Have any of you here ever heard of "'Albert Johnson, the 'mad trapper of Rat River'"?

[Mysecondaccount]

Recently, I was reading up about "Albert Johnson", otherwise known as the "Mad Trapper of Rat River." For those unfamiliar, Albert Johnson was an unidentified man shot dead in the 1930s by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, after an intense manhunt that climaxed into a gun fight. It all started when a mysterious fur trapper who referred to himself as “Albert Johnson”, arrived at Fort McPherson, a small outpost in Canada’s Yukon territory.

At the time, most of Yukon was very desolate, and the local demographics were overwhelmingly dominated by Native Americans. The settlements around Fort McPherson were no exception. If I recall the details correctly, around ~87% of Fort McPherson’s population (more precisely 200 out of 230 people) were Native Americans. Thus, a blonde haired white man like Johnson stuck out like a sore thumb.

Relations between Johnson and the local Natives quickly soured. As the natives were rather unwelcoming to white outsiders, whom they deemed as encroaching on their livelihoods. It didn’t help that Johnson was a very secretive recluse with a volatile temper, who avoided human interactions at almost all costs. Johnson only willingly intermingled with others when restocking his supplies, and even then was very curt and aloof in those exchanges. Reportedly, Johnson threatened native trappers with his rifle on a few occasions. In return, the natives accused him of sabotaging their traps, and took their complaints to the Mounted Police.

Local authorities were already suspicious of Johnson on the account of him not acquiring a trapping license. With the sabotage accusations added on the list, a few officers tried talking to him. In the first interaction, Johnson only gave evasive and short responses to their questions. He then ghosted further attempts at contact.

Fed up with Johnson’s uncooperative behavior, the Mounties trekked to his handmade cabin for further questions. Once they reached his cabin, seeing smoke from the chimney, they knocked on his door. Again, Johnson ignored them. A few days later, the officers returned with a warrant. When they tried to force their way in, Johnson shot one of them, and scurried away after a brief shootout.

The other officers dragged their wounded comrade to safety to the nearby town of Aklavik. From there, they regrouped and formed a posse consisting of Mounties and their trapper guides, to hunt Johnson down. Over the course of the month and a half long manhunt, Johnson traversed over 150 miles in temperatures as low as -40°F to the Alaskan border, even crossing a 7,000 foot mountain peak.

Some of the tactics he used to evade the Mounties was following Caribou tracks, building blind trails (with the help of wearing the snow shoes backwards), and backtracking. Johnson also carefully built small fires that would be difficult for pursers to detect. Last but not least, he also shot 3 more Mounties over the course of several skirmishes in the manhunt, killing one.

In desperation, the authorities resorted to a search plane to flush him out. With the help of the plane, the Mounties finally located Johnson. In the final confrontation, Johnson shot another Mountie, while taking 9 bullets in return. Finally killing him in the process.

While attempting to identify Johnson, the authorities took his fingerprints, though they couldn’t find a match in their archives. They also took pictures of his corpse and distributed them around both in Canada and the US, in hopes of soliciting someone to claim him. No one ever did.

To this day, Johnson still remains unidentified. Every attempt to identify him with DNA testing has proven unsuccessful. Perhaps from his suspiciously generic sounding “name”, authorities and historians are almost certain that “Albert Johnson” is a mere pseudonym. What motivated his behavior during the whole episode is also unknown. As the dead can’t exactly speak for themselves. Johnson not leaving any diaries or written records, nor having any known associates didn’t help in that regard.

Some scholars speculate that he might have committed some sort of crime(s) in another jurisdiction. According to such theories, Johnson was paranoid that if he was further questioned or detained, the Mounties would’ve eventually tied those previous crime(s) to him. Thus he was hellbent on eluding them.

At the time of his death, Johnson was estimated to have been in his thirties. If that estimate is correct, then he would have been eligible to be a World War 1 veteran. Which might explain his proficiency with firearms and his performance in the shootouts. During their brief exchange, the officers noted him having a Scandinavian accent, leading some to believe that he was an immigrant from that region. Isotope testing done in the 2000s solidified this possibility, with the conclusion that he was either raised in the American corn belt states or Scandinavia.

On a few parting notes, first hand accounts mentioned that they never heard him utter a word in the entire chase. The only vocalization they reported Johnson making, was him laughing after shooting a Mountie. It is also unknown if he truly was responsible for sabotaging those traps, or if they were just false pretenses conjured up by the natives to get rid of him.

What are your thoughts on the Albert Johnson case, if any? From what little is available to us, what are your theories on the man's true identity and nature?


Sources:

1.https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/albert-johnson


2.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Johnson_(criminal)


3.https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2017/02/17/canada-history-feb-17-1932-the-end-and-beginning-of-the-mystery-of-the-mad-trapper/

[Larry of the Lake]

My thoughts:

Quote

Johnson only gave evasive and short responses to their questions. He then ghosted further attempts at contact

He'd be a natural at internet dating.

