MARSHAL MADSEN - THE LYING LAWMAN

2/25/1851 - On a cold Tuesday morning, the many adventure storied life of future U.S. Deputy Marshal, Chris Madsen, begins on the Denmark island of Funen (the country's third largest island) in the village of Orested, with the birth of Christian Madsen Rormose.

Madsen

When Madsen first rises to notoriety as a lawman helping clean up the American West, the tale he tells about himself he that he is the son of a Danish soldier, and as such, though only thirteen at the time, he too enlists in the Danish Army (after graduating from the Kauslunde Argicultural School) and fights for the Danes at the Battle of Dybbol on April 18, 1864 as part of the Second Schleswig War (the fight is a huge German victory).  After hostilities in that war end, Madsen joins the French Foreign Legion and is stationed in Algiers until his unit is transferred to Europe and fights at the the epic Battle of Sedan that concludes the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 in favor of Prussian King Wilhelm I (greatly assisted by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke).  During the battle, Madsen will claim to be wounded and taken prison, before escaping from the Prussians and making his way to Norway.  In Norway, Madsen finds work as a railroad engineer, as a clerk in a shipping office, and as a sailor on a whaling ship.  Sometime during his Norway sojourn, Madsen also meets an American expatriate Civil War veteran named Major Hansen who fills the youth's head up with tales of the U.S. Army and life in America, so much so that the Dane books passage for a trip to New York City, where he arrives in 1876, and four days after after stepping off the boat, enlists in the army on January 21, 1876.  Most of the tales are made up though (Madsen never serves in either the Danish Army of the French Foreign Legion, which never fights at Sedan) to prevent it from being known in his new digs that Christian Madsen Rormose is actually a crook and conman with numerous convictions for fraud and forgery (and there are arrests for begging, and vagrancy too), and that he has spent a good portion of his youth behind bars (after losing a position with a local wine seller), with his trip to the United States actually being bank-rolled by the Danish government just to get rid of the bad apple.  Released from prison on December 26, 1875, after serving 652 days behind bars (in other accounts, he is corralled for 1,346 days), two days later Madsen is on his way across the Atlantic!

Dybbol

Sedan

New York City Harbor - 1876

A second chance to reinvent himself in a new country ... the conman of course creates a new name for himself by dropping his last name of Rormose, and shortens his first name to Chris.  Enlisting in the United States Army, Madsen is assigned to the 5th Cavalry and sent out West ... and another batch of stories attach to his life, the biggest whopper being that the Dane is actually assigned to Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry where he sees action during the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and actually is the clashes only survivor ... or that he is one of the soldier's that polices the battlefield afterward, burying the bodies of dead fellow troopers.  Not at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Madisen makes up for his absence by actually being a witness (he is a signalman for Company A of the 5th Cavalry) to the Battle of War Bonnet Creek during which a Cheyenne chief named Yellow Hair fights Army scout William "Buffalo Bill" Cody on July 17, 1876, a skirmish between the two men in which Cody guns down the chief with a Winchester rifle, scalps the warrior with a Bowie knife, and is then said to have held his grisly prize aloft, yelling, "The first scalp for Custer!"  In the same unit as the legendary Wild West showman, as the years roll on, Madsen's acquaintance with Cody becomes a fantasy in which the Dane is one of the man's best friends.  And doing something right, in 1883, Madsen is chosen to be part of the 75-man cavalry escort that accompanies 21st President Chester Alan Arthur on his exploration of natural wonders of Yellowstone National Park.  During Madsen's service in the cavalry, he will earn a Silver Star for bravery fighting hostile Indians, along with earning sergeant's stripes (he also meets and marries Margaret Bell Morris in 1887 while being stationed at Fort Reno in Oklahoma, a union that will produce two sons, Marion and Christian), but will also demonstrate that the mendacity and nefariousness in his personality have not been totally erased by change in location or new moniker ... absent without leave and in possession of stolen property, Madsen serves five months behind bars at the Wyoming Territorial Penitentiary before returning to his duties (brought up also on charges of larceny, for lack of evidence he is acquitted).  Not enough money being paid him by the military, using tale tales of his exploits in Europe, and then with the U.S. cavalry, in 1891, Madsen retires from army life and manages to con his way into a position with the United States Marshal Service as a deputy marshal in the Oklahoma Territory for Marshal William Grimes (working out of the town of El Reno and then Guthrie).

Cody Versus Yellow Hair

Yellowstone Adventure - Seated From Left To Right - Montana Governor

Schuyler Crosby, Lt. General Philip Sheridan, President Arthur, Secretary Of

War Robert Todd Lincoln, Senator George Vest Of Missouri - Standing - Lt. Colonel

