Just in case the article moves on
Bob Weber
The Canadian Press
He's been dead for 75 years, but the Mad Trapper of Rat River almost evaded pursuers one more time.
A film crew exhuming the body of the legendary outlaw in an effort to finally identify him had to dig two holes to find him – and wound up relying on the memory of a 92-year-old woman to successfully get DNA samples.
"We thought he was going to evade us one last time," Carrie Gour of Myth Merchant Films said today of the Alberta-based film company's attempt to find an answer to one of the North's great enduring mysteries.
Albert Johnson slid into Arctic lore – probably under an alias – in January 1932, when he died in a gun battle with police after a brutal mid-winter manhunt that cost the life of an RCMP constable.
Police began chasing Johnson after he shot and nearly killed an officer who wanted to ask him about complaints that someone had been interfering with traplines near Fort McPherson, N.W.T.
RCMP dynamited his cabin, but Johnson survived and led police dog teams on a spectacular two-week chase that was followed across the continent on the then-new medium of radio. When officers eventually reached him, Johnson shot one of them dead.
Despite travelling on foot and not being able to build a fire or hunt, Johnson escaped again, somehow crossing the 2,100-metre-high Richardson Mountains in the middle of a blizzard.
It took the first aerial search in Canadian history – by World War One flying ace Wilfred (Wop) May – to eventually find him. Trapped, Johnson died in the ensuing gun battle.
His pockets held more than $2,000 but no identification. His fingerprints revealed nothing. Nobody claimed the body.
Myth Merchant, after receiving permission from the village of Aklavik, N.W.T., to dig up the body, is hoping to use DNA sequences to finally settle the question of Johnson's identity.
The exhumation began last Friday under a large army tent. Diggers, including a local trapper, started burrowing inside a small fenced-off area where lore held Johnson was buried, a story backed up by ground-penetrating radar.
But by Saturday, it was clear Johnson wasn't there.
An elder was consulted, who told the diggers that Johnson was in fact just outside the fence, beneath the crew's pile of dirt.
The shovels shifted, and the coffin – its lid collapsed and decayed – finally emerged on Sunday, uncovered by the trapper.
"It takes a trapper to find a trapper," said Gour.
Far from a macabre, horror-movie ambience, Gour described the exhumation as "magical."
"It was like a community barn-raising – only different."
The weather, cold and grim all weekend, changed as Johnson re-emerged.
"Within 15 minutes, the wind dropped, the sky opened up and an eagle flew overhead."
There wasn't much left of the Mad Trapper, mostly skeleton, although some facial hair, fingernails and soft tissues remained. Scientists took tooth and bone samples as interested community members filed respectfully in and out of the tent.
Johnson and his original coffin were placed in a new box and reburied to the prayers of a minister and a Gwich'In elder.
DNA sequences will be completed in a month or two. Gour said Myth
