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The Mad Trapper destroyed Cabin. Albert Johnson kept fighting from a hole in the ruins of his cabin on Rat River after Royal Canadian Mounted Police besieged and destroyed it with dynamite. In these days of forgone privacy and hi-tech forensics, its rare to find a high-profile criminal case that is still unsolved, but such is the case of the mysterious Mad Trapper of Rat River who rolled into the Canadian wilderness out of nowhere and proceeded to go on a crazed tear through the wilderness with the mounties hot on his heels.
Mad Trapper of Rat River
Albert Johnson’s arrival in Fort MacPherson, July 9th 1931 on the southern edge of the Mackenzie delta was by all accounts non-eventful. He was about 35 years of age, a very taciturn person with cold blue eyes coupled with a stocky muscular build. These physical characteristics in men that trapped for a living in the north were nothing out of the ordinary.
What the local people considered strange, however, was the fact that Albert Johnson did not bother to get a trapping license even though he built an 8′ X 10′ cabin with a good view on 3 sides in a prime trapping site on the Rat River.
With the trapping season in full swing by early December, some of Albert’s neighbours began having someone disrupt their traps. The only change from last season to this one – was Albert Johnson.
He led authorities on the longest manhunt in Canadian history, fleeing across frozen tundra and scaling a mountain in blizzard conditions. Albert Johnson played the leading role in a seven-week game of cat-and-mouse that captivated a nation. The story of The Mad Trapper of Rat River is a legendary Canadian mystery that still begs to be solved.
The entire tale unfolds during the alarming sub-zero temperatures of the mid-winter darkness above the Arctic Circle. In 1931, an unfamiliar man by the name of Albert Johnson spontaneously arrives in Fort McPherson, building a small cabin on the banks of the Rat River, near the Mackenzie River delta. In December of that same year, members of Aklavik’s detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were obliged to question Albert Johnson as a result of a formal complaint filed by local trappers. Someone was tampering with traps, and it wasn’t long before the antisocial newcomer was identified as the likely suspect.
Constable Alfred King and Special Constable Joe Bernard trudged out to Johnson’s forlorn cabin to discuss the allegations against him. It was reported that Johnson refused to acknowledge the presence of the inquiring RCMP. It was decided that returning to Aklavik for a search warrant was the next step in the investigation.
Constables King and Bernard returned two days later with two additional RCMP officers and a civilian deputy. Johnson again refused to answer any questions. In due course, Constable King decided to implement the warrant and force the cabin’s door.