Michael Sheridan, General Anson Stager, Captain Philo Clark, New York Lawyer

Daniel G. Rollins, And Lt. Colonel James F. Gregory

Margaret

Grimes
 

It is with his move to the U.S. Marshal service that Madsen becomes a Wild West legend himself.  The rewards the greatest for bringing in the Indian Territory's biggest miscreants (Dead or Alive), the Dane is soon after the members of the area's notorious Dalton Gang ... a group of Oklahoma former cowboys and gunslingers led by former lawmen Bob Dalton, Emmett Dalton, and Grat Dalton.  In his quest to brings down the desperadoes, Madsen will soon find himself working with two other deputy marshals, Henry Andrew "Heck" Thomas from Athens, Georgia and William Matthew "Bill' Tilghman.  For their efforts against the outlaws the trio will soon be known throughout the Territory as "The Three Guardsmen" (during their combined careers, the three lawmen will make over 300 arrests, along with taking out a handful of bad apples that when requested, don't go peacefully into incarceration).  The Dalton Gang destroyed when the citizens of Coffeyville, Kansas refuse to allow the brothers and friends to rob two of its banks on the morning of October 5, 1892 (in the robbery, along with four citizens of the town being shot down, Bob and Grat Dalton will be killed, along with gang members Dick Broadwell and Bill Powers, with Emmett Dalton being wounded by 23 bullets and buckshot pellets, arrested, tried. convicted, and then sent off to prison on a life sentence), Madsen immediately reprioritizes his targets and begins a pursuit of the gang that forms from the Dalton's Waterloo in Kansas, the Oklahombres.  Known as the Oklahombres, the Wild Bunch, and the Doolin-Dalton Gang, the new outlaw confederation consists of William "Bill" Doolin (the leader of the bandits, a former cowboy and Dalton gang member that survives Coffeyville because riding into town with the rest of the gang, his horse goes lame and he turns away from the robbery), Doolin's second-in-command, another crooked Dalton back from California to avenge his brother, William Marion "Bill" Dalton, William "Tulsa Jack" Blake, Dan "Dynamite Dick" Clifton, Roy Daugherty (aka "Arkansas Tom Jones"), George "Bitter Creek" Newcomb, Charley Pierce, William F. "Little Bill" Raidler, George "Red Buck" Waightman, Richard "Little Dick" West, and Oliver "Ol" Yantis.  Yantis will be the first of the gang to receive justice at the hands of the "Three Guardsmen."

Thomas

Tilghman

Dead Bob & Dead Grat

Doolin

The new gang's first robbery takes place on November 1, 1892, when Doolin and his associates hit the Ford County Bank of Spearville, Kansas.  Bandanna masks worn during the heist, outlaw Ol Yantis is nonetheless recognized as one of the culprits, a small posse consisting of Madsen, Heck Thomas (eager to make up for being a day behind the Daltons when they show up to rob Coffeyville), and U.S. Deputy Marshal Tom Hueston, and Ford County Sheriff Chalkley Beeson goes looking for Yantis at the farm of the bandit's sister (Mrs. Hugh McGinn), three miles outside the town of Orlando, Oklahoma.  At sunrise of a foggy November 29, 1892, Yantis emerges from his sister's home carrying a sack of feed for his horse in one hand and a six-gun in the other.  "Throw up your hands, Ol.  We're officers," Madsen yelled at the outlaw, but Yantis responds by snapping off a shot at the lawman which misses, an action that prompts the marshals to return fire.  They do not miss, though for awhile the downed badman continues to fire on the officers though he is mortally wounded by slugs from the rifle of Madsen (a round from Madsen's Winchester hits Yantis in the right side above the hip, angles down, and severs the outlaw's spinal column) and the shotgun of Hueston.  Yantis will soon be joined in death (or behind bars) by all of his desperado friends. 

Hueston

Beeson

Yantis

Wired on June 10, 1893 that the Doolin-Dalton  Gang has hit the westbound California Express train outside of the town of Cimarron, Madsen guesses where the bandits might cross back into the Indian Territory, puts together a posse, and with swift riding, is able to put together a posse and ambush the outlaws as they tried to cross the Cimarron River near a spot called Deep Hole (near where the town of Buffalo, Oklahoma is now located).  In the gun battle that takes place when the two groups meet, although the bad guys get away (they escape into a large thicket of willows), Madsen gets to operate his new .30-.30 Winchester rifle for the first time, putting a steel-jacketed slug into the heel of Doolin's right foot ... an injury that will plague the outlaw the rest of his life.  Later in 1893, Madsen slaps leather again  while escorting a district judge to Beaver City, Oklahoma.  Bedded down for the evening over a saloon, the pair find sleep impossible to obtain when drunken revelers below the mind start discharging their pistols into the air and slugs beginning crashing through the floor.  Marching downstairs when a bullet comes a few inches from his head, Madsen jerks the revolver out of one man's hand, but immediately has trouble with another imbibed celebrant that gets in the Dane's face while screaming, "I'm a son-of-a-bitch from Cripple Creek."  Keeping his sense of humor intact despite his lack of shuteye, Madsen responds, "I knew who you were, but I didn't know where you were from."  Apparently not willing to share why he left Cripple Creek, the drunk answers Madsen by swinging a fist at the lawman's head.  No match for someone who is sober, Madsen dispenses his own form of shuteye by clubbing the miscreant to the floor, and shooting the man's friend in the hand when the fool decides to protest Madsen's actions ... the saloon is quiet for the rest of the night. Also in 1893, due to other marshal business and injury (Tilghman is laid up with a broken ankle), all three of the territory's guardsmen miss the September 1, 1893 debacle that takes place at the town of Ingalls ... a shootout between fourteen lawmen with the marshal's service and the Doolin-Dalton Gang that results in three deputy marshals (Thomas Hueston, Richard Speed, and Lafayette Shadley) deaths, a civilian bystander named Dal Simmons getting killed when he attempts to take cover inside Vaughn's Saloon, saloon owner George Ransom is wounded in the leg, while his bartender, a man named Murray, is wounded in the arm and side, barfly, N. A. Walker takes a killing slug through his liver, the 14-year-old son of the town doctor, Frank Briggs, takes a flesh wound to the shoulder, outlaw Bitter Creek Newcomb being grievously wounded in the groin, bandit Dynamite Dick Clifton is wounded in the hand, a sickness ailed Arkansas Tom is captured at the town's Pierce's O.K. Hotel, two horses are killed, and a chicken is pulverized into torn meat and bloody feathers as it tries to cross the street.

