Albert Johnson is famous in Canadian crime history for leading Mounties on a sensational and deadly chase through the Yukon and Northwest Territories during the winter of 1931-32. How he managed to elude police over hundreds of kilometers in subzero temperatures through a mountainous wilderness is as much a mystery as his real identity. To this day, very little is known about the man nicknamed “The Mad Trapper”.
My guest, Helena Katz, Canadian historian and author, joins me to talk about her book, “The Mad Trapper: The Incredible Tale of a Famous Canadian Manhunt”. More information can be found at her website at www.katzcommunications.ca.
Interview Transcript:
[00:00:00] Erik
On this episode of the Most Notorious podcast, The greatest manhunt in Canadian history, the 1931-32 pursuit of Albert Johnson, the “Mad Trapper”, through the Northwest Territories in the Yukon.
[00:00:17] Helena
So Albert Johnson had traveled probably close to seventy miles, you know, on foot in the dead of winter in really cold conditions where it could be with the wind chill, it could be minus 50, minus 60, minus 70 degrees. You know, he had had been pursued for 49 days and never gave up until he was completely cornered and surrounded.
[00:01:09] Erik
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Most Notorious podcast. I’m Erik Rivenes. Thank you for joining me. I’m so excited to have as my guest today, Helena Katz, she is an award winning Canadian journalist and author and historian. She has published four non-fiction true crime books, including “Gang Wars, Blood and Guts on the Streets of early New York”. The book she is here to talk about today is called “The Mad Trapper: The Incredible Tale of a Famous Canadian Manhunt”. Great to have you here. Thank you.
[00:01:52] H
Thank you for having me today. And I’m really delighted.
[00:01:56] Erik
Yes, I’m looking forward to it. So when did you first hear about this story?
[00:02:02] Helena
I first heard about this story probably – I want to say 2002, I had heard about a publisher who was looking for some manuscripts or book ideas, and so I went online and I was looking up some information about a bush pilot called Wop May. And because I was thinking, oh, well, maybe I’ll you know, I’ll pitch a book about bush pilots since that tends to intrigue people. And while I was surfing around online looking for information, I came upon the story of the Mad Trapper, and Wop May played a really central role in the story, and so I was sitting there, had a piece of paper on my desk and a pen, and I was just jotting notes down as I was reading on the story on the screen. And when I finished looking at the website, I looked down at the piece of paper on which I had written some notes and I realized that what I had actually been writing was chapter headings. And so I thought, OK, this is obviously a story that speaks to me and one that I need to to write. So I started doing more research and pitched the idea of writing The Mad Trapper and the publisher immediately within two days said, yes, let’s do it. So I worked on the story.
[00:03:42] Helena
They did a bunch of research. But one of the things that I was also wanting to do in that story is because it had been told a few times before, I wanted to try and find a way to tell it a little differently. And so what I did was I went and looked into the archives, the National Archives of Canada. And one of the the scenes in the book is a shootout, a deadly shootout. In some of the details that I used in that particular scene were taken directly from a police report that I had found in the National Archives. I also did some research with the archives for the the Yukon Territory and dug up some material there. That was quite interesting as well, just the little snippets of information. So one of them was a letter that someone had written. She was the wife of a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and she shared some information and there that I hadn’t seen anywhere else. So I was able to integrate those pieces into the story. The other thing that I really wanted to do as well, and I also went and looked at newspaper headlines and newspaper coverage, and I integrated that into the book as well. So one of the parts of that I that I found interesting was and it’s something that I think we can relate to today as well, which is that, you know, we sit in front of our TVs these days and online and we’re looking at things like manhunts and what have you.
[00:05:25] Helena
And, you know, if we look at it with interest, but we don’t always capture in that moment what it’s like for the people on the ground who are actually experiencing and living it. And so one of the things that I found really interesting was in the newspaper coverage was that juxtaposition between the rest of the world and as far as the London Times and and newspapers all over the world were covering, that this manhunt, that juxtaposition between them seeing it as, oh, this really entertaining story versus what was happening on the ground where people were scared. There were trappers from all over the area that were out participating in the manhunt for the Mad Trapper. And and meanwhile, you know, their wives and children were had come into these little settlements to to stay together for for safety reasons. So I found those I found those elements really interesting as well. And then another thing I was really quite conscious of doing was of paying some respect to the special constables of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who had participated in these manhunts and just generally their role.
[00:06:37] Helena
So a lot of the members of of the RCMP were from southern parts of Canada, which were more populated, and they would come north to police the north, but they didn’t necessarily have the wilderness skills and survival skills out in the wilderness to be going out on patrols by themselves. And so and they also didn’t necessarily know the local indigenous languages. So what they would do was that they would hire special constables who acted as guides because they knew the land really well. The special constables were also interpreters because they knew the local language. They taught Mounties the survival skills that they needed when they were out on, you know, on patrols in the middle of the wilderness with with basically nothing but their own smarts to get them through. They would teach them how to drive dog teams and they would also drive dog teams and work alongside the Mounties. So they did play a role as well, in the story of the manhunt and they’ve played, I think, an incredible role in northern Canada, in the north in policing and and assisting and the work that they did with assisting the Mounties. And I think the Mounties could not have done their job without the special constables.
[00:08:11] Erik
So speaking of your isolated area of the world, for those of my listeners who might not be familiar with Canadian geography, can you explain this area, the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, the terrain, especially as it relates to the 1920s and 30s?
