestimated.

But yes, and then also they felt that they could probably you know, supplement their supplies by killing game along the way. But again the weather was so much harsher than they had anticipated that they encountered very very very little game to kill.

So tell us a little bit about that story, about these unique Indians and their connection to this story.

Uh and you know, increasing uh conflict between the whites and the Native Americans, and uh, you know, the the the the Indians were constantly forced into this position, you know, of having to negotiate these treaties which would guarantee them supposedly in perpetuity, you know, all this land, you know, but as soon again, you know, again, as soon as

somebody discovered more gold or silver on the Indian reservation. Uh, there would be another invasion of white settlers and you know the Indians, uh, you know, this land that had been promised to them forever, they suddenly had to be renegotiated, and you know, their reservations became smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. Uh. They there was a very very remarkable figure named Chief Uray who became sort of the

designated chief of the youth nation. Uh and who you know, Uh, it was a figure that you know, the white white America and some of his own people had somewhat different feelings about. You know, some of his own people, I guess saw him kind of as what later came to be called an Uncle Tom who was betraying them, you know, to the whites. He was you know this, no, you know this well he was called a friend to the whites. But you know, he was kind of a visionary person.

I mean he understood that, you know, he was between the proverbial rock and a hard place. I mean he understood that, you know, without negotiating these these treaties, his people are just going to be totally exterminated. So yeah, so those were the that was the native population that. You know that Packer and his companions and all the all the white prospectors and settlers to the area, you know, had to confront and deal with.

Packer from the beginning. You know, I don't think Packer had the most winning personality, and according to against some of the people he was traveling with, you know, he seemed to be displaying kind of suspicious interest in the amount of money they were carrying with them, and you know, they also felt that he was hogging much of their

increasingly diminishing provisions. So there were a few of the men there who really bitterly disliked and distrusted Packer even before it became clear that he had completely misled them into thinking that he could serve as a god the people he was traveling with. This guy McGrew in particular, you know, fell much more warmly towards Packer and felt

sorry for him. The other thing, again, were these terrible seizures that that Packer was subject to, you know, which some of the men you know, were really really really put off by, unsettled by in a very very deep way. I mean, they found it very very disturbing. You know, McGrew was much more sympathetic and would really tend to Packer when he was in the throes of one of

these seizures. But but Packer definitely, you know, even again before it became queer that he really had no idea where he was going, had made had made enemies among those men.

So yeah, by by the time they were by the time they actually finally did reach the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, they had been reduced to eating the horse feed. I mean, they had eaten their horses grain. They were really in a state of near starvation. They were, yes, as he said, on the brink of killing their own horses and eating their own horses. And then they were saved by there by a sudden encounter with Chief Ray and a band of his Indians, who then very hospitably

invited them into Uri invited them into his camp. Uh. And the men set up their quarters there and engaged in some trade with the Indians. And Ray invited them and advised them to remain with him at the Indian camp until springtime and the snow melted.

would never make it there alive. But they ignored him. You know, I mean Greed. I guess he's a great, great motivating force in human behavior. You know, these guys were very very eager, uh to you know, to make it to this, you know, to this to this mining spot and get started. Uh. So they set out into the wilderness. Packer actually tried to follow them, you know, but a Lot was one of these people who was so hostile to Packer that he actually drew a gun

and threatened to kill Packer of Packer followed them. So so Lot in these four other guys uh set out, you know, set out in the snow. Uh, and then a few days later, Packer and five other men followed in their wake. Incredible.

last for a few days. You know, they they very very rapidly, you know, ran out of food. They were you know, frozen, they were starving, you know, they were they were basically vulnerable, you know, to the most you know, to the harshest kinds of you know, winter environmental conditions imaginable and so yeah, so that was the position they

found themselves in very very rapidly. And of course, you know, the way, the way the story unfolded, and the way I tell the story in my book is you know, pat Ray and the other men who remained at Oras camp, you know, you know, saw Packer and these five other people you mentioned heading off into the wilderness on their way supposedly to this Indian agency which was supposedly they were going to reach them less than a week. And

then the next sighting of Packer. The next time anybody saw Packer was three months later, you know, three months later in April, when he emerged from the wilderness by himself and made his way to this Indian agency, and the other five men that he was with were not there and in fact never seen alive again.