Madsen

Ingalls

Arkansas Tom

The core of the Doolin-Dalton Gang still on the loose and now responsible for the deaths of multiple lawmen (Grimes giving way to a new head marshal, Evett Dumas Nix, the new chief is booted from the office for gross malfeasance in 1893, and Madsen almost goes out with him too when rumors that he has been filing false arrest reports surface), the Three Guardsmen intensify their efforts to bring down the outlaws following the embarrassment received at Ingalls (a posse led by Madsen will come close to encountering the gang at the Pleasant Valley horse farm of Dave and Jerry Fitzgerald).  The pressure on the bandits begins to pay off in the spring of 1894 when Bill Dalton is found visiting his family at a farm in the Indian Territory and gunned down by a posse led by U.S. Marshal S.T. Lindsey.  Briefly stepping away from his pursuit of Doolin and his crew, on May 12, 1894, Madsen is in El Reno, Oklahoma when he spots train robber Felix Young on the town's main street.  Bolting for his horse when he sees the lawman approaching, the outlaw fires his revolver twice at Madsen but misses, while Madsen gets off five shots which drop the bandit's horse, and afoot, the Dane is able to capture Young and put him behind bars.

Nix

Dead Bill Dalton

  1895 proves to be a disaster for the outlaws.  Following the gang's robbery of a Rock Island train outside of Dover, Oklahoma on April 3, 1895, Madsen organizes a posse which goes after the desperadoes ... and thanks to the accurate fire of Deputy U.S. Marshals William Banks and Isaac Prater, the criminal escapades of William "Tulsa Jack" Blake are brought to a permanent conclusion.  Next to leave are Bitter Creek Newcomb and Charley Pierce who make the mistake of hiding out on the ranch of the Dunn Brothers, and their sister, Newcomb's sweetheart, Rose (who will become known as "the Rose of Cimarron").  Betrayed for the reward money available, both outlaws are murdered by their "friends" while sleeping in the ranch's barn on May 2, 1895.  Then Bill Tilghman gets into the action, tracking Little Bill Raidler into the Osage Nation, eighteen miles south of Elgin, Kansas, to the Moore Ranch.  Gunfight instead of the requested surrender, Raidler gets off a single shot that misses Tilghman, but Tilghman doesn't miss Raidler, sending a load of shotgun buckshot into the outlaw that knocks Raidler to the ground with pellets in each side of his body, the back of his head, his neck, and through his right wrist (surprisingly, Raidler survives his injuries and is put on trial and sentenced to ten years behind bars for his part in the Dover train robbery ... released in 1903 from a federal prison in Ohio in ill health from his unhealed wounds, he dies the following year at the age of 34.  Tilghman then tops himself in January of 1896 by capturing Bill Doolin in the bathouse of the Davy Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

Bank & Prater With Tulsa Jack

Newcomb & Pierce

Raidler

1896 doesn't see the total end to the Doolin Gang, but it does see the end of Doolin himself,  Captured by Tilghman, along with an also arrested Dynamite Dick, Doolin and thirteen others escape from the Guthrie, Oklahoma jail on the night of July 5, 1896.  Foolishly not fleeing south into Mexico when he has the chance, the outlaw leader is turned into human Swiss cheese by twenty-two pieces of lead when he is ambushed by a posse led by Heck Thomas on August 25, 1896, outside of Lawson, Oklahoma, at the ranch of his father-in-law.  George "Red Buck" Waightman joins Doolin in death when lawmen find him in an Arapaho, Oklahoma hideout and he refuses to surrender.  Two gang members still on the loose, under the direction of Madsen posses, both men do not make it into the new century.  On November 7, 1897, near Checotah, Oklahoma, searching the environs of the Sid Williams Ranch, U.S. Deputy Marshals George Lawson and W. H. Bussey surprise Dynamite Dick Clifton on the trail, request his surrender, and when the outlaw opens fire with his Winchester instead, the lawmen knock him out of his saddle with a bullet through his arm, follow the wounded bandit through the brush to a cabin in the woods, and kill him when he refuses to surrender for a second time and starts shooting.  The last Doolin outlaw to go is Richard "Little Dick" West, who is discovered by Madsen hiding out in the territorial capital of Guthrie.  On April 13, 1898, West goes like so many of his other friends and loses a late night shootout after being requested to surrender ... the outlaw gets off four shots that hit nothing, while Madsen and his men (or by other accounts, Tilghman, Thomas, and their men) take West out with buckshot from a 10-gauge Remington shotgun and Winchester rifle bullets, the killing round coming in the form of a piece of lead that hits the outlaw in the side and then exits his body through the shoulder.  