[00:08:33] Helena
Ok, so the landscape up here is as largely at the time, the landscape in the area where the manhunt took place in northern in the northern part of the Northwest Territories is largely wilderness. So people were living in camps out on the land. So you can imagine this landscape that’s barren. I guess I could probably the best way to describe it. And there are, as you know, few trading posts and settlements are far apart. And it’s not heavily populated at all. It’s very sparsely populated. And so people would often live out on the land in very isolated camps. And generally twice a year they would come in off the land and go to trading posts where they would trade the furs that they had gotten from trapping. They would trade those in exchange for some supplies like flour and other things that they couldn’t necessarily get off the land. And generally there were periods of the year when they would come off the land and go into these trading posts. So part of it was the summer, which is where the story of the manhunt begins, Albert Johnson, and generally, you know, at Christmas as well. So coming to the trading post was it wasn’t just about getting the supplies, but it was also about reconnecting with family and friends.
[00:10:04] Helena
And it was a very celebratory period of time. So, you know, the landscape is a lot of rivers and you really need strong wilderness skills to survive. And so in the 1930s, one of the things that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would do was, you know, if somebody new showed up in the area, they would check out to make sure that that person was able to manage and had the skills to manage on their own, because, of course, in the Depression, a lot of people were really desperate and looking for work. So you would have somebody who would, you know, maybe come north thinking, OK, well, maybe I can I can find some way to make a living up here. But they weren’t always sufficiently well prepared to do that and to to manage on their own. And so the RCMP had to check to make sure that they would be OK and would be able to fend for themselves, because if that person was not able, it did not have the wilderness skills to survive and got themselves into trouble, then they, the RCMP or other people would have to go and bail them out. And sometimes they would put other people in danger in the process. So there was definitely a safety issue involved.
[00:11:27] Erik
So the central figure in the story, as you’ve mentioned, Albert Johnson, is a man that is really shrouded in mystery. What do we know about him?
[00:11:40] Helena
Well, he arrived in the in this little settlement called Fort McPherson in in the northern part of the Northwest Territories, and he for somebody who seemed to want to be left alone, he attracted an awful lot of attention. So people generally traveled with, you know, on the rivers. So the rivers were basically like what we use as highways. So he showed up on a crude raft that he’d made of logs when everybody else was traveling on using birch bark canoe. So that was that was the first thing that everybody kind of went, hmm. He he was definitely a loner in a time and a place where people really depended on one another for survival. And they you know, people definitely helped each other out. And there was a lot of interdependency and sort of collaboration. So him being a loner definitely was another thing that caught people’s attention. He also he showed up with very, very few supplies, but he seemed to have money to buy supplies. So he’d go into there were two trading posts in Fort McPherson and he would show up, walk into the trading post. He knew exactly what he wanted. So he would go pick out an item and then go and pay for it with a 20 dollar bill, which was a, well, quite a bit of money in 1931. And then he would purchase the item and then he would walk around the store and pick another item and then take another 20 dollar bill out of another pocket and then pay for that item. So he that also attracted attention because it was a bit peculiar. But he you know, he seemed to have money.
[00:13:25] Helena
He knew what he wanted to do. He knew what he wanted. And while he was at Fort McPherson, he became sort of a little bit away from the settlement. But, you know, a couple of things struck people that, you know, for example, some of the local people went to shake his hand, which is very northern custom, and he he rebuffed them. The other thing that was a bit of a raised eyebrow was that at one point there was a storm. And so everybody was sort of huddled into the, you know, hanging out in the trading post because it was nice and dry. And they went to his tent to find out if he’d like to come to the trading post as well. And he just said no and just stayed in his tent. So that definitely attracted some attention. And Edgar Millan, Constable Edgar Millan from the RCMP went and checked him out just to make sure that he could survive on his own. And after chatting with him for a bit, decided that, yes, he he seemed to know he seemed to be sufficiently skilled to to manage out on in this wilderness kind of environment. So he just, you know, sort of seemed to appear out of nowhere. So nobody really knew why he was there. I think what they did figure out was that he may not have intentionally wanted to come to Fort McPherson. He may have as he was paddling his raft on the river system, he may have actually taken a wrong turn and ended up in the Northwest Territories instead of the Yukon.
[00:15:07] Erik
So how did he fall onto the bad side of local authorities? How did this mess all start?
[00:15:16] Helena
How did this mess start? (laughing) Yes. So, you know, after after Albert Johnson picked up his supplies in Fort McPherson, one of the things he got himself was a canoe. And he continued on and went and settled on the river. And what he did was he picked a spot that had a river on three sides. So he had a really good view from his cabin of what was going on around him and somewhere around Christmas time of 1931. So, you know, nearly 90 years ago, three local men were trapping following their own trap lines, which is the way that they fed their families. And they noticed that their traps had been hung up on trees and they weren’t sure what had happened. But they wondered because Albert Johnson was the only newcomer to the district, whether somehow and because he was unfriendly, whether he perhaps may have done this and, you know, done it as some sort of a warning. So they they complained to the RCMP about this. And the RCMP, after Christmas, two constables went to Albert Johnson’s cabin and one of them was a special constable, Joe Bernard, and the other one was. An RCMP member called Alfred King, so they went to his cabin and, you know, they were just told them that they wanted to ask him questions, but they kept they banged on the door and he refused to open, refused to answer any questions, never spoke.
[00:16:59] Helena
And so, you know, after a bit they realized, well, he’s not going to answer any questions. So then they got on their dog team and traveled to another community, to Aklavik, and explained to the RCMP inspector there what was going on. And he said, OK, well, we can’t do anything unless we have a search warrant. So they he issued a warrant. But this time because Albert Johnson was acting strangely, they decided that they would send a couple of people, constables, with Joe Bernard and Constable King. And so the four of them showed up to the cabin and again told Albert Johnson they they just wanted to ask him some questions. And Albert Johnson’s response was to shoot one of his guns through the door of his cabin and hit Constable King. And so then, you know, it was so cold because it was winter and it’s really, really cold at that time of year. So they had to take King back to a Aklavik so he could be seen by a surgeon and they knew that it was really bad. So they dumped everything off one of the sleds and tied him to one of the sleds. And there was times where because the terrain was so rough and it was so cold, they had to, like, lift up the sled.
