Fatal Gothic

Fatal Gothic. Episode 11, ”Jeremiah Johnson and Boone Helm. Cannibal Mountain Men”


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After the Donner Party incident of 1847, Cannibalism became the big sensationalist news across the United States for a generation. The public was obsessed by it, and two men became infamous for their taste for human flesh and murder. Though Jeremiah Johnson would become a larger than life fictional hero of mythical stature in books and finally in movies, the real man was known as "Liver Eating" Johnson, and killing and eating the body parts of a reported 300 plus warriors of the Crow and Blackfeet Nations in battle was far from his only activity. He was known to kill Native women and children as well, and may have murdered and eaten three white children years after his battles with the Indians. And nearly as prolific a cannibal was Boone Helm, another mountain man of the mid 19th century. Helm is thought to have murdered and eaten as many as 100 people in his lifetime, and many more in gunfights and barroom brawls during his travels from Missouri to California. His cannibalism made him a creepy household name before he was finally hanged, not for eating people, but for simple bank robbery.
 

 

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Fatal GothicBy fatalgothic