A Popular History of Unpopular Things
A podcast that makes history more fun and accessible - we love all things gory, gross, mysterious, and weird!
A Popular History of Unpopular Things
The Kentucky Cannibal
Join Kelli as she tells the story of Levi Boone Helm, a frontiersman-turned-outlaw who committed murders across the West at the height of the California Gold Rush. But that's not all this serial killer did - he was also a cannibal. And he bragged about it.
It's another mid-19th-century tale of the dark side of western expansion. With lots of cannibalism.
So let's dive into the historical context of the time to see if we can place Boone Helm in his contextual place, the American West during westward expansion.
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The Kentucky Cannibal
Intro
Welcome to A Popular History of Unpopular Things, a mostly scripted podcast that makes history more fun and accessible. My kind of history is the unpopular stuff - disease, death, and destruction. I like learning about all things bloody, gross, mysterious, and weird.
Just a quick reminder that you can support me and the show on Patreon, just look up either A Popular History of Unpopular Things or APHOUT: A-P-H-O-U-T. And you can also now watch episodes on YouTube - so go subscribe to my channel there! I appreciate all the love and support :)
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So a while back, I did an episode called The Cannibal Plateau, where I told the story of Alfred Packer, convicted murderer and cannibal. Fun times. And if you’re a fan of this podcast, then you know that cannibalism stories are some of my favorites.
So I’m sure you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that there are other cannibalism stories from the 19th century, that’s the 1800s. I’m not sure what the deal was with the 19th century, but there seem to be a lot of stories about cannibalism. Well, I mean, I have a good theory on that, but that's an episode for another day. Or maybe my Patreon.
Today, I’m going to talk about Levi Boone Helm, a mountain man, an outlaw, a violent murderer, and a cannibal. He was originally from Lincoln County, Kentucky, so he became known as “The Kentucky Cannibal.” Hence the… title of the episode. But it’s worth mentioning that he didn’t really spend too much time there, and he didn’t kill anyone in Kentucky either. It just stuck as a nickname.
So the plan is to talk all about the Kentucky Cannibal - who is he? Where did he come from? What kind of cannibal is he - did he do it to survive in the wild? Or was he a serial man-eater? We’ve uncovered a lot of potential reasons for man to consume his fellow man, but I think today’s story might be a bit different than the norm… if, you know, cannibalism could be considered the norm. I mean it is on this podcast at least!
Now as we always do here on the APHOUT podcast, we’ll start with the historical context - what was happening in the 19th century that led to Boone becoming an outlaw? Why was he a cannibal? Did it have anything to do with the times or the environment in which he lived? We need to get a good sense of what was happening around Boone to have a better understanding of how he fits in history. Can his story be a microcosm of life in mid-19th century America? Or is he an outlier?
So get ready for another murderous, cannibalism-packed episode, and let’s get started.
Historical Context
So if we’re talking about America in the mid-19th century, our mind usually goes to the Civil War, right? That’s fair, it was a major event that more or less defined the middle of the century. But today’s story takes place just before all of that - so we’re going to contextualize this story not in the lead-up to the Civil War, but in the era of westward expansion.
The US’ first big move to expand westward was with Thomas Jefferson’s acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase. It effectively doubled the size of the country by adding lands on the Western side of the Mississippi River. And once we got those lands, we started to explore them - think men like Lewis and Clark, with their trusty guide Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman who helped them survive in indigenous lands.
And once we got a clearer picture of the potential of the West beyond the Louisiana Purchase, we just started taking over indiscriminately. From taking over indigenous spaces in the Great Plains and beyond, to taking land from the Spanish and later Mexicans in the West and Southwest… we really just kinda manifest destineed all over everyone until we controlled territories from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
In the midst of all this, we do see hardworking, honest folk making their way West in search of better opportunities for themselves and their loved ones, using routes like the Oregon Trail and other similar paths.