Doolin

Red Buck

Dynamite Dick

West

The big guns of the Doolin crew gone, in 1898, with an eye on perhaps getting into politics, Madsen leaves the marshal service and decides to get back into military attire by fighting in the Spanish-American War taking place in Cuba by joining the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry of Colonel Leonard Wood, a group now better known for being Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders.  Shipped to Cuba with the rest of Wood's command, Madsen participates in the unit's triumphs on the island as a quartermaster sergeant.  Not the adventure he was anticipating, feigning a tropical illness for the higher pension his condition commands, the Dane is back out of the Army before the turn of the century, and soon back in the Indian Territory as a deputy marshal once more (one of his assignments is to escort convicted Oklahoma train robber, Al Jennings, to Ohio for incarceration).  When Roosevelt becomes President of the United States in 1901 following William McKinley's assassination, Madsen has high hopes of moving up the command chain for law enforcement and becoming the head marshal of the region himself, but despite much name dropping and even more glad handing that includes multiple visits to Washington D.C. (during one, in which he is accompanied by Bill Tilghman and Bat Masterson, as a joke he will be presented to guests at a formal White House dinner as the next ambassador to Denmark and called "Your Highness" throughout the evening), the Dane is passed over for the position in 1901 and 1906 (it does not help that Madsen is a Republican as the region turns Democrat), but does finally achieve his goal in 1911 when he temporarily replaces the recently removed from office, John Reeves "Catch 'Em Alive" Abernathy (the nickname comes from the lawman's unique method of capturing living wolves) for four months at the beginning of 1911.  When Madsen is again passed over for the permanent position in 1913, he leaves the marshal's service, but does not quit being a lawman (or a liar) and in the years that follow the Dane, after being rejected for serving in the army again when WWI for America begins, will serve as a special investigator for the governor of Oklahoma, James Robertson, from 1918 to 1922, is appointed Chief of Police for Oklahoma City while in his sixties (he will kill a fleeing bootlegger in his last gunfight), works as a guard at a federal reserve bank in Oklahoma city (he gets the job at 73 after besting the other candidates for the position in a marksmanship contest in which he puts six bullets in a bull's eye from 70 yards away), as a court bailiff from 1927 to 1933 when he is 82-years-old, as a superintendent of a Union Soldier's Home, and finds time to write his autobiography with Harold Mueller for the The Daily Oklahoman, "With Sword and Pistol," in 1935.

The Rough Riders

Madsen

Jennings

Abernathy & Roosevelt

Chief Of Police

   And burnishing his legendary career as a lawman, in 1915 he becomes involved in the making of the silent film, "The Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws."  Made by the Eagle Film Company, the film is directed by Bill Tilghman (and shot by pioneer photographer, Benny Kent, one of Tilghman's Oklahoma neighbors) and features several scenes filmed where the actual events happened, cowboys from the 101 Ranch pretending to be posses and outlaws, actual lawmen Bud Ledbetter (Jennings' captor, and sometimes known as "The Fourth Guardsman") and Evett Nix, Doolin gunman Arkansas Tom (before the released convict returns to a life of crime and is shot down in Joplin, Missouri at 54 during a gunfight with police detective Leonard H. Vandeventer), and Madsen and Tilghman playing themselves.  After filming, Tilghman and Madsen take the film across the country for showings that include talks before the movie by the lawmen commenting on how crime doesn't play, the film, then a look at Old West memorabilia from Tilghman's collection.  A hit for years, there are talks of more movies, but none are ever made.  Eyes dimming as he ages, Madsen spends his "golden years" living with his daughter, Marion, in Guthrie, Oklahoma, action for the old man coming in the form of walking downtown daily and visiting the local sheriff's office and the office of the marshals too. telling his tales, some true and some just tall, to anyone willing to listen.  In the winter of 1944, he slips on a patch of ice and breaks his hip   Trying to recover from the injury at Guthrie's Masonic Home for the Aged, he dies on January 9, 1944 at the age of 92, leaving behind a farm, an estate worth a little over $10,00, and a raft of story questions that can never be fully answered.  He is survived by his daughter, and by his son Chistian, and is buried in Yukon, Oklahoma's Frisco Cemetery.  In 2009, along with his companions, Bill Tilghman and Heck Thomas, Madsen is inducted into the Oklahoma Law Enforcement Hall of Fame.

With All His Medals

Movie Poster - Madsen In 

Upper Left Bubble

Arkansas Tom Recreating Ingalls Battle

1937

Final Resting Place

    

  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

 

      

 

THE DEATH OF ALBERT JOHNSON

2/17/1932 - The huge manhunt of over a month (the largest in Canadian history to the time) through the winter wilds of Northern Canada for a mysterious stranger known only as Albert Johnson (he will become known as "The Mad Trapper of Rat River"), the murderer of RCMP Constable Edgar Millen, ends on the frozen Eagle River of the Yukon in gunfire and death.