very very start, suddenly showed up. Suddenly showed up another and three other men had very wisely taken Chief Ray's advice and remained at the Indian camp until snow melted, and then uh set out and just by happenstance, two weeks later they arrived at the Las Pinos agency just hours after Packer showed up. And as I said, Nutter was one of these fole who had you know, it was always very very suspicious of Packer from the beginning,

of his motives. Uh, and you know Packer, and he wanted to know where these other five guys who had set off that Packer were. And Packer told him that that he Packer had developed frost spite in his feet and had become snowblind and was holding the other guys up. So they had left him, and they had left him behind with a rifle and and and they had set off. They had set off into the wilderness, and he had

never seen them again. He had just somehow managed to survive by himself for all that time, and you know, and then made his way back and made his way to Los Pinos. But he claimed that he had no idea where the other five guys were. Right away.

delicacies like canned oysters. You know, this struck the other man is very very suspicious because you know, they knew Packer had been so broke to begin with that, you know, he'd had to he had to basically barter his services in order to in order to accompany the men. So they became very very very suspicious of Packers free spending ways again given how poor he had been before, and began to wonder where all this he had come from.

And eventually, well, you know, very quickly, you know, another in particular, came to be convinced since there was no sight of these other men, you know, became convinced a lot by a lot in his companions who had set off before Packer and could also run into a lot of trouble, you know, but they had finally made it to the Indian agency. So so the only ones missing and unaccounted for were Packers five companions, and again Packer

suddenly seemed to be, uh, you know, inexplicably prosperous. So Nutter became convinced that Packer had murdered these other five guys, had stolen their money.

you know, on on his original story. But then finally uh, you know, Packer's story changed.

which is which is not not true. You know, Packer never denied well except for his initial you know, his initial claim that these five guys had had left him in the wilderness and that he'd never seen them again. But from the time of his earliest confessions, he never denied that he had engaged in cannibalism. What he did claim, however, is that he was completely innocent of murder. According to

his first confession. After a short time, Israel Swan, who was the as you pointed out, the oldest of this group of six people, died of exposure, and the other five men, you know Packer. You know, Packer gave a very very harrowing and probably pretty accurate description of the state of near starvation that they were in. They had been reduced to the point of boiling their own moccasins and eating them. Uh you know, they were trying to gather tree sap from the from the roots and eat that.

They were eating whatever stray rosebuds. I mean, they were scrounging around the rivers for snails, which they actually couldn't find. So they were they were in an extremely, extremely you know, dire straits and uh, you know, Packer said that Humphrey had died of exposure, and the other five men had eaten his flesh and then left the corpse where it

lay and proceeded on. And then after a little while a second man, I think Humphrey had also collapsed and died of exposure, and then the remaining four men had dined on his flesh, and so on and so forth, and finally Packer claimed that Shannon Shannon Wilson Bell killed Get, which one probably California Noon. And then Packer had, you know, kind of ahead and eaten the Noon's flesh. And then at the end, Packer and Bell made a pact that

they wouldn't neither would try to kill the other. But then in fact Bell tried to kill Packer, and Packer had killed Bell in self defense. So that was his first confession. In other words, he freely admitted cannibalism, denied that he had committed murder, admitted that he had killed Bell, but only in self defense. And he also claimed very importantly that each one of the four guys that had been successively cannibalized, that their bodies had just been left in the places where they had died.

