"It Tastes Far Better than Fish or Pork" - The Horror of Wendigo Worldwide
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Sources:
https://www.executedtoday.com/2014/12/20/1879-swift-runner-wendigo/ https://www.britannica.com/topic/vision-quest
https://headstuff.org/culture/history/terrible-people-from-history/alexander-pearce-the-tasmanian-cannibal/
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Zevon Odelberg is a true crime podcast host and disability advocate. Zevon has cerebral palsy and he wants Kinda Murdery to be welcoming community for people with disabilities and for people living with challenges of any kind. Life can be hard, but being together makes it better.
Warning. Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and descriptions of
violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and we recommend you stop listening
now. Hello everyone, and welcome to Kind of Murdery, a true crime
podcast that's mostly about murder and always about the strange and compelling stories that arise
when the path less traveled twists to darkness and those who walk its shadows surrender
to violence and moral corruption. We have a perilous journey ahead, so thank
you for lending me your courage and good company. I'm Zevan Odelberg, and
this is kind of Murdery. Let's do a quick list and some of our
favorite things. Coffee, tea, ear wine, booze, cigars, green
olives, vegamite. One of these things all have in common. Well,
people love these things, but I think most of us can agree that they
all fall under the umbrella of acquired tastes, meaning, however much you like
them all, now when I do the first time you tried any of these
chances are you thought they tasted terrible. But once you've gone back to the
well a few times, suddenly the switch flips and each of these items undergoes
an extreme recalibration. In other words, they go from being nasty to utterly
delicious. They are acquired tastes. I should mention that an article written by
Kieran Conleft for headstuff dot Org was instrumental in putting together today's episode, and
that, as per usual, all my sources can be found in the show
notes. All right, back to our list of delicious acquired tastes coffee,
tea, beer, wine, booze, cigars, green olives, vegemite.
I doubt it escape your notice that everything on this list of acquired tastes,
with the exception of green olives and vegemite, has an intoxicating effect, even
vegemite, with its naturally occurring MSG and high levels of B vitamins which tend
to have an energizing effect. Even vegemite, it could be argued, is
intoxicating. Now. The thing about acquired tastes is, generally speaking, they
aren't acquired immediately. It's unlikely that the very first time you ever took a
sip of your dad's beer or you said to yourself, oh my god,
that's delicious. It tastes just like a cold glass of sunny d after soccer
practice. No, I don't think that's what you thought. If you're like
the rest of us, you had to subject yourself to the nastiness repeatedly and
with purpose, before that magical moment when the gross suddenly became permanently delicious.
And of course, it's hardly coincidental that nearly all of these acquired tastes are
also intoxicants. As our brains come to desire or even rely upon the desired
effect, it's all that much easier to convince our taste buds that they're encountering
something delicious. Mind over matter and all that, you know. Meanwhile,
our body is still attempt to warn us that we're ingesting poison. That's why
they all taste bad for a while. Even with the added carrot of a
buzz, we must still be beaten with the stick of yuckiness over and over
before our taste buds do the eventual one eighty flip and we become a craver
of that particular flavor. Well, today, I'm here to talk to you
about an acquired taste that may not be acquired at all. In other words,
at least some evidence suggests that this forbidden food is scrumptious from the first
bite and forever after. And the evidence, well, that would be the
stories I'm telling today, the stories of Native American guide swift Runner, and
of Irish born Australian convict Alexander Pierce and the scrumptious food. I'm referring to
why human flesh? Of course, in fact, ask swift Runner and Alexander
Pierce what they think of human flesh, and they may sound a lot like
Will Ferrell in the Seminole early two thousands comedy Old School. Once it hits
your lips, it's so good. Indeed, so now, if you're ready,
please join me as we uncover what truths we can and solve what mysteries
we may, kind of murderies. It tastes far better than fish or pork.
Swift Runner, Alexander Pierce, and the Horror of Windigo Worldwide starts now.
