h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There is a song written by sixties protest folksinger Phil Ochs, called, "The Ballad of Alfred Packer". It appears on the CD: Phil Ochs, The Broadside Tapes I. (Smithsonian/Folkways Records 1989).

In the state of Colorado
In the year of seventy four
They crossed the San Juan Mountains
Growing hungry to the core
Their guide was Alfred Packer
And they trusted him too long
For his character was weak
And his appetite was strong

Chorus: They called him a murderer, a cannibal, a thief;
It just doesn't pay to eat anything but Government inspected beef.

The song, and the news article quoted in the liner notes, says the Judge remarked, "There was only six Democrats in all of Minsdale County, and you, you man-eating son of a bitch, you ate five of them. I sentence you to hang by the neck until you're dead, dead, dead, as a warning against further reducing the Democratic population in this county." But six or seven, the idea is still the same.

I was walking down the street, attracted to the smell of feet.

I sent a tramp to heavens door and then dispatched another four.

As at their feet the only guest, I helped myself to the breast.

I got to like the taste of rib so I packed a bundle for the trp.

When the law found out what I had done I spent 9 years on the run.

Tried for murder then manslaughter they sentence me to serve fourty.

Pardoned later and out of gaol at least I lived to tell the tale.

It's HINSDALE County, not "Minesdale." I live next door in La Plata County. Hinsdale County is the most sparsely populated county in Colorado today, mostly occupied by the Weminuche, the largest wilderness area in the Lower 48, and a bunch of old mining towns gone bust and abandoned.