[00:18:31] Helena
One of them was running ahead to create a path because there were some parts where the snow was too deep. And so they he was, you know, packing it down for the dogs. And they had about a 20 hours by dog team to get to the settlement. And when they got there, the surgeon examined Constable King. And you can imagine this poor constable has a chest wound. He’s got a bullet in his chest and he’s going over, bouncing up and down over this rough terrain. And it’s really cold. And they finally get to Aklavik and the surgeon takes out the bullet, which is really close to his heart. And the constable made a full recovery eventually. But now the whole situation was a lot more serious because he essentially had attempted to kill a Mountie. And this time because this was now more serious, the RCMP then assembled a bigger team. And what they did was because they didn’t have enough RCMP members, a number of trappers who knew the landscape really well also joined the manhunt. And when they got to Albert Johnson’s cabin, they had a 15 hour siege. And during that 15 hour siege, like they couldn’t get you know, they told Albert Johnson that the Mountie had survived and they didn’t want him for murder, you know, because they were hoping that maybe somehow he would give himself up and he didn’t.
[00:19:55] Helena
And then they took – they had some dynamite. But because it was so cold, they had to stick the dynamite inside their jackets to warm it up before they would throw it at his cabin. I can’t even imagine having a stick of dynamite that close to me. But anyway, after a 15 hour siege and some of the some of the sticks did not light, but some of them did. They managed to blow off the roof and part of the side of his cabin but he still wouldn’t leave his cabin. And then they realized that they wouldn’t be able to flush him out. And one of the things that plagued this manhunt was – because everybody was traveling by dog team. One of the things that you had to have was enough food for the dogs. So to have enough food, you had to carry enough food for everybody who is in the manhunt. But you also had to carry enough food to feed all of the dogs. And they realized that they were going to run out of food for the dogs and for the members of the posse that were chasing the Mad Trapper. So then they had to go back to Aklavik and regroup.
[00:21:04] Erik
Now, this was still a local story at this point, or had it already started getting national attention?
[00:21:11] Helena
At this point, I think the story was still – it was starting to starting to come out, certainly the fact that Constable Alfred King had been shot did appear in a newspaper in Edmonton, which is the – it’s in southern Canada, but it’s sort of considered a bit of a gateway city into the north. And so and it’s sort of one of the larger cities in Canada. So I think at that point, the story was starting to seep out, but it hadn’t quite hit all around the world yet. I think that was to come as the manhunt continued. I think, you know, once the posse had left the area and return to a Aklavik, you know, they started to regroup and figure out what to do next. And meanwhile, of course, Albert Johnson realizes, A, his cabin is not going to hold – protect him anymore because, you know, half of it has been caved in. But he also realizes that the RCMP is now going to come after him. And so after they leave, he packs up as much stuff as he can take on his back with him and grabs his snowshoes and off he goes. Now, the RCMP did send two trappers out to try and find him, but they couldn’t while while they assembled a larger posse to chase him. And by the time they got back, of course, Albert Johnson was gone and they had four people that were out looking out for Albert Johnson.
[00:22:44] Helena
And at some point, you know, they kept following these leads like they would see they would suddenly they would walk around, they’d see these faint snowshoe tracks. And because Albert Johnson had homemade snowshoes that had a particular look, they figured it was his snowshoe tracks. And so they would follow them. But, you know, sometimes they were a day old and then they would dead- end somewhere and they would lose the trail. So this went on for about two weeks where people were looking for him. And one day, you know, while they were trying to boil some tea, they decided to take another little walk around while they were waiting for the water to boil. And they somehow spotted some tracks and realized they were fairly fresh. So the next day they went out and, you know, the four of them went out, including Constable Melon, who was the only person who the only member of the RCMP who had ever spoken to Albert Johnson. And they went out and tracked him down and they actually found his camp and he was in his camp. They couldn’t see him, but they could see the tarp over his camp and they could see him and him – like his stuff – and they could hear him puttering around his camp.
[00:23:54] Helena
So they positioned themselves on an embankment where they could see him and try to flush him out. And they couldn’t. And they were shooting and he was shooting back and he kept changing positions. So they were having trouble figuring out where he was and trying to locate him. But they were shooting. And then at one point, Constable Mellon stood up and said, OK, I’m going to just fire a couple of rounds here. And he did. And then at that point, Albert Johnson shot him and and killed him. Then at that point, it became really serious because now there was the group of four was now three, and they just had to leave Edgar Mellon’s body there because they had to retreat. And they also realized that the other three were not members of the RCMP. And so there was nothing that they could do. You know, they certainly didn’t have any power to arrest him, even if they were able to catch him. So they retreated and then one of them went back to Aklavik to let the inspector know that now Albert Johnson had actually shot and killed a Mountie. So at that point, the situation really became a lot more serious and it was starting to make headlines around the world that they were looking for Albert Johnson and, you know, and that he had, you know, killed one Mountie and wounded another.
[00:25:17] Helena
So this really was making headlines. And, you know, weeks had gone by that they could track down Albert Johnson. And so then, you know, Inspector Eames of the RCMP was thinking, OK, well, I’m going to have to – we’re going to have to do something different because we we don’t have the.. You know, obviously, what we’re doing to try and track him down is is not working, and it wasn’t it wasn’t because the RCMP wasn’t able to do it with what they had. Part of it was just that Albert Johnson was very, very savvy, incredible wilderness skills and very smart. Like sometimes he would create a trail and then double back or create two trails and people would follow them because they didn’t know which way those two trails lead. But then they would find he had actually created a little bit of a circle. So, you know, Group A follows one side of the, you know, one trail – Group B follows the other trail and then the two the two come face to face as the two trails, you know, join up. And so, Albert Johnson, would do this because he knew that if he created some false trails, that would allow him to gain a bit more time to get further and further away, which he succeeded in doing for a certain period of time until Inspector Eames decided to try something that had never been done before.
