On January 30, 1932, Constable Edgar Millen of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was killed near the Rat River in the Northwest Territories while attempting to apprehend a man who called himself Albert Johnson. The man had wounded another constable a month earlier, held off a party of officers for most of a day in early January, and then vanished into the winter. Seventeen days after Millen's death he was killed on the ice of the Eagle River, in the Yukon, by the party that had followed him across the Richardson Mountains. He was never charged and never tried. The name he used has never been connected with any real person.
The case belongs to the history of the RCMP in the North for reasons beyond the deaths. It was the first time the force used an aircraft in a manhunt, and it held the attention of the Canadian press for weeks. It also left one of the country's longer-standing unanswered questions: nobody has established who the man was.
A man giving his name as Albert Johnson arrived at Fort McPherson, in the Northwest Territories, on July 9, 1931. He was slight, clean in appearance and spoke with what the police took to be a Scandinavian accent. He was secretive and sparing with words, and he paid for his supplies at the trading store with a large number of bills. Local trappers met him at a camp on the Peel River within days of his arrival.
The officer commanding the Western Arctic, Inspector Alexander Eames, directed the constable at the Red River detachment, Edgar Millen, to make inquiries about the newcomer. On July 21 Millen questioned him at Fort McPherson about who he was and where he had come from. According to the RCMP's own account, Johnson said that he had spent the previous year on the prairies and that he wanted to live alone. Millen found his answers evasive. Johnson declined to buy a trapping license, then went up the Rat River, where he built a log cabin about 65 kilometers north of the settlement and set traps.
Millen had joined the force on November 22, 1920, and held service number 9669. By 1931 he had been in the force a little over ten years.
On December 25, 1931, a local trapper reported at the police post at Arctic Red River that Johnson had been interfering with traplines. The complaint came from the Gwich'in trappers of the district, who said he was tampering with their traps. Millen sent Constable Alfred King and a special constable, Joseph Bernard, to look into it. They set out on December 26 and reached Johnson's cabin a couple of days later. He would not answer or open the door. They returned to Aklavik, where Inspector Eames, who also held the office of justice of the peace, issued a warrant.
The party that went back, on or about December 31, 1931, numbered four police and special constables. Johnson wounded King, who was taken by dog team to Aklavik and survived. From that point Johnson was a wanted man.
A larger party set out under Eames, eight or nine men with a guide and 42 dogs. On January 9, 1932, it surrounded Johnson's cabin with Millen among its members. The standoff lasted about fifteen hours in temperatures that fell to around minus 40 degrees, and the police could not bring it to an end. With supplies and dog feed low and the cold extreme, the party returned to Aklavik around January 12. Eames later wrote that Johnson had won that round.
Millen and a trapper were sent back to watch the cabin and arrived on January 16. Johnson had left, and snow had covered the sign of his departure. A larger party, put at 21 men and including 11 Gwich'in, followed the same day. By then the case had become a national story, and the press had given the fugitive a name of its own. Eames rejected the description. In his official report he called Johnson shrewd, resolute and dangerous.
Staff Sergeant Earl Hersey of the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals joined the search. Food ran low, and the number of volunteers dwindled. Millen stayed on because he was the only member of the force who could positively identify Johnson.
Millen was with one of the parties that went out to find him. Its members came upon Johnson, who refused to surrender. Millen was killed. The RCMP gives the date as January 30, 1932; another account of the same events gives January 31. The RCMP Honour Roll records the death as occurring while he was attempting to apprehend a person, near the Rat River.
Millen is number 51 on the RCMP Honour Roll. A cairn to him stands on Millen Creek, near the Rat River and about 40 kilometers from Fort McPherson. In March 2021 it was rebuilt and fitted with plaques in Gwich'in, English and French, and the Fort McPherson detachment and the community rededicated it.
After Millen's death the police asked for an aircraft, and Ottawa approved the request on February 2. Eames set out the same day with a growing party that reached 17 men. The RCMP engaged Wilfrid "Wop" May, a First World War pilot, who left Edmonton on February 3 in a ski-equipped Bellanca monoplane with a mechanic and a constable familiar with the district, and reached Aklavik on or about February 5 to 6. He carried food and men to the parties on the ground and scouted from the air. The Alberta Aviation Museum records that an earlier aerial police pursuit had been flown in Alberta in 1919, so the 1932 operation was the first of its kind for the RCMP rather than for Canadian police generally.
On February 11 newspapers across Canada ran a photograph of Johnson on their front pages. Aside from a description of him as the trapper who had killed a constable, the coverage held little biography.
Johnson crossed the Richardson Mountains into the Yukon around February 9 to 12, in conditions that kept the aircraft on the ground at times. On February 14 May saw tracks on the Bell River and followed them to the point where they turned south up the Eagle River. On February 17, 1932, the party reached Johnson on the ice of the Eagle River. Staff Sergeant Hersey was wounded in the exchange that followed. May landed on the frozen river, took Hersey aboard and flew him to Aklavik. Johnson was killed by the party.
No papers identifying him were found, and no claim made since has been proved. The RCMP's own history of the case closes on that point: nobody has been able to show who the man calling himself Albert Johnson was, or why he acted as he did. In 2020 the genetic genealogy firm Othram joined a long-running effort to name him. Its findings, published on July 26, 2021, pointed to Swedish ancestry and to descendants of a Swedish couple born around the turn of the nineteenth century, but found no close relative, and the firm asked for further family data. No identification has been announced.
Millen's death is the only killing of a police officer attributed to the man; it was never the subject of a trial. Whether Johnson meant to kill or to avoid arrest, and why he refused every contact with the police after July 1931, is not known. His own words on the subject were never recorded; he is described as saying almost nothing from the first wounding until his death.
The date of the cabin visit on which King was wounded is variously given as December 31, 1931 and a few days earlier. The date of the interview in which Millen first questioned him is given as July 21, 1931 by most accounts and as September 11 by one. The RCMP gives Millen's death as January 30, 1932; one account gives January 31, and another places the pursuit reaching the creek in early February.
July 9, 1931: A man calling himself Albert Johnson arrives at Fort McPherson.
July 21, 1931: Constable Edgar Millen questions him; Johnson says he wants to live alone.
Late July 1931: Johnson leaves the settlement for the Rat River.
December 25, 1931: A local trapper complains to the police at Arctic Red River.
About December 31, 1931: A constable is wounded at Johnson's cabin; the party withdraws to Aklavik.
January 9, 1932: A larger party surrounds the cabin; the standoff lasts about fifteen hours.
January 16, 1932: A second party finds the cabin empty.
January 30, 1932: Constable Edgar Millen is killed.
February 2, 1932: The request for an aircraft is approved; Eames sets out with a larger party.
About February 3 to 6, 1932: Wop May flies north to Aklavik.
February 11, 1932: Johnson's photograph runs in newspapers across Canada.
February 14, 1932: May sights his tracks on the Bell River.
February 17, 1932: Johnson is killed on the Eagle River; Staff Sergeant Earl Hersey is wounded.
March 2021: The Millen cairn is rebuilt and rededicated.
July 26, 2021: Othram publishes its genetic findings; identity still open.