You may be familiar with the legend of the Windigo. The windigo is
a cryptid belonging to the Algonquin speaking tribes of North America. They are described
as impossibly gaunt, almost skeletal creatures, extremely tall seven feet or more,
with the antlers of a buck or reindeer. Rising above their heads, making
them impossibly even taller. They have long arms, long claws, and eyes
that glow red. It is said that a windigo is created when a person,
driven to the brink of madness by starvation consumes human flesh. Upon consumption
of human flesh, they will be transformed into a windigo, forever ravenous,
never sated, and always and only hungry for human flesh. Their ever present
cannibalistic urges drive them to kill again and again, and from the legend of
the windigo was borne a psychological disorder known as windigo syndrome. Windigo disorder describes
a person who believes they are a windigo, or, more to the point,
a person who behaves in all ways like a windigo and lacks only the
physical appearance of a windigo. In other words, once this person has sated
their hunger on human flesh, they find that they are starving, always and
forevermore, consumed by a hunger that can never be sated, and that they
desire to eat only human flesh and nothing else. They find the lure of
consuming the flesh of their fellow humans to be irresistible, the flavor of that
flesh to be delicious, and yet even when they have crammed their bellies to
bursting, they find that their hunger can never be put to rest. One
such true story of Windigoe derangement syndrome. The story of swift Runner, is
where we begin today, and once we've finished with swift Runner, will travel
from the frozen tundras of Canada to the much warmer temperatures of the Australian Penal
Colony, where one convict, Alexander Pierce discovers that his cannibalistic urges, the
desire to eat people, cannot be repressed. Welcome to Windigo worldwide. The
first legal hanging in Alberta, Canada, took place on December twentieth, eighteen
seventy nine. Almost one hundred and fifty years later. It is still remembered
as one of the province's worst and strangest crimes. The hangman was a native
Cree known as swift Runner, who was on good terms with frontier authorities.
They trusted him as a guide for the Northwest Mounted Police. That is until
swift runners violent whiskey benders unbalanced him so much that the police sent him back
to his tribe, and then his tribe kicked him out too. When swift
Runner was expelled, he took to the wilderness for the winter of eighteen seventy
eight and seventy nine, and he brought his family with him a wife,
a mother, a brother, and six children. But only swift Runner would
return from the winter camp. When police were alerted to the suspicious absence of
swift Runner's family, the former guide himself escorted investigators to the scene. One
of swift runners six children had died of natural causes and was buried at the
camp. The other eight humans had been reduced to bones strewn about the camp
like the set of a slasher film. They had all been gobbled up by
a windigo. As mentioned at the top, a windigo is a frightful supernatural
beast of Algonquin mythology, so ravenous it is said to devour its own lips.
If you'd like to give yourself a fright go ahead and google it.
According to swift Runner, the windigo spirit had entered him and compelled him to
slaughter and eat all of his relations. Swift Runner became the poster child for
wind to goo psychosis, a mental disorder thought to be particular to the northern
algonquin people's in the psychosis, which was diagnosed in the early nineteen hundreds but
hotly disputed in psychological literature, people are said to have experienced themselves possessed by
the windigo and racked by violent dreams and compulsions to commit cannibalism. Windigo psychosis
is importantly distinguished from famine cannibalism, for although it was the wilderness during winter,
swift Runner had access to other food when he turned windigo. The author
of a nineteen sixteen report on the phenomenon said he had known of a few
instances of this deplorable turn of mind, and not one could plead true hunger,
let alone famine as an excuse for it. The disorder, whatever it
was, was nevertheless surely connected to the precariousness of life in the wilderness.
Windigo cases vanished in the twentieth century as afflicted populations came in closer and closer
contact with encroaching sedentary civilization. In other words, as soon as there were
reliably villages, sounds, and cities nearby, cases of wind to Go psychosis
dried up for Canadian authorities. In eighteen seventy nine, however, there was
no x files case or philosophical puzzle. Here there was simply a man,
swift Runner, who had shot, bludgeoned, and or strangled his whole family.