[00:26:45] Helena
And he said, OK, we’re having problems because we can’t catch this guy because he’s incredibly savvy. This is a really tough terrain that we’re on. It’s cold. It’s dark because at that time of year, there’s quite a bit of darkness. And we’re also having trouble with keeping enough supplies to go for any extended period of time because we’re trying to feed the people who are on the manhunt and we’re also trying to feed the dogs. And these are actually elements of the story that a lot of the media, when they were covering it, were not understanding how difficult the terrain was. So they, you know, they kept having these headlines about how, oh, the Mounties were, you know, were going to catch Albert Johnson any day now when in fact, that wasn’t the case. So I think I think the media was a little overly optimistic about, you know, how the Mounties were going to be able to catch Albert Johnson. And I think they didn’t also did not understand how difficult the terrain was and the conditions were. So they were kind of like, hmmmm.
[00:27:48] Helena
So then Inspector Adams said, OK, I need to do something we’ve never done before. And he decided that he was going to ask that an airplane be brought into the manhunt. And this request, because it was so different than anything had been done before, that request had to go to the Canadian government in Ottawa for the Canadian cabinet to approve it, which they did. And then that’s where they sent in Wop May who is a pilot from World War One who is decorated. He had downed thirteen enemy planes in World War One. You know, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1918. And he was also very aware of the conditions in the north and the difficulties of flying in the north. So, you know, in 1929, he had flown with another pilot on a mercy mission to an isolated settlement in northern Alberta to prevent a diphtheria epidemic. So he was well aware of the conditions – he had done mail runs into the north, so he knew the conditions pretty well. And so he turned out to be a really good asset to the manhunt. And this is where, you know, we talk about why I wrote the book, how I stumbled on the story. This is where my interest in Wop May and the story of the Mad Trapper intersected.
[00:29:11] Erik
I know it’s all speculation, but do you have any guesses as to what his destination was?
[00:29:19] Helena
Well, in that area, there’s the Richardson Mountains, which separate the Northwest Territories from the Yukon, and so it became evident at some point that he looked like he was heading toward the Richardson mountains to try and get over the mountains and into the Yukon. And what we’re thinking is that he was trying to get into the Yukon because from there it was a lot easier to get into Alaska. And then once he was in Alaska, of course, the RCMP couldn’t follow him there because now he was going to be in a different country, so. That’s what we think his plan was, the thing about the Richardson Mountains is it’s really, really cold in the winter – like minus 100 degrees with the wind, and there’s not a lot at the top of the mountain to make fires with, like there’s no there’s not a lot of sources of wood to make fire. There’s not shelter from the wind. So it’s quite barren up top. And, you know, a lot of the local the local indigenous people who know the area, like the back of their hand were saying, like there’s no way he could cross those mountains in the dead of winter. Nobody’s done that because it’s so difficult terrain. And why would you want to do that? So, you know, at some point they were like thinking, OK, well, that seems to be where he’s heading. So when Wop May joined the manhunt, there was a few things that he was able to do because he was flying overhead. Well, first of all, the terrain was still really difficult because, of course, you don’t really have runways. So there were some days where there were blizzards.
[00:31:01] Helena
There were some days where, you know, the wind was really strong. And so you can’t – there’s days where you couldn’t really fly. But there was also – the challenge was of, you know, when you could fly, was where you’re going to land. So Wop May was able to load up his plane with some supplies when he was able to fly, he would bring the supplies to wherever the camp was, where all of the the posse was chasing them out – trappers that they would bring the supplies and he would drop them off there. Sometimes he would actually have to drop them off a few kilometers from – or a few miles from the camp because of where he was able to land and where he couldn’t. But the fact that he was able to do that meant that the posse didn’t have to come back to Aklavak to get supplies so they could actually stay out and focus on the manhunt and focus on trying to find Albert Johnson. And the other thing that Wop May was able to do, you know, once he would drop off supplies, what he would do is he’d fly overhead and from the air, he would look to see if he could find some trails and some tracks that belonged to Albert Johnson, because they they knew from the snowshoe tracks that’s how he was traveling. And so he was able to circle overhead and he would keep looking. And by doing that, he was able to eliminate which of the trails were false trails designed to throw off his pursuers. And he was also then able to see, you know, which were the real trails, which were not the real trails.
[00:32:34] Helena
And at some point on the Yukon side of the Richardson mountains, they were aware that Albert Johnson was out on on the lam and that the Mounties were looking for him. And there was a manhunt in. So people on the other side of the mountains knew this as well. They were in the northern Yukon. They were keeping an eye out ans -you know, one day when the posse was still on the on the Northwest Territories side, they were sort of in camp one evening figuring out, OK, what are we going to do next? And then all of a sudden, Special Constable Peter Aleksi arrives from the Yukon and says, we’ve seen some tracks on the other side of the Richardson mountains and they look like the snowshoe tracks of Albert Johnson. So then the team sort of split in two, and so one of the teams went over the mountains and another – and another group were flown over the mountains by Wop May and dropped on the other side. And once that happened, there was that – that was sort of the turning point in the manhunt, because now Wop May was able to see where the tracks were. And the other thing is that on the Yukon side of the mountains, the snow was much softer and deeper. And so you could see snowshoe tracks much more easily from the air. And so it was a lot easier for Wop May to be looking and saying, OK, I’ve seen tracks over here. This is where you guys might want to concentrate your search efforts.
[00:34:15] Erik
Was Johnson making campfires to keep warm? Was there smoke that might have helped pursuers track him?
