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Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: H ii am, welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: There's Chuck. Jerry's here too, sitting in for Dave, and
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: the three of us are on the run through the
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Canadian Arctic recreating the story of the Mad Trapper, and
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: it's not going very well for us.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: That's right, the Mad Trapper of rhet River aka perhaps
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: I don't even know about, perhaps almost certainly Canada's most
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: infamous unknown person on the Lamb, and the largest manhunt
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: in Canada's history conducted to try and get this guy.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a I saw it referred to as
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: like an iconic Canadian story. This guy just tore us
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: up in nineteen thirty one, made international headlines and died.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: It's still to this day, no one knows who he is,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: and not one of those things where like we're pretty
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: sure it's this guy, we just can't prove it. They
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: have no idea who who this guy is. They're starting
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: to kind of chew around the edges of it. But
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: the fact that he is still unidentified just makes it
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: that much more interesting. But even if you were identified, Chuck,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: his story is still just totally fascinating on its own.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not like Somerton Man, because that was the
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: most interesting thing about that was the mystery of who
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: he was. It wouldn't care, it wouldn't matter if this
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: guy was indeed Albert Johnson, who was his alias. It's
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: a remarkable story that started in July nineteen thirty one
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: when this guy Albert Johnson came and moved there. They
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: think he may have come from Sweden, according to certain
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: people who talk to him here and there. But he
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: was a man of very few words, as we'll see,
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: when he arrived in the vast remote area of the
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Northwest Territories near Fort McPherson and built a little eight
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: by ten foot cabin near the Rat River.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're talking like the northern most parts of Canada,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: like basically along the Arctic Ocean.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: In the thirties.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was essentially living where the guys from the
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Terror and the Arebus that we talked about were trying
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: to get to when they were like on their march
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: down toward Canada. They had they done this in nineteen
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: thirty one, they might have run into Albert Johnson. He
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: was that far up right. So this is a really
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: really rugged, wild, dangerous place to live and like you
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: said he arrived in July. In a few months after that,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: I think in November December of nineteen thirty one, okay,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: December of nineteen thirty one, a couple of trappers from
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: the First Nations who lived up there, got in touch
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: with one of the local police and said, Hey, there's
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: this guy. His name's Albert Johnson, and he's messing with
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: our trap lines and he's not supposed to do that,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: so can you go tell him to stop doing that?
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: And three days later, a couple of cops just knocked
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: on Johnson's cabin door, assuming that they were just going
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: to talk to him and tell him to stop doing that,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: and that would be that, right.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, these are the Mounties, so these guys
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: are not messing around. The story is a little confusing
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: because everywhere you look it's a little different. But from
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: what I gathered, there were three total visits. One visit
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: when he basically said get the heck out of here
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: and pointed a gun at them. A second visit when
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: two guys came back, and this time he supposedly refused
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: to talk at all, and when they went to look
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: through his windows, he just covered his windows up and
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: ignored them and then.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Smasher.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: I guess four total, because the third one was when
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: those two guys plus two more I think it was
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Alfred King and Joe Bernard and two more guys came
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: back with warrants, forced the door over and he shot
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: King and a brief firefight ensued. And then finally the
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: fourth visit when they brought a bunch of guys with
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: dynamite and camped out for three days outside his cabin.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they threw Dinah on his roof to flush him out,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: and it certainly blew up the roof as expected, it
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: also took down some of the walls of the cabin,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: and amazingly, Albert Johnson survived, and even more amazingly, he
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: still refused to come out and engaged in a gunfight
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: with this posse that the Mounties had assembled to go
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: take this guy out because like, he shot at an
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: officer who just wanted to tell him to stop messing
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: with trap lines, like shot and tried to kill him. Right,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: So this guy was already a big deal by this time,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: and he managed to hold off this posse from taking
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: him alive. They actually had to get out of there
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: because they were running low on food, and the weather
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: was terrible. This is this is December in the northernmost
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: reaches of Canada along the Arctic. Now the time you
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: want to be outside. Apparently the temperature was a negative
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: forty five. And this guy's holding these guys down in
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: a gunfight. And then they leave, and four days later
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: they come back, and now they find that this destroyed
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: cabin is now empty. He's fled, and a blizzard has
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: covered up his tracks.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw that it was like a sixty mile
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: hike just to get to his place. So the fact
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: that they came back four times when this guy probably
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: could have opened the door the first time and said
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: all right, I won't mess with their traps anymore, and
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: that probably would have been the end of it. But yeah,
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: he managed to evade them on this man hunt by
