Happy Alferd G Packer Day!
It was celebrated April 17th at University of Colorado, from 1968-1995 and may still be. Packer remains a basic icon there, noted in his museum, the Alferd Packer Grill http://umc.colorado.edu/food/grill_pages.html & the Mexican food counter, El Canibal.
Packer remains the only US convicted anthropophagus. On 2/9/1874 Packer, as guide for a mining party, with 5 miners left camp in the (now-called) Cannibal Plateau in the San Juan Mts of Colorado. On 4/16, Packer reached town alone, but fit & healthy. In August their bodies were found. It was evident that they had been murdered and that flesh had been cut from them. Packer served 18 years of a life sentence. He admitted eating the men but always claimed he didn't actually kill them; they killed each other & the last one attacked Packer. Packer barely saved himself by shooting the actual murderer.
He died 4/23/1907 at age 65 (b1842).
There's a great deal one might write about him, mostly comical.
In 1995, a medical forensics team, as an exercise, exhumed & examined. They concluded he was the murderer & was correctly convicted. They found, AND I QUOTE, "like Packer's victims, justice had been served."
There are a number of traditional and recent songs about him including a great catchy tune in "Cannibal! The Musical," directed by & staring Trey Parker. The following most closely matches the oral tradition surrounding Packer:
When the judge pronounced the sentence
He was in a righteous rage;
And what he said can still be read
Upon the yellowed page;
He wished that they could hang old Al
Until completely dead,
So when he banged the gavel,
It was in anger that he said:
"Oh, Alfred Packer,
You should be skinned alive!
There was only seven Democrats - [in the county]
And you bastard, you et five."
"Ballad of Alfred Packer," by Jack Guinn, 10,000 Goddam Cattle,
Katie Lee & also in DigTrad, Filename ALPACKER. [Thanx Alan Thiesen]