Man-Eater: The Life and Legend of an American Cannibal by Harold Schechter

Author:Harold Schechter [Schechter, Harold]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Kindle-Unlimited, History, Non-Fiction, True Crime
Goodreads: 24965089
Publisher: Little A
Published: 2015-08-03T22:00:00+00:00

37.

THE INSANITY COMMISSION

In the wake of the supreme court’s decision, sensational rumors about Packer’s mental condition began appearing in the press. According to these stories, the bitter dashing of his hopes had caused him to become mentally unhinged. From a model prisoner with a spotless record, he had turned into a “raving maniac.” His “taste for human meat [has] revived,” one Denver paper claimed, “and he threatens to make food of fellow prisoners and guards at the Cañon City Penitentiary”—to “eat everyone in sight and on sight.” “What few docile traits he formerly exhibited have all disappeared,” another reported. He had become “a dangerous lunatic with an unnatural lust for human flesh, determined to whet his appetite on any piece of man’s anatomy on which he could fasten his teeth.”1

While these stories were nothing more than the sort of luridly titillating fantasies that would soon become the stock-in-trade of twentieth-century tabloid journalism, Packer’s behavior had, in fact, become increasingly erratic in recent months. Believing that he might be better off in the state insane asylum at Pueblo, Warden Frank A. McLister urged Governor Davis Hanson Waite to appoint a commission to “inquire into the mental condition of Prisoner Packer.” Within days, three physicians had been selected for the task: P. R. Thombs, superintendent of the state insane asylum; Frank P. Blake, the Fremont County coroner who had examined the prisoner several years earlier when Packer applied for a government pension; and Eugene Grissom of Denver.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania medical school, Grissom served with distinction in the Civil War before returning to his native state of North Carolina to practice medicine. Following two terms in the state legislature, he was made head of the North Carolina Insane Asylum in Raleigh, beginning a twenty-one-year tenure that would earn him a reputation as one of the nation’s leading alienists. A frequent contributor to leading medical journals, he also found time to serve as the first vice president of the American Medical Society, the president of the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (later the American Psychiatric Association), a member of the state board of agriculture, surgeon general of the state guard, and a trustee of the University of North Carolina. His brilliant career was abruptly derailed in June 1889, when he was accused of having taken “indecent liberties” with female attendants and of “gross mistreatment” of his patients. Though acquitted at the climax of a sensational three-week trial, his reputation suffered irreparable damage. Resigning under public pressure, he moved out west to start a new life and settled in Denver, where he resumed his medical practice.2

Accompanied by a reporter for the Denver Republican, Grissom and the other two members of the Commission de Lunatico Inquirendo (as it was formally known) arrived at Warden McLister’s house on the penitentiary grounds shortly after noon on Wednesday, August 16. After a brief consultation about procedure, they summoned a string of witnesses, beginning with the prison chaplain, the Reverend Dr. L.

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