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: stepping in caribou tracks and from these storms that would
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: come through, and maybe that's a good time for a break. Yes,
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: all right, we'll be right back.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: So I don't think we said yet. Now there's a
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: man hunt underway. This guy who they want to take
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: in for shooting at cops is on the run in
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: the Canadian wilderness, and this man hunt lasted seven weeks
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: from December to mid February. This guy kept evading them.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: They'd catch up to him, he'd shoot at him, they'd
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: have a firefight. One time he killed a cop, Constable Millin,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: who was like a member of this posse that was
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: hunting him down. And he would manage to fend them
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: off every time they caught him in a firefight. And
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: one of the other interesting facts about this chuck is
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: this is the first time an aircraft was ever used
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: in a manhunt as far as anyone knows.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: That's right. They got a pretty legendary WW one Canadian
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: fighter pilot name named Wilfrid Wilfrid wap May to come
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: in a little side note here, wop May was in
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: the dogfight that ended the Red Baron's life. So a
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: very sort of famous Canadian fighter pilot flying above for
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: the first time seeing if they could see and if
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: you could just spot trails from above.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw a photo that he took from his
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: aircraft of like this, like he was really high up
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: and there's a little tiny speck in the middle of
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: a frozen river and it's identified as Albert Johnson. And
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: then there's like three more tiny specks coming out of
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the woodline, chasing after Johnson and what may got a
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: picture of it, and it's just when you understand what
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: you're looking at, it's just astounding what these guys were
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: running through over the course of seven weeks. It's nuts.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: And so people heard about this thanks to the radio,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: which was still a pretty new invention, but this story
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: that was kind of playing out over the news in
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: real time actually helped sell a bunch of new radios
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: because people didn't want to miss out.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, supposedly this is one of the really first big
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: news stories to be broken via electronic media. So you've
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: got your first search and rescue or I guess not
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: search and rescue, search and destroy, mission feeding featuring a plane.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: You've got the first big news stories breaking on radio
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: for the first time. One of the weird parts of
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: this case I said he was a man of few
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: words is, as the story goes, this guy didn't say
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: a word the whole time, Like there was never like,
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: you know, it's my right to be here, you know,
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: get away. I'm just trying to live. Like supposedly this
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: guy said nothing to any of them.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: That is so unsettling. It's just totally It's another thing
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: that just kind of adds to his legend too.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: So yeah, people by this time, this was during the Depression,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: and a lot of the public that was following the
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: story were actually rooting for him because remember this was
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: a time when the public rooted for like bank robbers
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: and and other curials and outlaws because the establishment had
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: basically screwed everything up and taken advantage of everybody. So
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: there were people who were pulling for him, And even
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: if you weren't pulling for him, it was just astounding
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: what this guy was doing with just some I think
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: he had a rifle and a shotgun, he had his clothes,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: and he was like out maneuvering and surviving against this
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: posse that was on his trail. And I also saw
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: chuck that one of the unsung or overlooked groups that
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: was part of this posse were some of the first
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Nation members who helped track him. That this posse probably
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: would have lost his trail in the first few days
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: had it not been for the trackers that came with him.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the Loose Show people were the ones
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: who initially filed the complaint didn't. Did you see which
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: tribes helped out in the search.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: I didn't. I just saw that one of the members
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: last name was Rat. So I'm guessing he was named
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: after the Rat River that the River family was. Yeah, exactly.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: So. Another part of the kind of a fun fact
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: of this story is, or at least part of the lore,
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: is that at one point they had him pinned in
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: a steep canyon and he supposedly scaled a near vertical
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: wall of ice basically to get out of there.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So at this point they're like, this guy is
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: not human. Yeah, and again another First Nations member comes through.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: I think somebody came back and mentioned that they heard
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: a rifle shot in this like totally desolate area and
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: the Royal Canadian Mounty posse where like, well, they can
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: only be Albert Johnson. And they headed that way and
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: they found his trail and they started chasing him and
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: they engaged in one last firefight with him, and this
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: one Albert Johnson didn't come out of alive.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: That's right. They got him finally after this long, long
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: man hunt, a very successful evasion for a long time,
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: but yeah, they eventually got him. No one knows I
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: mean part of the you know, the second part of
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: this is just the mystery, like not only who was
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: he literally, but like who was this guy to move
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: way out there to not you know, they supposedly back,
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: you know, closer to town, even though I'm sure that was
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: super small as well. It was like a very friendly place,
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: and he was known as a loner and very unfriendly,
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: which was not the norm. And like, who was this guy?
