New Book Edition Solves Mystery of 'Albert Johnson' (SPOILERS!)

Cheers Walt!! The book is fascinating and traces "Albert Johnson" all the way from North Dakota to Wyoming to California back to North Dakota and finally up into Canada. Dick North -- whom I believe is in his 80s now -- really spared no rod and was patient beyond the normal call in tracking down leads, interviewing surviving witnesses (over a span of about forty years, since he first began his research in 1964) and being persistent in communicating with every archivist in North America who could possibly be of assistance in helping him track the documented paper trails of the two men: Backward from "Albert Johnson"'s arrival in the Fort MacPherson area, and forward from this "Johnny Johnson"'s arrival in North Dakota with his immigrant family. He also had forensic specialists compare fingerprint records, criminal artist composite sketches and even behavioral psychologists to help map out a "profile" for both men, and the match between them is almost perfect.

Of additional interest is that a Canadian film company did finally get permission to exhume "Albert Johnson"'s gravesite in Aklavik where they examined his remains & took DNA samples to compare against possible donors who may be related to the man suspected to be in the grave. One gruesome but intriguing detail is that the clap board coffin used to bury the Mad Trapper was apparently too small, so they literally broke his legs (!!) so they could cram his carcass into the box before burying it. Here is a weblink to an online news article that has a picture of the casket as it was being opened:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070817/madtr apper_dna_070817/20070819?hub=Canada

and here's another one
http://news.therecord.com/News/CanadaWorld/article/229011


And just typing the word "Mad Trapper" into any search engine will be rewarded with a couple dozen other articles on how this development came to be. I hope they all give Dick North proper credit for his tireless research, and would be willing to enter into a wager with any doubting Thomas that in time his conclusions will be borne out by DNA testing: "Johnny Johnson"'s brother was alive and well and raising a family in Minnesota at the time of the manhunt, and presumably his offspring's DNA could be used to compare with the remains found in Aklavik.

I agree with you that in spite of it's shortcomings DEATH HUNT is a fine action/adventure film that tells a really interesting story. I'm sure everyone of us has at some time or another felt the urge to just shuck it all and head into the hills to build a cabin in the sky & live in perfect solitude, away from the chaotic mess of the current world. The film plays into a fantasy about it and the only sore point I have about it these days -- other than the complete exclusion of Wop May & substitution of the hare brained fool pilot character played by Scott Hylands -- is that the film genuinely wants us to sympathize with "Albert Johnson"'s plight, and stacks the decks in his favor by depicting the posses that went to his cabin during the initial conflict as being redneck barbarian sub-humanoids. Dick North's book makes great pains to depict the posse(s) and volunteers who participated in the manhunt as actual people who were well aware that "Johnson" was an exceptional man, and as sane as you or I. It was the seemingly unceasing efforts of the news media to keep listeners hooked on every word who created this mythos of a demented or insane trapper who'd gone cabin happy. Far from it, but also he wasn't the nearly saintly & misunderstood recluse portrayed by Charles Bronson, he was a criminal who had shot a man in cold blood, then murdered another & attempted to kill a third (or as many as he could take with him in the end) without ever saying a word to his pursuers, who repeatedly begged him to surrender.

I've been a fan of the movie since I first saw it on cable TV in about 1982, have four or five other books on the manhunt including "The Death of Albert Johnson" (which is still a good source of information), and plan to spend a couple hours making up a list of liberties taken by the film or inaccuracies about how the story actually unfolded. I.e. there really was a trapper named "Charley Rat" who joined the posse (though he never charged the cabin to get "Johnson"'s scalp, only be blown away in a shotgun blast), there really was a "Bill Lusk" hermit/trapper who lived in the area & claimed to know "Albert Johnson" (though he was snowblind and confined to his cabin due to old age, and a benign individual by all accounts), and "Albert Johnson" was indeed found during the post-mortem examinations to be carrying pieces of gold dental work among his personal effects that were not his own (though they weren't very valuable and there is no record of anyone in the area having been murdered & their teeth extracted) etc ...

One of the common myths about "Albert Johnson" which I have been thinking about is that he was carrying in excess of $2,400 in cash with him, which press coverage and rumor about the event usually implied as proof that he was surely up to sinister tasks like stealing the gold from men's teeth to get rich: TOTALLY UNTRUE. Trappers who were diligent and crafty about their work literally could make thousands of dollars per season selling the skins and furs of the martens, white foxes and other animals of the region valued for their hides, and most did not have access to banks or other places to amass their wealth -- they tended to keep it on their person, and it was not uncommon for a successful trapper & hunter to literally have thousands of dollars of cash squirreled away in their cabin or habitat somewhere. Since "Johnson" was presumably fleeing the area with no intention of returning it would make sense that he'd have his earnings with him and on his person during his escape.

Nor was it uncommon for a trapper to make two or three trips to a trading post or general store to buy hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of supplies in one visit, and if hunting was how you planned on feeding yourself it wasn't uncommon either for a backwoods dweller to buy cases of ammunition, weapons, and haul the loot away to their shacks in a manner that might suggest some anti-social agenda. The press did a thorough job in vilifying almost everything about "Albert Johnson" to keep readers glued to the story and a lot of those untruths or exaggerations made their way into the script of the film, which is curious considering what lengths the scriptwriters went to make Bronson's character sympathetic.

And yes, I've been obsessed with this story for quite a while. It's a great mystery and I hope that it's solved once and for all, even though that might ruin some of the epic mythos about the entire affair.


;D

Perhaps the OP made a mistake because Folsom Prison is of course in Cali.

The original Wyoming State Penitentiary was opened in 1901 and operated until 1981. It was called the Wyoming Frontier Prison, so maybe the OP meant to say that or meant to say California.