But don’t get me wrong, we’ve seen this go wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. If you were raised in the American education system, public or private I have to imagine, then you most likely heard about the Donner Party - a group of westward travellers en route to California who got stuck in the snowy mountain passes on the Sierra Nevada mountains. Many died, some made it out alive, but many of those who did make it resorted to cannibalism for survival. It’s the classic story of what men and women would be willing to do to survive a horrific situation, and a warning about the dangers of being unprepared in the wilderness.
My first podcast episode was on the Donner Party - go back and have a listen if you haven’t already!
But in that situation, they were (mostly) just good, honest folk who made some poor decisions and experienced a survival situation that still haunts people to this day. I’m looking at you, Louis Keseburg… you were a hot mess. A murdering, cannibalistic, hot mess.
But why did people go out West? Why into the unknown? Why not, I don’t know, Independence Missouri?
Well, for some, the West represented the promise of land and homesteading, a new start. And a better climate - certainly better than the dusty plains of the relatively new Louisiana Purchase territory. That’s what led to the first groups of people to travel out west, including the aforementioned Donner Party. But for most people, from the mid-19th century on, it was the allure of gold.
In 1848, gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill, which is in today’s Coloma, California, just northeast of Sacramento. News spread back East, and some 300,000 people decided to head out there - it was the California Gold Rush. And while it was certainly chaotic, it also led to new towns, better infrastructure, and a growing economy. Boomtowns, we call them. Communities that experienced rapid growth in a short period of time. All of a sudden, there are all these people looking to move in, make money, spend money, and build a new life. Towns were popping up everywhere. I mean, even San Francisco started off as a boomtown! And look at it now!
But some of the towns didn’t survive the California Gold Rush era from 1848 to 1855, and when the people left in search of better opportunities, those towns became ghost towns. Those are pretty cool to visit, if you ever find yourself out West and drive past one.
But not everyone who went out west did so with the best of intentions. And that is where we get some classic Wild West movies and stories about outlaws. You know the ones - we’ve got the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns like A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Or, if you want more modern ones, think about some scenes from the Revenant, or maybe Django Unchained… and there are a ton that take place around or after the Civil War too. There are comedies like Blazing Saddles. And can we count the third Back to the Future? I guess so. Basically, any Wild West story where the bad guy outlaws come in from out of town, threaten the people, shoot at them… all that good stuff.
Today’s story takes place in that period of time of westward expansion, and it’s centered around a man who became one of those outlaws - a person who took advantage of the chaos of people heading west for the California Gold Rush. He, like many others, had wanderlust and wanted to make a new start out west, but his violent and psychopathic ways led him down the path of serial killing and cannibalism. So let’s dive deeper into Levi Boone Helm and how he ended up as the Kentucky Cannibal.
The Helm Family’s American Dream
Levi Boone Helm, as I mentioned before, was born in Lincoln County, Kentucky. A good ole Appalachian boy. And a quick note - most sources I’ve read just call him Boone, so that’s what I’m going to do too.
Boone was born in 1828 to a poor family who moved around a lot, wherever the work took them. There were 10 other children besides Boone, so when I say a poor family, I mean it - the father worked hard, but feeding a family of 13 is tough for unskilled laborers. So, whenever they had the opportunity to move somewhere else with the promise of better work, they took it.
The family went from Kentucky to Missouri, where they settled down on one of the routes going out west. As such, there was a constant stream of wagons coming and going, which meant two main things: one, a growing town with a healthy economy, which was good for the family; and two, closer proximity to the frontier, which gave the younger boys like Boone an education in things like trapping, hunting, and skinning. Boone took to that stuff pretty quickly.
Boone also ended up being a fighter - his first choice was to use violence to get out of a situation. It’s not clear why he was this way - I’m sure there are big holes in the story that are lost to time, or maybe he was just born this way. But what we do know about him in these early years is he would fight at the first sign of an insult from the other boys, and he would do so with cruelty.
As Ryan Green wrote in his book, The Kentucky Cannibal: The True Story of an Outlaw, Murderer, and Man-Eater, quote,
“More than once, Boone had to be dragged off another boy for fear that he’d kill him, and more often than not, he’d seek revenge on the ones who’d saved him from being a murderer… Despite his savagery, Boone never actually seemed to be angry. There was a cold efficiency to the violence he doled out, like he was just fulfilling his duty.” End quote.
