On April 16, 1874, 65 days after his departure, Packer emerged from the woods alone and made his way across a frozen lake bed to the Los Pinós Indian Agency, near
Saguache, Colorado. As the men of the agency were eating breakfast, Packer came in and stood before them begging for food and shelter. He carried with him a rifle, a knife, a steel coffee pot, and a satchel. The men sat Packer down at the table and gave him some food, which he could not ingest without vomiting. Packer said that his digestion was altered as a result of his prolonged near-starvation. Then he related to the men the events that had led him from Ouray's camp to Los Piños. He said he had been hired by five men to guide them to Breckenridge. He then stated that during their journey, he had become
snow-blind and was left lagging behind the party, becoming a burden for them. Packer claimed that a member of the party, Israel Swan, had supplied him with a rifle, just before the others decided to abandon him. Since this moment he had been forced to survive on his own and make his way out of the mountains with minimal ammunition and virtually no supplies. He indicated he had little else to eat than roots and rose buds the entire time he was alone. He had also eaten his moccasins. The men at the agency listened to his story, but found it rather odd, that even though he had been lost in the wilderness for a little over two months, he did not look as malnourished and threadbare as most lost wanderers they had come across in the mountains. His face was reported as being bloated, and his overall physique hardly skeletal. Moreover, Packer said he would drink whisky for breakfast, instead of any kind of food.
Discovery of the bodies The following August, the site of the incident was found by John A. Randolph, an illustrator who worked for ''
Harper's Weekly'' magazine. He discovered all five of the bodies at the foot of Slumgullion Pass, two miles southeast of
Lake City, Colorado, in a pine-shaded gulch. They lay above the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River, now known colloquially as Dead Man's Gulch, which matched the description of where Packer had originally claimed that only Bell was killed. The snow that had been covering the bodies and campsite had melted in the intervening four months. Randolph sketched the scene as he found it, and then alerted authorities in nearby Lake City. The story was covered two months later in the October 17, 1874, edition of ''Harper's Weekly'', and included his illustration of the site. The local coroner and law enforcement set out for the site along with about 20 volunteers and discovered the bodies of all five men in various states of decomposition, having been left to the elements and animals for four months. First responders to the site noted that it appeared that "extreme violence" had befallen the men. Frank Miller's head was missing entirely from the campsite; his and Israel Swan's corpses had been considerably worked upon by scavengers and were little more than scattered bones. Israel's skull had a jagged chunk missing out of it. The bodies of George Noon and James Humphrey were largely flayed torsos of rotting viscera, attached to skeletal legs, but with intact and bearded faces, with Humphrey's face being slightly more decayed than Noon's. They had received blows to the head, the shape indicating perhaps a hatchet, and their bodies had noticeable broken bones. Shannon Bell lay with largely skeletal legs splayed and arms to his sides that were crudely cut to their bones leading to hands that were still fully skinned. His remaining corpse was a mass of viscera encased in an almost wholly flayed torso. His face was still wearing a thick red beard and bushy hair. The lack of noticeable decay in his face suggested that he had been the last to die. The top of Bell's skull had been ripped open. The three men whose bodies were still intact, or partly intact, had flesh and muscle excised from choice and meaty locations; no attempt had been made to consume bone marrow or any organs at all. The state of the bodies contradicted Packer's version of events. They were all together in one spot, not scattered across miles. Both Humphrey and Noon had large portions of remaining flesh, muscle and organs, that could have been consumed long before Bell attempted to murder Packer, as he had claimed. The men had tattered cloths lashed to their rotting feet, which had replaced the shoes they had probably eaten, and moldy and tattered blankets lay beneath and beside them. A beaten path went from the resting place of the corpses to a crude shelter that was used by Packer. Moreover, there was evidence to suggest that the deaths had occurred before supplies were totally exhausted. Within the shelter were possessions of the men which Packer had left behind. The theory at the time was that Packer killed the men before supplies ran out to rob them of their possessions, got snowed in, and then lived in his makeshift shelter for months, walking to his slain companions and slicing meat off as needed. Preston Nutter accompanied the party to the site, and identified the bodies as belonging to the five missing men. A rifle broken in two was found close to the bodies. Owing to the damage apparent on their remains, it is presumed that it was used to bludgeon one or more of them. Their remains were buried at the site by officials, and the search party returned to Packer's makeshift jail to confront him, only to find him missing. The jail he had been kept in was little more than a log cabin located on ranch property belonging to the
Saguache County Sheriff. Months had passed with no definitive evidence of a crime having been committed, no bodies discovered, and no formal charges lodged against Packer — other than the attempt on Lauter's life, which was not tenaciously sought for prosecution and was used more as a means to keep him under custody. Saguache County authorities were reportedly not happy about taxpayer dollars being spent so exorbitantly on keeping Packer housed and under constant guard. He was allegedly passed a makeshift key for his irons and given some supplies, and easily escaped. Even so, nearly the entirety of Saguache was convinced, either through rumor or rational deduction, that Packer was guilty of either robbery or murder. His life was threatened constantly by the nearby townspeople. Packer never divulged who helped him escape, how this was achieved, or why. It was presumed that his guard had been bribed by Packer himself or by someone else.
Theories The generally accepted theory at the time was that Packer had attached himself to the party under highly overstated qualifications of being a
mountain guide familiar with the area in order to accompany the men to Breckenridge, and had at best led his party to miserable deaths due to gross incompetence. This was enough of a crime in itself as far as the local population was concerned. However, an ultimately more popular theory was that he had set out with his party of five men from Ouray's camp, with a premeditated plan to lead them into the wilderness where he would kill and rob them. Nutter and Loutsenhizer made it a personal mission to discredit Packer's alleged qualifications for being a guide — let alone a mountain guide — and pointed out all of his character flaws that they had come to know, stressing his numerous different stories and inconsistencies. Local papers picked up the story and the incident received constant coverage, with highly sensational headlines, many negative comments regarding Packer's character, and highly imagined theories that grabbed both national and international attention. Regardless as to how it may have happened, nearly the entire population of Saguache — and soon nearly the entire country and beyond — found that Packer's culpability for his party's deaths was beyond doubt. The cannibalism aspect of his charges, although shocking, was not necessarily the foremost issue of his guilt. People at that time were well-acquainted with the story of the ill-fated
Donner Party, who had resorted to cannibalism during the winter of 1846–1847, and were understanding to a degree of the dire need to eat in the unforgiving wilderness. Additionally cannibalism was and is not
illegal per se in the United States, unless one commits murder in order to obtain the flesh to be consumed. Even in such a case, the accused would be charged with murder, with the cannibalism itself being charged as the desecration and/or abuse of a corpse. Packer would claim for the remainder of his life that he had been unjustly vilified and convicted for engaging in cannibalism rather than for cold-blooded murder, which he continued to deny ever having committed. In the end, it came down to the question: did the five men die due to incompetence, or greed? ==First trial==