Alfred G. Packer first made headlines in 1873, when he returned from a harrowing journey through the Colorado Rockies ... alone. What happened to his five traveling companions became the stuff of legend, as author Harold Schechter explores in the new Man-Eater: The Life and Legend of an American Cannibal.
Detailed and carefully researched, Man-Eater delves into Packer’s early life, the events that led to that ill-fated and ill-timed prospecting journey, the manhunt that ensued after Packer’s apparent mass murder was discovered, his trial, and his strange transformation in the court of public opinion from wild-eyed killer ... to something resembling a folk hero. We caught up with Schechter—a veteran true-crime writer whose previous books take on an admirable range of similarly notorious figures, including Ed Gein, H.H. Holmes, Albert Fish, and Jesse Pomeroy—to learn more about this fascinating tale.