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: He just moved out to the middle of nowhere and
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: like didn't speak a word this entire time.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: M hm, right, yeah, why why.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Would he do this?
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, which is just deepens the mystery further. By
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: the way, one other thing, it was Charlie Ratt, who
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: was the guy that helped the Mounties find how nice
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Albert Johnson.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: What a name.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: So they had a picture of him. There's a very well,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: I guess famous if your Canadian picture of his dead
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: body on like a morgue slab, that.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Would mess with the guy.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: No, he looks rough and tough, for sure, he does.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: He like you could not know his story and see
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: that picture of his dead body and be like, I'll
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: bet that guy could survive in the Canadian wilderness for
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: seven weeks with the cops on his trail.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, I would would want nothing to do
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: with this guy.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: So they took this picture because they wanted to circulate.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Everybody wanted to know who this guy was, and it
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: made it in all the papers in Canada and the
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: United States, and no one came forward. The details of
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: his life and demeanor didn't match anything that anybody knew of.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, people came forward with tips, but none
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: of them were legitimate or panned out. And very quickly
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: this guy just became this anonymous weirdo who did some
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: crazy stuff in the winter of nineteen thirty one.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, like you said, they exhumed his body in
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: two thousand and seven once DNA sampling was you know,
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: a viable thing, and that has enabled some genetic comparisons
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: to possible relatives. They obviously he didn't, you know, no
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: one has come forward with it like a perfect match
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: or anything. But they made comparisons with more than two
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: dozen families and they have some strong, circumstantial evidence that
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: what family he may have been from and where they
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: have landed. Now is that they're pretty sure that his
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: background is Swedish and he has been linked to multiple
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: descendants of a gentleman named Gustaf Magnuson who died in
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: eighteen fifty three and Britta sven daughter who passed away
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: in eighteen forty six, and they are pretty sure that
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: he's a descendant of them, But nobody from any of
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: those bloodlines has come forward either.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: No, and this company called Authrom, a genome sequencing company,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: they have figured out a few other things about him
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: that he almost certainly grew up in the Midwestern United States.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: His autopsy revealed that he had extensive and expensive dental work,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: and then he had scoliosis. Yeah, this guy did this
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: for seven weeks scale the near vertical face cliff with
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: scoliosis as well. He was just amazing in a really
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: kind of specific way.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: I think one foot was bigger than the other one too,
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: which Lord I thought was a very strange little uh
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: add on.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, but also if he grew up in the Midwest,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: like the stuff he was doing, there's not many places
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: to learn that. I mean, I guess if you're from
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: like Upper Minnesota or something, but I'm guessing comparing an
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Upper Minnesota winter to in Upper Canada winters like night
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: and day, so.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: They contend he was never like a Swedish resident.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: They don't necessarily contend that he could have been a
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: transplant from Sweden who was just raised in like a
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Swedish speaking community.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so he could just wonder about like ice wall
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: climbing and stuff. He could probably do that in Sweden.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, apparently based on
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: and his teeth isotopes that he was born he was
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: raised or grew up in the mid the middle of Yes. Yeah,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: all right, so maybe one day we'll.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Know maybe, I mean, we found out the Summerton Man's identity, right.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I don't think we ever mentioned it on
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: the episode on the podcast, do we. Yeah.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: I think we read a listener mail because we got
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: like ten thousand Australians.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Great, well, if it ever comes out, who's the mad
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Trapper of Rat River? Was everybody? We want to know?
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: So we can tell everybody else. Sure. Yeah. And in
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: the meantime, Chuck, I think short Stuff is out. Stuff
• 15:36
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• 15:38
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