The Mad Trapper: Unearthing a Mystery
Excerpt from
The Mad Trapper: Unearthing a Mystery. Reprinted with permission.
Yukon resident Ole Getz, a trapper and log-home builder himself, was raised in Norway. His boyhood was rich with exciting stories about the adventures of his mother's uncle, Johnny Johnson by name, who immigrated to North America in the early part of the twentieth century and made his fortune in gold and furs.
In reality, however, this uncle and his family had settled in North Dakota and were barely scraping by. Johnny eventually turned to petty crime to support himself. By the 1920s the family back in Norway had lost track of their uncle and simply presumed that he had died of natural causes. The possibility that he had become the infamous Mad Trapper was a revelation.
Testing Getz's DNA was, therefore, an obvious necessity, and every angle of every lead had to be pursued until it could be ruled out entirely, and so, as soon as Ole supplied the drop of blood required for DNA testing we rushed the specimen to the lab. Coincidentally, another equally strong candidate came to our attention that same week. Ontario resident Suzanne Young and her sisters had recently unravelled a long and convoluted family secret - one that seemed to lead directly to the Mad Trapper. All the dates matched up and family photos even showed an uncanny physical resemblance between their grandmother and Albert Johnson. We certainly agreed that the two could well have been brother and sister.
In the meantime, the partners in Myth Merchant Films had been working with a man named Mark Fremmerlid. Like Ole Getz, Fremmerlid grew up with tales about his great uncle but this family had never made any connection between themselves and the Mad Trapper. It was not until Mark was a young adult that such a possibility occurred to him and, if it had not been for a conversation with a former employer, Fremmerlid might never have connected the two pieces of history. Initially the connection see
med tenuous but nevertheless it set Mark on a mission and soon he had a reasonable case built on strong circumstantial evidence.
His heritage even fit well within the portions of Norway identified on Dr. Bell's isotope map as having been Albert Johnson's homeland but so did the histories of many other candidates who had written to us asking to be tested. Mark's great-grandfather had come to Canada to earn money in order not to lose the family's farm in Norway.
Mark's case (had) two technical advantages over many others we examined. First, he had a living relative one generation older than he who was willing to be tested and secondly, he had pursued his investigation as far as he could without having access to DNA comparison and had not run into any contradictory indications. I anxiously began corresponding with Mark's aunt in Norway. As soon as I had the two DNA samples in my possession I couriered them to Dr. Sweet's lab and then we began the now-familiar process - of anxious waiting.
Barbara Smith is the bestselling author of 25 books. Canadian social history is one of her lifelong interests, and she has also taught writing-related courses in schools from elementary to university level and for private industry. Barbara and her husband, Bob, live on Vancouver Island in British Columbia.