"Alferd" Packer and the Bonfils/Tammen Shooting, 0913 COBJ, Pg. 49
| Author | Frank Gibbard |
Frank Gibbard
Columns Historical Perspectives
About the Author
Frank Gibbard is a staff attorney with the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and Secretary of the Tenth Circuit Historical Society—(303) 844-5306, frank_gibbard@cal 0. uscourts.gov. The views expressed are those of the author and not of the Tenth Circuit or its judges. Readers are encouraged to contact Gibbard with topic suggestions or to volunteer to write Historical Perspectives articles. A collection of Historical Perspectives articles is available for purchase from CBA—CLE. Visit www. cobar. org/cle /pubs.cfm?ID=20166for complete information.
Many longtime Coloradans have heard the tale of "Alferd" G. Packer, 1 the state’s infamous murderer and cannibal. Nearly 140 years after his crimes, interest in Packer has not waned. In recent decades, he has been the subject of books and articles, movies, a ballad, 2 and even a musical.3 The University of Colorado has an on-campus restaurant named after him.4
Less well known is the story of how Packer maneuvered his way through the Colorado courts, escaped the hangman, was released on parole, and died a free man—a mercy that had its costs in both money and blood. The story of Alferd Packer’s parole is a disturbing but fascinating tale of extortion, bribery, and violence. Two Colorado legends nearly died over Packer’s parole. The blood they spilled on a January day more than a quarter century after the Colorado cannibal killed and ate his five fellow travelers forms an odd but intriguing postscript to the case of People v. Packer.
The Packer Murders
The underlying facts of the Packer murders are well known, but there is significant dispute about the details. For more than a century, some have maintained his innocence of one or more of the five murders attributed to him.
In January 1874, before Colorado attained statehood, twenty-one men arrived at Chief Ouray’s camp on the banks of the Uncompaghre River in Southwestern Colorado. They were gold prospectors from Provo, Utah, and they were half-starved. Chief Ouray of the Utes, known as "The Peacemaker, " provided the men food and hospitality. Chief Ouray cautioned the men that the Rockies could be treacherous during the winter and advised them not to attempt to travel to a prospecting site until after the spring thaw. Some of the men listened to him and remained in his camp. Others insisted on pushing on to Saguache via the Indian agency at Los Pinos.5
The men who left for Saguache split into two groups. One of the groups was led by Alferd Packer. He took five men with him: Israel Swan, Shannon Wilson Bell, Frank "Reddy" Miller, George "California" Noon, and James Humphrey.6 The men were an eclectic bunch, from all over the United States and even one from Germany. They ranged in age from their early 20s to age 65. Chief Ouray gave them directions and some food for the journey.
Packer, their guide, had been a Union soldier during the Civil War and had worked in the smelters at Bingham City, Utah. Since being discharged from the army because of his epilepsy, Packer had worked a number of jobs, "including teamster, miner, hunter, trapper, and guide."7 Two features made Packer easy to recognize. He had lost two fingers on his left hand in a mining accident in Georgetown, and he had a peculiar, high-pitched, and raspy voice.
Though the trip should have taken them a week or two, the group Packer led disappeared for more than two months. Then, on April 16, 1874, Packer arrived, alone, at the Los Pinos agency. He appeared disheveled. His feet were wrapped in blankets and his hair was matted. He claimed to have been abandoned by his five traveling companions in the wilderness when his feet became frozen and he couldn’t keep up. He expressed surprise that the others in his party had not yet arrived.
Charles Adams, the Indian agent, took Packer in, but he couldn’t help noticing a few odd things about him. For a man who claimed to have subsisted solely on roots and berries for several weeks, he had remarkably "rounded muscles and firm flesh."8 Also, after arriving at the agency, Packer had requested whiskey, not food.
Packer declined an offer of employment at the agency, and pressed on to Saguache with two other men from the original prospecting party who had arrived separately. In Saguache, Packer’s suspicious behavior soon had tongues wagging. People noticed that he was suddenly flush with cash, which he spent lavishly at James Dolan’s saloon and elsewhere. Otto Mears, from whom Packer attempted to purchase a horse, noted that Packer had no less than four pocketbooks with him. He also was in possession of Frank Miller’s prized skinning knife. Packer implausibly claimed he found it after Miller left it stuck in a tree.
