Alfred Packer @ Alferd Packer

Solving the West’s Greatest Mystery: ...“This gun was found at the site where Alferd Packer Was Alferd Packer Innocent of Murder The mystery of what happened that fateful day would slowly come to light one hundred and twenty years later in a most unlikely place, the artifact storage area of the Museum of Western Colorado. As Curator of History at the museum in 1994, my intention was to photograph, document, and obtain the provenance or associated history of the firearms in the Audrey Thrailkill collection. The Thrailkill collection has an amazing assortment of pistols, rifles, carbines, and swords owned by the famous and infamous figures of the Wild West, such as Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill, and outlaw members of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch. killed and ate five of his traveling companions.”... Many of the firearms have fascinating histories that were well documented and verified by firearms experts. Several had little or no historic information, but a few had tantalizing bits of information that connected them to important events in Colorado history. One of the most intriguing of these was an 1862 Colt Police Model pistol. The pistol was in poor condition–the grips were rotted off, the main spring broken, and the rusted cylinder of the gun still had .38 caliber bullets in three of its five chambers. The yellowed accession card with the gun cryptically stated, “This gun was found at the site where Alferd Packer killed and ate five of his traveling companions.” The card referred to one of the most infamous incidents in the American West. In the winter of 1874, Alferd Packer and five prospecting companions tried to cross the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado in order to reach the Los Pinos Indian Agency, 75 miles from present day Lake City. They were advised by the famous Ute leader, Chief Ouray, not to attempt this dangerous passage in winter, but the prospectors, anxious to get to a gold strike in Breckenridge, ignored his warning. In April of that year, only one man ventured out of the mountains, Alferd Packer. Suspicions were aroused and Packer was arrested after his companions were found murdered and partially eaten. Fearing that he would be lynched and hanged, Packer escaped from jail and stayed on the run for eight years. He was eventually arrested in Cheyenne, Wyoming, tried, and after several changes of venue, was sentenced to forty years in prison. During the trial, he told the jury that his prospecting companion, Shannon Bell, attacked him with a hatchet after killing the other members in the party. Packer then fired his gun at Bell and killed him. After much hesitation, Packer admitted to “eating the flesh of his fellow man” knowing that he was on the brink of death from starvation. Packer later claimed that it was cannibalism that sent him to jail not murder charges. However, in 1901, Packer was paroled after sixteen years in prison due to the public outcry that he was convicted on flimsy circumstantial evidence. He eventually died in 1907, claiming to his last breath that he was innocent of murdering his traveling companions. To think that this rusted relic could actually be the pistol that Packer used to shoot Bell intrigued me and I decided to find out whether or not this gun had actually been at the murder site. While researching the pistol’s origin, I found out it had been issued by the Colt Firearms Company as a cap and ball revolver in 1862. The gun was later re-released in 1873 and converted to fire .38 caliber rimfire bullets. This conversion pistol was popular with prospectors because it was inexpensive and this is probably why it accompanied the ill-fated Packer expedition. While I was working with archaeologist Phil Born in the Museum collections, he noticed the pistol and recalled seeing a photograph of it taken by his cousin, Jim Harris, many years ago. On April 14, 1994, I contacted this cousin in Texas and found out how the pistol came into the Museum’s possession. The pistol had been unearthed by a young Western State College historian, Ernest Ronzio, in 1950. Mr. Ronzio was a student of C.T. Hurst, the father of Colorado Archeology. After the pistol was found at the Alferd Packer massacre site on Cannibal Mesa, near Lake City, Colorado, it was brought to Jim Harris, then a member of the Uncompahgre Archaeology Society, to be photographed and studied. The pistol later went on display at the Western State College Museum. I verified that the pistol had been in the Western State’s Museum collection when I noticed an old accession number on the backstrap of the gun. I called the librarian at Western State College and she found the old museum record book indicated that the accession number on the gun matched an entry in the book. This entry described the rusted condition of the pistol, that it came from the Alferd Packer site, and was loaned by Ernest Ronzio. Eventually the pistol was purchased by Audrey Thrailkill and given to the Museum of Western Colorado. Having established the proper time frame and location in conjunction with the Packer massacre, I began a search for every document related to the Packer case in hopes of connecting the pistol to the crime. From 1994 to 1999, I combed through archives, research libraries, old diaries, depositions, and hundreds of pages of the Packer trial documents. The evidence that emerged was astounding because many of the documents seemed to prove that Packer was innocent. I found much of the testimony given by the witnesses against Packer directly contradicted later interviews they gave to the press and other private sources. Ps: It is a very famous piece of cannibalism information on Alfred Packer. I expected not many will be interested. This is my personal research but not my report. But I do keep a book entitled "A Voice For The Dead" by James E. Starrs. It is about the development in exhumation and one of the exhumation was done on this famous Alfred Packer.Coming up next is part 2 of Alfred Packer. Sorry for no illustration, it is quite troublesome.