WHO WAS THE MAD TRAPPER OF RAT RIVER?

AA3Albert Johnson, known as the Mad Trapper of Rat River, was a murderer and a fugitive from the largest manhunt in the history of Canada, leading a posse of Mounties through the Arctic on a six week, winter wilderness chase in 1932. He killed one Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer and wounded two others before dying from police bullets in a firefight on a frozen river. Today, the Mad Trapper tale is symbolic of the North American frontier. He is an icon. A legend. But was he really Albert Johnson? Find out what modern forensic science tells us.

AA14The story began on July 9th, 1931, in the Northwest Territories when a stranger arrived in Fort McPherson. Constable Edgar Millen of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police routinely questioned the newcomer who identified himself as ‘Albert Johnson’ but provided no other personal information. Millen satisfied his responsibility to ensure Johnson was equipped for survival in a frontier land with sufficient money and supplies but thought it odd that Johnson declined to buy a trapping license. He noted Johnson was slight of stature, clean in appearance, and spoke with a Scandinavian accent.

Albert Johnson ventured far into the McKenzie Delta and built a small, log cabin on the banks of the Rat River where he reclused. Come the winter, local natives found their traps being raided and concluded the only suspect was Albert Johnson. They complained to the RCMP in Aklavik, causing two Mounties to dog-sled 60 miles through waist-deep snow, arriving at Johnson’s cabin on December 26th, 1931. Johnson was there but refused to speak, forcing the police to return to Aklavik and get a search warrant.

On December 31st four Mounties returned to Rat River. As they attempted to force into Albert Johnson’s shack, he shot at them with a 30-30 Savage rifle, seriously wounding a constable. The police retreated to form a larger posse.

AA1They came back with nine, heavily-armed men, forty-two dogs, and twenty pounds of dynamite. Johnson again opened fire, causing the police to hurl in explosives which blew the cabin apart. Rather than himself also being in pieces, Johnson emerged from a foxhole under the cabin and blasted back with his rifle. A 14-hour standoff, in -40F temperatures, took place until the posse backed-off to Aklavik for more help.

A severe blizzard delayed the return, but on January 14th, 1932, a huge squad of police and civilians arrived to find Albert Johnson long gone. The pursuers caught up with Johnson two weeks later far up the Rat River where Johnson opened fire from a thicket of trees on the bank and shot Constable Edgar Millen dead. Again the police retreated.

AA11By now the news of the manhunt had reached the outer world through an emerging medium called radio. Listeners all over Canada, the United States, and the world, were fixed to their sets to hear the latest on the cat and mouse game between a lone, deranged bushman and the might of the famed Canadian Mounties who ‘always got their man’. It was like the OJ Simpson case of the time.

The ‘Arctic Circle War’ represented the end of one era and the beginning of another as the police turned to technology to capture Albert Johnson. They embedded radio into another new tactic – the airplane. World War One flying ace W.R. ‘Wop’ May and his Bellanca monoplane were hired to find Johnson from the air and radio his position to the dogsled and snowshoe team on the ground.

On February 14, May spotted Johnson on the Eagle River in the Yukon Territory, confirming Johnson had traveled an incredible 150 miles, crossing a 7,000-foot mountain pass in white-out conditions, in temperatures with windchill hitting 60 below Fahrenheit. He’d eluded his trackers by wearing snowshoes backward and mingling with migrating caribou herds.

AA7The police overtook Johnson on a river bend on February 17th, 1932. It ended in a mass of bullets leaving another Mountie seriously wounded and Albert Johnson, the Mad Trapper of Rat River, dead on the snow.

They sledded Johnson’s body back to Aklavik where it was examined, fingerprinted, and photographed. Remarkably, dental examination showed sophisticated, gold bridgework which indicated this man, age estimated at 35 – 40, came from an affluent background. In his effects was $2,410 in Canadian money (worth $34,000 today) but absolutely no documents on his identification. An extensive investigation ensued to find his true identity. His death photos and description were circulated word wide, causing some leads to come in, but nothing definite. No one came forward to claim the body and ‘Albert Johnson’ was buried in a perma-frost grave near the village of Aklavik.

Here are the GPS coordinates for significant Mad Trapper locations.

