http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Johnson_%28criminal%29

Albert Johnson, known as the Mad Trapper of Rat River, was a fugitive whose actions eventually sparked off a huge manhunt in the Northwest Territories and Yukon in Northern Canada. The event became a minor media circus as Johnson eluded the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) team sent to take him into custody, which ended after a 150 mi (240 km) foot chase and a shootout in which Johnson was fatally wounded on the Eagle River, Yukon.
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Albert Johnson arrived in Fort McPherson after coming down the Peel River on July 9, 1931. He was questioned by RCMP constable Edgar Millen, but provided little information. He had a Scandinavian accent, generally kept himself clean shaven, and seemed to have plenty of money for supplies. Soon after arriving he built a small 8 ft × 10 ft (2.4 m × 3.0 m) cabin on the banks of the Rat River, near the Mackenzie River delta. Johnson did not take out a trapping license, however, which was considered somewhat odd for someone living in the bush. At that time many northern native traditional trapping areas were invaded by outsiders fleeing the Great Depression and the complaints may have been intended to remove him.


In December one of the local trappers complained to the local RCMP detachment in Aklavik that someone was tampering with his traps, tripping them and hanging them on the trees. He identified Johnson as the likely culprit. On December 26, Constable Alfred King and Special Constable Joe Bernard, each of whom had considerable northern experience, trekked out to Johnson's cabin to ask him about the allegations. They noticed smoke coming from the chimney, and approached the hut to talk. Johnson refused to talk to them, seeming to not even notice them. King approached and looked in the window, at which point Johnson placed a sack over it. They eventually decided to return to Aklavik and get a search warrant.


They returned five days later as a party of four. Johnson again refused to talk and eventually King decided to enforce the warrant and force the door. As soon as he started, Johnson shot him through the wooden door. A brief firefight broke out, and the team managed to return King to Aklavik, where he eventually recovered.


A posse was formed this time with nine men, 42 dogs and 20 lb (9.1 kg) of dynamite which they intended to use to blast Johnson out of the cabin. After surrounding the cabin they thawed the dynamite inside their coats, eventually building a single charge and tossing it into the cabin. After the explosion collapsed the building, the men rushed in. Johnson opened fire from a foxhole he had dug under the building. (He did not build a foxhole. What he had built was a countersunk cabin that has the advantage of increased insulation against the cold. It did function well as a foxhole but was not the initial design.) No one was hit, and after a 15 hour (Endoing at 4:00 A.M.) standoff in the −40 °C (−40.0 °F) weather the posse again decided to return to Aklavik for further instructions.


By this point news of the events had filtered out to the rest of the world via radio. When the posse returned on January 14, delayed because of almost continual blizzards, Johnson had left the cabin and the posse gave chase. They eventually caught up to Johnson on January 30, surrounding him in a thicket. In the ensuing firefight, Johnson shot Constable Edgar Millen through the heart, killing him. Once again they were forced to retreat. The posse continued to grow, enlisting local Inuit and Gwich’in who were better able to move in the back country. Johnson eventually decided to leave for the Yukon, but the RCMP had blocked the only two passes over the local Richardson Mountains. That did not stop Johnson, who climbed a 7,000 ft (2,100 m) peak and once again disappeared. This was only discovered when an Inuit trapper reported odd tracks on the far side of the mountains.


In desperation, the RCMP hired Wop May to help in the hunt by scouting the area from the air. He arrived in his new ski-equipped Bellanca monoplane on the 5th. On February 14 he discovered the trick Johnson had been using to elude his followers, when he noticed a set of footprints leading off the center of the Eagle River to the bank. Johnson had been following the caribou tracks in the middle of the river, where they walked in order to give them better visibility of approaching predators. Walking in their tracks hid his own footprints and allowed him to travel quickly on the tramped-down snow without having to use his snowshoes. He only left the trail at night to make camp on the river bank, which is the track May had spotted. May radioed back his findings and the RCMP gave chase up the river, eventually being directed to Johnson by February 17.


The pursuit team rounded a bend in the river to find Johnson only a few hundred yards in front of them. Johnson attempted to run for the bank, but did not have his snowshoes on and could not make it. A firefight broke out in which one RCMP officer was seriously wounded and Johnson was eventually killed after being shot in the left side of the pelvis at an acute angle. It is believed that the bullet passed through important tissues, bowels, and main arteries, and caused his death. May landed and flew the officer to help, being credited with saving his life.


After Johnson's death, RCMP officials realized that he had traveled over 85 miles away from his cabin in less than 3 days, burning 10,000 (ten thousand) calories (approximately). 75 years later (2007), forensics teams found that his tailbone actually was not symmetrical, causing his spine to curve left and right slightly. In addition, one foot was longer than other.[citation needed]


An examination of Johnson's body yielded over $2,000 in both American and Canadian currency as well as some gold, a pocket compass, a razor, a knife, fish hooks, nails, a dead squirrel, a dead bird, a large quantity of Beecham's Pills and teeth with gold fillings that were believed to be his. During the entire chase, the Mounties had never heard Johnson say a single word. The only thing they heard was Johnson's laugh after he shot Constable Edgar Millen. To this day people debate who he was, why he moved to the Arctic, or if he was actually responsible for interfering with the trap lines as alleged.
[edit] Identity

