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-Miscellaneous Forensics-

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Alferd Packer

Solved using pathology and forensic science

Alferd Packer was born on the 21st January 1842 in Pennsylvania. He was a shoemaker originally, but served in the Union Army for a while. In 1862 he was discharged for a disability, so went back to shoemaking. He moved out west for a while. He took a job as a guide.
 
On 8th November 1973, Packer guided a group of 21 people into the Colorado Rockies in search for gold. Winter soon came and times grew difficult, as food supplies were low. On 9th February Packer and five members of the group left the camp, even though they had been ordered to stay with the group at all times. No one heard from the six of them for months.
 
But on 16th April Packer turned up at the Los Pinso Indian Agency in Colorado. Packer claimed his companions had got lost in the snowstorm, but people were suspicious of him. Packer was quite fat and had lots of money, yet he had supposedly spent the last few months with very little food in the mountains. Later on a travelling artist discovered the mutilated bodies of the missing men. After an examination it was confirmed that the victims had all been murdered with some kind of axe.
 
Packer claimed that he had not killed the men, but it had actually been another member of the group, Shannon Bell. Apparently Bell shot the other members of the group, so Packer had been forced to shoot Bell in shelf defence. Packer admitted to eating his team members’ flesh in order to survive, but did not kill them. Packer was charged with murder but escaped from jail, just to be arrested again eight years later.
 
Alferd Packer was tried and found guilty, then sentenced to death. However the case was appealed, and this times Packer was sentenced to forty years of hard labour, avoiding the death penalty. He served in the penitentiary for five years and was later paroled. He moved to Denver where he stayed until his death in 1907. However there was still questions over whether Packer was guilty or innocent.
 
In 1989 the remains of Packer’s team members were exhumed. Luckily their bodies were in fairly good condition and were examined again. Each body had hatchet marks as well has marks left by Packer eating flesh off them. But there were no bullet wounds in the bodies, meaning Packer lied, and had in fact murdered them all.