Cannibals (20 page)

Judge Melville B. Gerry pronounced that Packer ‘be hanged by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead . . .’

Alferd Packer is probably best known as the only American ever to be convicted of cannibalism. At his trial Packer admitted to ‘eating the flesh of his fellow man’ knowing that he was on the brink of death from starvation.

Alferd Packer was born on January 21, 1842 in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. He was a shoemaker by trade, but at the age of 20 was enlisted in the Union Army at Winona, Minnesota. He was honourably discharged on December 29, 1862, at Fort Ontario, New York, due to a disability so he decided to go west and continue in his trade and have a go at prospecting.

On November 8, 1873, Packer was enlisted as a guide for a party of 21 men who wanted to go prospecting. They left Bingham Canyon, Utah to go to the gold fields of the Colorado Territory. Part of their food supply was accidentally lost when they did a particularly difficult river crossing by raft, and their journey was further hampered by very severe winter conditions. Eventually the party completely ran out of food and in late January 1874 they were forced to take shelter at Chief Ouray’s camp near Montrose, Colorado.

The men recovered their strength and stamina and, contrary to the advice of Ouray, Alferd Packer along with five other men, left the camp on February 9, 1874. While the original party had been considerably larger, only Packer (still acting as their guide), Israel Swan, Shannon Wilson Bell, George Noon, James Humphrey and Frank Miller dared risk the brutal Colorado winter to continue their search for riches. When they left Ouray’s camp the men had about seven days supply of food sufficient for one man. The weather was indeed brutal, and only two or three days into their journey the group was totally engulfed by a violent blizzard. They struggled on and came across a mount, managed to cross a gulch and then found the snow so deep that they had to climb upwards. After the fourth day the only food they had left in their packs was about a pint of flour. They continued to follow the line of the mountain until they came to the main range which took them around ten days, and all the while they were living off rosebuds and pine gum. The men were becoming desperate, and even broke down in prayer for the Lord to save them from their plight. When they eventually came across the main mountain range the party made camp on a stream which ran into a big lake. After taking a brief rest the men crossed the lake and cut holes into the ice in an endeavour to catch fish. However, their attempts were to no avail and some of the men ended up falling into the icy water where the ice was rather thin.

The men were becoming more and more angry and they sent Packer, who was supposed to be their leader, off in the search of food. All he managed to find was a few rosebuds and when he returned to their camp a day later, he found his red-headed colleague, Bell, sitting by the camp fire roasting a piece of meat. Bell, who had been acting rather crazy over the past couple of days, had apparently cut the piece of meat out of the German butcher’s leg. The man in question, Frank Miller, was lying further down by the banks of the stream, his skull had been crushed with a hatchet.

Packer immediately noticed that the other three members of the party were lying near the fire and they too had several cuts in their foreheads made by the hatchet. As Packer started to approach the fire, Bell spotted him and immediately jumped up wielding the hatchet, and in self-defence Packer shot him sideways through the stomach. Bell immediately fell forwards, whereupon Packer grabbed the hatchet and hit him in the top of the head.

That night Packer stayed awake sitting by the fire and when morning broke he followed his tracks from the day before back up the mountain. However, the snow was too deep for him to continue and he was forced to return to the camp. He decided the best thing he could do for protection was to build himself a shelter and using some pieces of timber and pine boughs that were lying around, he made himself a rough cabin. Next he went and covered the bodies of the men who were lying around the camp and then set about rebuilding the camp fire. Packer was literally starving and getting increasingly weaker, so he decided to cook the piece of meat that was lying by the fire and had his first real meal for days.

Time and time again he tried to leave the camp, but the weather always forced him back. So for a period of around sixty days Packer lived off the flesh of his travelling companions. Then the weather started to change and he noticed that the snow was starting to form a crust and he decided it was time to leave. He cooked up some more meat which he carried with him, along with a blanket, the money he had taken from his colleagues packs and his gun.

Packer arrived at the Los Pinos Indian Agency in Colorado on April 16, 1874. Despite the fact that Packer had been stranded for some considerable time his appearance was of someone who had been well fed, and when he started to spend quite a considerable amount of money at the nearby saloon, the locals became suspicious of his story. He had told them that his party had been hit by a storm and while he set up camp the other members of his party had gone off in search of food, but not one of them ever made it back to the camp. However, unluckily for Packer there were several men from the original Provo group who were dubious about his version of the story.

Indian Agent Charles Adams took Packer in for questioning and on May 8, 1874, managed to extract the first of two conflicting confessions. According to Packer, Israel Swan had died and the others, being without food, had eaten him in order to survive. Subsequently, the other three had died from exposure and starvation. Packer admitted to killing Shannon Bell, but he claimed it was in self-defence.

Packer was sent to Saguache jail, which was just outside the town. In August Packer managed to escape and was not seen again until March 1883, when Frenchy Cabazon, who was one of the original prospecting party, bumped into him purely by chance in Douglas, Wyoming.

