Episode 625: Albert Johnson: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
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Hey weirdos, it's Ash. Before we dive into today's twisted tale, let me tell you about the spooky perks of Wondery+. It's like having a skeleton key that unlocks ad-free listening and early access to new episodes. So don't wait, try Wondery Plus today. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.

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Wait, guys, serious question. Did you get your invite to our next Weirdos Audio book club? No? Oh my god, I'm so sorry. Well, consider yourself invited. This time, you guys, we are covering the audible title Bluebeard, a suspenseful radio-style dramatization of true-life events leading to the capture of infamous, the infamous Bluebeard Watson, who conned and killed countless women in the early 1900s.

Join us and a special guest on Friday the 13th of December while we talk about this title. Join the conversation on Instagram, Friday, December 13th, Weirdos Audiobook Club. Hey, Weirdos. I'm Alayna. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid. Hey there, brothers. It's also morbid with a little bit of ambiance because it's lightly raining, which we... I know I'm an elderly person when I say this, but...

My goodness, we needed it. No, we did. Oh my God, wait. Isn't there a song about like needing the rains? I miss you like the desert misses the rain. Yes! You knew exactly what I was talking about. And I miss you like the desert's missed the rain. Is that J-Lo? No. Sorry. No. Like the desert's missed the rain. Hold on. Oh, and it goes, and I miss you.

I feel like I can picture that music video in my head right now. I think the J-Lo one that I was thinking of was like, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,

I don't like JLo. Well, yeah. No, I don't like her as a person. No, I don't like her songs either. So there's really nothing there for me. Wait, you don't like Don't Be Fooled by the Rocks That I Got? You don't like that song? I do not. What the fuck? I remember it was on like TRL when I was, you know, for the TRL days. And I remember that.

But it was never, I don't know. Let me see how old I was when that song came out because I feel like I remember bopping hard to that. I like, oftentimes, I don't always, but the things I've seen her in, I like J.Lo the actress. Like The Cell. The Cell is such a film. Oh, we got to cover that on Scream. What the fuck am I doing here? The Cell I've never seen. The Cell is a wild movie. See, I like Monster-In-Law.

I haven't seen that. Is that what that one's called? Is that? Mikey's saying yes. Yeah. In Mikey we trust. I haven't seen that one. You haven't seen Monster-in-Law? No. That's a fun one. I've seen her in The Cell. Oh.

I've seen her in, I'm sure I've seen her in other things. Jane Fonda's in Monster in Law and Jane Fonda is everything. Yeah, I haven't seen that. Yeah. I'm trying to think of other J-Lo things. I'm sure there's many that I'm missing right now that people are screaming and I'm like, what? A lot of them are rom-coms, so it makes sense that you can't think of them. Yeah, because I like a rom-com every once in a while. It just has to be a very specific one. Yeah. Those are all like the early aughts ones and those ones are always fun. Those are great. Yeah. Yeah. What a random intro.

We didn't plan to talk about any of that. No, but it just happened. We went from the deserts missing the rain to J-Lo. Hello? Hello. Hello. You know what? A random intro for a random episode. Tell me everything. Because this episode, so this is about the mad trapper of Rat River. Yeah.

You couldn't even finish that. The mad trapper of Rat River. Yes. I think I come from the Rat River. From the Rat River. I feel like. This is a wild and random and very different tale, I would say, than we normally cover. Okay. But it's one that, unfortunately, people die during this. Like, this is not without death, not without murder. Yeah. Yeah.

Not without mystery. I love mystery. Because at the end of this, there is still a mystery that's involved with it to this day. Unsolved? It's unsolved. But you think you know the answer. There's a theory and like it's a pretty good one. Okay. But there's still mysterious elements to this, which makes it very interesting to talk about. Makes me think of your kids when they were like, the quack of mystery. The quack of mystery. There's mysteries in there. Yeah.

The cave of mysteries. The cave. The cave of Blanche. Blanche is like, wait, I have something to say. He said, mysteries. So basically this is, his name was, and I should say in air quotes, Albert Johnson. But it wasn't. Because we don't know his real name. Oh, an alias. That is the name that people know him as. Okay.

Like you said, an alias. This is a manhunt that was so wild and so long and so scary and so iconic that it honestly doesn't sound real. I can't believe I've never heard of this. It's a crazy one. So let's go back to when this all began.

Canada, like the United States, like, you know, like, like down here was hit really hard by the economic and social effects of the Great Depression. Oh, yeah. It was it was a widespread issue. Obviously, it wasn't just like in certain parts feeling it. Yeah. You know, there was a ton of droughts which wreaked havoc on the agricultural industry. And that caused a ripple effect that by 1930 happened.

had put as much as 30% of the workforce out of a job. Wow. And that's huge. Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah. The economic shock and the hardships of the Depression was really, really, like, specifically hard on the residents of the more rural and remote parts of the country. Mm-hmm. Because they were lacking, you know, like, the social welfare structure that a lot of people in urban areas and more, like, well-populated areas were really relying on. Yeah. And many of these people were self-sufficient and independent.

Instead of taking any kind of charity or anything like that, they chose to seek out alternative means of employment in the small towns and villages and, you know, like military outposts in Canada. Right.

in the North and West. And in the summer of 1931, at the absolute peak of the depression, a man calling himself Albert Johnson arrived in Fort McPherson, which was a remote village in the Northwest Territories, about 650 miles from the nearest cities of Whitehorse and Dawson City. So very remote.

At that time, it wasn't super unusual for like random strangers to wander into Fort McPherson. It was usually they were like either on their way to or coming from the more remote parts of the area. Okay. So it was kind of like a pass through. Yeah. In those cases, it was the practice of the local RCMP agents to briefly question these people, the random people coming through, um,

Because, like, as journalist Barbara Roden put it, they basically wanted to ascertain their plans and try to ensure that the person was equipped for life in the rugged North.

