Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 09:14:10 -0400
To: ultra@DARTCMS1.DARTMOUTH.EDU
From: dblaikie@fox.nstn.ca (David Blaikie)
Subject: History: Alfred E. Packer

Here, purely for entertainment purposes, is a glimpse back into the
"history" of ultrarunning (with thanks mainly to Nick Marshall and his eye
accounts of great events.)

From:   Ultramarathon Canada
	MARCH/APRIL 1995
	Vol. 7 No. 1 (page 16)

History: Alfred E. Packer

The story of a cannibal from the Wild West who spent the winter of 1873 in
the Colorado Rockies, dining on fellow travellers. "It tasted like jerked
beef," he said.
				    * * *
     Perhaps the most infamously-named ultra of our times was the Alfred E.
Packer 50-miler, run for several years by the Colorado Ultra Club on a
five-mile out and back road loop in the Chatfield State Recreation Area
outside Denver. The man whose named graced the event held a unique
distinction. He was the only American ever to be tried for cannibalism.
    Packer's story was told by Nick Marshall of Camp Hill PA in the 1983
edition of his early and authoritative record books, published from 1979 to
1985 as an annual Ultradistance Summary. In short, Packer was an inept 19th
century guide who led a party of gold prospectors into the Rocky Mountains
in 1873 and got thoroughly lost. The group broke into factions and Packer,
out of food, shot the last five of his followers, looted their corpses, and
stayed alive until spring by eating flesh from their bodies.
    After confessing, he was arrested, but escaped and spent nine years as a
fugitive before being recaptured. In 1883, he was finally tried, convicted
and sentenced to die, but his conviction was overturned on a technicality.
He was retried in 1886 and sentenced to 40 years in prison, but ever the
survivor, he was paroled after 16 years and eventually died of natural
causes in 1907.
    "The closest Packer ever came to any extreme endurance feat was hiking
out of the snowy mountains alive," wrote Marshall, who learned of Packer in
a detailed century-old newspaper account of the 1886 trial. The account said
Packer portrayed himself as a victim who had returned to camp from a failed
hunting excursion only to discover that a member of his group named Bell had
shot all the rest the group and was already dining on their flesh. Bell
turned on him, Packer testified, and he was forced to hill the man in
self-defence. Then, alone and dying himself, Packer told a pitiful tale of
how he too was driven at last to eat the flesh of the dead. "It tasted like
jerked beef," he said.
    However, his sad narrative unravelled during cross examination and
Packer turned nasty. The newspaper account located by Marshall described the
scene at the courthouse in Gunnison CO this way: "He became enraged and
branched off in a tirade of abuse against newspaper men, the prosecuting
counsel, and finally against the judge and jury who heard the first trial,
when he was convicted and sentenced to be hanged. He cursed Judge Gerry in
the most wicked term known to the English language. His counsel, the judge
and the sheriff, all had to interfere to hush him and they did it with
difficulty. He became fierce, and rising to his feet, looked the demon that
he had been pictured. His conduct caused a chill to pass over the audience,
which remained breathlessly silent..."
   Marshall had the last word: "The things a person has to do to get an
ultramarathon named after him," he wrote.
		    * * *
    (Sources: Ultradistance Summary 1983; Ultrarunning March 1985, The Sun
27 DEC 1994)
		    * * *


David Blaikie                                      (Ultramarathon Canada)
5515 Millview Road, Manotick, Ontario, Canada    K4M 1J3
(h) 613 692-0583 (o) 613 237-1590 Ext. 268 (fax) 613 692-0330
dblaikie@ fox.nstn.ca      (or)      an346@freenet.carleton.ca