THE MANY CONFESSIONS OF ALFRED PACKER

S05EP14

SYNOPSIS

The North American mineral rushes of the 19th Century saw hundreds of thousands flock to mountains and mines across the continent in search of fame and fortune, from panning for gold to working long, dangerous shifts down poorly run mines, entire industries exploded overnight, sucking in workers from around the world. During the San Juan Silver Rush of the 1870s, one of these workers was a young man named Alfred Packer, an epileptic, military cast-off, who drifted across America looking for his passport to a new life. He had lived a reasonably anonymous existence, until one fateful expedition saw him wind up almost starving to death, only surviving by eating his fellow party members, a surprisingly common occurrence in the Old West.

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Christensen, Mike (1989) Final Word: Packer Guilty as Sin. The Daily Sentinal, 13 October, 1989, p.1. USA.

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