This was obviously about that person's safety. They didn't want them wandering out into the mountains and just like, see you later, goodbye. But it was also about resources because if somebody inexperienced was going out there to trap or hunt and they got stuck and needed help... It's going to cost a lot. It was a lot of effort. And the RCMP, you know, they didn't want to have to expend all...

all those extra resources that they really didn't have at their disposal at that time. I get that. On somebody who shouldn't have been out there in the first place. You know, it makes sense. Makes sense, yeah. On July 21st, 1931, the day that Albert Johnson got to town, the task of questioning the man fell to Constable Edgar Millen. Remember that name? He's going to come up later. Writing it down. He was one of just three RCMP officers stationed in the area. Yeah.

And Millen found him, you know, Albert Johnson, purchasing supplies in the general store. And Johnson told the Mountie that he had come into the Arctic through the McKenzie River system. He had obviously, at this point, he had been made aware of Albert Johnson's presence from some of the local native trappers in the area. And basically the native trappers were saying that they believed this man was like,

with their traps. Oh, no. And they had, like, described him and everything. So Millen knew Johnson was lying to him about where he'd been because he was like, I know you've been fucking with those traps. Yeah. So I know you're not just coming in from the McKenzie River system. But he was kind of accustomed to dealing with people like this, so, you know.

And apparently trappers and fishermen kind of like guard their territories pretty closely because they don't want to avoid competition. So it's all like a little bit of a game. Yeah. Of secrecy and all that. Right. And honestly, to Millen, it didn't really matter where Johnson had come from as much as where he was planning to go. He's like, you going into my territory or not? Like, what are you doing? Yeah.

From the look of things, Albert Johnson was a skilled trapper and he honestly wasn't going to need and it didn't seem like he was really even going to accept any assistance from the RCMP. So Millen didn't really press the whole thing. He was like, I'm pretty sure he'll just go out there and we'll never see him again. Yeah. He's like, that's ideal. And Johnson was giving like super short, very curt answers to him and he wasn't making a lot of eye contact. He was making it very clear to Millen that like,

I'm an isolated person. I live an isolated life. I would like to keep it that way. Leave me alone kind of thing. Leave me alone. So Millen was like, cool. So before leaving the store, he kind of left it alone. But Constable Millen told Johnson, fine, whatever, whatever you're doing, I don't give a shit. But he was like, if you're planning to do any trapping in the area, you do need to obtain a license. Yeah. And you need to know that.

But Johnson was just like, whatever. Now, a week later, Johnson was back at the general store and he purchased a 12-foot canoe and some other, a ton of other supplies. And the clerk behind the counter was like, hey, you might want an outboard motor for this boat. And I guess Johnson flexed his arms and said, no, these are good enough for me. Oh, no. Yeah.

He's like an OG Chad. Yeah. He's like, welcome to the gun show, baby. This is all I need. But you know what's crazy? He was kind of right. He wasn't really like over, over, overzealous. Yeah. He wasn't, he wasn't exaggerating his abilities at all. All right. Like,

Well, you know what? Still, though. Good for him, then. Doesn't come off great. Yeah, we love a humble king. We love a humble king. Now, after getting all the supplies, Johnson headed out to the canoe and began paddling downstream in the direction of...

The Rat River. Now, he spent the rest of the summer and fall building a small 8x12 cabin on a plot of land that he had staked out for himself about 70 miles from Arctic Red River. And that's the Arctic Red River is where Millen and the other two RCMP officers were stationed out there. So he was either building that cabin, and if he wasn't building the cabin, he was hunting and building up his food storage for the winter season. Right.

He also spent a lot of time surveying the area. He was getting to know where he was. And during this time, he definitely learned where the trap lines were for local trappers where, like I said, they're very territorial about their trap lines. That's where they set their traps. So he made a point of learning that. He would know where those were. So it's not like he accidentally stumbled upon their traps and fucked them up.

Like he knew he was like looking out for that. Okay. Um, specifically William, and I hope I said everybody's name right. William Vetracqua, Jacob Drymeat, and William Nerisu, which were all members of the local Lu Show tribe. And I hope I said that right. I looked it up several places. Lu Show tribe. Okay. Edgar Millen hadn't thought about Albert Johnson since he had left Fort McPherson in early like

like early in the summer when he had met him in the general store. Right. So he wasn't even thinking about him, especially when Neri Sue showed up at Arctic Red River Trading Post on Christmas Day to report that Johnson had been fucking with their traps. Oh, come on, dude. So initially he was like, what? Like, I don't know who that is.

Now, according to Nerisu, Johnson had encroached on their trap lines, and in recent weeks, he had been springing the traps and hanging them from tree branches. Oh, so he's being like— So he's being really fucking with them. Yeah, he's being like deliberate about this. And he was also making it very obvious that his interference with these traps wasn't an accident. Right. Like he could have said before it was an accident and nobody could really prove otherwise. Yeah. He's hanging them from a tree. Like he's being very obvious about it.

So then Millen was like, oh, shit, I do remember this guy. I remember that interaction I had with him. And he remembered that he also hadn't purchased a trapping license before leaving Fort McPherson like he had told him to. And he was like, and I'm pretty sure he probably didn't get one anywhere else. So not only was his interference a matter that was going to be taken seriously by the RCMP, but now he was also poaching. And that was going to be a problem. Yeah.

So the next day, Millen directed constables Alfred King and Joe Bernard to travel more than 60 miles out to Johnson's cabin...

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offer of the year. Head to simplisafe.com slash morbid. That's simplisafe.com slash morbid. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. And talk to him about what was going on. He's got some accusations now. Yeah. The two officers traveled by dog sled and arrived a little past 10 a.m. on December 27th. And when they reached the cabin, they noticed that there was smoke coming from the chimney and there were snowshoes propped up by the door. So it seems like somebody's home. He's home.

