FIENDISH KILLERS (True Crime) Read Free Page A

rebellions, so as to discredit the Scots. However, it has also been argued that as the chapbooks also contained horrifying stories about English criminals, this is unlikely. What does seem to be the case is that, from earliest times, there was a great deal of poverty and lawlessness in the remote rural areas of Scotland, so that many travellers were robbed, murdered and possibly even cannibalised as they passed through, by outlaws such as Sawney Bean and his family.

Alferd Packer

     
    Alferd Packer was an American cannibal who was accused of murdering and eating five companions on a trip into the Colorado rocky mountains. He swore that he had only eaten the flesh of men who had already died so as to survive, but he did admit to killing one of them in self-defence. There was a great deal of controversy at the time as to Packer’s innocence or otherwise, and nobody really knew what actually happened on the expedition, as he was the only witness.
     
    M INING FOR GOLD
     
    Packer was born in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, on November 21, 1842. He became apprenticed to a cobbler, but when the Civil War broke out, he enlisted in the army. At the age of nineteen, he headed out west and joined the US infantry in Winona, Minnesota, but was later discharged due to epilepsy. He later returned to the army as a soldier in the Iowa Cavalry, and some believe he was a scout for General Custer, but once again his illness forced him out.
    Little more is known of his activities until in 1873, at the age of thirty-one, he joined a group of twenty prospectors who set out from Bingham Canyon, Utah, into the mountains of Colorado to look for gold. The expedition did not go well: the party got lost in bad weather, and soon ran out of food. The members of the group arrived in an Indian camp, where most of them decided to stay put till spring, but five of them pressed on – they were Shannon Wilson Bell, Israel Swan, James Humphrey, Frank ‘Reddy’ Miller, and George ‘California’ Noon.
    Two months later, they had not arrived at their destination, and their relatives were becoming anxious about them. Accounts vary as to what happened next, but Packer is thought to have appeared at a saloon in the town of Saguache, saying that he had a leg injury and needed some whisky. Observers noticed that he had several wallets on his person. He said that he had become separated from the party, and did not know where they were. However, it was later discovered that there were strips of human flesh on the trail where he had been, and he was questioned once more as to what had happened to his companions.
     
    H UMAN MEAT
     
    This time, he made a formal confession, saying the men had died of starvation and then been eaten by the others, who were crazed with hunger. Israel Swan, aged sixty-five, had died first, and all survivors had fed off his body. The next to go was James Humphrey, and Packer admitted that he had taken his wallet, which had over $100 in it. After that, Frank Miller, known as ‘the Butcher’, died in an accident searching for wood, and he was eaten too. That left George Noon, who was only eighteen, Shannon Bell and Packer himself. According to Packer, Bell shot Noon, and the two remaining survivors then ate him. Packer then alleged that Bell had attacked him, so he was forced to defend himself. He killed Bell and ate him, then managed to get to Saguache on his own.
    The authorities arrested Packer on suspicion of murder, and he was thrown into jail at Saguache. When the trail was inspected further, it became clear that the men had not died one by one. An artist named John A. Randolph discovered five sets of human remains beside the Gunnison River, at a place called Slumgullion Pass. Randolph made a detailed sketch of the bodies, which showed that parts of the thigh and breast had been cut out. Witnesses were brought to the scene, and the bodies were then buried in an area that became known as ‘Dead Man’s Gulch’.
    However, while