he started out. Then he refused to do it, and they brought him back and locked them, locked them up, and well what passed for jail, it was just really a little shack and he actually escaped and remained at

large for nine years. Anyway, not too long after he escaped, there was an illustrator for a very very popular publication at a time called Harper's Weekly, who was on assignment doing sketches of the of a Colorado mining area, and he came upon what had been a campfire with five horrendously decomposed and mutilated corpses, still all lying in their in their you know, sleeping blankets and so on, and uh, you know, it became and immediately became clear that these

were the five men that Packer had stood out with. So an examination of the corpse has showed that their skulls had all been crushed, they'd all you know, they'd all been they'd all been u uh. Flesh had had obviously been removed in their bodies. They could tell, you know, by the knife marks on the bones and so on. So you know Packer's story that these you know, these guys had died one after another, these natural deaths, and they'd eaten their bodies and had left them where they lay.

It was obviously a complete lie. All these guys had been well, the four of them anyway, had clearly been killed in their sleep. One of them, Shannon Bell Uh, apparently his body was a little farther off that his scope had also been crushed. So it was very, very evident that these five men had been horribly murdered, at least for them in their sleep, and you know, and

and then butchered for their flesh. And obviously the leading suspect in the case was the only person who had survived, Alfred Packer, and he immediately became the most wanted man in the west. Uh. And you know who was known as the man eater.

and so forth. But nine years after the events just related, in eighteen eighty three, one of the former members of the original twenty one man party that Packer had been part of, un named Frenchy Cabazon, who at that time was working as a you know, kind of a drummer or a traveling salesman. Was stopping at a boarding house in Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, and he heard in the adjacent room somebody speaking of this weirdly high pitched voice that

was one of the distinguishing characteristics of Packer. Apparently it's a not uncommon symptom of severe grandma. See that some of the you know, some of the people afflicted with it have these very high pitched voices. Anyway, Yeah, Cabizon recognized this guy who was calling himself Schwartz as as Packer, and he notified the authorities, and Packer was arrested and taken back to Colorado for trial. And of course this is a great, great, great sensation, not only locally but

really nationally. You know, the capture nine years after his escape of a notorious man eater.

they were heading for. And that when he when he returned to the camp at dusk that day, he found Shannon Wilson Bell roasting some human flesh on a fire. Uh, and the other the other four men lying there dead. Uh. And then Bell jumped up and attacked him, and Packer killed Bell in self defense. So that was his story. That was Bell who killed the other four men and uh and then tried to kill him and uh. And

he had shot and killed Bell in self defense. And then he had, you know, made a little lean to for himself and in the main there for the next few months, living off the flesh of the dead bodies that you know again that Bell had killed. At his trial, and again there were you know, there was you know, this very very very uh uh devastating testimony against him by Lad and another. You know, it's it's there was so much prejudice against Packer by that point. You know

that Packer received nothing like a fair trial. Uh. You know, one of the interesting things to me about the Packer case is I came to believe, although it's still very much an open question that people continued to debate, you know that Packer probably was guilty of murdering these five guys, although there are the people again who feel very strongly

that he wasn't. But that's my best guess anyway. But nevertheless, whether you know he did or not, he definitely did not receive a fair trial because you know, he was he was being made to prove his innocence, which of course is not how American jurisprudence works. You know, there are certainly very a lot of reasonable doubt, you know that his lawyer raised, but there were so many much

prejudice against him. The testimony of people like Lot and another, you know, who claimed and not only that Packer had killed these other people, but that he had deliberately deliberately led them into the depths of the wilderness in order to slay and rob them. When they were at their most vulnerable. And Packer didn't do himself any favors. I mean,

Packer was very, very very prickly personality at best. Uh. And you know, and he gave this long, elaborate testimony you know that you know, in which he you know, he was barely able you know, to keep his own his own ugliest impulses in checks.

marry one of the local women. Since you know, his trial, like you know, the trial of most people, you know, notorious accused killers, attracted a number of I guess you

know what later came to be called groupies. But yes, he was indignant, you know, and you know at the charges that were made against and also very indignant that you know that nobody in the courtroom could possibly really understand the kind of you know, horrendous circumstances that you know that he that he and the others were suffering.