Packer Confesses
Eventually, Charles Adams, who had stopped in Saguache, decided to interrogate Packer. During the interrogation, Packer made a startling admission. He said he and others had killed members of their party and had eaten portions of their bodies to survive. Packer’s story, as recounted to Adams, was an odd and grim one, a Darwinian tale of survival of the fittest. According to Packer, Israel Swan, the oldest member o f their party, died first, of hunger. The other five men ate him. Then Humphrey died, and they ate him, too. Frank Miller died next, either from an accident or murder, and the men consumed him the same way. Now there were only three men left. Packer claimed that Shannon Bell shot George Noon and then attacked Packer with a hatchet. But Packer shot Bell instead, and then ate him.
Packer’s signed confession was forwarded to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, and Packer was incarcerated in a makeshift jail in Saguache. At one point, he helped a search party look for the remains of the bodies, but none could be found. In the meantime, news of the killings and cannibalism reached the press and created a journalistic firestorm. The grisly details, including Packer’s alleged preservation of flesh as "human jerked beef, " shocked and titillated readers.9
Soon the remains were located. The forensic evidence—the mutilated bodies were all found at a single campsite—did not exactly match Packard’s story. A warrant promptly was issued in Hinsdale County, charging Packer with five counts of murder. Before it could be served, though, Packer escaped. He continued to evade the authorities for nine years.
Then, in March 1883, one of the original Utah prospecting party, a man named Jean "Frenchy" Cabazon, was lodging at Fort Fetterman, north of Cheyenne, Wyoming. He heard a familiar high-pitched voice coming from the next room. Soon after, Cabazon encountered a man calling himself "John Schwartze, " whom he quickly recognized as Alferd Packer. Cabazon alerted the authorities, and Packer was arrested and transported to Hinsdale County for trial.
In the meantime, Packer made another confession, this one at least a little more consistent with the evidence found at the campsite (which, incidentally, had now become known as "Dead Man’s Gulch"). This time, Packer claimed that Shannon Bell had killed the other men, and that he then killed Bell.
After some jurisdictional wrangling to determine whether the killings had occurred on Indian land or in Colorado Territory instead of in the State of Colorado, Packer was indicted on five counts of murder. For whatever reason, he was tried on only a single count of murder—for the death of Israel Swan. A jury convicted Packer of murdering Swan and found that the killing was premeditated.
Packer’s First Sentencing
Judge M.B. Gerry pronounced Packer’s death sentence. Judge Gerry did not make the famous profanity-laden speech that was quoted in multiple sources, reviling Packer for killing and eating five out of the seven Democrats in Hinsdale County. That is a fabrication.10 Judge Gerry’s actual remarks at sentencing were far more telling. In a speech weighted with Biblical allusions and Victorian moralizing, he evoked the beauty of the wilderness as a witness against Packer and his evil deeds, ignoring the starvation that Packer and his companions had found there. He then admonished Packer to prepare to meet his God.
Judge Gerry delicately declined to recite the details of Packer’s crimes, calling this restraint a "kindness." He then cited the Mosaic principle of "a life for a life, " told Packer he had no hope of escaping his doom, exhorted him to repent and make his peace with God, and sentenced him to be hanged on May 19, 1883.11
How Packer Escaped Death
Packer did not accept Judge Gerry’s advice to accept his fate and ask for mercy from God. Instead, he appealed to a different high power—the Colorado Supreme Court. It was the first of five times he would appear before the Court.12 Surprisingly, this first appeal was successful: the Court reversed his death sentence on a technicality.
Before 1870, there was only one grade of murder in Colorado Territory and one punishment: death by hanging.[13] In 1870, the Colorado Territorial legislature amended the murder statutes to create two classes of murder: (1) premeditated murder, punishable by death; and (2) non-premeditated murder, punishable by life imprisonment.14 Defendants charged with murder soon discovered an interesting wrinkle in this sentencing scheme. Under the Colorado courts’ interpretation of the statutes, a prisoner could plead guilty to generic murder, making no admission of premeditation, and receive an automatic life sentence without running a risk of receiving the death penalty.15
This interpretation eventually yielded a particularly unjust result, at least in the eyes...
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