The passage goes on to suggest that Boone didn’t care about having a bad reputation. He liked the attention, but didn’t need it. This was just how he was. But he did have a need to prove that he was the biggest, baddest brawler around, fighting all the men in town, and those passing through, just to prove he could win. A big fish in a small pond.
He got married, but he was just as violent in his marriage as he was in other aspects of his life. He was so violent that his wife Lucinda resigned herself to dying at his hand when he took it too far one day. When she became pregnant, things changed for her, and she filed for divorce - something not super common in the mid-19th century. Divorce back then carried a greater societal shame, but Boone’s reputation was so bad that I don’t think anyone really would have blamed Lucinda - in fact, Boone’s own father was the one who paid for it. And it bankrupted the family, but they felt it was their honor-bound duty to provide a proper life and money for their grandchild, even though they had to give up their American dream in Missouri to do it.
So what did all this mean for Boone? I really like how Ryan Green puts it. Quote:
“It was over. He’d destroyed everything that his family had spent so long trying to build. His wife had left him. His parents had left him. Even his brothers and sisters had abandoned him to the fate he was so intent on fulfilling for himself. He was alone now, which meant he had nobody left to restrain him.” End quote.
Ooh, that’s a good line. I like that one. I appreciate a good storyteller.
And it was at this point that Boone became a murderer.
Boone Helm the Murderer
Boone, with few other options in Missouri, made a drunken plan at the local saloon with a second cousin named Littlebury Shoot to head down to Texas and start anew. Boone showed up at Littlebury’s place the next morning, packed with what little belongings he had and ready to go. But Littlebury had no intention of leaving - why would he? He had a comfortable life in Missouri, and didn’t want the kind of life that Boone was offering.
When Littlebury told him no, Boone stabbed him in the heart with his Bowie knife.
He cleared out Littlebury’s house of anything of value, recovered the knife from his cousin’s chest, and decided to head West for California - where people wouldn’t know how to find him.
When Littlebury’s body was found, the Sheriff and some others from town set off to find Boone, because of course it was Boone, but they couldn’t quite figure out where he was. Despite all his bravado and brawling, which gave the facade of a capable, strong frontier man, he wasn’t actually a frontiersman, so he didn’t know how to survive out in the wilds. So he came up with a plan.
When the Sheriff came upon him, Boone was just skin and bones, trying to drink water from a mud puddle. He was ranting and raving like a madman. And in behaving this way, a doctor signed off on him needing medical rehabilitation because of mental illness - not jail. So he was sent off to a sanatorium, an asylum. Which was his plan. Because he knew, otherwise, that he’d be hanged for Littlebury’s murder.
Once he left Missouri, en route to an asylum out East, he dropped the madman act and played the long game, making friends with the workers at the asylum and gaining their trust. He was a model citizen and always did what was asked. It got to a point where the orderlies would take him outside to walk near the woods at the edge of the asylum, partly because they pitied him, but also because they trusted him.
Each time, while out on the walk, he’d ask to go urinate in the woods, and each time he was allowed to do so, he’d go a little further in, spend a bit more time, and build up trust there as well. And since he always returned, the orderlies weren’t ever concerned. Until the day came when he went into the woods, never came back, and escaped from the asylum.
And luckily for Boone, in his escape, he ran into a gold prospector on his way out West who helped him out with food, clothes, and shelter. When the prospector was no longer useful to Boone, Boone murdered him. But this time, there was no Bowie knife. It wasn’t an easy kill. Boone had to rely on his strength, instead. He found a rock, smashed the guy in the face, then kept hitting him until the deed was done. According to some sources, he kept hitting him until his face was a bloody pulp of nothing but wet skull fragments and squishyness. Boone rummaged through his things, took what he wanted, and carried on. Yikes. A ruthless murderer was now loose again, with his sights set on the West. He certainly couldn’t go back to Missouri.
But it wasn’t an industrious life mining gold in California that he wanted - he would continue finding targets, killing them, and looting their belongings to get what he wanted. Any traveler out there, alone, who came across Boone, would usually end up dead.