[00:34:25] Helena
What – what we think is like early on in the manhunt, somebody heard a gunshot at one point. And, you know, that’s where they got close to Albert Johnson, but then lost his trail again. And so what we think is that, you know, early on he may have been running out of food and so he may have tried to shoot a caribou, for example, to have enough food to keep going and then realized that he couldn’t really risk another instance of shooting something to eat because that gunshot would be heard and then they would figure out where he was. So what he would do is he’d you know, he’d make really like – he’d make small fires. He try and find some, you know, like if there was a spot where there was a bit of shelter or like a little bit of a cave so that you couldn’t really see the smoke, he would build these fires to try and stay warm. And one of the things he would do for food was he would try to snare small small animals in order to to survive. So he was quite the bushman. But at the same time, you know, I think his days were numbered at that point because it’s really hard to sustain yourself on small animals that you can snare kind of on the fly like that. So I think that his days were starting to be numbered as well in terms of accessing a food source. But at the end, I’m sure he got – he was quite clearly got frostbitten a lot as well. So that was certainly – he wasn’t completely successful and stay warm all the time.
[00:36:02] Erik
One of the truly amazing things about this story, I mean, here is this guy that was very possibly a foreigner and likely not as familiar with the Canadian wilderness as the people who were trying to capture him. And that includes trappers who had been there for decades, members of indigenous tribes who had generations living there. But he still managed to elude them for a long distance. I mean, it’s it’s pretty darn incredible.
[00:36:36] Helena
Yeah, it is pretty incredible. And I think one of the you know, it is certainly really incredible that he he got as far as he did and that he had these incredible bush skills and wilderness skills. But one of the things that, you know, we wonder is, you know, he was very proficient with firearms, you know, and given his – his incredible wilderness skills, we – you know, we wonder whether he had some sort of police or military training in his background because because of that, because he was he was a good marksman when he had first arrived in in Fort McPherson at the beginning of the story, you know, he at one point had set up some pieces of wood and was using them for target practice. So, you know, he he had a gun in each hand and he was he was shooting. He shot out of each hand and then he crossed his arms and shot again. He was practicing. But also, you know, it was quite evident to the local people that he – he was very proficient with firearms. So one wonders whether he – he had that in his background. We don’t actually know what his background is, and this is part of the enduring mystery with Albert Johnson is that the police discovered it was actually a pseudonym. It was a name that he was using as an alias. So they never knew who actually he was, because even when they checked police forces in Canada and the U.S., there was nobody who turned up with fingerprints that were his.
[00:38:09] Helena
So we don’t know who he really was and nobody ever claimed the body. So we also don’t know – that’s another thing as we don’t know. One of the things that happened around the 75th anniversary of the end of the manhunt. There is a team of documentary filmmakers who did a documentary for the Discovery Channel. And what they did was they they assembled a team of forensic experts and they did quite a bit of work because Albert Johnson’s body is buried in a grave in Aklavik. And what the forensic team wanted to do was to exhume the body and get some DNA, if they could, off of the body to see if they could determine who he was related to, because they did have someone in the U.S. who said, you know, this may be my relative. My relative is Johnny Johnson from Norway. So one of the things that – Albert Johnson did have a slight Scandinavian accent. So they figured, OK, well, you know, he must have come from Scandinavia, but via the United States, like he he was raised in in the United States. And so the documentary team went to Aklavik and they talked to the elders. And, you know, at first the elders were really not – they were really concerned about this because, you know, when somebody is buried, you let – you let them be. And one of the things that the filmmakers said was, well, you know, perhaps this will allow – if we can identify him, perhaps this will provide closure to a family that is wondering what has happened to to the relative who disappeared.
[00:39:55] Helena
And so the elders said, OK, if this will bring peace and closure to a family, OK, but you only have 24 hours to do the exhumation and 24 hours and no more than that. So the team went up to Aklavik. And you talk about Albert Johnson being elusive in life. He was elusive in death as well because, you know, they’d been digging for hours to try and locate his body. I mean, his grave was marked, but they were digging and digging. And they they couldn’t they couldn’t locate his body. And finally, you know, they were running out of time. And so finally somebody went to talk to one of the elders and she told them actually that they were digging a few feet in the – they were digging in the wrong spot, but just by a few feet, and told them where his body was buried. And once they had that information, then they were able to locate Albert Johnson’s body. And when they exhumed his body in that part of the north, there’s permafrost. So there’s part of the ground that’s frozen year round. And because of that, part of Albert Johnson’s body had been preserved. And so they were able to get some DNA. Some of his fingers were still intact.
[00:41:15] Helena
And so they were able to get DNA. And then they had – one of the members of the forensic team had – was doing a new technique where you can take some enamel from the teeth and you can analyze it to figure out where the person was raised. So Dr. Lynn Bell took a sample and figured out, based on the teeth, that he was probably from Scandinavia but had been raised in the U.S. And then Dr. Doug Sweet, who has a forensic lab, analyzed the DNA. And they had some people that had supplied DNA because they said, you know, we think Albert Johnson, it may be a member of our family who just mysteriously disappeared. And so they compared Albert Johnson’s DNA against some other people’s DNA, including a family member from John – of Johnny Johnson. And none of them were a match. So they don’t – still don’t know to this day who Albert Johnson really is, but what was amazing was that they were able to get DNA 75 years later. His body was so well preserved in his grave that they were able to get that DNA. So, you know, I mean, if somebody ever shows up that has a strong case to say, this was one of my relatives, the DNA is still there at the lab. But – but, you know, the chances of ever finding a relative of Albert Johnson to give him a positive identification is quite remote at this point.
[00:42:54] Erik
So how did police eventually find him? And how did Albert Johnson die?