Johnson In Death

The trouble for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), begins in July of 1931, when Johnson paddles down the Peel River on a make-shift raft and arrives at a small bit of civilization in the Inuvik Region of Northern Canada once used by the Hudson Bay Company fur trappers, Fort McPherson.  A mountain man roughly 5'9" in height, with brown hair, cold blue eyes, and a very cryptic communicator style, the man calling himself Johnson makes his presence known to the locals by buying, with cash from an old tobacco can, supplies from the Northern Traders LTD store (an Iver Johnson 16-gauge single-barrel shotgun and twenty-five shells for the weapon), setting up a tent camp upstream of the fort, and demonstrating his abilities to protect himself and his property by whittling away three-foot target sticks with his weapons that he places in a sandbank along the river (he is carrying over $3,000 on his person).  Keeping to himself, confining most of his conversations to locals with simple "yes" and "no" replies (it is said that some folks catch a whiff of a Scandinavian accent when the trapper speaks),  he soon draws a visit from Constable Edgar "Spike" Millen of the Arctic Red River detachment of the RCMP, making sure the newcomer is properly equipped and has the necessary skills to survive in the area's harsh wilderness.  During his interview with Johnson, Millen discovers the man intends to set up trap lines in the wilds between the Arctic Red River and the Peel River but does not yet have a trapping license.  Millen suggests Johnson should save himself some trouble and purchase the necessary paperwork as soon as possible.   one as soon as possible.  License never purchased, a week later Johnson buys a twelve-foot canoe local fisherman, Abe Francis, fills the canoe with his possessions, and paddles off for the Rat River.  Eventually finding what he is looking for, Johnson crafts a small cabin (the timber structure measures eight-by-ten-feet) on a promontory that gives him good views in three directions.  Through the summer months Johnson makes improvements to the cabin and hunts down critters for his food supplies for the winter.  Unfortunately for Johnson though, his cabin is built on land that trappers, William Vittrekwa, Jacob Drymeat, and William Nerysoo, consider their own domain ... and they want Johnson gone.

Fort McPherson

Rat River Region - Winter

Millen

Little is heard from Johnson until William Nerysoo walks into the Arctic Red River Post's Christmas celebration of 1931, and complains to Constable Millen that Johnson has been springing the traps of Nerysoo, Vittrekwa, and Drymeat, and then hanging the valuable equipment in the trees (after the manhunt for Johnson ends, it will be discovered that Johnson did nothing to the men's traps, and that the report made is revenge against the stranger for being in territory the men consider their own, and that when they confront Johnson at his cabin and tell him to leave, Johnson instead pulls out a rifle and forces the trio to leave the area with a declaration that he is going no where).  The next day, December 26, 1931, Millen directs Constable Alfred "Buns" King and Special Constable Joe Bernard to mush to Johnson's cabin and question the man about springing traps, and to see if Johnson is still without a trapping license.  Taking two teams of dogs, the lawmen set out in temperatures that will reach up to forty degrees below zero.  Covering sixty miles of frozen wilderness, the men reach Johnson's cabin at around noon on December 28th.  Calling out for Johnson to come outside and discuss the complaints that have been made about him, the Mounties grow frustrated when Johnson refuses to talk to the lawmen or come outside, and locks himself in his abode.  Feeling they can do no more without a search warrant, King and Bernard set off on an eighty mile journey down the Husky River to the RCMP post at Aklavik, where they can report the matter to Arctic region commander, Inspector Alexander Eames, obtain a search warrant, and get reinforcements to help in the search of Johnson's cabin and camp.  The men, now joined by Constable R. G. McDowell and Special Constable Lazarus Sittichinli, arrive at Johnson's camp at around noon on New Year's Eve.  Smoke coming out of Johnson's cabin, the lawmen take up positions about the structure as King demands the trapper come outside, then knocks on the door to show the search warrant.  A moment later he is shot through the door by a slug that passes through the left side of the lawman's chest before exiting his right side.  Wounded grievously, King manages to crawl down to the riverbank, while his comrades engage in a brief gun battle with Johnson, before lashing King to a sled and making a desperate run back to Aklavik to save the man's life.  An historic dash that saves King's life, with stops of only minutes for rubdowns that prevent frostbite, lowering and raising King over the countless obstacles and the steep banks of the Husky River, in below zero weather, the party covers four miles an hour, and eventually makes it back to Aklavik in twenty torturous hours (where King is immediately tended to in the settlement's small hospital by Resident Doctor J. A. Urquhart and two nurses ... lucky to be alive, the lawman is up and around three weeks later).

Aklavik

Mounties - King At Left, Millen At Right

Extremely unhappy that one of his men has almost been killed by Johnson, Inspector Eames puts together an even bigger posse to bring in the trapper.  This time, Eames is in command, accompanied by Constable McDowell, Special Constables Bernard and Sittichinli, and Earnest Sutherland, Karl Gardlund, and Knut Lang, with Constable Millen and native guide, Charley Rat, radioed at the Artic Red River post to meet the force at the mouth of the Rat River (the force is transported into the wilderness by forty-two dogs, and along with normal supplies and weapons, the men purchase twenty pounds of dynamite at Arthur Blake's trading post on the Peel River).  Eames' men leave Aklavik on January 4, 1932.  After moving through drifts of snow and temperatures hovering around -45 degrees, the men take up stations around Johnson's cabin in the late morning of January 9th.  Again, Johnson, surprisingly still at his abode, is told to come out of his cabin, this time by Eames, while being notified that he has not killed King, but again refuses to comply, or even answer the inspector's surrender request (since his first encounter with the RCMP, and throughout the manhunt that ensues, Johnson will not be heard to utter a single word).  No go, Eames then mounts a series of attacks on the front door which Johnson beats off firing a sawed-off shotgun and a .22 rifle with its stock sawed off from loopholes in the walls of the cabin and from a pit dug into the structure's floor.  Meanwhile, the lawmen take turns warming themselves around a makeshift campfire that Johnson can't target, while they take turns with the dangerous job of thawing out the dynamite.  Explosives warmed, Eames illuminates the cabin with flares and begins pitching lit sticks of dynamite at the front door ... none manages to create an opening in the cabin or do more than create loud explosions of dirt and snow.  Frustrated that they can't get at Johnson, at around midnight, with cover fire from the posse distracting Johnson, Knut Lang     crawls forward and pitches dynamite onto the roof of the cabin.  The subsequent hole blown in the roof though does not convince the trapper to give himself up.  Knowing that a siege in the current weather conditions can not last much longer, at 3:00 in the morning, Eames binds up the remaining sticks of dynamite, and tosses the remaining four pounds of explosives twenty yards onto the cabin's roof.  BOOM!  The dynamite blasts the roof off the cabin and partially collapses the sides of the structure.  Rushing the front door expecting Johnson to be dead or dazed, Eames and Karl Gardlund are horrified to discover the trapper is in command of his senses and still fully belligerent, causing the men to retreat when he shoots the flashlight out of Gardlund's hand.  Rejecting suggestions from the posse that they burn Johnson alive in the ruins of his cabin, Eames decides to try again under better conditions and at 4:00 in the morning, leads his force back to Aklavik (they are lucky to have only one injury, with Constable McDowell reinjuring an already injured knee when Johnson bullets force him to jump behind a large snow drift).  Sent to keep an eye on Johnson until the posse can return, on January 14th, Constable Millen and Gardlund discover the trapper has fled into the wilderness.