In the 1930s the initial investigation about the identity of Albert Johnson primarily focused on an obscure individual named Arthur Nelson. Details of Nelson's life before his arrival in Fort McPherson on July 9, 1931 are recorded by Yukon researcher and author Richard North. Nelson apparently travelled from Dease Lake, British Columbia up into the Yukon in the 1927 to 1931 period. He had similar guns (a Savage .30-30 and a .22) as Albert Johnson. Nelson is also remembered by Kaska elders Art John Sr. and others who knew him by the alias "Mickey Nelson" when he trapped and prospected in west central Yukon; Ross River region. Yukon author Dick North published his theory that Albert Johnson, Arthur Nelson, and John Johnson from North Dakota were one and the same person in his 1989 book "Trackdown". John Johnson did time in San Quentin and Folsom Prison and his physical description is well-documented. North traced John Johnson's identity back to Norway. "Johnny Johnson" was born Johan Konrad Jonsen (1898) in Bardu, Northern Norway, north of the Arctic Circle. Recently DNA tests have ruled out the Johnny Johnson theory.[1]

The Johnston family of Pictou, Nova Scotia have long believed that Albert Johnson is actually Owen Albert Johnston, a relative who had left Pictou at the beginning of the depression to find work in the United States. The family's last letter from Johnston was posted from Revelstoke, British Columbia early in 1931. They never heard from him again. According to the radio interview a relative was arranging for DNA tests.[2]

Previous theories were challenged with the release of Mark Fremmerlid's "What Became of Sigvald Anyway" book. He proposed too many coincidences to ignore the possibility of Sigvald Pedersen Haaskjold from Norway emerging as Albert Johnson. Sigvald was last known as a highly self sufficient 32 year old in 1927, 4 1/2 years before the chase and death of Albert Johnson, who was estimated between 35 and 40 years. Sigvald had become obsessed with the notion that the authorities were still looking for him after evading conscription during the First World War. He had built a fortress like cabin on Digby Island on the north coast of B.C. before disappearing. This author points out circumstantial evidence for this case.[3] This theory, along with the others tested, was 100 percent excluded through DNA testing.

In 2009 a televised exhumation of Johnson's corpse was aired in which the DNA comparisons were made to confirm Johnson's identity. On August 11, 2007, a forensic team sponsored by the Discovery Channel exhumed Johnson's body and conducted forensic tests on his remains before re-interring it in an attempt to confirm his true identity conclusively. All candidates tested for were eventually excluded with 100 percent certainty. It was reported that, by analyzing isotopes in Johnson's teeth, it was determined that Johnson was not Canadian but grew up in America or Scandinavia. It was also reported that he was aged in his 30s when he died.[4]
[edit] Films & Music

* The event has been written about in a song by Wilf Carter.

* A highly fictionalized film based on these events was released in 1975, called Challenge to Be Free.[5] An American production, it relocated the events to Alaska and referred to Johnson's character merely as "Trapper", or in the theme song, "Trapper Man". It portrayed Johnson as a man who lived in peace in harmony with wild animals, similar to Johnny Appleseed, and whose initial interference with other traps was due to rival trappers' inhumane techniques.

* A second, also highly fictionalized, version of Johnson's story appeared in Charles Bronson's 1981 movie Death Hunt. The film reverses the facts, making Johnson a sympathetic, freedom-loving character, and changing RCMP hero Edgar Millen from the young and popular figure that he was into a broken-down, middle-aged alcoholic (played by Lee Marvin) who rather than being shot by Johnson actually leads the pursuit to capture him. Furthermore bush pilot Wop May is represented as a Royal Canadian Air Force captain, Hank Tucker, who is shot down and killed by the posse after Tucker wildly shoots up members of the posse.

* A new narrative feature length film currently entitled The Mad Trapper is being developed by the independent motion picture production company Stainless Steel Productions for a potential 2012 theatrical release date.

[edit] Books

* Rudy Wiebe, The Mad Trapper, 1980, Jackpine House Ltd., 186 pages, ISBN 0-88995-268-X
* Thomas York, Trapper, 1981, Avon Books, 476 pages, ISBN 0-380-63156-3
* The Death of Albert Johnson Mad Trapper of Rat River, 1986, Heritage House Publishing Company Ltd., 94 pages, ISBN 0-919214-16-9
* Dick North, The Mad Trapper of Rat River, 2003, The Lyons Press, 338 pages, ISBN 1-59228-771-9
* Hélèna Katz, The Mad Trapper, 2004, Altitude Publishing Canada Ltd., 133 pages, ISBN 1-55153-787-7
* Dick North, The Man Who Didn't Fit In, 2005, The Lyons Press, 259 pages, ISBN 1-59228-838-3
* Mark Fremmerlid,What Became of Sigvald Anyway? Was He The Mad Trapper of Rat River? 66 pages, ISBN 978-0-9784270-0-9

[edit] References

Read the book

http://www.amazon.com/Mad-Trapper-Rat-River-Canadas/dp/1592281176



Other trapper stories/books at the bottom of this link alsop

"Challenge To Be Free" was one of my favorite movies as a kid!

Steve, I think this Charles Bronson movie was a take on this real story

Death Hunt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcZhmyd7D7A

I'll have to put that in my Netflix queue. Should be a little more shoot-em-up with Bronson starring.