Because he also, he literally couldn't have traveled far without those snowshoes. So they knew he was either home in there or he's like right there. Yeah. Like they literally came from, by dog sled. So that makes sense. Exactly. So King knocked loudly on the door and announced that they were there, but no one replied. Despite getting no response, the constables knew he was home and they definitely knew they, he heard them knock. Yeah. So at one point he had even watched them through the window and they saw him. Did they?

They're like, hey, it's you we're looking for. They were like, hi. And he saw that they saw him and he just closed the curtains. That's moderately iconic. Now, after spending an hour trying to convince Albert Johnson to open the door and they still got no response, the officers had to give up and walk back to their sleds.

And they didn't have any way of contacting Millen to tell him what was going on and that they had made this trip for nothing. For no reason. So King and Bernard decided to travel the shorter distance to the RCMP headquarters at...

I hope I'm going to say this. A clavik. I looked that up at many places as well. A clavik. Okay. Where they could obtain a search warrant for the cabin and then they could come back the next day with more officers. Oh, that's great. They were trying to do it on the up and up. Yeah, and trying not to like waste too many resources it seems. Yeah, like let's just get this done. And take too many trips, you know? They could have never predicted that.

how this would go. I'm so, I'm like, what's going to happen? You can't, it's bonkers. Also, I'm just picturing him for an hour. Like, you know when somebody's at your door, like they're going to sell you something and you're like, oh, I'm not answering the door. What do you do for an hour? And in a cabin. Yeah, in like a tiny, like, yeah, what'd you say, like 8x12 cabin? Do you have a good book in there? You gotta. Damn. Now, early in the morning on December 30th, after obtaining their search warrant,

King and Bernard left Declavik for Johnson's cabin. This time they added more RCMP constables. They added R.G. McDowell and Lazarus. I hope I say this again. Some of these names are really tough. City Kinley. Okay. Lazarus is a sick name. It's true. It is.

It is. The four men reached the cabin around noon on December 31st and they went to the door, knocked, announced they were there. Again, smoke was coming from the chimney. So they knew he was inside ignoring them. So King shouted that they had a warrant to search the premises. And if Johnson didn't open the door, they were going to force it and enter anyway because they had the warrant. Yeah. So they approached the door and they were coming from a side angle.

Oh, no. And Johnson had...

had shot a shotgun blast out the front door and it hit King in the chest. Oh, God. And it knocked him off the porch into the snow and McDowell and Johnson ended up like returning fire with each other with pistols. Right. And attempting to keep

king down long enough so they could get him off to the riverbank out of the line of fire because he had just fallen back into the snow yeah so they're like we're not trying to get you shot again exactly but they but it was like crazy like gunfight ensued like barely missed mcdowell at one point like it was gnarly damn and the constables did manage to get back to the sleds at the riverbanks where they loaded king onto one of the sleds and like fled out of there

King was bleeding like super badly. Shotgun blasts to the chest. Yeah, like close range too. And they needed now to get back to Aklavik to save his life. That's where the doctors were. That sounds like it's not like a short distance. They were 80 miles from where that is. And the temperature was almost 40 below zero. Oh my God. And when they factored in the wind, it could drop as low as 90 below zero. Sorry, where are we?

We're in Canada. Holy shit, that's cold. Yeah. Damn. Yeah. So going back to a clavic from this place...

It would take a skilled outdoorsman with all of the things he needs two days. Yeah, that makes sense. Conditions, and that was like in, you know, ideal conditions. Conditions were not ideal here. No. Like not ideal, anything but ideal. Quite the opposite. Their sled dogs were already exhausted from getting to the cabin. The first trip, right. And strong winds and snow drifts had covered all of them.

all the tracks that they had laid on the way there. So they would have to run through fresh, dense snow to get back. Oh, my God. And despite that, McDowell drove the dogs like as hard as he possibly could just to save this man's life. And they managed to get to Aklavik in 24 hours. Holy shit. So they cut a whole day off. Skilled outdoorsman, two days. Damn. In ideal conditions. This is like a legend. Yes. Is this folklore? Yes.

You would think it is. That's the thing. I mean, you cannot understate how fast this was and how unbelievable and incredible it is. In 1931, the Northern Territories were...

so remote and the route they traveled was like this winding crazy trail too and it went over like steep banks and across frozen terrain I mean they were hitting every kind of terrain on the way there it's not like it was a straight shot like down a hill or something like they were going up a hill down a hill around the trees yeah like winding everywhere

And under any circumstances, the windshield would be the biggest challenge. Yeah. Because the windshield is gnarly. Yeah. According to author Dick North, quote, even with a parka, fluid from a running nose freezes in a man's nostrils. Oh. And an ice film will collect on his eyelids. Oh. Imagine how uncomfortable that would be and painful. Yeah, and you're flying through it.

Like at high speed. You must just be like blinking nonstop. Oh, yeah. So apparently in order to stop frostbite from happening, they all, so there was four men on the way with King. Sure.

All of them took turns rubbing King's face to keep him warm to prevent frostbite. So they would all just be like rubbing his face. And this man has been shot in the chest. By a shotgun. And he was alive when they got there the next day? Holy shit. I wonder if those conditions helped keep him alive somehow. I know, you wonder if it helped somehow. They immediately, when they got there, rushed him to the hospital and he was taken into surgery by the resident doctor, J.A. Urquhart.

Which immediately I have like, we have like ancestry that like went over to Nova Scotia in Canada. So I'm like, am I related? You could be. I'll update you. I'm going to look at my shit. Damn. Well, I'm going to have John take a look-see. A look-see. But I was like, oh my God, that's not the same. I never see it in any of these. I know. But the bullet had entered through the upper left side of King's chest and exited through the right and had missed all vital organs. Wow. Yeah.