These latitudes and longitudes can be plugged into iTouch Maps for satellite viewing. https://itouchmap.com/latlong.html

  1. Cemetery / Gravesite at Aklavik:   +68.222979N   -135.010579W
  2. Trapper’s Cabin on Rat River:  +67.713444N  –135.127873W
  3. Settlement of Fort McPherson:  +67.436700N  -134.88100W
  4. Richardson Mountain Pass:  +67.278236N  -136.122161W
  5. Eagle River Death Scene:  +67.165926N  -137.172716W

AA12The Mad Trapper case was of enormous public interest, many sympathizing how a loner – almost super-human – could endure the environment, living off the land for forty-eight days and outwitting some of the most bush-wise and toughest people of the time. As with the mystery of Albert Johnson’s identity, so was the question of his motive.

Over the years, a number possible identities were offered for who ‘Albert Johnson’ really was.

AA8The most widely accepted theory was Arthur Nelson, a prospector who was known to be in British Columbia from 1927 to 1931 and had left for the Arctic. Photos of Nelson appeared to be a dead-ringer for ‘Albert Johnson’ and descriptions of Nelson’s effects (rifle, pack, and clothing) were identical to those recovered from Johnson.

Another promising lead was a man known as John Johnson, a Norwegian bank robber who’d done time in Folsom Prison. Again, the physical description was similar and the Scandinavian accent noted by Constable Millen seemed to fit.

The Johnson family of Nova Scotia identified the Mad Trapper as their lost relative, Owen Albert Johnson, who was last heard of in British Columbia in the late 1920’s. Again all the pieces fit – physical appearance, personal effects, and disposition.

AA6Sigvald Pedersen Haaskjold was suggested as being the real ‘Albert Johnson’. Haaskjold, who was last seen in northern British Columbia in 1927, was a recluse who was paranoid of authorities because he’d evaded conscription in the First World War. He’d built a fortress-like cabin near Prince Rupert before disappearing. Once more the looks, age, accent, and mentality fit the Trapper’s profile.

As with advances in 1930’s technology like the radio and the airplane which tracked ‘Albert Johnson’ down, forensic technology in the twenty-first century came into play for a once-and-for-all attempt at solving the mystery of who the Mad Trapper of Rat River really was.

AA10In 2007, seventy-five years after his death, ‘Albert Johnson’ was exhumed for another look. As part of a Discovery Channel documentary, a team of eminent scientists including forensic odontologist and DNA extraction expert Dr. David Sweet, forensic pathologist Dr. Sam Andrews, and forensic anthropologist Dr. Owen Beattie, examined the skeletonized remains.

This forensic story is every bit as exciting as the hunt for the Trapper himself.

It took a pile of wrangling to get legal approval for exhumation, then obtain the consent of native peoples who laid claim to the land in which the Trapper was interred. Due to permafrost, there was only a slight window of time when the archeological dig could be made. And the exact location of the grave was in doubt.

AA9Perseverance came down to the last available day when the team and film crew zeroed-in on a shallow grave with a rotten, wooden casket. Using archeological skill and precision, the forensic scientists carefully detached the lid and exposed a perfectly preserved male skeleton. There were no longer traces of flesh or fabric, but what gleamed in their faces was gold bridgework from a sneering skull. Dr. Sweet used dental records made in 1932 to positively identify the ghostly remains as that of the Mad Trapper.

The team cataloged the bones, making three interesting observations. One was a deformity in the spine which led to questions as to how the man could have performed the physical feats described in legend. Second was that one foot was considerably longer than the other, again questioning his mobility. And third was the entry and exit marks of a bullet path through the pelvis which was consistent to the reported fatal wound.

AA13The team had the right remains but were no further ahead in determining identity. Dr. Sweet sectioned the Trapper’s right femur and extracted bone marrow samples as well as pulling four teeth for DNA examination. The remains were replaced in a new casket and re-interred in the original grave.

Back at the University of British Columbia, Dr. Sweet and his colleagues developed a perfect DNA profile of the Trapper. Extensive field investigation located relatives of the primary suspects – Arthur Nelson, John Johnson, Owen Albert Johnson, and Sigvald Pedersen Haaskjold. Descendant DNA profiles were developed for these men and compared to the known biological signature of the Trapper.

And guess who’s DNA matched?

AA4No one’s.

All four suspects were conclusively eliminated by modern forensic technology as being the Mad Trapper – as were a number of other remote possibilities. One sidenote is that oxygen isotopes developed from the teeth enamel indicated that the Trapper originated from either the mid-western United States or from Scandinavia.