And this is gnarly, guys. He also snapped open all of their
bones and sucked them clean of marrow, which indicates someone who was not eating
just for sustenance necessarily, but who was truly enjoying his repast. But if
the verdict and sentence were clear, the logistics were less, So hangings were
virgin territory for Fort Saskatchewan. Swift Runner, repentant by the time his day
of execution rolled around, had to wait in the cold on the frigid morning
of his hanging while the old pensioner hired to hang him, retrieve the straps
he'd forgotten to pinion his man, and fixed the gallows trap with a bit
of gallows humor all his own. Swift Runner was reported to have said,
I could just kill myself with a tomahawk and save the hangman further trouble.
Yikes, that's dark, but hanged he was now. The story of swift
Runner is a quick a swift if you will, snapshot of a man gone
mad in the winter woods who devoured his family. It is the literal text
book example of wind to ghost psychosis. Now we'll move on to another story.
One will spend a little bit more time with the story of a different
man from a different culture on the other side of the world, who,
nevertheless, like swift Runner, found that he had developed a taste for human
flesh that he simply could not or did not want to shake. We now
travel from Alberta, Canada, to the island of Tasmania off the coast of
Australia for the story of the Tasmanian cannibal Alexander Pierce. Although it's true that
the European settlers of Australia were largely convicts, it was far from a lawless
place. In the early nineteenth century during the heyday of transportation. The sentence
of transportation was a compromise by a British government, moving away from the old
quote bloody code unquote that some people hanged for stealing anything worth more than a
shilling. They didn't want to go to the expense of building prisons, so
instead they settled on sending people to the fringes of the empire, wild unsettled
lands, where they might be able to quote civilized unquote things through forced labor.
So throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century, men, women and children were
transported for crimes like stealing cheese, carrying a burglar's tools, bigamy, and
pretending to sell somebody wine petty crimes. In other words, some convicts made
their sentence into an opportunity and built a new, better life on the other
side of the world. Most served their time in colonies quietly and then returned
home when their sentence was served. And then there were those who refused to
abide and found themselves sentenced to a prison within the prison. Alexander Pierce,
the Tasmanian cannibal, was one of these. Alexander Pierce was born in County
Moynihan, Ireland, sometime in seventeen ninety. Very little is known of his
early life, except that he was poor. He mostly found work as a
farm laborer and probably supplemented his income with petty criminal activities. In eighteen nineteen,
those activities caught up with him and he was convicted by a court in
Ireland for stealing six pairs of shoes. He was a shoe thief. Ladies
and Gentlemen twenty nine year old Pierce was sentenced to seven years of transportation,
loaded onto a ship and then take and halfway around the world to the island
of Tasmania. At the time, Tasmania was called Van Diemen's Land, after
the Dutch governor who had sent the expedition that founded it. Up until eighteen
hundred, convicts had been sent to New South Wales on the Australian mainland,
But as New South Wales transitioned into a more standard colony, the residents objected
to the constant influx of convicted criminals, and so the criminals were diverted to
Tasmania. Given the non violent nature of Pierce's crime stealing six pairs of shoes,
he was probably assigned to work as a farm laborer, not that different
from what he'd been doing back in island. Also not that different was Pierce's
tendency towards shall we say, side hustles. He committed various offenses, starting
with stealing ducks and turkeys and then working his way up to forging a work
order hold on a second. So, this horror of a guy that I'm
in the process of telling you about, the cannibal of Tasmania, the New
South Wales, Windigo. Initial criminal offenses were stealing six pairs of shoes and
stealing ducks and turkeys. He was a shoe, duck and turkey thief,
and he somehow wound up being a cannibal boy. Talk about a prison system
having a rehabilitation problem, huh woo, All right back to it. After
stealing ducks and turkeys and shoes, he worked his way up to forging a
work order. And this was a serious enough offense that when it was discovered
in May of eighteen twenty two, he absconded. Absconded was the official term
for when a convict abandoned their sentence. A ten dollar reward was offered for
his arrest, and the Hobart Town Gazette gave the following description of him.
