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In 1994, one of my main objectives as Curator of History
was to photograph, document, and obtain the provenance or
associated history of the firearms in the 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.
Many of the firearms had 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 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, 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. The famous Ute leader, Chief Ouray, advised them 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, 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 why it accompanied the ill-fated
Packer expedition. Even more astoundingly, while 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 his cousin in Texas and
found out how the pistol came into the Museum’s possession.
A young Western State College historian, Ernest Ronzio,
had unearthed the pistol in 1950. Mr. Ronzio was a student
of C.T. Hurst, the father of Colorado Archeology. After
the pistol was found at the Packer massacre 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 (WSC) Museum. I verified that
the pistol had been in the Museum’s collection when I noticed
an old accession number on the backstrap of the gun. I called
the librarian at WSC 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 and that it came from the Packer site on loan
by 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 were proof 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. Other 1873 documents indicated that,
although the bodies had been exposed to the elements, each
of the dead men was identifiable by their clothes and physical
features. A Civil War veteran that visited the crime scene
stated that Shannon Bell had been shot twice and the other
victims were killed with a hatchet. Upon careful study of
Bell, he noticed a severe bullet wound to the pelvic area
and that Bell’s wallet had a bullet hole through it. He
also stated that only two shots were fired at the murder
scene, both at Bell. This passage caught my attention because
the rusted 1862 Colt pistol found many years later at the
scene had two chambers empty and three loaded.
The facts from the 1873 investigation of the murder scene
seemed to mesh with the physical evidence, the 1862 Colt
pistol. Packer stated numerous times during his trial that
he shot the real killer Shannon Bell, but his testimony
failed to convince the jury. What is even stranger is that
visitors to the crime scene failed to report their findings
on the witness stand, and in some cases lied about what
they discovered.
My case to prove Packer was innocent came to a stand still
in the spring of 1999. Even though I had physical evidence
that matched Packer’s story, there was still no way to scientifically
tie the gun to the murder scene. The pistol never was introduced
as evidence because it was lost after Packer’s desperate
fight with Bell in a snowstorm in 1873 and not recovered
until 1950 by Mr. Ronzio.
As with many historical investigations, my chance to prove
my case came unexpectedly during a visit to the Lake City
Museum in October of 2000. The Museum of Western Colorado
and the Hinsdale County Historical Society had just finished
a joint exhibit on Packer. I asked Grant Houston, the Hinsdale
County Historian, about the exhumation of the Packer party
victims by Dr. Starrs and a forensic team in 1989. He explained
the team proved the bodies had been cannibalized and had
met violent deaths. Each of the skeletons had been marked
A through E for scientific identification and then photographed.
Skeleton A had a hole in the pelvic region and therefore
must be Shannon Bell. Mr. Houston shocked me by mentioning
that forensic samples had been taken from under the skeletons
and were now in possession of the Historical Society. I
then asked if the Museum could borrow the samples from Skeleton
A (Shannon Bell) for testing. Hopefully, there would still
be gunshot residue in the samples to help prove Packer’s
story that Shannon Bell had been shot at close range.
After receiving permission from the Historical Society,
I took the samples to Mesa State’s Electron Microscopy facility
in Grand Junction. A team of scientists led by Dr. Richard
Dujay, the facility manager, began to examine the bits of
wool fabric, old buttons, and soil for the traces of residue
with the electron microscope. Dr. Dujay knew the task of
finding gunshot residue would be difficult and stated, “It’s
as if 127 years ago someone hit a baseball in the U.S. and
now you’re asking to find it.”
However, on February 10, 2001, we found the baseball, a
50-micron piece of lead. Dujay and other scientists discovered
that the fragment was man-made, because of its structure,
size, and composition. He next used an X-Ray spectrograph
to analyze the elemental makeup of the object. Dujay found
that the object was consistent with lead used for bullets
during the post-Civil War era. The scientists next took
a small sample from a bullet still in the gun and compared
it with the lead fragment underneath Skeleton A. The X-Ray
spectrograph showed an exact match! Finally I had proof
that linked the gun to the murder scene.
Although this new information was over a century too late
to help vindicate Packer, it is never to late for the truth.
As the fall 2001 semester begins the "Alferd Packer Project"
is still going strong at Mesa State College. Two students
(Chad Williams and Matt Marvin) will be working their way
through 80 plus specimen stubs using the Scanning Electron
Microscope, located in the Science Lab Building, and supervised
by Rick Dujay Ph.D. Chad has already found an additional
lead fragment, slightly smaller than the first, using Energy
Dispersive Spectrography (EDS). The particle's composition
has yet to be compared to the bullet lead sampled from Alferd
Packer's gun, but the theory is that a consistency will
exist between the two. Matt will begin his search beginning
the third week of the fall semester.
The Packer research team will take a trip to Lake City
soon to gather more soil samples and survey the murder site.
Publications on the project will be forth coming with the
completion and release of David Bailey's book on Packer,
followed by scientific and possibly forensic publications
concerning the work performed at Mesa State College.
Alferd Packer T-shirts are available at the Museum of Western
Colorado and may be available soon at Mesa State's campus
book store. The T-shirts boast the cooperation between the
Museum of Western Colorado and Mesa State College with the
names of the research team members, including MSC students,
listed on the back of the shirts.
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