[00:43:00] Helena
Well, one of the things that – because Wop May was flying overhead, you know, he could see where the trails were – and then at some point they had figured out that he was on the Eagle River on the Yukon side. And so they got up early one morning and the searchers were going along the Eagle River and they were all traveling by dog team. And the first team all of a sudden realized that this chap, this person that was ahead of them was Albert Johnson. But because a lot of the people in that manhunt had never actually seen Albert Johnson – and it was only when he reached back and pulled out his snowshoes off of his backpack – that they suddenly recognize the snow shoes and realized it was him. So they got themselves into position because he was he was traveling along the river. And what they did was the first team, the first two teams knew that they needed to make sure that he didn’t get up on the riverbank because as soon as he was up on the riverbank, he would then be able to pick off his pursuers one by one. And so they kept shooting at him while he was in the middle of the river and they kept shooting at him, you know, when he tried to climb the riverbank on the other side. But they would shoot sort of at his – at his backpack. They would shoot just close enough not to to kill
him, but just enough to slow him down.
[00:44:25] Helena
And so eventually, as all the teams got onto the scene, then they were able to spread themselves out on the riverbank and shoot at Albert Johnson, who had now given up the possibility of getting up on the riverbank. And he was in the middle of the river, you know, on this frozen river shooting at them. He tried to sort of bury a little – burrow a little hole to hide a little bit and give him a better position. But, well, first of all, there was a – there was two members of the Canadian military who were on where part of the the search team and one of them who was in one of the first two dog teams, got down on one knee and was shooting at Albert Johnson. And he actually got shot himself. So he was – he was wounded and managed to sort of roll over and out of the way so that he wouldn’t get – wouldn’t get shot again. But they just kept shooting at Albert Johnson. They kept telling him to give himself up and he refused to give himself up. And eventually, like, they realized he he wasn’t going to give himself up alive. And then at some point, Wop May came onto the scene and was flying overhead – and was watching so he could see from the air all the the flashes of the gunfire.
[00:45:40] Helena
And then at some point, he noticed that Albert Johnson was lying in this very strange and awkward position on the river and was not moving. And there was no sign of shooting again. And so he waited a few minutes to make sure that Albert Johnson really was dead. And then he signaled with his wing as he signaled to the posse below that Albert Johnson was was now dead. And so at that point, you know, everybody sort of slowly, carefully went toward where Albert Johnson was lying. And they ascertained that, yes, he was indeed – he was indeed dead. And so then they had to bring his body, put it on a dog sled and brought it back to Aklavik. And then Sergeant Hersi, who was from the Canadian military who’d been injured, was then put on a plane and Wop May had to fly through the peaks of the Richardson mountains to get to the other side, to bring him to the hospital. And it was pretty hairy flight because there was some wind blowing and snow blowing. So he had to kind of do it a little bit from memory of where, you know, where the peaks were and had hoped that he could get through without any injury or any issues. And he did get to Aklavik in about 15 or 20 minutes and not having the plane there actually saved Hersi’s life.
[00:47:03] Erik
What was the total distance that he had traveled?
[00:47:07] Helena
So well, Albert Johnson had had traveled probably close to one hundred and seventy five miles, you know, on foot in the dead of winter in really cold conditions where it could be with the wind chill, it could be minus 50, minus 60, minus 70 degrees. You know, he had been pursued for 49 days and never gave up until he was completely cornered and surrounded and lived on very little by the end of it. And he – when he was dead and they looked at his body, he was completely emaciated, as one would expect, traveling in such difficult terrain, and he would cover huge distances in a short period of time. So he was obviously very determined, but also very capable of travel on the land like that.
[00:48:03] Erik
So I know the Royal Canadian Mounted Police tried their best to catch Johnson, and suffered injuries and death as a result of this pursuit, but were they looked down upon at all? Was there any public relations blowback because it took so long to finally stop him?
[00:48:24] Helena
I’m going to say that I think one of the things that I think was quite significant about this, this manhunt was, first of all, the fact that the airplane was used in a manhunt for the first time and that led the RCMP to start its air division in 1937. And so they have their own fleet of airplanes and they can use – and since 1937, they can use airplanes and manhunts when they need to. So I think it was a good sort of an opportunity to move the needle forward on some of the police techniques that were used. The other thing that happened on that manhunt, which hadn’t happened before, when we look at police officers, you know, we notice that they have their their two way radios as part of their standard equipment. Back then, that wasn’t the case when the Mounties would go out on a patrol. There was no – there was no radio. And so if they got into trouble out on the trail or out on a patrol, they were -they had to figure out on their own what to do. And during the manhunt, the two members of the Canadian military had a lot of experience with -with communication. And so they they used sort of what they had to fashion, some sort of a radio, a two way radio that could relay messages between the searchers and the camp back to the base in Aklavik, you know, if they needed more supplies or or whatever, what have you. And there was so a lot of difficulties with it initially because the batteries would freeze.
[00:49:58] Helena
And so, of course, the batteries are frozen, the radio doesn’t work. And also in that terrain, there’s some areas where there’s valleys and peaks. And so sometimes if you were in a bit of a valley, the radio wouldn’t necessarily work as well because of the reception. But eventually they did get the two way radios working during the manhunt. And so that became another technique that was now possible to use. So those are two things that the RCMP was able to then make use of subsequently. I don’t know that it necessarily hurt the RCMP. I think, in fact, there was lessons learned from it, you know, or opportunities, I would say, in terms of the technology as such as it were. It was in 1930 – in February of 1932. But I think it’s also really enduring in that one of the things that it also, I think really highlighted was the important role that special constables play or were playing in the RCMP in the north. I think it really – it was one of the things that highlighted just how important special constables were, because there were -there were four special constables that were involved in the manhunt at various stages. So Joe Bernard and Peter Aleksi and John Moses. And so they that I think helped, you know, to show a little bit more what to people in southern Canada, what special constables did and the important role that they played.
[00:51:35] Erik
So do you personally have a theory about the real identity of Albert Johnson?