Alexander Pierce, a convict number one oh two charged with various misdemeanors, is
five foot three and a quarter inches tall, brown hair, hazelies, age
thirty. A laborer tried at Armagh, Ireland in eighteen nineteen, sentenced to
seven years. Arrived in the colony at Castle Forbes in eighteen twenty born in
County Moynihan, and he's covered in pock marks. So he's a pockmarked duck,
turkey and shoe thief who got seven years a little more than one year
per each of the six pairs of shoes that he's stole. And it's also
a note that he's a much smaller than average man at five foot three and
a quarter inches. Okay, so when he first absconds leaves the colony escapes
from his sentence, although since most prisoners in Australia weren't actually locked up,
I think that's why they called it absconding as opposed to breaking out, if
you will. Pierce's recaptured, but since he had violated the trust placed in
him as a prison colony laborer, he was not sent back to work as
a laborer, but instead he was sent to Macquarie Harbor on the west coast
of the island of Tasmania. This was considered the ideal place to hold incorrigible
convicts, as it was surrounded by waters so treacherous that even ships approached with
great care. In fact, more more than a few convicts never made it
to the prison on mcquarie Island because their ships strayed from the narrow Sea passage
and were wrecked. So what we're talking about here, guys, is the
Australian Alcatraz. Five foot three and a quarter inch Alexander Pierce stole six pair
of shoes, some ducks, some turkeys, and then he forged a work
order. Oh boy, and he winds up at mcquarie Harbor, Tasmania,
the Australian Alcatraz, with a seven year bid. I mean, if that
kind of sentencing overkill isn't enough to drive you to eat people, I don't
know what is a kid. So here we are Mcquarie Harbor. The harbor
on the land side was surrounded by mountainous wilderness, with hundreds of miles of
travel to the main settlements on the other side of the island. So it's
not exactly Alcatraz, but functionally it is. On one side you have nearly
impassable ocean waters. On the other side you have hundreds of miles of Tasmanian
bush. There's nowhere to go if you get out. Mcquarie Harbor was considered
entirely escape proof, so naturally, less than two months after he arrived on
the island, Alexander Pierce tried to escape. Pierce was part of a work
gang with seven other men cutting down trees on the edge of the settlement on
the twentieth of September eighteen twenty two, when they made their escape attempt.
The ringleader was Robert Greenhill, a former sailor who came up with a plan
to steal a whale boat and head out to try to reach either mainland China
or one of the Pacific Islands. Their exact destination never became an issue because
the boat was too heavily defended for them to steal it. Before scouting the
boat for a potential hijacking, however, they had overpowered their overseer. Even
though they couldn't steal the boat, they were already committed to some form of
escape, so Pierce, Greenhill, and the six other men headed off into
the impassable wilderness with the idea that anything was better than mcquarie Harbor. Although
Greenhill, who as a sailor was used to navigating, took the lead,
none of the escapees were used to living outdoors. Green Hills leadership may also
have come from him commandeering the overseers acts when they fled. That sounds about
right, frankly, Even if Pierce and the seven others had all been practiced
survival experts. The Tasmanian wilderness was so bleak that there was almost no life
to be found. After eight days, the men were starving and desperate,
and that was when the cannibalism began. Pierce later claimed that the reason they
chose to kill Alexander Dalton was because, in prison, he had been one
of the volunteers who issued floggings to those who broke the rules. Boy takes
balls of steel to be the guy who volunteers to whip other prisoners when you're
a prisoner yourself, Jimminy Christmas, balls of steel or brains of none?
I guess. Floggings were a regular occurrence in mcquarie Harbor in the year following
Pierce's escape eighteen twenty three. It's estimated that nine thousand, one hundred lashes
were given to the total prisoner population. Men who volunteered for that type of
duty were generally despised, so the only question would be if they'd decided on
the cannibalism before or after one of them murdered Dalton. Either way, the
deed was done, and the seven starving survivors feasted. The next morning,
there were only five of them, Edward Brown and William Kennerley, had decided
that some things were worse than Mcquarie Harbor, so they fled under the cover
of darkness. They did manage to find their way back, but they both
died within a few days of returning. Officially, both men died of exhaustion.
Unofficially, their deaths might have been helped along by the rough discipline.
