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Welcome to the Most Notorious Podcast, I'm Eric Rivenes. My guest today is Harold

Shecter, prolific author of so many wonderful historical true crime books that it would

take me an hour to list them all. He was a guest on an earlier show last winter and

we talked about child serial killer Jesse Pomeroy and his book Fiend. At the very end of

the interview, I asked him a little bit about his latest work, a book called Man Either.

Well, today we have a full episode on it and it's a pretty incredible story. Mr. Shecter,

thank you so much for joining me today.

That was my pleasure.

So for those who haven't read the description of the show yet, the subject today is Elfrid

Packer, a man who was accused in 1874 of not only murder but cannibalism as well. But

before we get into that story, could you talk about some of the 19th century views on cannibalism?

What were some of the more famous cases?

Well, the most famous one, of course, is the Donner Party, which was a group of western

settlers that got snowed in the high mountains of the Sierra Nevada's and ended up having

to resort to cannibalizing some of their dead companions.

I began the book by talking about this famous explorer, John C. Freeman, who is known

as the great pathfinder, who is blazing all these trails out west. And during one of his

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