12 minutes ago, Mysecondaccount said:

What are your thoughts on the Albert Johnson case, if any? From what little is available to us, what are your theories on the man's true identity and nature?

I mean this was in the 1930's, it's not weird that they couldn't figure out where he came from or that there was no DNA match, whatever the hell that means.  What were they trying to match it to?  He didn't show up on 23 &me with super athlete genetics?

edit, re: Question in thread title: No

Edited May 22, 2021 by larrytheimp

[Mysecondaccount]

4 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

My thoughts:

He'd be a natural at internet dating.

I mean this was in the 1930's, it's not weird that they couldn't figure out where he came from or that there was no DNA match, whatever the hell that means.  What were they trying to match it to?  He didn't show up on 23 &me with super athlete genetics?

edit, re: Question in thread title: No

I probably should elaborate a bit more on the DNA tests. Throughout the years, there were several candidates for Johnson's true identity that were proposed. Almost all of them were stemmed out by comparing the DNA of their decedents to the samples procured from his remains.

[Larry of the Lake]

Ok I confess he was my great grandfather AMA

Edited May 22, 2021 by larrytheimp

[Ormond]

2 hours ago, Mysecondaccount said:

I probably should elaborate a bit more on the DNA tests. Throughout the years, there were several candidates for Johnson's true identity that were proposed. Almost all of them were stemmed out by comparing the DNA of their decedents to the samples procured from his remains.

I suppose they could now do one of those genealogical DNA searches to try to figure this out, as they have done with several "cold cases" of murder recently. But of course there may not be the budget for that. Perhaps they should try crowdfunding such a study.

[DireWolfSpirit]

So the guy goes way out into the Yukon to be left the hell alone and the authorities insist on harassing him to the point where he resorts to defending himself.

I'm skeptical of the Royal Mounties version of any of these events, especially after seeing a few of those Manhunt series.

Shame we do not have his side of the entire affair.

Eta: This has great movie written all over it.

Edited May 22, 2021 by DireWolfSpirit

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Reminds of a movie I once watched as a child.

And surprise. It is listed there as loosely based on Johnson.

[VigoTheCarpathian]

Hm, has some of the same plot beats as one of the outlaws/dipshits from my home turf- Claude Dallas.  

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Dallas.  

He evaded authorities out in the wilderness for more than a year, got caught and then escaped from prison and was on the run for another year.

[Chataya de Fleury]

8 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

My thoughts:

He'd be a natural at internet dating.

Oh yes. I wonder if he had a PhD in Business Ethics...

[polishgenius]

Did Gazza show up at the shootout with a box of chicken and a crate of beer?

[Prince of the North]

Death Hunt

Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin are all over this!

ETA: Ah, I see Death Hunt is mentioned in the wikipedia link above.

 

Edited May 22, 2021 by Prince of the North

[DMC]

4 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

So the guy goes way out into the Yukon to be left the hell alone and the authorities insist on harassing him to the point where he resorts to defending himself.

When you put it like that, sounds a lot like what happened to Rambo.

[Tywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, DMC said:

When you put it like that, sounds a lot like what happened to Rambo.

Rambo vs 100 Mounties. All parties are armed as they desire. Who are you betting on?

@Fragile Bird

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Rambo vs 100 Mounties. All parties are armed as they desire. Who are you betting on?

John Rambo.  Duh.

[Tywin et al.]

31 minutes ago, DMC said:

John Rambo.  Duh.

Level: Patriot.

Now you're a fully armed Rambo fighting..... 1,000 Mounties riding elephants. Who you got?

 

[Winterfell is Burning]

25 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Level: Patriot.

Now you're a fully armed Rambo fighting..... 1,000 Mounties riding elephants. Who you got?

 

Did the elephants travel to Canada or the Mounties travelled to India to ride them? How much elephant riding training they have? Those are relevant questions.

[Chataya de Fleury]

4 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Did the elephants travel to Canada or the Mounties travelled to India to ride them? How much elephant riding training they have? Those are relevant questions.

And how hilly was the land mass?

[Tywin et al.]

Rambo is clearly fighting the 1,000 Mounties riding 1,000 elephants in the Amazon jungle. And they're very well trained.

Don't be ridiculous. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

39 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Now you're a fully armed Rambo fighting..... 1,000 Mounties riding elephants. Who you got?

Scipio Africanus, and a thousand hyperintelligent elephants riding Romans.

 

[Tywin et al.]

2 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Scipio Africanus, and a thousand hyperintelligent elephants riding Romans.

 

Now you're just being an asshole.

New power, Rambo controls all the ants in the Amazon and then sends them across the Atlantic to eat you. They can return to fight the aforementioned Mounties riding elephants only after their mission is done.

If you'd like, you can ask future-person @larrytheimp anything about how it all goes down.