Meeted out to escape ease like them, but if it was the latter,
it wasn't recorded. Obviously, there are some inconsistencies in Pierce's account of the
escape. In some accounts, he says that it was actually Thomas Bodenham who
they killed an eight after he lost the drawing of lots, and that Dalton
fled the camp along with Kennerley and Brown. If that's true, then Dalton
didn't make it back to mcquarie Harbor with them. But if he was the
first victim, then Bodenham was the second that left Pierce, Greenhill, Matthew
Travers, and John Mather trudging through the wilderness. Mather was the next to
go. Five weeks into their journey, now there were three men left,
and things were looking bleak for Alexander Pierce, because Travers was close friends with
Robert Greenhill and Greenhill was the one with the axe. But things weren't as
bad as they could have been because by now they'd made it through the mountains
and were in an area where they could scavenge some food. But the new
terrain brought new dangers that the three men were ill equipped to deal with.
Now, remember there are three men left. Eight escaped. Originally two got
freaked out by the initial case of cannibalism and ran back to the prison.
So three men have been eaten thus far. But while drinking water from a
creeks, was bitten on the foot by a tiger snake, one of the
deadliest snakes in Australia. The bite of a tiger snake invariably causes death unless
treated with antivenom. This is where another inconsistency in Pierce's story comes up.
He claimed that he and Greenhill brought Travers along with them for five days before
mercy killing him in his sleep. But if it was a tiger snake that
bit him, he wouldn't have survived that long, And however it happened,
Travers died and the two survivors fed. After Travers's death, things got somewhat
tense. I bet Neither green Hill nor Pierce trusted each other, and they
did their best to avoid sleeping. After eight days, green Hill finally was
too exhausted, and Pierce took advantage. He managed to get the act without
waking green Hill, and then killed him with a single blow to the head
that left Alexander Pierce as the sole survivor of the eight men who had escaped
mcquarie Harbor less than two months earlier. Somehow, Pierce managed to make it
the rest of the way to the edges of the Tasmanian colonies on the east
coast. He knew he'd made it when he found sheep grazing in a field,
and, in an unlikely coincidence, the first person he met in those
colonies was an old friend who was working as a shepherd for those sheep,
and who found him eating one of them that he'd killed. The friend pointed
him towards a local gang of bushrangers, escaped convicts like him who survived by
rustling sheep. Pierce joined the gang, but unfortunately for him, a month
and a half later, they were all captured by the Tasmanian authorities. The
examining magistrate in Pierce's case was the Reverend Robert Knopwood. Knopp would had been
born in England as the third son of a wealthy family who became an Anglican
priest at the age of twenty six. He inherited a fortune when his elder
siblings died before his parents, and then lost it all gambling beyond his means
when he fell in with the Prince Regent's Crown. Forced to find employment,
he took a post as a navy chaplain and then became the official chaplain and
later magistrate for the town of Hobart. He served in that post for twenty
years, and his diaries are now one of the best primary for early conditions
in Tasmania. Pierce's case must have been one of the last ones he ever
heard before his retirement. The sudden appearance of a convict who should have been
in Macquarie Harbor, the unescapable Australian alcatraz, caused some consternation, and Pierce
was pressed to give an account of how he made it across the island.
Perhaps out of guilt, he made a full confession. The details of their
escape, how they'd turned on each other, and the multiple instances of cannibalism
he had committed. In fact, his confession was so frank and shocking even
by rough frontier standards, that Knopwood didn't believe him. I would imagine that
the fact that Pierce was five foot three and apparently had managed to overpower seven
other convicts and eat them or five other convicts the two ran back to the
prison still, I imagine that also contributed to the fact that Knopwood didn't believe
him. Magistrate Knopwood came to the conclusion that Pierce had invented his story in
order to cover for the others who had escaped with him, and some of
them must still be out there as bushrangers. So instead of the death sentence
he expected, Pierce was sent right back to mcquarie Harbor. This is not
the end, folks, Because he had escaped once, Pierced was ironed,
made to wear restrictive iron shackles on his legs so that he could not escape
again. This did more than restrain him, though it also marked him out
as a symbol to his fellow inmates that escape was possible. One man who
was entranced by that promise was Thomas Cox. Cox was an Englishman who'd only
been seventeen years old when he was sent to Tasmania. His crime must have
been a severe one, since while most were only transported for seven years,
Cox was sent for quote the term of his natural life unquote. This was
reflected in his conduct in Tasmania, as he quickly became an absconder. When
caught. He managed to break out of prison, but he was caught again
and sent to mcquarie Harbor. Despite his confession. It's likely that Pierce hadn't
mentioned his cannibalism to the other prisoners. Even if there were rumors, Cox
would have been desperate enough to ignore them. He was facing the rest of
his life in mcquarie Harbor, a place as close to Hell on Earth as
could be imagined. He had a plan, and he had equipment, stolen
fishhooks, a piece of flint to start a fire, and scorched rags to
use for tinder. Cox spent months trying to persuade Pierce to escape with him.