So here’s one anecdote for you that will bring us into the next phase of Boone Helm’s depravity. In his travels, as you might imagine, Boone would often run out of food. Once, he saw a hunter out on the range, and assuming he must have meat back at camp, Boone killed him. As it turns out, the hunter hadn’t actually caught anything yet. So now Boone is beyond starved, sitting at camp, feeling cramped and dizzy from the hunger… and then he looks at the man he just killed. And in this instance, in a case of survival cannibalism, Boone carved him up and ate him.
The butchery of it didn’t put him off - he had learned to kill, skin, and carve up small game from his time as a kid in Missouri when he was just playing at being a frontiersman. But now here he was, out on the frontier, trying to survive, and having nothing but this freshly killed hunter’s body. So he got to work, pulling back the skin, cutting through the muscle, making chops out of the edible parts, and cooking his meal over a fire.
And he’d do this several times throughout the night to avail himself of his extreme hunger.
So now, the murderous escaped asylum patient Boone Helm… was a cannibal.
Boone Helm the Outlaw and Cannibal
Boone arrived in California and started tracking down some family that he knew went out west. He eventually ran into some cousins, who were hardened frontiersmen like Boone now was. In a late night of drinking, the men started bragging about who was the toughest, and it was here that Boone said an admittedly badass and spooky line. Quote: “Many’s the poor devil I’ve killed, at one time or another, and the time has been that I’ve obliged to feed on some of ‘em.” End quote.
It’s safe to say that Boone won the night in terms of being the roughest and toughest man there.
Boone carried on in this way, drinking and fighting his way across California saloons, picking fights and duels with men as an excuse to keep killing. Eventually, he killed a man in cold blood, in a way that couldn’t be excused away as a duel, so he had to flee, or else risk being arrested again. From here, he headed north to Oregon.
On the way, he told his stories about his frontier experiences, and he started to attract attention from other men like him - bandits, cutthroats, assassins… you name it. He managed to amass a small group of criminals just like him, and he learned fun outlaw skills like robbery at gunpoint. In return, Boone taught his new outlaw companions to murder any witnesses or victims so they couldn’t be tracked as quickly. Fun guy, great at parties.
Since there were countless men out west, in search of their own riches, there was never a shortage of targets. Boone and his outlaw gang would travel from place to place, at little stops dotted along the roads, killing indiscriminately and tossing the bodies off the side of the road. After the law caught up with them in Oregon, they headed south towards Utah to carry on their robbing and killing.
But on the way, they found themselves snowed in at a cabin. When they inevitably ran out of food, including their horses, they packed up and braved the snow. Boone more or less ditched the rest of his party, and they died somewhere out there in the cold - their clothes were recovered, but the bodies disappeared. It wasn’t Boone this time - my guess is animals ate them. One guy managed to follow closely enough behind Boone to not get lost, a man named Burton. When they were on the edge of Fort Hall, in today’s Idaho, Burton collapsed in the snow. Boone dragged him the rest of the way, a short distance, and plopped him down in front of a fire.
Now Burton probably thought he was saved by his outlaw companion. Despite being outlaws, there was still a code shared between them - a basic sense of honor and duty to each other, even though they were robbers and pillagers. But we all know that Burton isn’t safe in the hands of Boone Helm.
When Burton had recovered a bit, he saw Boone standing over him with his Bowie knife drawn. Boone knocked Burton in the head enough so that he was not completely unconscious, but unable to do anything to stop what was about to happen. And a quick gore warning - this part gets pretty nasty. Burton, semi-conscious and still recovering from passing out in the snow, watched - and screamed - as Boone sawed his leg off halfway down the thigh, and then tied off his now-stump so he wouldn’t bleed out.
Boone then cooked Burton’s leg over the fire, as Burton fell into and out of consciousness. Boone even offered his victim cooked pieces of his own leg, which is deranged and horrific, but Burton ate some! He must have been thinking that perhaps he would somehow survive all of this, and needed to eat to gain his strength.
