Cannibals (4 page)
Kuzikov liked to marinate choice cuts of human flesh with onions and hang them outside of his apartment window in plastic bags. When the police forced their way into his home, they also found old Pepsi bottles containing blood, and ears hanging from his walls, which he claimed were his winter supply. They also found severed arms, legs, human bones and buckets of human flesh left to marinate with onions. Kuzikov tried to bribe the officers by offering them some of his choice meat along with a glass of vodka.
Kuzikov was found guilty of murdering three of his vodka-drinking friends and eating their internal organs on March 19, 1997. He is currently being held in a maximum-security psychiatric hospital at St. Petersburg. The self-confessed cannibal said he killed his first victim in 1992 after inviting him into his flat for a nightcap. He claimed that he became a cannibal because he was unable to buy enough food on his meagre $20 pension.
Of the 83 members of the Donner Party who were trapped in the mountains, only 45 survived to tell the tale
There were very few white people living in the American West in the year 1846. San Francisco, originally an Indian town, was still a very small community which eventually flourished in an international farming community. Sacramento, which was originally little more than a lush river valley, was starting to gain popularity because of its fertile soil, and it soon became a prosperous land for grazing livestock. People from far and wide soon started flocking to the American West in search of a new life.
James Frazier Reed was 45 at the time of the Donner Party. He was born in Ireland, but had become a well-known businessman, who owned a furniture manufacturing company and was also a member of the masons in Springfield, Illinois. During the American Blackhawk War, Reed had served in the military alongside the future president, Abraham Lincoln. He married Margaret Keyes-Backenstoe-Reed and together they raised three children, along with his stepdaughter, Virginia. Although Reed was disliked by his party for his wealth and culture, he was known to be a kind and caring man.
In the year 1846 three families from Springfield decided to move and try to make their fortunes ‘Out West’. The three families in question were those of George Donner, Jacob Donner and James F. Reed. George and Jacob were brothers and they knew Reed by reputation.
The Oregon Trail officially started at Independence, Missouri and then moved along the Platte River in the Midwest, over the Rocky Mountains, through Utah, Wyoming and Idaho, and then down the treacherous Columbia River to Oregon city. The families were looking forward to their journey when they started out from Springfield. Many wagon trains before them had made the 2000-mile trek and, although most people suffered various hardships along the way, they managed to get over the Sierras and on to California in safety.
And so it was that the two Donner families and the Reed family set out from Springfield in April 1846. To help them drive the additional wagons loaded with food and luggage, the families had hired teamsters. They also brought with them their trusted family servants who had come along of their own free will, as they wanted to stay working with their employers. Margaret’s mother, Sarah Keyes, was already frail when they started the journey, and by the time they reached Independence on May 11, she had weakened considerably and become virtually blind.
The Bryant party, led by William Russell, joined up with them at Independence and George Donner, aged 60, and his friend James F. Reed, aged 46, were chosen to be the leaders for the duration of the journey. At the end of May, Sarah Keyes died at a place near Alcove Springs. Further along the trail various other groups joined the Donner party and everything went smoothly until they decided to take the Hastings’s Cut-off, which was supposed to be a shortcut. This was to be the first of a series of very peculiar events along their ill-fated journey. The reason they took the supposed shortcut was because somewhere along their route they met a man named Wales B. Bonney who was carrying an open letter from a man called Lansford Hastings. This letter told travellers of a newly-discovered route to the south of the Great Salt Lake, and encouraged people to go this way to save time. It pointed out that this route was shorter and would save the travellers around 400 miles. Despite being previously warned by experienced travellers not to take the shortcut, the Donners thought it sounded promising and decided to go against their advice.
Veering off from the normal route, the Donner party travelled on towards Fort Bridger, where they expected to find Lansford Hastings waiting for them. However, by the time they reached the Fort it was already quite late in the season and Hastings had already left, taking with him a large wagon. He had left directions for any parties that would like to follow him along his new trail. Convinced that this was the right thing to do, the Donners stocked up with supplies, and four days later their party of nine families, plus sixteen single men, left the Fort on the last day of July.
A little way out of Fort Bridger the party came across a fork in the road. The fork to the right would lead them up the old road towards Fort Hall, but as the tracks of Hastings’s wagon were clear on the left fork, this is the way the Donner party headed. It wasn’t too long before the countryside became very mountainous and the road barely passable. In certain places along the route they had to actually lock the wheels of their wagons to stop them sliding down the narrow ravines and steep hillsides. Still convinced that this was the way to go, the party continued to follow the wheel tracks made by the Hastings’s wagon. They managed to make around 10 to 12 miles in a day, but by the time they reached the Red Fork of the Weber river the trail had stopped. Attached to a bush was a note written by Hastings, warning any party that decided to follow him through the Weber canyon, that the route was very treacherous. His advice to the party was for them to make camp and send a messenger ahead to catch up with him so that he could return and give them exact directions across the mountains. Reed, along with two other men were the appointed messengers, and they left on horseback to see if they could catch up with Hastings.
They waited for several days and on the fifth day Reed returned looking very weak and dishevelled. He was riding a different horse from when he left and he explained to the anxious party about the difficulties they had experienced in trying to catch up with Hastings. The other two men who had accompanied Reed had decided to stay with Hastings, as their horses were exhausted and Hastings could only spare one fresh horse. Despite his promise on the note, Hastings was not coming back to meet up with the group. However, on his way back Reed had managed to explore a route through the canyon which had been suggested to him by Hastings himself. Although he knew it would be difficult, he felt that they could get their wagons through. Although the party was very dubious, they decided to take Reed’s word for it and they voted unanimously to take this route.
