Albert Johnson (d.1932)
	
A man calling himself Albert Johnson arrived at Fort McPherson in July 1931. Alfred King, of the RCMP, went to Johnson’s cabin on the Rat River, about sixty-five km outside of town to question him about trapping without a licence and tampering with other’s traps.  Johnson was in the cabin but refused to speak. King and special constable Joe Bernard went to Aklavik to get a search warrant and returned with constable Robert McDowell and special constable Lazarus Sittichinli. King knocked on the door and was shot in the chest. His companions put him on a toboggan and pulled him 130 kilometres miles back to Aklavik where King recovered. The third trip to the cabin was conducted by three Mounties, two special constables, three trappers, an Indigenous guide, and forty-two dogs. They brought some dynamite which they used to blow Johnson’s cabin apart. They approached the destroyed cabin to be met with gunfire from an underground foxhole. After a fifteen-hour standoff in -40°C weather, the Mounties were out of ammunition and returned to their home base. When they returned with larger numbers, Johnson was gone. There was a 240-kilometre-plus chase that lasted more than a month during which Johnson killed constable Edgar Millen, and seriously wounded an army officer, Earl Hersey. At one point he was seemingly trapped when the only two passes through the Richardson Mountains were blocked by the Mounties but, during the night and in a blizzard, Johnson climbed over a 2,000-metre peak in -58°C temperatures.((Hélèna Katz, “A rag and a bone and a hank of hair may finally lay to rest a grand mystère.” 21 May 2009. 2009 website: http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/newtrail/nav03.cfm?nav03=83812&nav02=83805&nav01=83804))

The story made headlines around the world as the media-dubbed “Mad Trapper’s” actions were reported daily in newspapers and on the radio. The pursuit marked the first time that police used two-way radios and an airplane in attempting to apprehend a fugitive. The plane was flown by the First World War flying ace Wop May. The story inspired numerous books and a Hollywood film, //Death Hunt,// starring Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin. Johnson was killed in a shootout on the Yukon’s Eagle River on 17 February 1932. His true identity was unknown.((Hélèna Katz, “A rag and a bone and a hank of hair may finally lay to rest a grand mystère.” 21 May 2009. 2009 website: http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/newtrail/nav03.cfm?nav03=83812&nav02=83805&nav01=83804))

Seventy-five years later the community of Aklavik gave Myth Merchant Films permission to exhume Johnson's body. The same request had been denied to author Dick North fifteen years earlier. Aklavik mayor Knute Hansen explained that it was against the Gwitchen cultural practices to disturb the dead, but the elders were concerned that a family somewhere did not know what had happened to their relative. University of Alberta professor Owen Beattie and filmmaker Carrie Gour organized a forensics team that included a DNA specialist, a pathologist, and an expert who analysed the oxygen isotopes in Johnson’s teeth for indications of where he was raised.((Hélèna Katz, “A rag and a bone and a hank of hair may finally lay to rest a grand mystère.” 21 May 2009. 2009 website: http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/newtrail/nav03.cfm?nav03=83812&nav02=83805&nav01=83804)) Discovery Channel televised the results of the exhumation in 2009. All candidates were excluded and it was determined that the Mad Trapper was raised in the corn belt of Midwest America or possibly in Scandinavia. He was in his thirties when he died.((“Albert Johnson (criminal).” //Wikipedia,// 2019 website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Johnson_(criminal) ))