From Sangres.com:
On February 9, 1874, Alferd Packer, Israel Swan, James Humphrey, Wilson Bell, Frank Miller, and George Noon ventured into the San Juan Mountains from Chief Ouray's camp. In the best of times, it was a 75-mile trip but they started out thinking it was only 40
miles and they carried only 10-days supply of food (according to one of
Packer's versions of the story). Only one man emerged on the other side
of the mountains that next April. Trapped in the mountains with snow to their shoulders and piling higher daily, they ran out of food and energy on a gravel terrace near Lake San Cristobal, just up the hill from what is now
Lake City. If only they'd gone left instead of right, and descended the Lake Fork instead of ascending it... but Packer was their guide.
Packer claimed he eventually staggered another 50 miles to the
Los Piños Indian Agency, arriving there on April 16, 1874, but he was
looking pretty good for someone who said he'd been struggling through
heavy snow for ten weeks. Later, several witnesses popped up who said
they had seen him in Saguache a week or more earlier. He was telling
people there that he'd hurt his leg and dropped behind his companions.
He was asking everyone if they had seen them, did they make it out of the mountains
alive? At the same time, these witnesses said that Packer had several
wallets in his possession and there were rolls of money in each.
Packer offered up a confession. He said that the
group had left Chief Ouray's camp with 7-days supply of food for one
man. Ten days into the journey, he said they were surviving on rosebuds
and pine pitch and some of the men were showing severe signs of
depression and madness. One day Swan told Packer (their erstwhile
guide) to go up on a mountain and scope out the trail. When Packer
returned to camp, he said he found Bell sitting by the fire, roasting a
chunk of meat from Miller's thigh. As Packer approached, he said Bell
picked up the hatchet and came at him. In self-defense, Packer shot
Bell sideways through the stomach and Bell went down hard. Then Packer
grabbed the hatchet and whacked Bell hard on top of his head to finish
him off.
Packer claimed that every day after that, he
tried to leave the gruesome camp but was stopped by the snow depth. So
each day he ate a bit more of his companions, surviving this way for
about two months. Finally, he packed up a gun, $70 he'd found on the
bodies, several chunks of human flesh and headed out for Los Piños.
While he doesn't account for several strips of human flesh that were
found later along his trail he does say that he ate the last bits he
had with him just before reaching the Agency.
Convicted of murder he was sentenced to death. Years later, it was commuted to 40 years.
In August of 1897, Packer wrote a long letter to a reporter at the
Rocky Mountain News. In that letter (most of which was subsequently
published), Packer told yet another, more detailed and still
contradictory version of his story. Newspaper reporters and local
politicians got the governor involved and the governor finally got
Packer's request for parole approved in 1901. Packer, suffering from
Bright's Disease, was released from prison in 1901.
He
was offered a job as a side-show freak with the Sells-Floto Circus but
he took a guard job at the Denver Post instead. Shortly after that he
moved to Deer Creek Canyon in Jefferson County and spent the rest of
his life managing two mines and dealing with his stomach and liver
ailments. Neighbors said he was a kind man and that he loved telling
children stories of his exploits in the mountains. He died of a stroke
on April 24, 1907 and, as he had been collecting a military disability
pension of $25 per month since sometime during his imprisonment, he was
buried at government expense, as befitting a veteran of the Civil War.