So who really was Albert Johnson, the Mad Trapper of Rat River?

The mystery of who lies in the Aklavik grave remains unsolved.

*   *   *

Here are links to the fascinating made-for-television documentary on the forensic exhumation of the Mad Trapper’s skeleton.

http://www.mythmerchantfilms.com/index.php/mnu-library/mnu-lib-madtrapper

https://vimeo.com/channels/vidalbdoc/65414821

And author Barbara Smith wrote The Mad Trapper – Unearthing a Mystery which documents the forensic adventure.  Click Here

THE REAL GENIUS OF ALBERT EINSTEIN’S BRAIN

AA1On April 19, 1955, Mrs. Schafer asked her fifth graders at Valley Road School in Princeton, New Jersey, if they had anything to contribute for current events. A smart little girl, sitting at the front, shot up her hand and blurted “Einstein died!” A smart-ass boy, at the back of the class, said “Yeah, and my dad’s got his brain.”

When Albert Einstein died of an abdominal aneurysm the previous day, it was his will that his body be cremated. There was no mention of his brain being kept for scientific study. The story of what happened to Einstein’s brain over the past sixty years, and what today’s science tells us about the cause of his genius, is fascinating.

AA6Einstein was autopsied by Dr. Thomas Harvey, a pathologist at Princeton University, who removed the brain and kept it without the Einstein family’s knowledge. Dr. Harvey was caught like a grave robber, however worked out a deal with Einstein’s son, getting permission to retain the brain – but only for research, not for profit or show.

Dr. Harvey fixed the brain in celloidin, which is a standard procedure in preserving grey matter, then dissected it into 240 blocks and 1,000 microscopic slides, photographing it extensively. He sent specimens to leading neurologists around the world for their examination and, in time, received most of the pieces back.

AA13Findings were that Einstein’s brain was somewhat smaller than most male’s – 2.7 pounds vs. 3.0 pounds, however the inferior parietal region which governs mathematical and special reasoning was 15% larger than average. Otherwise, they thought at the time, he was a pretty normal guy – at least anatomically.

For twenty-three years Dr. Harvey kept Albert Einstein’s brain in two glass jars in a wooden crate, sometimes in his basement, sometimes in a closet, and for a while behind a beer cooler under his bed. In 1978, it was ‘rediscovered’ and became a media frenzy. That died down and it stayed with Dr. Harvey, travelling here, there, and wherever Dr. Harvey went as his career disappeared into twilight. In 2010, after Dr. Harvey’s death, the brain was transferred to two locations; the U.S. Army’s National Museum of Health and Medicine, and the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia where parts of it are on public display.

But science didn’t forget about Albert Einstein’s brain.

AA16As techniques advanced, Dr. Harvey loaned it out to researchers. In the 1980’s Professor Marian Diamond of the University of California, Berkley, pursued a theory that the ratio of glial cells in Einstein’s grey matter may be higher than average. Glial cells provide nutritional support for the neurons in the brain which allow the parts to communicate. Sure enough, she found that the glial cells in Einstein’s left inferior parietal area were ‘statistically significant’ and that this high ratio could have contributed to his ability to understand complex scientific problems.

Advancing to 1999, a team of researchers at McMaster University in Canada made the shocking discovery that a portion of Einstein’s brain called the parietal operculum region in the inferior frontal gyrus in the frontal lobe was vacant. They also found that part of a bordering region called the lateral sulcus, or the Sylvian fissure, was absent. The researchers speculated that this vacancy, or a missing part of Einstein’s brain actually allowed his thoughts to ‘see’ each other, rather than ‘speak’ which backs up Einstein’s own claim that he was a totally visual thinker, not a verbal communicator.

AA11And, in a 2013 study published in the credible, medical journal Brain that analyzed Einstein’s corpus callosum – the large bundles of nerves that connect the two cerebral hemispheres – scientists determined that Einstein’s nerve connections were thicker than average which may have contributed to his obvious ability to function at a high plane of thought.

The actual anatomical reason for Einstein’s genius remains a mystery. Perhaps, as science advances, new techniques will develop and may conclusively explain why a simple patent clerk, with a flawed brain, was able to see himself riding on a light beam through space and then found a way to express the theory of relativity through words.

