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Scientists seek to prove cannibal was no murderer PDF Print E-mail
Written by DeadGirl   
Wednesday, 01 September 2004
September 01, 2004

By GARY HARMON
The Daily Sentinel

One final course remains in the resuscitation of Alferd Packer from murderer to mere cannibal.

David Bailey, the curator of the Museum of Western Colorado, will lead an expedition Thursday and Friday that he hopes will shed some light on the lonely spring Packer spent near the refrigerated bodies of the men on whom he feasted, the men he was supposed to escort to gold country. The “Alferd Packer Lost Camp Expedition” will focus on the site where Packer said one of the miners, Shannon Bell, killed the others and attacked him, provoking Packer to kill Bell in self-defense.

Bailey’s investigations into the claims of the Colorado cannibal have revealed forensic evidence supporting Packer’s claims that he killed only the miner who had killed the other four. Working in concert with Dr. Rick Dujay at Mesa State College, Bailey showed that the bullet wound that killed Bell could indeed have been inflicted as Packer said it was, with a close-range blast from Packer’s revolver, which was found near the scene.

Little, however, has been done at the scene near Lake City, Bailey said.

“We’ve analyzed things that were found at the site, but we haven’t analyzed the site,” Bailey said.

With an expedition financed by Engel Brothers Media, which is working on a documentary for The History Channel, Bailey said he hoped the effort would allow him to complete his investigation into what actually happened in the San Juan Mountains during that blizzard of the spring of 1874. Packer was sentenced to be hanged for the killings of the miners, but his conviction was overturned, and he eventually served 16 years in prison on convictions for manslaughter and cannibalism.

In his research, Bailey found what he believed to be the site where Packer camped after the killings, for what Bailey terms “obvious reasons.”

The camp site is about two miles from the bluff where Packer said he came upon a hunger-crazed Bell after Bell had killed the other prospectors.

Others have noted the site in the past, and their writings helped him find the camp site, Bailey said.

One source placed the site behind the former Ocean Wave smelter; a second source, a road surveyor, noted it near a beaver pond.

Using the two sources, he found a site with a campfire ring, Bailey said.

“It was cool, probably the coolest experience I’ve ever had in archeology,” he said of the find in which independent sources matched precisely with his observations.

Bailey will use the expedition to complete a book on Packer. The History Channel, he said, will air its documentary, “Cannibal Instinct,” in the spring.


Gary Harmon can be reached via e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

http://www.gjsentinel.com
 
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Taphophilia?

taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)

ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"

DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries

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“O Death the Healer, scorn thou not, I pray, To come to me: of cureless ills thou art The one physician. Pain lays not its touch Upon a corpse.”

Aeschylus

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