The determined emigrants pushed on and on as the terrain became more and more difficult to cross. They were growing weaker and weaker by the day as they had to constantly use axes, picks and shovels to clear the way, and gradually their spirits became lower and lower. It was now August 27 and not only were they totally exhausted, the fear was starting to set in. They had been on their new route for 21 days now and so far they had only managed to travel 360 miles. Their provisions were running low and they knew that soon the weather would turn against them. On August 29 the party arrived at the spot where Reed had met up with Hastings. Apparently Hastings’s own party had managed to get through, and no doubt the Donner party would have been successful as well were it not for the onset of the winter weather. It seemed their fate was sealed when an unusually fierce winter storm hit the Sierra Nevada desert.
It took the Donner party five days to cross the desert. Wagons which got stuck in the deep quagmire of wet salt and sand had to be abandoned. Their oxen went mad from the lack of water and either just ran away or died. The party decided to take inventory of the provisions and it proved that they did not have enough left to last them the 600-mile trek which was still ahead of them. They camped for the night, but when they woke in the morning they saw the mountain peaks were covered with a dusting of snow, and they realised that things were not going to improve. They managed to reach the Humbolt River by September 26, but it then hit them that the so-called diversion had cost them an extra 150 miles. As their nerves became more and more shattered, so the fights broke out. James Reed killed the Graves family’s leader, John Snyder – supposedly in self-defence – and he was subsequently banished from the party. He left his family behind, took a horse and rode on to California alone.
As the family reached the base of the steep summit on October 31, the snow was starting to fall more heavily. Some of the group did manage to reach the summit, but they had to turn back because they realised that there was no way the entire party could make the ascent. Overnight the snow fell continually, and by the morning the pass had become completely blocked by extremely high snowdrifts. Frustration really set in now as they had made the 2,500 mile journey in seven months only to be beaten by the weather by one day. They were by now only 150 miles from their final destination of Sutter’s Fort, now known as Sacramento.
The group, now realising that they were stranded, decided to make camps to see them through the worst of the winter. Their shelters were basic and crude. Using nothing but logs for the walls, wagon parts for the doors and leather hides for roofing, they managed to make cabins which provided them with minimal shelter. As the snow fell, the Donner party knew they were trapped, with steep slopes in front and behind them, there was absolutely nowhere they could go. The Donner brothers were old men, and there were very few left in the party who had any strength left in them. Over the following four months, the remaining men, women and children huddled together in their makeshift cabins. By now all the oxen had been killed and eaten, and by mid-December they lost their first casualty to malnutrition. They had nothing to do to occupy their time, but nevertheless they made the best out of the situation by chopping wood and attempting to fish and hunt. There was very little game in the area and the surface of the lake was frozen, so in the end they resorted to eating bark, twigs and boiled hides.
Desperation set in and several attempts were made by small groups to cross the mountains. One group of 15 men, women and children did successfully cross the summit, but only seven of them survived to reach Sutter’s fort. Their arrival at the fort raised an outcry of alarm, and rescue attempts followed shortly afterwards.
Back at the camp, food was now depleted, the snow would not let up, and the remaining members of the party left alive were losing all their strength and hope. They had nowhere to go, and as a gruesome reminder of their plight, the bodies of the dead were always in their sights. The suggestion of cannibalism had been made, but no one was sure about this, nor indeed were they looking forward to the fact that this is what they would have to resort to. Soon they had no options left . . .
Desperation set in, and four of the dead bodies at the camp, now known as ‘Camp of Death’ were cut up, and the meat was dried. After all nobody had been murdered, they were only resorting to this desperate measure in order to survive. The survivors were very careful about who they ate, they made sure that none of them were actually consuming any of their own relatives. Most of the dead had died from starvation so they could offer only a small amount of meat, but the little they were able to obtain provided them with enough strength to move on.
At the end of December the storm, which had held the party in their makeshift camp, subsided and some of the party were able to leave the Camp of Death, leaving those who chose to stay behind. They took as much meat with them as they could carry in their packs, and then pushed ahead as far as they could. They knew they had a long way to go and that they were still miles away from any Indians, let alone white people. The sorry party of five men and five women trudged across the Sierra Nevada in their snowshoes in a desperate effort to reach their final destination.
By early January the party had made reasonably good progress, but they still had a long way to go and food supplies were again running low. One of the party, Joe Fosdick grew terribly sick and was unable to keep up with the others. Understandably he was left behind with his wife Sarah. After a couple of days William Foster and one other person, presuming that the couple would be dead, turned back to find the corpses and use them for food. But to their surprise, Sarah Fosdick was still alive, although extremely weak. Remaining faithful to her husband she had stayed by his side, and even after his death a short while later she had abandoned any hope of continuing the journey on her own. Right before Sarah’s eyes her husband’s corpse was cut up and, after filling the packs with the meat, Foster and Mrs. Fosdick returned to the others who had made a camp to wait for Foster’s return.
However, the meat from one very undernourished body did not provide much sustenance for nine people. Among these nine were two Indians, and luckily for the white people they refused to eat any of the human flesh. William Foster was becoming more and more deranged and started to make plans to kills the two Indians, Luis and Salvadore, to give the remaining party more food. Immediately the two Indians ran away, frightened for their lives. It was easy for the party to follow their tracks though, because their bare feet had become so raw from exposure that the majority of their toes had fallen off, and they were leaving a trail of blood wherever they went. Foster decided that even if the Indians didn’t lead them to safety, they could at least find their bodies and use them for food.