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


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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/

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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

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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.

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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. :)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The far north has its share of and then some of crazed lunatics out in the northern wilderness.

About twenty years ago, i read an account of a couple guys who floated down the Yukon river from Whitehorse (Yukon Territory)} to Ruby (a village NW of Fairbanks)back in the 60's - used to be a thing for the outdoorsy types. North of Fairbanks, the Porcupine River hits the Yukon.  There, they found a ramshackle cabin, presumably leftover from one of the several mini-gold rushes in the states.  Looked occupied, but they didn't see anybody.  Stopped the boat, got out, headed up, found the door ajar, called out, peeked inside, found some tools and crude furnishings - along with a book of laws for Michigan (or maybe Minnesota, I forget which).  Damn strange find for an isolated cabin in the middle of nowhere.  They exited the cabin, made it halfway back to the boat when this crazy guy comes running out of the brush, swinging an ax and bellowing legal lingo at the top of his lungs.  Pair jumped in their boat and paddled off at top speed.

Locally, about thirty years ago, there was another, more straightforward incident.  Wildwood is a former Air Force base constructed for cold war operations that was later converted to a medium security prison.  Two sections: Pre-Trial, at the SW corner, and the main cellblock in the middle.  There was an especially nasty criminal in Pre-Trial whose case had just concluded.  Last night there before being moved to the main block.  This was right after the conversion to prison had taken place, so there were gaps in the security.  Guy makes a dummy fromnewspaper, cut hair and blankets, manages to get rid of a couple bars in his cell window, climbs out, scales a fence topped with razor wire (using another blanket) then hits the street and takes off.  Later, it turns out he spent a night or two hanging out in local bars - then he vanished. 

 

Enter the Gray Cliffs / Moose Point rural subdivisions - a collection of several hundred almost inaccessible lots sold by the Borough (County) starting a year or two prior to all this excitement (I bought and still own one of these lots and have never laid eyes on it) No roads, just ATV trails - but that didn't stop a couple hundred folks from planting cabins on this or that patch of swampland for hunting or whatnot (most were skidded in on ice roads during the winter).  Most of the time, though, these places sat empty, though most held a few weeks worth of supplies for when the owners were there.

 

Turns out our escapee made a beeline for these subdivisions and spent a good six months bouncing from cabin to cabin, living and looting one after another - until the owners showed up and realized what was going on.  Then he vanished again.  When he turned up, he was getting a haircut at a barbers college (beauty school?) in Anchorage.  Somebody recognized him, called the cops, who showed up and shot a surprising number of bullets in his direction, the vast majority of which missed (and endangered other people}.  I forget if he was killed in that incident or not (it was thirty years ago). 

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