Carter Roy

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Do you want to hear something spooky?

You know how they say tragedy plus time equals comedy?

Well, it's been more than 150 years since Alfred Packer was convicted of murdering and cannibalizing five fully grown men.

And at the University of Colorado Boulder, you can now eat at the Alfred Packer Grill, where the slogan is, have a friend for lunch.

And if you time it right, you can even attend UC Boulder's annual Alfred Packer Day, where guests can sign up for a mystery meat-eating contest, enter a lookalike competition, race in coffins, and buy branded t-shirts that say things like, finger lickin' good.

Then you can hop over to Lake City, Colorado, and spend the night at a place formerly called the Cannibal Cabins.

Ah, cannibal humor.

It's dark.

And you may consider it in bad taste.

But the fact that all the pageantry exists proves how notorious Alfred Packer has become to a slice of America.

And given that notoriety, you might think there's consensus around what kind of person he actually was.

But that's not the case.

The jury is still out on the man who faced two different juries in his lifetime.

Was the Colorado cannibal a villainous traitor or a misunderstood victim?

First, let's talk about a much smaller mystery, his name.

You may have heard me say Alferd Packer-Grill earlier.

That wasn't a mistake.

In some places, he's referred to as Alfred, R-E-D, and in others, Alferd, E-R-D.

Why?