Some Of The Mush Teams

Mounties - Eames Front Row Center

Johnson's Blown Up Cabin

World made aware of the events taking place in the wilds of Northern Canada by way of radio broadcasts flashed over "UZK," folks in both Canada and the United States begin tracking the manhunt as if Johnson is a pitcher throwing a no-hitter against the authorities (the hunt will be considered one of the events that propels radio from a media curiosity to a place of importance in people's lives).  The RCMP make their next attempt to capture Johnson as below zero freezing conditions persist and a major blizzard hits the area.  On January 16, 1932, the latest posse looking for the trapper leaves Aklavik.  It consists of John Parsons, a former Mountie, Frank Carmichael, a trapper from the district, Noel Verville, another regional trapper, Ernest Sutherland and Special Constable Siitichinli, veterans of the RCMP's attempts to corral Johnson, and two men from the small Royal Canadian Corps of Signals post, Staff Sergeant Earl F. Hersey and Quartermaster Sergeant R. F. Riddell.  They are accompanied into the wilds by a new set of mush dogs, radio equipment, supplies that can keep the full group searching for four days, or a minimum party for ten days, and a batch of beer-bottle fire bombs and explosives crafted out of old outboard engine cylinders.  There are also eleven Loucheux Indian scouts combing the area for Johnson, along with Millen and Gardlund still being camped near the trapper's destroyed cabin.  Cognizant of the weather conditions in the area and the state of the posse's supplies, Eames decides to concentrate search efforts into one primary group of four men ... Belfast, Ireland born Millen, Gardlund , Verville, and Riddell.  Searching for Johnson, the men discover two small caches of food, which the men leave alone to bait Johnson into an ambush (but the trapper doesn't bite), before Riddell finally locates the trapper's two day old trail on a small piece of ice and in nearby creek.  Up and down seemingly impossible to climb snow covered ridges, only crossing creeks on glare ice, snowshoeing two miles to every one the posse is able to follow, moving in zig-zag patterns that eventually have two different hunters meeting head-on in their search of Johnson's trail, despite showing super-human attributes of strength and energy, undetected, the foursome eventually find the trapper camped in a steep canyon northwest of the confluence of the Rat and Barrier rivers.  Moving quietly, Riddell and Gardlund set up fifteen yards from Johnson, waiting for Millen and Verville, but any surprise advantage the men have over the trapper is lost when the men's descent into the canyon is heard by Johnson.  Rattlesnake quick, the trapper whirls and fires a rifle round from his 30-30 Savage, but then falls to the ground when Verville sends lead his way.  Wind howling and blizzard blowing (it is -37 below zero), the frozen seconds become minutes and eventually the minutes become an hour as the men watch the still body.  Then the one hour becomes two, and a perturbed Millen, finally moves forward to deal with the corpse, despite Verville yelling at Millen to get down lest Johnson is feigning being shot.  Sure enough, Riddell and Millen are approaching Johnson, when the trapper suddenly comes to life and snaps off a shot at the quartermaster sergeant that barely misses the man's head.  Then, Johnson and Millen engage in a brief gun battle.  First try, both men miss each other.  On Millen's second firing, he misses again, but Johnson finds flesh when he targets the lawman again, sending the lawman to Boot Hill when one of his rifle rounds hits the Mountie in the heart.  If there was any doubt before to what the outcome of the manhunt for Johnson will be, Millen's death insures that this group of Mounties will most certainly "get their man" (Millen will be honored for his sacrifice by having a tributary of the Rat River named Millen Creek, and at the site of his death, a memorial of three permanent plaques in English, French, and Gwich'in to the fallen officer is restored in 2021).