Eventually, after he'd been flogged for stealing a shirt, Pierce cracked while
they were north up the coast from the harbor on a foraging expedition. They
bolted into the wilderness. Eleven days later, Pierce was recaptured at the mouth
of the King River after he lit a signal fire and surrendered to a passing
boat. He told the pilot, who recognized him, that Cox had drowned
in the river. When they searched him, they found a piece of flesh
in Pierce's pocket. Pierce admitted that he'd cut it from Cox's corpse to prove
that Cox was dead. Then he changed his story and admitted that he had
killed Cox. The next day, Pierce was taken out to retrieve Cox's body.
What they found was horror. Cox's head and hands had been removed from
his body. He had been disemboweled, which any butcher will tell you was
the first step in turning a body, hopefully an animal body, into meat.
The flesh had been carved from his flanks, legs, and arms.
There was a bloody axe nearby, which Pierce admitted was the murder weapon.
Back at the prison, Pierce made a confession. He told them that he
and Cox had planned to go round the coast to the north to reach the
settlement of Port Dalrymple. Since Pierce knew how barren the mountains were. When
they reached the King River, though they'd hit a problem. One thing Cox
hadn't told Pierce was that he didn't know how to swim. When Pierce found
this out, he lost his temper and killed Cox with an axe. They'd
stolen the axe in order to break off Pierce's irons. Then Pierce had butchered
the corpse, but he'd been overcome with self loathing and thrown the meat into
the river before eating it. He'd kept a piece in his pocket to prove
his crime and signaled the boat. Pierce said at that time that he was
ready to die for his crime, but when the case went to trial,
he'd changed his mind. Charged with murder, he pleaded not guilty. The
grounds for his defense was that he had killed Cox during an argument and was
only guilty of manslaughter. By now, his confession to Knopwood was well enough
known that the jury had to be told by the judge to disregard it,
but it made no difference to their verdict. They found Pierce guilty of murder,
and he was executed a month later. Before he died, he made
one final confession, which differed in details but was largely identical in content to
his previous ones. His last words were recorded as being and I quote,
man's flesh is delicious. It tastes far better than fish or pork. Yes,
Holy Molly. Before I let you go, please let me remind you
of the free three digit lifeline number nine to eighty eight that you can call
any time twenty four hours, seven days a week to receive immediate assistance for
mental health, substance use, or suicidal thoughts. So God forbid, but
if you find yourself an acute crisis, please do call nine eight eight.
Program it into your phone now, and please do always remember that the world
is a better place with you in it, and you are loved. Now,
if you're in a cute crisis, I'm not the right person to reach
out to because I'm not qualified to help you with that. But if you'd
like to reach out to someone just to make a connection, to tell your
story, to share your thoughts, to let me know what's going on with
your life, please do feel free to reach out to me at kind of
Murdery on all social media, kind of Murdery at gmail dot com, or
you can call the kind of Murdery hotline eighty eight murdery. That's eighty eight
six eight seven three three seven nine. Or you can leave a message and
tell me what's going on with you, or you can tell me your kind
of murdery story and inspire an episode of the show. But what I want
you to know is that I'm here, I care, and I would love
to connect with you. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.
I'm Zevan Odelberg and this has been kind of murdery.
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