Like, miraculously. I just think of that bring it on thing. You've been touched by an angel, girl. You've been touched by an angel, girl. That's crazy. Yeah. While he recovered in the infirmary, the other three returned to RCMP headquarters to report what the fuck had just happened at that cabin. Yeah. Now, in Eklavik, Inspector Alexander Ames had 11 RCMP officers under his command, and he had three additional constables where they just were at the Arctic Red River outpost. That's where they initially were.

Ames selected his nine most experienced officers to go back to the cabin and then sent word to Red River instructing Millen and his two constables to meet them at the mouth of the Rat River. Okay. Because Millen was from the beginning, remember? And he was one of those three that was at the Red River. Yep.

Now, the men set out for the cabin early in the morning on January 4th, 1932, and they made camp about eight miles from the cabin. Their plan was to ambush Johnson and take him in with no shots fired. That's ideal. They didn't want all this shit. The next morning, two officers were sent ahead of the others to scout the cabin. They found smoke coming from the chimney, so he's home. So they made camp a little closer, and then the whole team met up shortly before noon on January 9th.

Once they got to the cabin, they spread out and surrounded the house while Ames shouted for Johnson to come out.

He shouted to him, King was still alive, so at the very least, you will not be charged with murder. Okay. And there is still time to resolve this matter without trouble. Okay. So he's really trying to talk him down. Like, nobody... I know you're probably freaking out because you shot someone in the chest with a shotgun. Right. A literal man of the law. Yeah. Like, out in the wilderness. But have no fear. We can talk about it. But, like, you didn't murder him, so there's that. Why don't you come out? Yeah. But no reply. So instead...

They were greeted with gunfire from inside the cabin again, kicking off what would be an 18-hour siege at the cabin. I'm sorry, what? 18 hours. How did it take that long? How did they have that much gunfire? It's wild. So initially, the officers tried to get close to the cabin, basically assuming if they could get inside, they could take Johnson down. Yeah, that makes sense. Stop the whole thing. Right. But any time they would get close to the small front door, they would have to push back because it was endless gunfire. Right. Right.

And it was coming not from the windows, but from holes that Johnson had drilled near the floor in anticipation of them coming back. That's on another level. Yeah. This man is not well. No. In fact, the angle...

where the gunfire was coming at them was like so perplexing to them because they were like, where the fuck is this coming? It feels like it's coming out of the ground. Like, what is going on? Seems like it was. And they only learned it later when they were able to search this place that he had dug a trench, a deep trench. Motherfucker had a trench? Motherfucker is in the trenches. He's in the trenches in his cabin where he has drilled holes into like near the floor where he can shoot from. What the fuck?

And he's in the trench firing at them from his position near the floor. And from that position, it was impossible for the RCMP officers to hit Johnson because they couldn't get close enough to the inside. And shooting through the windows from their position was pointless. They were shooting at him through the cabin, the trenches. Now, given their location, the gunfire wasn't the only problem that they were facing at

At 45 below zero, they were having to continuously move just to avoid frostbite. Right. They couldn't stay in one position or they'd fucking freeze. Yeah. And to make matters worse, they didn't know they were going to be involved in an 18-hour standoff tonight. So they weren't prepared. So they didn't pack enough food to sustain themselves or the dogs for a long period of time. No. At the riverbank, they built fires and officers were rotating between watching the cabin and warming themselves by the fire.

And this kept the frostbite from happening, but it didn't solve the other problems. And Ames knew he had to come up with a plan quick or they were going to have to go back to Aklavik and maybe risk losing Johnson. Yeah. So when the sun started to set and the temperatures really started to drop even lower, Ames ordered the men to retrieve the dynamite from the sleds and begin warming it in their coats.

The dynamite? When it was warm enough to use, Constable Newt Lang volunteered to toss the explosives into the room. I'm sorry. You know he was like me. He was like, I'll do it. I love that they didn't bring enough food for this ordeal, but they did bring dynamite. Just in case.

When midnight came and all the flares had gone out, Lang approached the cabin quietly and the other officers distracted Johnson by continuously like answering the gunfire, essentially. And he lit the stacks of dynamite and tossed them onto the roof.

The explosion blew a big hole in the roof, sending the chimney flying in all directions. No more fire. And then the chaos of the explosion, Lang burst through the front door and found himself face to face with Albert Johnson. That must have been horrifying. But according to North, who I mentioned above and we will link in the show notes, for some unexplained reason, the constable froze and failed to shoot him.

What? And in that moment, Johnson regained his composure and began firing a pistol in one hand and a sawed-off shotgun in the other. So Lang stumbled back out of the cabin and went running back to the riverbank. Lang. Lang. Lang. That's what I said.

Like, what happened there? Shoot him. You threw the dynamite. You couldn't finish it off? Come on. But the CMP agents held out until the next morning, January 10th, and that's when Inspector Ames decided to make one last attempt at getting him the fuck out of that cabin. Ames gathered the remaining four pounds of dynamite.

Bundled it together, lit the fuse, and hurled the explosives at the cabin. The explosion ripped the roof clear off the structure and caved several parts of the walls in. Oh my gosh. So basically the entire cabin came down. Yeah. On Johnson. Yeah.

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So they were like, cool, we'll catch him off guard because this whole place just blew up. This should work. This should do. I have a feeling this will do the trick. Ames and one of the other constables, Carl Gardland, rushed in and they had flashlights in their hands. And they were basically expecting to find him unconscious at the very least, you know. But when they pulled away the front door, Johnson was not only alert...

Like with it. But he shot them. But he fired at them with his pistol. We know. And he shot the flashlight out of Gardland's hands. What? How did we just pop off like this? I don't know what this man's MO is at all. All I know is he's just going crazy. He's going bonkers. Yeah, balls to the wall. So this was clearly unexpected, this attack. So it drove them both back to the riverbank where they had no choice but to load the sleds and get the fuck out of there and go back to Aklavik.