On the day that Packer escaped, the remains of the missing prospectors were discovered in a valley. There was certainly evidence of a struggle and the authorities were convinced that there had been foul play.

After his recapture, Packer was taken to Denver, Colorado and once again questioned about the incident. In his second confession, Packer stuck to his original claim that he had killed Bell in self-defence, but this time admitted to stealing a rifle and around $70 in cash from the bodies of the dead men. Packer was charged with the murder of Israel Swan, who was the first man to die, and was taken to Lake City to stand trial.

Packer faced a jury of 12 honest citizens, who took no time in finding him guilty of willful and premeditated murder. Judge Melville B. Gerry, who resided over the case gave his final summing up as follows:

‘Alferd Packer, the judgement of this Court is that you be removed from hence to the jail of Hinsdale County, and there be confined until the 19th day of May, A.D. 1883, and that on said 19th day of May, 1883, you be taken from thence by the Sheriff of Hinsdale County, to a place of execution prepared for this purpose, at some point within the corporate limits of the town of Lake City, in the said County of Hinsdale, and between the hours of 10.00 a.m. and 3.00 p.m. of said day, you then and there, by the said Sheriff, be hung by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead, and may God have mercy upon your soul.’

Packer appealed against his conviction to the Colorado Supreme Court, where the verdict was indeed reversed. He was tried again and this time fount guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 40 years in the state penitentiary.

Packer served 17 years of his 40 year sentence and in 1901, Governor Charles S. Thomas granted Packer’s parole request. Packer moved to Littleton, Colorado, where, if the story is true, he became a model citizen who was well liked by all of his neighbours.

Alferd Packer died of natural causes on April 23, 1907, and was buried in military style in Littleton Cemetery. Alferd Packer’s memory lives on in The Ballad of Alferd Packer written by Phil Ochs in 1964. Below is just one verse from this ballad:

Two cold months went slowly by;
Packer came back alone.
‘My comrades they all froze to death,
I’m starving,’ he did moan.
The Indian chief knew how he lied,
He spat upon the ground,
For Packer’s belly hung out all over his belt:
He’d gained some thirty pounds.

Haarmann saw killing as a business opportunity not to be missed

Haarmann became known as the ‘Butcher of Hanover’ and was thought to have been responsible for the deaths of as many as 27 young men. He was a lust slayer who would experience an orgasm as he chewed his way through his victim’s flesh.

Freidrich Heinrich Karl Haarmann was born on October 25, 1879, and was the youngest of six children. His mother, who was 41 when he was born, adored him and pampered him continually. She encouraged him to play with dolls rather than the more masculine games, and even as a young child loved to dress him up like a girl. In contrast, the young Fritz loathed his father, something that would not change even when he was an adult. This hatred most probably stemmed from the fact that his father was both a drunkard and a womanizer, and Fritz could not stand the way it upset his adoring mother.

The birth of Fritz had left his mother very weak and most of her remaining 12 years were spent in bed. Fritz always felt a very strong bond with his mother and always spoke of her with warmth and compassion.

Fritz started to show some strange traits that were apparent all through his school years. The first was his noticeable femininity (bordering on being a transvestite) and the second was the apparent pleasure he showed when he inflicted fear or horror. One trick that really pleased the young Fritz was to tie his sisters up and then frighten them in the dead of night with stories of werewoves and ghosts.

Fritz failed his exams to become a locksmith and was sent to a training school for non-commissioned officers at Neu-Breisach in April 1895. He was an obedient soldier and developed a talent for gymnastics. However, he suffered concussion when one of his moves went wrong and afterwards suffered periodic lapses in consciousness and epileptic fits. He discharged himself from the school in November 1895 saying that he didn’t like it there anymore, and returned home and started to work for his father.

Although Fritz was a rather lethargic and lazy person, in contrast to that was his rapidly developing sexual appetite. Sexual offences against children seemed to be happening on a regular basis and soon the finger pointed at Fritz. He was studied by the town doctor who prescribed him as being deranged and shortly after his 18th birthday he was sent to an asylum. It was while he was there that he suffered some kind of trauma which left him with an intense fear of the asylum. He begged and pleaded to be released, and then one day he managed to escape and fled to Switzerland.

When he was 20, Fritz returned to Hanover and for a while managed to lead a fairly normal existence. He seduced and eventually married a very pretty girl by the name of Erna Loewert and both sets of parents were very pleased by the news and hoped that this would prove to be the making of the young Fritz Haarmann. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case, and before long he deserted his wife and their unborn child and went into military service.

Fritz seemed to thrive in the routine of army life and became a soldier of high merit. He was later to refer to that time as the happiest in his entire life but everything was to change once again. After approximately a year in service Fritz collapsed whilst taking part in a military exercise. He was admitted to the military hospital and remained there for another four months. He was diagnosed as having a ‘mental deficiency’ and therefore considered unsuitable to remain in the service.

Despondent and down-hearted Fritz returned to his family and the life-long battle he had with his father. His father tried to have him committed to an asylum but the town doctor did not consider he was ill enough to be interned and was left to his own resources.

