Confessed cannibal Alferd Packer was paroled. In April 1874, Packer emerged alone from a gold mining expedition in the harsh Rocky Mountains, suspiciously fit after a brutal Colorado winter. Packer explained that he lost the other five men in a blizzard, but later confessed that four miners had died naturally and the starving survivors ate them. He later changed the story to say Shannon Bell had killed the other four with a hatchet, and Packer shot Bell in self-defense and eventually ate his corpse to survive. Packer was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 40 years, spending 18 years behind bars before his parole. He died at the age of 65, reportedly a vegetarian.
The legend of Alferd Packer lives on. University of Colorado’s cafeteria grill is named the Alferd G. Packer Memorial Grill with the slogan, “Have a friend for lunch!” And the debate about what happened that winter continues to this day. In 1989, an exhaustive investigation by George Washington University forensics specialists concluded: “Cannibalism per se is the ingestion of human flesh. So you’d have to have a picture of the guy actually eating.”