Because they're like, we've blown him up twice. And he's still shooting. Like, what is going on? They're fucking Michael Myers. Literally. Back at the RCMP headquarters, the team's regrouped and we're like, we need a new strategy for getting Michael Myers out of this house. What would it be? I'm like, all you can do is literally light it on fire. Several of the officers wanted to go back and firebomb the cabin. They were like, let's just literally firebomb this thing. But Ames wanted to take him alive.

He was like, I do not want to kill him. I mean, I could see why. On January 15th, he sent the constables Gardland and Millen back to the mouth of the Rat River to keep an eye on the cabin. But by the time they got there, Johnson had cleared out and was on the run. Well, that makes sense, too. I'm like, guys, you blew the roof off his place. He can't stay there very long. But by then, also, the news of King being shot and the siege at the cabin was already national news. And this is all just over traps. Yeah. Yeah.

He would have just got like a fine or something. Like, it's like, holy shit. And then he murdered or tried to kill a cop. Yeah. So this is national news. Journalists are reporting all of these antics of Albert Johnson. And they started calling him the mad trapper of Rat River.

Whoever came up with that, hats off to them. Honestly, a race. The mad trapper of Rat River. Motherfucker. Now, while the rest of the team were strategizing back at RCMP headquarters, Gardland and Milland were cautiously approaching the cabin to search it for things. Okay.

You know, they wanted to find any clues, any plans he might have had. Right. And the cabin had been like obliterated, essentially. I mean, yeah, we just heard. But according to Gardland, the agents found it hard to believe their adversary had survived the last dynamite blast. Oh, so they thought he died? They were like, maybe he like was in shock or something when we saw him and he popped up with fucking two guns. Yeah.

It's like Billy Loomis out in these streets. Yeah, truly. But honestly, there was, he wasn't there and there was little of value in the cabin. They did find a lot of like a concealed load of supplies hidden high in the trees nearby, which was a testament really to like his outdoor skills. Yeah. He had hid tons of shit in the trees. Yeah.

She's got shit in the trees. He's wild. This is wily. The constables also discovered Johnson's canoe still tied up at the river edge, so that meant that he had fled into the wilderness on foot. On foot, yeah. Now, on January 16th, the search team departed Aklovik in the direction of the cabin, and this time they were well prepared for what they knew could be a very extended search on very rough terrain. A

Among other things, they had with them a two-way radio that would let them communicate quickly and communicate, I just said. I'm so happy you went there because I was like, you can't skip over that. Because I was going to say quickly. Communicate quickly. Communicate quickly and I was like, communicate quickly. Wow.

Wow. I loved that. This would help them communicate very quickly and easily with headquarters, you know, if they needed emergency assistance, because now we don't know what this dude is capable of on the streets. I'm surprised anybody was even willing to go out at this point. Yeah, I'd be like, fuck that. I think I'm going to put my two weeks in, and actually I mean my one day. Here you go. I'm going to try baking. Like, I don't want to do this. Yeah. Now, at the same time,

warnings were going out to everyone living in and around Klovik, alerting them to any of the potential risks. We don't know what this dude is capable of. He was shooting everybody. Well, and he's eventually going to need more supplies, too. Yeah, exactly. Breaking. Now, as a result, many of the people living in the more isolated areas chose to stay in Klovik while Johnson was captured.

Oh, okay. Now, for nearly two weeks, the team of our CMP officers just scoured the area around the cabin looking for any signs of Johnson, any evidence of where he might have gone. Two weeks they were looking for him. Damn.

And unfortunately, it was so bitterly cold and the wind and subzero temperatures were making it so difficult to search for like long periods of time. And then there was recent snowfall and heavy drifts that were covering any tracks that he could have left. So it was like perfect for him. But in late January, Ames and his team received a report of gunshots near Bear River.

Thinking it might be Johnson hunting for food, Ames sent Millen and three other men ahead to scout the area, with a plan for them all to meet up together after this if they found evidence of him being around. Okay. When they arrived, Millen spoke to several members of the local tribe.

who told him that they believed the man suspected B. Johnson had holed up in a remote cabin nearby because they said he could not have crossed over the hills under the current weather conditions. I don't know. I think he did. I think he crossed them hills. One of the things they learned after this was maybe don't underestimate Albert Johnson because holy shit. Exactly. So with assistance from several native men, the four constables soon found tracks matching those of Johnson's very distinct snowshoes

and followed the trail until they reached an area covered by this like, basically it was like an area that was covered by a barricade that was like a natural barricade of trees and boulders and all that stuff. Okay. And there were tracks leading in, but no tracks coming out. So the four constables spread out and approached the entrance very quietly. Yeah, they better have.

But without warning, Johnson began firing at them from behind the tree line, pushing them all back. Of course he did. All four opened fire in the general direction from where the shots were coming from, but there was no return fire after that.

So they were like, oh, shit, we either incapacitated him or killed him. So they waited two hours before going to check the area because they were that nervous that he was just fucking with them. You know that everybody on the banks was like, no, you go in. No, you go in. I'm not going in, man. We'll just wait a minute. So when they got within about 25 yards of the tree line, one of the constables, Noel Verville, shouted, watch it.

and then dove for cover behind a snowbank as a rifle shot struck the ground exactly where he had been standing. Oh my God. Literally yelled, watch it, dove out of the way and it hit right where he was sitting. And two of the other officers also scrambled for cover. This is like an action movie. It doesn't sound

real. No, it does not. But Millen stood his ground and dropped to his knee and fired three rounds in Johnson's direction. Damn. Johnson returned fire and hit Millen in the chest.

