Mad Trapper Story

[Maple Leaf Angus]

Say Northern Rancher yer last name ain't Johnson, is it? Wait a minute, I was maybe thinking of Silver, he's from up that direction!

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/246684

[Northern Rancher]

There's a couple guys up here could give him a run for his money lol.

[Big Muddy rancher]

I heard that on the news today about checking his DNA. Some histororians thinks he passed through this area and may have come from North Dakota. Hope I hear what they find out.

[Big Muddy rancher]

Just in case the article moves on

Bob Weber
The Canadian Press

He's been dead for 75 years, but the Mad Trapper of Rat River almost evaded pursuers one more time.

A film crew exhuming the body of the legendary outlaw in an effort to finally identify him had to dig two holes to find him – and wound up relying on the memory of a 92-year-old woman to successfully get DNA samples.

"We thought he was going to evade us one last time," Carrie Gour of Myth Merchant Films said today of the Alberta-based film company's attempt to find an answer to one of the North's great enduring mysteries.

Albert Johnson slid into Arctic lore – probably under an alias – in January 1932, when he died in a gun battle with police after a brutal mid-winter manhunt that cost the life of an RCMP constable.

Police began chasing Johnson after he shot and nearly killed an officer who wanted to ask him about complaints that someone had been interfering with traplines near Fort McPherson, N.W.T.

RCMP dynamited his cabin, but Johnson survived and led police dog teams on a spectacular two-week chase that was followed across the continent on the then-new medium of radio. When officers eventually reached him, Johnson shot one of them dead.

Despite travelling on foot and not being able to build a fire or hunt, Johnson escaped again, somehow crossing the 2,100-metre-high Richardson Mountains in the middle of a blizzard.

It took the first aerial search in Canadian history – by World War One flying ace Wilfred (Wop) May – to eventually find him. Trapped, Johnson died in the ensuing gun battle.

His pockets held more than $2,000 but no identification. His fingerprints revealed nothing. Nobody claimed the body.

Myth Merchant, after receiving permission from the village of Aklavik, N.W.T., to dig up the body, is hoping to use DNA sequences to finally settle the question of Johnson's identity.

The exhumation began last Friday under a large army tent. Diggers, including a local trapper, started burrowing inside a small fenced-off area where lore held Johnson was buried, a story backed up by ground-penetrating radar.

But by Saturday, it was clear Johnson wasn't there.

An elder was consulted, who told the diggers that Johnson was in fact just outside the fence, beneath the crew's pile of dirt.

The shovels shifted, and the coffin – its lid collapsed and decayed – finally emerged on Sunday, uncovered by the trapper.

"It takes a trapper to find a trapper," said Gour.

Far from a macabre, horror-movie ambience, Gour described the exhumation as "magical."

"It was like a community barn-raising – only different."

The weather, cold and grim all weekend, changed as Johnson re-emerged.

"Within 15 minutes, the wind dropped, the sky opened up and an eagle flew overhead."

There wasn't much left of the Mad Trapper, mostly skeleton, although some facial hair, fingernails and soft tissues remained. Scientists took tooth and bone samples as interested community members filed respectfully in and out of the tent.

Johnson and his original coffin were placed in a new box and reburied to the prayers of a minister and a Gwich'In elder.

DNA sequences will be completed in a month or two. Gour said Myth

[Jinglebob]

[JBB]

Hollywood made a pretty good movie about Albert Johnson about 20 years ago. The movie was called Death Hunt, with Charles Bronson playing the part of Albert Johnson. Also had Lee Marvin and Carl Weathers as RCMP's hot on his trail. Worth renting some night.

[Maple Leaf Angus]

[DJL]

The move is the Hollywood version, and so of course doesn't follow the true story but it isn't too bad a movie. The book is the more accurate portrayal if you can find it. It is just a little book, doesn't take long to read.

[Northern Rancher]

There's a guy to the southeast of us winters in an old bear den-he floods out every spring though. Not sure if he could remember his lines but he could almost fit the part.

[IL Rancher]

[OldDog/NewTricks]

Books

* Rudy Wiebe, The Mad Trapper, 1980, Jackpine House Ltd., 186 pages, ISBN 0-88995-268-X
* The Death of Alberta Johnson Mad Trapper of Rat River, 1986, Heritage House Publishing Company Ltd., 94 pages, ISBN 0-919214-16-9
* Dick North, The Mad Trapper of Rat River, 2003, The Lyons Press, 338 pages, ISBN 1-59228-771-9
* Hélèna Katz, The Mad Trapper, 2004, Altitude Publishing Canada Ltd., 133 pages, ISBN 1-55153-787-7
* Dick North, The Man Who Didn't Fit In, 2005, The Lyons Press, 259 pages, ISBN 1-59228-838-3

The event has been written about in a number of books, a song by Wilf Carter, as well as a fictionalized account that was later turned into the movie Death Hunt, starring Charles Bronson.

[koj]

My family in SD claims that Albert Johnson was my Grampa's uncle. When they killed Johnson they found money sewn into pockets on the inside of his shirt. My Grampa's aunt (Johnson's sister) sewed those kinds of pockets into all of her families clothing back in that time period. But, who knows? There are so many possibilities. My Dad has read all of the books and swears that Johnson is our relative. I am anxious to find out!