[00:51:41] Helena
One of the things I wonder is – so after I – after the – I guess a few years after my book initially came out, one day I was sitting at home and the phone rang and it was a fellow from Alberta who was calling me. And he shared with me that he had a relative who had a Scandinavian accent and who’s obviously a little peculiar in certain ways, you know, very savvy. He had definitely some really strong wilderness skills. And apparently the last time someone had seen him, a family member had gone to visit him. You know, some – wherever where he was. I’m – I’m trying to – I’m not exactly sure where. I want to say British Columbia, perhaps, but anyway, that this relative had created his housing, but in a little out of the way spot where you couldn’t really tell where it was and he had rigged it up so that you had to open the front door a certain way with a rope and, you know, to access his his house. It was almost like he was trying to hide. And so this person told me that, you know, they wondered if if perhaps their relative was Albert Johnson. But apparently when the filmmakers for the Discovery Channel documentary were trying to find, you know, who Albert Johnson really was, you know, I’m not sure that that this person had stepped forward to – to offer some family DNA when one of the challenges, of course, with DNA is that it has to be a close enough relative, that you can analyze it because if it’s too distant, then it becomes more difficult to really make a link between the two.
[00:53:31] Helena
So, for example, in the case of Johnny Johnson, the DNA, they had came from a grandmother’s hairbrush because she would have been of the same generation and a close enough relative. That if Johnny Johnson had been Albert Johnson, that they could have matched it, potentially matched it. I definitely think whoever he is – definitely had some some issues with police. He made it very clear at the outset he wanted nothing to do with the police, even when Constable Mellon went to talk to him and asked him, you know, just some general information, just to sort of suss out if – if Albert Johnson was OK to to manage on his own in a – in a remote environment. So, you know, Albert Johnson had at the time said nothing good ever happens when the police is around. So my sense is it was somebody who had either – had obviously had some negative experience with police, but a lot of – enough of an impact that he didn’t want anything to do with them and obviously had either some military or police experience, or perhaps was a – had experience with criminal activity, you know, to the point that he was – because he was proficient with firearms and unusually so.
[00:54:59] Helena
So this was obviously to me, somebody that that didn’t want to be found and didn’t want to associate with the police. And was – I actually wonder if he, in fact, was a criminal that just wanted to escape and disappear into the north. You know, since the the RCMP did send his fingerprints to police forces in Canada and the U.S., part of me thinks, OK, well, if he was a criminal, would his fingerprints have turned up somewhere, you know, in one of those searches or not? But, you know, at the time when you think about fingerprinting and you think about the fact that they had to fingerprint Albert Johnson after he was dead, his fingers were frozen. So, you know, I wonder, like, how accurate, you know, under those conditions, how solid were the fingerprints to begin with? I’m not an expert, so I can’t I can’t sort of say, but I certainly wonder how difficult it must have been to get good fingerprints, because, I mean, nowadays you do fingerprinting electronically and even that with a machine, you know, sometimes you have to fingerprint the person a couple of times or you have to make a few attempts before the computer will recognize the fingerprints.
[00:56:25] Erik
The only known photographs are taken of him after his death. Right?
[00:56:31] Helena
Well, yeah, there was the photos that you see of Albert Johnson were taken after his death, and he’s got this really awful grimace on his face. But one of the things that did come up after he – he died is that there was a man who bore a striking resemblance to Albert Johnson, who was in the Yukon from 1929 -1931. His name was Arthur Nelson. And there’s some really very fuzzy photographs of – a couple of fuzzy photographs of Arthur Nelson. And he did bear a striking resemblance to Albert Johnson. And he, you know, had a Scandinavian accent. And there was some of the things that were found on Albert Johnson, like some money that was found on Albert Johnson that was traced back to a bank branch in the Yukon. So there’s some sense that perhaps Albert Johnson and Arthur Nelson were the same person, because some of the things that Arthur Nelson had bought at trading posts in the Yukon turned up on Albert Johnson’s body, you know, after he was dead. And they search his pack sack. And he had you know, he had quite a few weapons. He had a lot of bullets. He had some kidney pills and he had some money and a bunch of this stuff were some of the same things that Arthur Nelson had bought in the Yukon. They weren’t able to trace everything, you know, in terms of the guns and the and the ammunition. They weren’t able to trace everything back to make that connection between Albert Johnson and Arthur Nelson, because one of the trading posts that had sold Arthur Nelson some of this weaponry had actually – their records had burned.
[00:58:26] Helena
And so they weren’t able to completely make that connection. But I think there was enough evidence, you know, circumstantial, but there was still enough evidence between some of the things that Arthur Nelson bought in the Yukon and in the summer in 1931. And then some of the things that were found on Albert Johnson’s body in February of 1932, that was – there was certainly a strong connection there. And the fact that, you know, Arthur Nelson had been trapping in the Yukon and that when Albert Johnson arrived in the Northwest Territories in the summer of 1931, you know, he was looking for a particular river and he asked them if this was the river and they said no, it was a different river. The river he was looking for would have kept him in the Yukon, the river that he actually – and actually ended up – probably through a wrong turn, took him to the Northwest Territories. So it is quite possible that Arthur Nelson was Albert Johnson. But again, they did – I think there was photos of Albert Johnson that were shown to people who had met Arthur Nelson. But because Albert Johnson was so emaciated and he had this grimace on his face, they couldn’t really be 100 percent sure if this photo of Albert Johnson, they were being shown with – also Arthur Nelson, whom they had met.
[00:59:59] Erik
Arthur Nelson disappeared, assumably.
[01:00:03] Helena
Yes, yeah, Arthur Nelson had disappeared, so nobody could actually check to see, you know, if this was one in the same. So the thing about this, the end of this story is that there’s a lot of tantalizing breadcrumbs, but no actual loaf of bread. So we’ll never – we’ll probably never know who Albert Johnson really was.
[01:00:24] Erik
I’m sure there are some armchair detectives out there who are are working on this as we speak.