Millen apparently bolted upright and spun around and then fell face down on the ground. And two other officers provided cover for like cover fire for Carl Gardland. I just did like a... You literally did. I made the thing. And they crawled towards Millen and tied the laces of his boots together and dragged him out of...

johnson's line of fire essentially why'd they tie his boots together so they could literally pull him by the boots oh okay okay okay because the other one like he was he's literally shooting at them two officers are providing cover fire while he's literally like trying to drag him out of the way got it then when they were finally in a safe spot gardland turned millen over and saw that the bullet had torn straight through his heart and had killed him instantly so when he bolted upright he just fell and died immediately yeah

And that's why I said remember Millen. I know. What a brave fucking dude. Yeah, he was the one. He was like, fuck that. I'm going to take this guy out. Yeah. Now the remaining officers retreated into the woods away from Johnson's line of sight. And they built a lean-to to try to protect Millen's body from animals until they could return. And then they made their way back to the campsite about a mile away. Okay.

The next day, one of them returned to the area to retrieve Constable Millen's body, while another returned to Aklavik to report about what had happened. Why is this guy so aggro? And they had to tell them that Johnson had escaped again. Now, Sergeant Riddle made it back to Aklavik in a little over 24 hours on January 22nd and reported the death to Ames. And Ames sent out the report across the RCMP wire.

And the news of Millen's murder and Johnson's third escape made headlines across North America. A reporter from the New York Times called Johnson a two-gun hermit. That's what they referred to him as. Two-gun hermit. While the press maintained, like, I'm glad, like, they definitely maintained, like, a pretty, like, somber tone when they were talking about the murder, essentially. Yeah.

But it also made, like, the fact that he escaped three times and this was his third time escaping, it didn't make the RCMP look good. And they were very open about that in the press. And the longer he remained kind of like on the yam there. On the yam. On the lamb. On the sweet potato. He was like, the more he was out there and the more he's on the run and the more he's escaping and the more these things get more and more like crazy and, you know, dramatic and all that. Yeah.

There was running a risk of him becoming a sort of like anti-hero among the anti-establishment residents across the territories. It just like it was starting to turn the story a little bit. I didn't even think of that. And you don't want that to happen, obviously. So not wanting to waste any time for that to happen, Ames radioed for additional assistance, specifically requesting a plane that could scout the area while the RCMP agents and volunteers took to ground searches.

In response, they got a small craft piloted by William May, who was a member of the Royal Flying Corps and one of the flying aces who successfully shot down the notorious Red Baron during World War I. Oh, wow. That is no joke. And May wasn't just a talented and experienced pilot. He was literally like a living legend who'd helped to open up the Northern Territories. So he was like a big deal. That's incredible, yeah. Unlike Ames' team on the ground, he could cover everything.

big like swaths of territory in a short amount of time in the plane and was immediately useful in ruling out the leads that ultimately provided false in the end. Anybody saying like, I think I saw him, they were able to like get these out. Now, while May looked for Johnson overhead, Ames' team was, you know, making their way to the site of Millen's murder on February 5th, but there was no sign of Johnson anymore.

From what they could tell, he had never emerged following the shootout. Like, he had never come back out of that, like, barricade that he had set up. So you're probably like, then how the fuck wasn't he there? Yep. Oh, he had climbed the nearly 7,000-foot cliff.

Yeah. He climbed a nearly 7,000 foot cliff wall to escape by traveling on the hard pack snow above the creek beds. Does anybody else have those relatives that tell like crazy stories from like their days of youth and you're like, yeah, grandpa, like that's cool. That didn't happen though. This guy? That feels like this. Like I'm like, what? This happened? So I didn't come out of the front. I just climbed a 7,000 foot cliff. That's not real. How is that real? That is not real.

But he is. Yeah. Yep. Like, yep. Yep. Yeah. He basically he went like so there was hard pack snow above the creek beds and it allowed him to move quickly and put a lot of distance very quickly between him and whoever was hunting him.

Also working. Yeah. Also working to Johnson's advantage was the fact that unlike the large group who required supplies and needed to manage, you know, animals that they were using, he was traveling alone. Right. And he seemed to know where he was going. So he didn't, he was just bopping away. See you later. By mid-February. Shut up. This ordeal started in December, you guys. Yeah.

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By mid-February, he was joined by several men from the Inuvialuit and Gwich'in tribes. And I, again, I apologize. I'm not saying that as correctly as I should, but I looked it up, I promise.

who they were familiar with the region and were just as interested in capturing Johnson as the RCMP. Yeah, they're like, get this guy the fuck out of our territory. They had a lot of help from these, like, native tribes. Like, local tribes. Yeah, and on February 12th, one of the native men reported that Johnson had been spotted snowshoeing on the west side of the Richardson Mountain.

which indicated that he traveled at least 90 miles since he was last spotted three days earlier. My God. Three days, 90 miles on foot. By himself. In crazy weather. No animal, like no dog sled, no nothing. And many of these people, even like these native men who are helping them, were like, this feels impossible. Like this seems impossible. Who is this man? Yeah.

So the group began making their way towards the west side of the mountain, and on February 14th, Valentine's Day, May spotted Johnson's tracks from the air, and it appeared he'd been traveling west. So when the whole team finally reached the area, they realized Johnson was traveling across the frozen riverbed, and his tracks appeared to be less than 24 hours old. So in the two days that followed, the group continued following his trail, finding evidence of him along the way.

And the further they traveled, the more recent the evidence became. Until on February 17th, they discovered tracks and a campfire that was less than a day old. So for nearly five weeks, the RCMP and volunteers had been tracking Albert Johnson and having...

repeatedly underestimated his outdoor skills and allowing him to slip away several times. By the afternoon of February 17th, though, it appeared that it was Johnson who maybe underestimated Ames' men. Because in a reconstruction of the day's events that was later shown, a little before noon that day, Johnson had left the center of the river where he had been walking and climbed a tree on the bank to basically look out for where the search party was.