Fritz turned to a life of petty crime and committed burglaries and minor confidence scams and, after 1904, spent the majority of the next 20 years either in custody or inside a prison cell. In the year 1914 he was arrested for theft from a warehouse and sentenced to five years imprisonment. On his release in 1918 he joined a smuggling ring and managed to conduct quite a prosperous business. He also became an informer for the police thinking that if he was helping them they wouldn’t look too closely into his other activities. For someone who was supposed to be mentally insecure he certainly had quite an acumen for planning his criminal life. His sexual crimes continued during this period but he was rarely convicted as his partners were too ashamed to report the assaults to the police. But soon his crimes were of a more serious nature.

Haarmann’s criminal career really took off in September 1918, a time when Germany was suffering the effects of economic depression. A young boy by the name of Friedel Roth had run away from home on September 25, leaving a letter for his mother saying that he would not return home again until she learned to be nice to him. Friends of the boy were able to give the police information about his whereabouts and eventually this information led them to number 27 Cellerstrasse. When the police arrived they found Fritz Haarmann in bed with a young boy and he was arrested and later sentenced to nine months in prison for seducing a juvenile. For some reason his rooms were not searched at the time, and five years later Fritz was to admit that a murdered boy’s head had been wrapped in newspaper and stuffed behind the stove in the kitchen.

On his release in 1919, Fritz met the young Hans Grans at the Hanover railway station. Hans had run away from home and was living on the streets surviving on the profits of his stealing. Seeing the obviously homosexual Fritz, the boy offered himself for money. They formed a strong bond and the young boy moved in with Fritz. Together they formed a deadly partnership. Hans was the dominant one in the partnership, and it appeared that he treated Haarmann little better than a servant. It was always Hans who selected their victims, but he always made sure it was his partner who took all the risks.

In early 1922 the two men moved in a district known as the ‘haunted area’ and took lodgings at number 8 Neuestrasse. Their killing rampage really took off in February 1923 when Haarmann approached two youths at Hanover station. He pretended to be a police officer who was inspecting the waiting rooms. He sent the less attractive lad on his way but Fritz Franke accompanied the bogus policeman back to his home.

From then on the murders gained pace and in the next nine months 12 more young men lost their lives. The modus operandi was always the same, they would lure the young refugees with the promise of food and shelter. Once back in the house at Neuestrasse, Haarmann would sexually assault his victims before biting them through their throats to kill them. Many times Haarmann would achieve an orgasm as he was chewing on their flesh. After the attack the bodies would be chopped up and their flesh would be sold on the black market as ‘beef’. Nothing went to waste, they sold the boys’ clothes and any part of the body that wasn’t worth eating was dumped into a river.

The murders continued unabated until early 1924. A woman who had bought some of Haarmann’s beef believed it to be human flesh. She gave a portion of the meat to the police, but the analyst who studied the meat said that it was pork!

On May 17, 1924, some children playing at the edge of the river near the Herrenhausen Castle came across a human skull. On May 29 another one was washed up on the riverbank and the town went into panic when two more were found in the river’s silt. An autopsy showed that all the skulls found belonged to young boys and, in all the cases, a sharp instrument had been used to separate the skulls from the torso and the flesh had been completely removed.

The killers’ reign ended with the disappearance of Erich de Vries on June 14, 1924. It is estimated that by this time Fritz Haarmann had murdered as many as 27 boys in less than 16 months, which worked out at an average of two a month. The city was gripped by sheer terror and the police stepped up their enormous hunt for this human ‘werewolf’.

Every thief and sexual deviant in Hanover was called in for questioning and, by a series of strange coincidences, a suspect by the name of Fritz Haarmann had been taken to the court prison. The man was already known to the police and as they started to question him they noticed his pleasant manner changed drastically. His hands became restless and he plucked nervously at his long fingers. Suspicious of this effeminate man, the police decided to search his home. This time the police did not miss all the blood, and blood-stained clothes that littered the rooms. At the same time a more extensive search of the river revealed a sack of bones as well as a sack full of human skulls.

With all the evidence they needed they backed Haarmann into a tight corner where he gave in and confessed to the murder of some 50 young men. He also implicated his partner in crime Hans Grans. He described to the police that he would grab the young boys off the street, sodomize them and while doing so would chew through their throats until the head was practically severed from the body. As he tasted their blood oozing into his mouth, he would achieve a sexual climax. Next he would cut the flesh off the bodies, consume his favourite parts and then sell the rest on the open market as butchered meat.

Fritz Haarmann was sentenced to death and while he was in prison awaiting his punishment he made an even more lengthy confession and blamed his lust for killing on his sexual perversions. He was finally decapitated on December 20, 1924, within the walls of Hanover Prison.

Hans Grans was originally sentenced to death for his part in the murders, but when a letter was discovered written by Fritz Haarmann claiming his innocence, they cut Hans’ sentence to 12 years imprisonment. As to what happened to him after his release there is no mention.