Millen

Millen Memorial

With each attempt to capture Johnson failing, more manpower is added to the effort to catch the trapper ... Eames sets off from Aklavik with ten men, local Inuvialuit and Gwinh'in natives enter the hunt, two groups of RCMP block the two passes over the Richardson Mountains in case Johnson tries to leave Canada and head into Alaska, Constable Sidney W. May and Special Constable John Moses lead a group of trappers from the La Pierre House post into the area, and in the move that will eventually result in Johnson's demise, for the first time in its history, Eames gets the RCMP to lease a ski-equipped single-engine Bellanca CH-300 Pacemaker to help with the hunt, a plane piloted by WWI ace (he has thirteen victories to his credit when the war ends and survives an encounter with the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen) and pioneer bush pilot, Wilfrid Reid "Wop" May (among his exploits, May and his brother Elgin open Canada's first airfield in Edmonton, flies into the area one of the two Junkers planes that help with the opening of the region's first oil rush in 1921, and May is one of the men that inaugurates the first mail and passenger service from Edmonton to Aklavik).  Back in the wilds, the RCMP discover that Johnson has escaped from the camp where he killed Millen by climbing a sheer cliff of over a thousand feet by waiting until dark and then climbing out of the area using handholds he has cut out of the snow and ice on the wall (he will follow this feat up by climbing over Mount Richardson, at an elevation 10,125 feet above sea level).  Once atop the ridge, Johnson heads west into terrain where the drifts have piled up, making pursuit by the RCMP's dog teams more difficult.  Searching for Johnson, hundreds of men now involved, patrols move into the northern wilderness from Whitehorse, Fort Norman, Dawson City, Mayo, Aklavik, Fort Simpson, La Pierre House, and even smaller settlements and individual cabins along the Mackenzie, Barrier, Shute, and Rat rivers.  On February 12th, the lawmen get their first break on the hunt.

Wop May At Left

The Hunt About To Go Airborne

Richardson Mountain

After native trapper Pete Alexie mushes over Rat Pass, word is received at the La Pierre House that mysterious snowshoe tracks have been found east of the post, information that is then mushed by Captain May to Eames' base camp at the mouth of the Rat River.  Also at the base camp is Wop May and the Bellanca, which immediately contribute to the pursuit, shuttling supplies, dogs, and men into the wilderness, a three day or more task reduced to minutes and hours, and shortly they will prove their worth by following Johnson's movements from the air and allowing the lawmen to get in front of their prey.  Picking up Johnson's tracks from the air, the Bellanca uncovers that the trapper makes a habit of circling back on his own trail and following in the tracks of roving herds of caribou, both for the ease of moving over hoof packed instead of drifts of powder, and because Johnson's tracks will be lost amongst the more prevalent animal tracks (the brief times he leaves the caribou tracks are how pilot May keeps tabs on the trapper (moving through snow drifts in blizzard conditions with temperatures ranging towards fifty below zero, supplementing his meager supplies hunting small animals with snares, breaking trail over and over, never making a large fire, following animal tracks, and covering up his own movements, Johnson makes it over the Richardson Mountains and to this day no one knows how).  Before yet another blizzard covers the area and grounds the Bellanca, following another herd of caribou, Johnson's tracks appear to be heading south along the Eagle River.

Johnson Illustration

Hunters - L To R - Sgt. Riddell, Sgt. Hersey, Duncan Bowen,

Norman Hancock, Sgt.-Maj Neary, Jack Either, And Wop May

Poor flying conditions keep May on the ground most of Sunday, but he is able to find Johnson's tracks about twenty miles up the Eagle River from its confluence with the Bell River.  On February 15th, two patrols (one consisting of four men commanded by Eames and a second composed of eight men led by Constable Sid May) marry up at La Pierre House and start off along the Eagle River in pursuit of the trapper.  After another day of inclement weather keeps the Bellanca grounded, on the morning of February 17th, the dog patrol is in motion along the Eagle River and Wop May is once more in the air.  Shortly before noon, the posse turns a bend in the river and discovers Johnson reversing through his own tracks on the iced over river.  Prey and hunters both surprised at finding each other only yards away after a wintery pursuit lasting over a month, leading the lawman from aboard his seven-dog sled, Staff Sgt. Earl Hersey whips out his rifle and fires on Johnson just as the mountain man turns and gets off a round of his own, a Savage 30-30 slug that smashes into the man's left elbow, through his left knee and into his chest, causing the kneeling officer to cartwheel through the snow.  Dividing the men into three groups, Eames sends four men up the east side of the river, four men along the west bank of the Eagle, while he remains with Constable May in the center of the river, yelling at Johnson to surrender and firing upon him when he doesn't, while overhead, Wop May arrives on the scene, overhead.  Having determined that he can not make it off the river to either bank, Johnson runs forty yards before throwing himself into a drift of snow.  There, he shrugs out of his backpack, sets up behind the sack, and begins firing on various members of the posse.  Fired on from three sides and protected by nothing more substantial than powder and cloth, the battle does not last long as the trapper is hit in the pocket by a bullet that sets off ammunition he is carrying in his pocket and takes a chunk of flesh out of his thigh.  Wounded, Johnson continues to fire on his adversaries, and he is soon struck by bullets to his shoulder and side, and finally takes a killing round in the pelvis which snaps the trapper's spine and causes massive damage to the trapper's bowels, vital tissues, and main arteries.  Flying so low his skis almost touch the snow, Wop May determines by Johnson's unlikely positioning that the trapper is dead and wagging the wings of his plane, lets the posse know they have successfully brought Johnson to ground after a pursuit of covering over 150 miles of winter Hell.  Gun battle over, May will land, load the wounded Hersey into his plane, and fly the lawman back to Aklavik, where he will be patched together again by Dr. Urquhart (and in a bit of silver lining from the manhunt and aftermath, recognizing the inadequacies of its hospital, the town will soon receive an X-ray machine).