And he appears to have believed that the party was moving away from him to the south. But in reality, they were approaching a bend in the river that would take them northward again. Okay. So he was thrown off by what he was seeing. Sure.

Although Ames and the other trackers knew they were on the right trail, they didn't really know that they were this close to catching him, even at that point. It was a happy accident. It was. Now, assuming he was in the clear, Johnson got down from the tree and continued following the creek because he thought they were going the other way. Right. And he turned a sharp corner and suddenly saw a search party about 300 yards in front of him. So he quickly strapped on his snowshoes and made a break for the cover of the forest. Finally.

firing at the group as he moved how many guns does he have he is a gun at this point i think like he guns run through his blood i think he can just create them at will yeah now sergeant earl heresy who was leading one of the dog teams jumped from the sled and grabbed his rifle and returned fire and in the exchange heresy caught a bullet in the knee which ricocheted off the bone and traveled a

upward through his elbow and into his chest. I'm sorry, what the actual fuck? Right? Oh, God, that's got to be awful. The damage. So while a few of the men were trying to help him, the remaining men pursued Johnson into the woods, and they followed his tracks and chased him to one of the cover stations that he had made for himself. Oh, my God. Which is basically a ditch surrounded by short snow banks.

And it's possible he simply underestimated how determined Ames and the others were at that point. Or maybe he just thought he was going to get lucky or like, he's got away before, so why wouldn't I now? But by that point, there was really no chance he was coming out of there alive. When he's just one dude, he's got to be fucking tired at this point. You've got to get to the end of the road at some point. And as one team approached Johnson from the ice, another group circled around and took up positions behind him at a slightly elevated angle.

Johnson kept firing at the men on the ice. And when he rolled onto his side into the ditch to reload, the men above him fired. And one of the bullets hit him in the spine. Oh! By the time they reached his position in the ditch, Albert Johnson had been shot seven times. And it was the spinal wound that was the fatal wound that they killed him. Yeah. Yeah.

So why did he do this? What's crazy too is they were aware that they had been fucked around by him before. They'd been tricked by him before. So they waited 10 or 15 minutes before even approaching his dead body. I don't blame them. To confirm that he was dead. They were like, I don't even want to run up on this dude. Like, I don't know what he's got going on. Like Sidney in the end of Scream. After five weeks of pursuing this man in the fucking treacherous,

Like Canadian sub-zero, windchill a billion percent, fucking wilderness. The manhunt finally came to an end here. This is like a Discovery Channel fucking episode. And throughout the whole ordeal, Albert Johnson never spoke a word to them.

From the time they appeared at his cabin knocking on the door until the time they shot him in that ditch, they never heard a

a word out of this man what a mysterious fellow for some reason that just gets me no it does that gets you he was silent because you just picture him being like ha ha ha you will not catch me fuck y'all like you know like just being like like suckers i am like running away yeah or just like yelling nothing nothing never made a sound nothing just shot and ran who is he

That's a great question. So once they had received word that he was finally dead, May, who's in the plane there, he landed his plane nearby and Heresy, who was the one that was shot, was loaded on board and taken back to Aklavik where he was treated. Oh, good. The following day, May returned to get Johnson's body and the rest of the team traveled back by sled.

Now, the news of his death was honestly celebrated across North America as a fitting end to a scary and also pretty exciting adventure for everybody to follow on the outside. It was like...

It was like a story. Like, this didn't feel real. No, like, it's like folklore, like I said. Yeah, it just felt like this, like, unbelievable tale that you were just following along with. And you have to remember, too, the time period where this was happening. Absolutely. Like, nobody had anything. No. So they were just like, whoa. So they did have this story. They did have this, exactly. And then the days after that, several members of the team provided the press with descriptions of the manhunt and the shootout that sounded...

More like a fucking film. A tall tale. Like a film. You're watching like a war film than something that really happened. Sergeant Riddle told a reporter, Johnson fought desperately to the end, emptying his rifle and was in the act of reloading it when killed. The accurate shooting of the posse had riddled his body with bullets.

And the more the story went around, the more it became a little embellished, as it were, or at least exaggerated. In the New York Times, for example, May, the plane, the pilot, the guy who took down the Red Baron, he went from being an essential figure in the third phase of the hunt. Because he absolutely is. To being a major player in the story the entire time, who, quote, tried to bomb Johnson from his cabin. And he did not.

He's like, nah. He's like, nah, I just came in with my plane at the end. He's like, what I did was enough. Don't indulge. You don't need to say it. Now, once Johnson's body was returned to a clavik, it occurred to several people that the man who had been shot and killed by the RCMP didn't look at all like the photos of Johnson that had appeared in the press. Shut up.

One journalist said... You shut your mouth over there. Pictures purporting to be of him were published in several papers, but they turned out to be that of a respected resident of Princeton, British Columbia. That poor man. Yeah. So...

It seemed that, well, a few people in and around Aklavik had spoken to Johnson at one point or another when he was passing through, at least for like a second, you know, like the clerk and all that. Yeah, yeah. And they were given the name Albert Johnson by him. Nobody knew who the fuck he really was. He was not Albert Johnson. That wasn't his real name. So...

A journalist for the Edmonton Journal wrote, And why the fuck he did any of this? In the early 20th century and before...

It was like your identity when you, it was a given. Like if someone told you your name and your biological information, like biographical information, there was no way to confirm that information. Yeah, they weren't like checking his Insta. So you just assumed it to be true. Like that's, you say your name is that, that's your name. Okie doke. And I'm sure he had some kind of paper saying it too. And it's like, well, and it's especially true of the more rural regions like the Northwest Territories because a lot of people go there to escape any modern culture.

You know, so like you say your name is Albert Johnson. That's your name.