[01:00:32] Helena
Probably. I think it’s one of the enduring the enduring mysteries. And I suspect that we’ll never – I mean, I would be surprised if we ever solve it, but there’s the mystery of who he really was. But there was also this incredible – I think there was, you know, some grudging admiration from his pursuers about how incredibly bush savvy he was and how incredibly crafty and smart he was. Like they kept saying, this guy is not mad, he’s not crazy. He’s just he’s really, really smart. He knows exactly – he seems to know exactly what he’s doing, knows how to throw people off. He’s always thinking. And so I think there was a certain degree of admiration for his bush skills. But they did – they’d obviously did want to find him because he had killed one Mountie and wounded another.
[01:01:21] Erik
How did he get the nickname The Mad Trapper?
[01:01:25] Helena
It was somebody, a woman, somebody who worked at one of the trading posts. She was writing some stories about the manhunt and came up with the moniker The Mad Trapper, because it just seemed to fit, I guess, except that there was no way he was crazy. And so I think at first people were saying, oh, you know, he you know, the mad trapper. Oh, that seems to describe him, except that they realized Albert Johnson was -maybe he was really paranoid, but he certainly wasn’t crazy in the – and mad in that sense because he was very, very crafty, very calculating and very determined not to be captured alive.
[01:02:09] Erik
Right. So you have a brand new audio version of your book out now, correct?
[01:02:19] Helena
Yes. So the audio book version of The Mad Trapper is available on Audible and through Amazon. And it’s – it’s narrated by Charles Huddleston, who is American. So I guess you can say that this audio book was a Canadian American collaboration, and I really love it. I really like how how Charles narrated the book. It – he really to me, he really captured the story beautifully. And the information that I talked about a little bit about the attempt to find the mad trapper’s – Albert Johnson’s identity 75 years later. And that’s in the audio book version as well. And this year actually will mark the 90th anniversary of the manhunt. And quite recently -so there is a cairn that someone had put up in 1961, you know, on the spot where Constable Edgar Millen passed away, where he was shot. And quite recently, the RCMP and the community put together a nice new cairn for – in honor of of Constable Edgar Millen. And Edgar Millen was buried. He was brought back to Edmonton, where he was from and was buried in the cemetery there.
[01:03:44] Erik
And tell us about your website.
[01:03:47] Helena
So my my website is called catscommunications.ca, and I have actually written four books. I have a master’s degree in criminology. And I got quite interested in – in criminology, actually, through living in North or, you know, through northern Canada. And I have written – So “The Mad Trapper” was my first book and I had three other books that came out. One of them was about gangs in New York in the early 1980s, late eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds. And then my third book was “Cold Cases” -it was basically unsolved murders and disappearances in the U.S. And through that book you see a little bit of the way that the forensic technology has evolved. And then my final book is called “Justice Miscarried” and it’s “Inside Wrongful Convictions in Canada”. And that book tells the story of 12 wrongful convictions in Canada. And it takes you through the different stages where mistakes get made in the justice system. So the first year, the first part of the book is on mistakes that get made at the police investigation stage.
[01:05:15] Helena
The second part of the book focuses on forensic faults. So in some cases, you know, you had someone that was, you know, forensic pathologist said, oh, this person was murdered when in fact they weren’t because the forensic pathologist was not actually – the pathologist was not actually a forensic pathologist. They were – they were not qualified to be making those decisions and those assessments. And then in the third part of that book, we talk about some of the errors that might get made in the courtroom, although the dozen cases that are in the book profiled in “Justice Miscarried” are Canadian cases. They are also profiling errors that happen in the American justice system as well. I just happened to pick Canadian cases because I was working with the Canadian publisher. But the – the cases were picked for the types of errors that were made, because I really wanted to illustrate the different ways that the justice system makes mistakes and that we always need to be on guard for potential miscarriages of justice because we do tend to think the justice system always gets it right. And it doesn’t always.
[01:06:31] Erik
That’s certainly true. Yeah, well, thank you for your time today. This has been really fascinating.
[01:06:40] Helena
Thank you very much, I really appreciate the opportunity to share the story about the Mad Trapper. I’m I’m really passionate about it and I live in northern Canada, so particularly so.
[01:06:52] Erik
Yes, I would imagine you’ve visited some of the sites associated with this history, too.
[01:06:59] Helena
I did, actually. I visited Albert Johnson’s grave in Aklavik before his body was exhumed. And I remember walking into the cemetery and I was feeling a little unsure of where to look. But I was also feeling a little odd about coming into the cemetery, which to me is a very, you know, very special place. And I was sort of standing there and I thought, OK, well, I’m going to give myself a few minutes and if I can’t find his grave, I’m going to leave because I’m in this tiny little hamlet and I don’t want to be – I want to be respectful. And I was standing there looking around. And then all of a sudden I hear a voice yell, he’s over there. You know, I guess people in the hamlet were used to the fact that sometimes people, you know, people from out of the community were coming in the cemetery and looking around. And they were probably looking for Albert Johnson’s grave. And there was a sign outside the cemetery just, you know, very quickly recounting the story of the mad trapper and Albert Johnson and saying that, yes, you know, he was he was buried in the cemetery.
[01:08:06] Helena
One of the things that I think was to me was very touching about the exhumation and sort of returning the body, Albert Johnson’s body to his grave was that a local lay preacher was there and, before Albert Johnson’s body was returned to the ground, she she performed a, you know, a sort of a ceremony, blessing his, you know, blessing him and and, you know, whoever he was in the end, that, you know, hopefully at some someday his family, you know, could find peace and and closure to this. So I think there was, you know, on one hand, you know, the I think the community people in the community were still, you know, wanting to be respectful despite what happened and the difficulties of catching Albert Johnson and the whole situation. I think they still wanted to be really respectful of of him as as they would, you know, anyone else who who is buried there.
[01:09:12] Erik
Well, thanks again.
[01:09:15] Helena
Thank you very much.