Hersey

Final Gun Battle From The Air

Dr. Urquhart also performs the autopsy on Johnson after the corpse is sledded to the La Pierre House and then flown to Aklavik.  Along with identifying Johnson's wounds, the doctor notes that the dead trapper is five feet and nine and half inches tall, weighs one-hundred-fifty pounds, has light blue eyes and light brown hair, and has an upturned nose and lobbed ears.  Urquhart also identifies the possessions the corpse is found with ... a small glass bottle containing five pearls (with an estimated value of $15) and five pieces of dental gold (with an estimated value of $3.20), a small glass bottle of alluvial gold (with an estimated value of $9.36), a Savage 30-30 Model 99 rifle, a 16 gauge Iver Johnson sawed-off shotgun, a sawed off Model 58 .22 Winchester rifle, a pocket compass, an axe (bearing a bullet hole in its handle), a sack containing a lard tin and a lid used for making tea, a knife made from a spring trap, a safety match, a Gillette safety razor, a homemade file and chisel, a moose-skin rifle cover, a moose-skin pouch, a small spring, nails and matches wrapped in tinfoil, a moose-skin sewing pouch with needles and thread, a 30-30 cartridge box containing a small empty bottle and pieces of wax, a sack of thirty-nine 30-30 shells, two boxes of .22 ammunition, seven pieces of moose-hide, a sack containing six smaller empty sacks, fifteen pieces of snowshoe lacing, a large bundle of snowshoe lacing, a sewing thread, a piece of moose-skin lace, a Calico rifle cover, a large envelope containing a box of Pony matches, a bundle of sulphur matches wrapped in tinfoil, a bundle of sulphur matches wrapped in paper, a paper package of fish hooks, an oily rag, a leather covered comb and sewing materials, a bundle of twine, a rag bundle of sewing twine, a paper package of fish hooks, four .2 shells, four 16 gauge shotgun shells, a rag containing pepper, a sack containing salt, a mirror with a moose-skin cover, over $2,000 in American and Canadian currency, a dead squirrel, a dead bird, and a large quantity of laxative Beecham's Pills.  After the body is examined, cause of death is established, fingerprints are taken, and photographs of the corpse are made, Johnson is put in a cheap wooden casket and buried in an unmarked grave ... case closed, or is it?

Some Of Johnson's Possessions

Johnson

The News

Manhunt over, it doesn't take authorities any time whatsoever to realize that they really know nothing about Albert Johnson, not even if Albert Johnson is really the trapper's name.  Looking for information, Johnson's death photograph is released in both Canada and America, but results in just deepening the mystery of the trapper's existence.  Testing theories, at first it is believed that Johnson is actually an obscure trapper named Arthur Nelson (who also goes by the name, Mickey Nelson) who is the right age and height, owned weapons Johnson was known to also have, and was in the region during the right time period, and Nelson is thought to actually be a Nebraska outlaw by way of Norway (he is born there, in the town of Bardu, as Johan Konrad Jonsen) named John Johnson who did time at San Quentin and Folsom prisons before heading into the wilds of Canada.  DNA testing however will negate this individual from being Albert Johnson.  And the confusion continues when the Johnston family of Pictou, Nova Scotia offers up Owen Albert Johnston as the Mad Trapper because of the similarities in this name, age, and that the family never heard from their relative again after receiving a letter from him in 1931 from British Columbia., but the claim is never proven.  The next candidate to be Johnson is a Norwegian trapper named Sigvald Pederson Haaskjold, who vanishes from the fortress he built on Digby Island off the northern coast of British Columbia, but no hard evidence is ever provided to substantiate the claim.  In 2007, Johnson's remains are exhumed so that DNA can be gathered to help in identifying Johnson, but as of 2021, nothing is still known about the man other than his relatives can be traced back to Sweden and the towns of Hanger, Kavsjo, and Kulltorp.

Police Drawing Of Johnson

Arthur Nelson - 1927

Likeness Recreation

Digging Up Johnson 

And of course, Hollywood eventually puts their spin on Johnson, producing "The Mad Trapper" in 1972, "Challenge to be Free" in 1975 (with professional wrestler turned actor, Mike Mazurki, as the Trapper), and a full blockbuster treatment in 1981 for 20th Century Fox, "Death Hunt," starring Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, Carl Weathers, Andrew Stevens, and Ed Lauer ... and of course, the film's makers find a need to tweak reality with Johnson as a sympathetic character caught up in events out of his control when he rescues a German Shepard from a vicious dog fighting trapper, a serial killer stranger being added to the action that steals the gold out of the mountain men he murders, Millen is not killed, and instead allows Johnson to escape at the end, claiming the serial killer that has his face shot off is really Johnson, and Wop May does not fire on Johnson from his plane during the hunt, nor is he shot out of the air by Johnson.  And so it goes, not what happened, but entertaining anyway.

Marvin As Millen

Bronson As Johnson

2/17/1932 - After a pursuit lasting over a month across one-hundred and fifty miles of wild Northern Canada during blizzard conditions, mountain man murderer, Albert Johnson, is shot down by authorities on the Eagle River, the RCMP getting its man once again, and instantly becomes a Yukon legend of survival (for awhile at least) and endurance.

Johnson?