So it was when the trapper gave the name Albert Johnson to Millen when he first arrived at Fort McPherson the previous year. Like, that's what it was. He assumed that was his name. But if it wasn't Albert Johnson, who the fuck was he? That's what I'm saying. And also, like you said, why the fuck had he responded so aggressively to the RCMP? Yeah. Like, he was just being confronted about trapping. Yeah, like messing with people's traps. Illegally, like messing with people's traps. And poaching.

Why the fuck did he respond like that? There was no reason. Unless he was wanted for other shitbacks in the States, which is what I think. So in the months that followed, the RCMP circulated the only known photographs of the man who they knew as Albert Johnson, which were taken after his death. That's all they had. Okay. In the hope that someone would recognize him.

Be like, oh, that's my crazy ass brother. And most of it, like for a while, nothing was coming. And then the first theory as to his identity came in late 1932 when RCMP officials got a tip that Johnson strongly resembled a man named Arthur Nelson who had been living in Dease Lake, British Columbia in the mid 1920s, but had traveled north to the Yukon and was last seen in May 1931. Okay. Just a few months before Johnson arrived at Fort McPherson.

They said that's when he had been traveling, like, into the Yukon. That was the last time. But other than that name, the fact that he had lived at Dease Lake, no one seemed to know really much about Nelson's life or his history.

So years later, author Dick North put forth his theory that Johnson and Nelson were in fact a North Dakota criminal by the name of Johnny Johnson. Johnny Johnson? So those were actually aliases for Johnny Johnson. It's like John Jansen, my Bravo heads. So according to North, Johnson had been born in Norway in 1898 and immigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1904.

There, when they got there, they settled on a farm in North Dakota. And in 1915, Johnson was involved in a bank robbery with another man and his partner was wounded and captured, but Johnson escaped. See, this sounds more like it. Johnson was eventually arrested and served jail time in Wyoming in 1918, then returned to the farm in the early 1920s and then disappears from the record.

And it was around this time that Arthur Nelson appeared in Dease Lake. Huh. And it turned out that North's theory had also been the theory of the RCMP. They requested Johnny Johnson's fingerprints from the U.S. authorities. I was going to ask that. To compare to those of Arthur Johnson. Yes. But the test proved inconclusive.

Huh. Now, Albert Johnson's identity came up again in 2007. Shut up. When a team of filmmakers working on a documentary about this mystery got permission for their team of forensic experts to have Johnson's body exhumed and DNA testing done. The examination of the remains revealed some interesting shit. Tell me.

At the time of his death, Johnson, quote unquote, had been about 30, between 30 and 40 years old. Okay. And was of Swedish ancestry. Okay. He had spent a lot of time in the American Midwest in his youth and had suffered from scoliosis.

Which is interesting that he was shot in the spine. Ironic. And that's what killed him. Very ironic. Don't you think? And perhaps most unusual, that despite his like clearly like, you know, mountain man individualistic like drive, like where he was like, I'm very isolated, very like I live in the outdoors. Yeah, DIY king. He had, DIY king, exactly. He had, quote, undergone sophisticated and expensive dental work for the period.

Really? Which is like not lining up. Yeah, no, not at all. And although they were able to learn a great deal more about, you know, the remains known as Albert Johnson, many of those things do like kind of support that theory of Johnny Johnson. Yeah. The forensic team were unable to conclusively give him a name. What the fuck? And...

Maybe it's because his antics were so iconic, so scary, so intense, so gnarly. His identity is so mysterious that I think that's why we will just like, I can't give up on this. The Mad Trapper...

like who the fuck he is and why he did this you can't let it go i will never let it go as long as i live and it has been a huge fixture in canadian culture for more than 90 years at this point like what the fuck is that about this is truly one of the wildest stories i've ever heard yeah it's inspired countless songs poems novels films which i was like where's i gotta watch show me the film yeah like i might write a fucking song about this let's go let's go i've never written a song before in my life i'll write a song like let's go

And still, we don't conclusively know who this man was and why the fuck he reacted the way he did and how he was able to survive out there. Well, so Johnny Johnson is the one who robbed the bank. Yeah. And the other two are aliases. They're all the same person. I feel like I feel like it's got to be him because he's the only one they have.

And who knows what else he did, like what other criminal things would have popped up had the RCMP got him. Yeah. You know? It's just like, but not knowing conclusively is driving me fucking nuts. And what a way to go out. What a way to go out. In a ditch, reloading your gun after five weeks of running in the wilderness in Canada. Yeah.

When you could have just paid a fine. Yeah, don't keep it that weird. Don't keep it that weird. Wow, what a tale. I love that story. I don't love that people die along the way. No, of course not. That is so deeply upsetting. But the actual story itself is riveting. That is riveting. Truly, that's a nail bite. Yeah, it had me on the edge of my seat. I don't have my acrylics on. Looking at this, it's crazy. Damn. Yeah. Wow. So that is the story.

of Albert Johnson, quote unquote, the mad trapper of Rat River. I'd like to say thank you. You're welcome. And we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it. But definitely not so weird as this guy. We already told you not that weird. No, that's weird. What a freaking tale. I love it. This might be one of my favorite episodes. Whoa. ♪♪♪

Bye.

Hello, ladies and germs, boys and girls. The Grinch is back again to ruin your Christmas season with Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast. After last year, he's learned a thing or two about hosting, and he's ready to rant against Christmas cheer and roast his celebrity guests like chestnuts on an open fire.

You can listen with the whole family as guest stars like Jon Hamm, Brittany Broski, and Danny DeVito try to persuade the mean old Grinch that there's a lot to love about the insufferable holiday season. But that's not all. Somebody stole all the children of Whoville's letters to Santa, and everybody thinks the Grinch is responsible. It's a real Whoville whodunit. Can Cindy Lou and Max help clear the Grinch's name? Grab your hot cocoa and cozy slippers to find out.

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