But you know, subsequently, i mean, in the mid twentieth century and particularly after the Second World War, you know, there were very very famous studies done about the effects of starvation on human behavior, you know, and it really, you know, drives people crazy and reduces them to a state of really kind of primal savagery, and you know, it's it's just very very very hard to know ultimately, whether you know, Packer's story as he told it was

true or not. It just seems to me, it's always seemed to me very very suspicious that it just seems to me that it was a little too convenient that Packer would go off of the day and come back and find that these other men you know, had been killed and we're just lying there, you know, neatly ready to you know, serve as four months worth of food supply and some other guy had done it, and then Packer had just killed this other guy in a way you know that also seems not totally impossible but a

little implausible. So so yeah, so I came to the you know, my best guess, which I'm ready to admit might be totally wrong, is that Packard was in fact guilty of murdering these guys. But again that said, he still did not receive anything remotely like a fair trial.

so much more to this story. And one of the things I just want to ask you about, and I guess where you could comment about, was the incredible juxtaposition between the fascination and he's selling souvenirs in prison, things that he's little trinkets he's made, and people want to come and visit him. So there's sort of a juxtapision between the bloodthirsty media and then society's fascination and almost

admiration of the guy in a lot of ways. And then also that the media wasn't exactly in a concerted effort on board in terms of the persecution of this person. And that comes to the point where you get Pauli Priye sort of going the other way making statements that a journalist, responsible journalists wouldn't make. So just tell us about that sort of whole incredible dynamic in America at that time.

of modern society. And you know, I mean, obviously right now we're living at this moment when you know, there's all this uh, you know, media obsession with with true crime.

But you know, the only difference between now and then is you know, technological, I mean, you know, now you have like podcasts like Sereal covering true crime, you know, but they didn't have that back then, you know, but the public appetite to read about these kinds of RNDUS crimes, you know, and to maybe even you know, get some kind of memento of the crime. You know, there's nothing,

nothing at all new about that. I mean, that's always existed, you know, there were there were there was some there was always some difference of opinion among journalists about whether Packer was the your innocence and how they're a trial he received, as you said, was originally sentenced to death. He was going to be hanged, and then his lawyer managed to get that conviction overturned on a legal technicality, and he was retried. He couldn't be retried for murder.

That would be double jeopardy. So he was tried and convicted of five counts of manslaughter and given eight consecutive a five consecutive eight year sentences for a total of forty years, which was essentially a life term. He was in his thirties by then, maybe even a little older.

But then this very crusading Denver journalist named Polly Pry, who was doing an expose on prison conditions in Colorado, encountered Packer, and you know, of course knew how notorious he was, and interviewed him, and she became convinced that the story that he told was the truth. And you know that Bell had killed these other guys, that he had killed Bell in self defense. You know that he

had monibilized the corpses. But you know, again there were other cases, notorious cases of that kind of survival cannibalism. You know, the people had not been persecuted anyway, prosecuted anyway. So she set about, she launched this crusade to get Packer pardoned, and ultimately he was paroled, uh, and then lived out his last few remaining years, you know, kind of as a well, sort of something of a little

local celebrity. You know. By then, you know, the west of the Frontier, you know, is already you know, turning into a kind of mythic you know, mythic thing. Uh. And Packer seemed like one surviving you know, relic of this you know past. And you know, when these when these brave frontiersmen, you know, would venture into the wilderness and deal with these horrible conditions and so on and

so forth. So you know, and and he died still insisting on his innocence and and then you know, entered into the realm of American legend.

discover themselves that there is. Again, this case fascinated people right from the very beginning, and in various ways, the media picked up on it and he went from reviled to hero, to reviled to hero to the myth to the butt of jokes and curiosity. But again, like you say, he has gone on to be an infamous legend in American history.