But here’s how smart Albert Einstein really was.

AA8He understood the public’s obsession with his status and he understood human nature. He wanted his body burned, including his brain, so it wouldn’t be a shrine to the macabre. He knew that scientists wanting their own celebrity status – their own moment in the science sun, would pore over his glial cells, his parietal region, his lateral sulcus, his frontal gyrus, and his corpus callosum and would profess that they’d cracked the code of genius.

And he knew most of it would be bullshit.

Albert Einstein understood what made him different – he simply saw his own thoughts. He probably wanted people to figure it out for themselves.

TIMELESS ADVICE FROM HUNTER S. THOMPSON

AA1AIn 1958, a then 22-year-old Hunter S. Thompson wrote a letter to a friend who’d asked him for advice. On the surface, this doesn’t seem like a big deal – 57 years ago letters were how people communicated. What stands out is that Thompson wrote this letter way before anyone knew who he was. In my opinion, this letter is a pure statement of faith, written by someone who’d become one of the most influential writers of our time, solely for the purpose of helping his friend. I know the letter wasn’t written to me, but I read it like it was and I’d like to share it with you. 

April 22, 1958
57 Perry Street
New York City

Dear Hume, 

You ask advice: ah, what a very human and very dangerous thing to do!

AA2For to give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal — to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.

I am not a fool, but I respect your sincerity in asking my advice. I ask you though, in listening to what I say, to remember that all advice can only be a product of the man who gives it. What is truth to one may be disaster to another. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine. If I were to attempt to give you specific advice, it would be too much like the blind leading the blind.

“To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles … ” (Shakespeare)

AA13And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect — between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.

But why not float if you have no goal?

That is another question. It is unquestionably better to enjoy the floating than to swim in uncertainty. So how does a man find a goal? Not a castle in the stars, but a real and tangible thing. How can a man be sure he’s not after the “big rock candy mountain,” the enticing sugar-candy goal that has little taste and no substance?

The answer — and, in a sense, the tragedy of life — is that we seek to understand the goal and not the man.

AA8We set up a goal which demands of us certain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a concept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you. Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on.

Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis?

AA3The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tangible goals, anyway. It would take reams of paper to develop this subject to fulfillment. God only knows how many books have been written on “the meaning of man” and that sort of thing, and god only knows how many people have pondered the subject. (I use the term “god only knows” purely as an expression.) There’s very little sense in my trying to give it up to you in the proverbial nutshell, because I’m the first to admit my absolute lack of qualifications for reducing the meaning of life to one or two paragraphs.

AA17I’m going to steer clear of the word “existentialism,” but you might keep it in mind as a key of sorts. You might also try something called “Being and Nothingness” by Jean-Paul Sartre, and another little thing called “Existentialism: From Dostoyevsky to Sartre.” These are merely suggestions. If you’re genuinely satisfied with what you are and what you’re doing, then give those books a wide berth. (Let sleeping dogs lie.) But back to the answer. As I said, to put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise.

So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. 

WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES. 

AA7But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors — but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal. In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires — including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter.

AA5As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal), he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path which puts no limit on his self-development), and he avoids the terror of seeing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws closer to it (rather than bending himself to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to conform to his own abilities and desires).

AA10In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important. And it seems almost ridiculous to say that a man MUST function in a pattern of his own choosing; for to let another man define your own goals is to give up one of the most meaningful aspects of life — the definitive act of will which makes a man an individual.

Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN — and here is the essence of all I’ve said — you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.

Naturally, it isn’t as easy as it sounds. You’ve lived a relatively narrow life, a vertical rather than a horizontal existence. So it isn’t any too difficult to understand why you seem to feel the way you do. But a man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.

AA9So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”

And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know — is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice.

AA11If I don’t call this to a halt, I’m going to find myself writing a book. I hope it’s not as confusing as it looks at first glance. Keep in mind, of course, that this is MY WAY of looking at things. I happen to think that it’s pretty generally applicable, but you may not. Each of us has to create our own credo — this merely happens to be mine.

If any part of it doesn’t seem to make sense, by all means call it to my attention. I’m not trying to send you out “on the road” in search of Valhalla, but merely pointing out that it is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it.

AA1There is more to it than that — no one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of company. 

And that’s it for now. Until I hear from you again, I remain,

your friend,

Hunter S. Thompson