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
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
Johnson?
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