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Lead gives Packer's story more weight
By Nancy Lofholm
Denver Post Western Slope Bureau
Feb. 13, 2001 - GRAND JUNCTION - Scientists examining dirt, cloth and buttons dug up from a Hinsdale County grave 12 years ago have found a new bit of evidence to help belatedly corroborate Alferd Packer's story that he was a man eater but not a murderer.
Using an electron scanning microscope to magnify the grave debris up to 1,000 times and measure the elements contained in it, scientists at Mesa State College found a fragment of pure lead in a piece of clothing. That bit of metal is believed to be from a 127-year-old bullet. The evidence, had it been available a century ago, might have helped exonerate the infamous cannibal when the well-fed Packer walked out of the snowbound San Juan Mountains.
"Finding this chunk of lead is a great start. It matches lead in the bullets in the chamber of Packer's gun," said Dave Bailey, the chief curator at the Museum of Western Colorado and Packer's most ardent modern-day supporter.
Bailey wanted to find this sign of a shooting from soil and clothing under the bones of one of Packer's companions, Shannon Bell, to show that Bell had been shot as Packer had claimed.
Packer never denied eating his five companions after subsisting on rose buds, pine gum and boiled moccasins for weeks. But in stories that changed over the years, he always maintained that he had killed only Bell and in self defense. Then, Packer said, he ate Bell, too.
This latest examination of Packer evidence has drawn inquiries from curious media around the world since Bailey mentioned that he would be working with the college.
Bailey said it was only coincidence that his findings were announced just after silver-screen cannibal Hannibal Lecter grossed $58 million at the box office last weekend.
Packer walked out of the mountains near Lake City 127 years ago last Friday, the same day Mesa State professors Rick DuJay and Rex Cole began scanning the debris taken from the grave of Packer's victims - a job equivalent to searching every speck of a half a square mile.
Or as DuJay puts it: "It's as if 127 years ago someone hit a baseball somewhere in the U.S. and now you're asked to find it."
DuJay placed samples borrowed from the Hinsdale County Museum on 40 button-sized pieces of carbon and spent two long days in front of a flickering screen examining a portion of those disks before he found what he was looking for. Besides visually identifying the lead in the microscope, DuJay and the Mesa State science team were able to confirm with a spectrograph, which measures elements, that the sample was pure lead.
Monday, they compared that lead with other samples from a bullet in a Colt revolver believed to be Packer's. The spikes on the spectrograph matched exactly.
When the bones of Bell and the other victims on Packer's ill-fated trip were dug up in 1988 there was a hole in the hip of the skeleton believed to be Bell's. Some scientists and researchers who examined it said it was a bullet hole. Others said it was simply a hole gnawed by rodents.
Bailey, who has been working seven years to prove Packer was no murderer, believes it was a bullet hole. He bases that on trial transcripts, letters, recorded accounts and Packer's own confessions as well as the physical evidence he has collected.
The scientists will continue to work with Bailey to prove the lead was part of a bullet.
Please help me. How does finding a fragment of a bullet from one's gun in a body help prove you were not a murderer?
Alferd Packer will always be a hero in my eyes. All five men he supposedly ate were known to be Democrats.
I don't know. Sorta like this guy getting off Death Row recently. I have yet to hear anyone ask, 'Well, who DID rape and kill the girl?'
Alferd Packer will always be a hero in my eyes. All five men he supposedly ate were known to be Democrats.
It helps to recall that Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton are democrats. I believe I'd starve before ever casting a hungry glance their way. (Though probably the cholesterol from a single serving would be instantly fatal.)
Packer's cannabalism made a real difference. He supposedly ate five of the seven Democrats in the county.
How does finding a fragment of a bullet from one's gun in a body help prove you were not a murderer?
It helps corroborate Packers story.
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