After these discoveries the Sheriff procured warrants charging Packer with five murders, but during his absence the prisoner escaped.
Nothing was heard of him again until January 29, 1883, nine years later, when General Adams received a letter from Cheyenne, Wyoming, in which a Salt Lake prospector stated that he had met Packer face to face in that locality. The informant stated that the fugitive was known as John Schwartze, and was suspected of being engaged in operations with a gang of outlaws.
Detectives began an investigation, and on March 12, 1883, Sheriff Sharpless of Laramie County arrested Packer, and on the i7th inst. Sheriff Smith of Hinsdale County brought the prisoner back to Lake City, Col.
His trial on the charge of murdering Israel Swan in Hinsdale County on March 1, 1874, was begun on April 3, 1883. It was proven that each member of the party except Packer possessed considerable money. The defendant repeated his former statement, wherein he claimed that he had only killed Bell, and had done so in self-defense.
On April 13, the jury found the defendant guilty with the death penalty attached. A stay of execution was granted to Packer, who immediately appealed to the Supreme Court. In the meantime he was transferred to the Gunnison jail to save him from mob violence.
In October, 1885, the Supreme Court granted a new trial and it was then decided to bring him to trial on five charges of manslaughter. He was found guilty on each charge and was sentenced to serve eight years for each offense, making a total of forty years.
He was pardoned on January i, 1901, and died on a ranch near Denver on April 24, 1907.
While Gilbert was reading this, I got myself a drink. Dorothy stopped dancing to join me. “Do you like him?” she asked, jerking her head to indicate Quinn.
“He’s all right.”
“Maybe, but he can be terribly silly. You didn’t ask me where I stayed last night. Don’t you care?”
“It’s none of my business.”
“But I found out something for you.”
“What?”
“I stayed at Aunt Alice’s. She’s not exactly right in the head, but she’s awfully sweet. She told me she had a letter from my father today warning her against Mamma.”
“Warning her how? Just what did he say?”
“I didn’t see it. Aunt Alice has been mad with him for several years and she tore it up. She says he’s become a Communist and she’s sure the Communists killed Julia Wolf and will kill him in the end. She thinks it’s all over some secret they betrayed.”
I said: “Oh my God!”
“Well, don’t blame me. I’m just telling you what she told me. I told you she wasn’t exactly right in the head.”
“Did she tell you that junk was in the letter?”
Dorothy shook her head. “No. She only said the warning was. As near as I remember she said he wrote her not to trust Mamma under any circumstances and not to trust anybody connected with her, which I suppose means all of us.”
“Try to remember more.”
“But there wasn’t any more. That’s all she told me.”
“Where was the letter from?” I asked.
“She didn’t know–except that it had come air-mail. She said she wasn’t interested.”
“What did she think of it? I mean, did she take the warning seriously?”
“She said he was a dangerous radical–they’re her very words–and she wasn’t interested in anything he had to say.”
“How seriously do you take it?”
She stared at me for a long moment and she moistened her lips before she spoke. “I think he–”
Gilbert, book in hand, came over to us. He seemed disappointed in the story I had given him. “It’s very interesting,” he said, “but, if you know what I mean, it’s not a pathological case.” He put an arm around his sister’s waist. “It was more a matter of that or starving.”
“Not unless you want to believe him,” I said.
Dorothy asked: “What is it?”
“A thing in the book,” Gilbert replied.
“Tell him about the letter your aunt got,” I said to Dorothy.
She told him.
When she had finished, he grimaced impatiently. “That’s silly. Mamma’s not really dangerous. She’s just a case of arrested development. Most of us have outgrown ethics and morals and so on. Mamma’s just not grown up to them yet.” He frowned and corrected himself thoughtfully: “She might be dangerous, but it would be like a child playing with matches.”