Let me repeat that - the man ate cooked chunks of his own leg that his attacker just sawed off him. Thinking he’d just be allowed to leave after it was all done.
I like how Ryan Green puts it. Quote:
“Boone didn’t deign to share his plans with his former [outlaw] friend and current pantry, but it didn’t take a genius to realize that Burton’s survival couldn’t factor into [those plans]. He was a witness to many of Boone’s crimes and the victim of this final one…[but] Boone still gave no indication of any malign intent. If anything, he seemed to show more kindness, trying to rouse the other man from his sorrows (and probably the shock of having his leg cut off and fed to him) with jokes and japes. As if his spirits could be raised while he was swallowing down a stew of his own parts.” End quote.
I like this guy’s gross humor. It matches mine. I appreciate you, Ryan Green!
One-legged Burton ended up shooting himself with a revolver that Boone left out. Burton was planning on killing his captor, but there was only one bullet left, and he figured that in his state there’d be no way he could realistically kill Boone. So he killed himself instead.
Boone, for his part, was annoyed that his fresh supply of meat was now no longer fresh, so he got to work cutting chunks off his other leg. He had to leave the bulk of his former outlaw friend behind, since the meat would soon rot. Bummer.
Boone then set out - alone, this time, except for the leg of his friend in a pack - to Salt Lake City, killing and eating lone travellers along the way as his hunger dictated. And in Salt Lake City, his reputation ended up getting him some work, if you will - he was given money by the Mormons running the show there to eliminate some ne’erdowells that were causing problems.
Boone killed them, but he was too obvious about it by killing them in cold blood, so he was chased out of town. From there, he wandered from town to town, continuing his life as an outlaw murderer, killing as necessary to steal money, or supplies, or because he wanted to. He wouldn’t always eat his victims, only when there was no food on the horizon. And because he was always on the move, his crimes never really caught up to him - when a local sheriff would sniff him out, Boone would be long gone.
Now eventually, Boone found himself back in California, San Francisco to be more specific. He spent him time avoiding bounty hunters and the law, scavenging on farmlands for survival, trying not to be caught or noticed. He was taken in by a rancher at some point, who pitied Boone and understood that surviving in the frontier was tough. I mean, Boone didn’t hide the fact that he was a murderer and cannibal; the rancher just was really laid back about it, I guess. Not a smart move - Boone was a ruthless serial killer. I mean, if a guy showed up on your property saying he killed and ate men, would you take him in? My guess is no.
Boone spent several weeks there with the rancher sharing his food, whiskey, and shelter. And the rancher gave it all willingly, without asking for any compensation! Boone just got to lay about and life the good life for a while. But after a time, when the bounty hunters and lawmen stopped sniffing around, Boone got bored of the quiet life. And instead of just leaving the rancher’s home like a normal person, Boone decided to kill him, because Levi Boone Helm is a psychopathic serial killer.
Boone then took everything of value from the rancher’s house, mounted a horse, and carried on north back to Oregon, back where he first became a celebrated outlaw. But things were different now. Here’s a great line from Green’s book. Quote:
“As outlaws were to normal men, so was Boone Helm to the outlaws. Honor and camaraderie still meant something to men living outside the law, probably more than they meant to civilized men living… within the confines of society, but whatever limits they might have placed on themselves to remain human and whole, Boone has breezed right by them.” End quote.
It really gives you a good sense of how violent Boone was - that even to the outlaws, he was too much and had a bad reputation that preceded him.
After committing several more murders, and running from the law to various different states, he made his way to Montana where he joined a gang run by a Sheriff, Henry Plummer. But soon enough, a vigilante group, sick of the outlaws running their town, arrested Plummer, Boone, and some others. And it was here, finally, that Boone would be held to account for his myriad of crimes.
He was hanged to death on January 14, 1864, at the age of 35. But, true to form, he couldn’t let someone else dictate how he’d die, so as the executioner came up to kick the box out from under Boone’s feet, with his head in the noose, Boone cried out “Every man for his principles, Hurrah for Jeff Davis! Let er’ rip!” and jumped off the box himself, snapping his neck. And Jeff Davis here of course is Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States. Context: his execution happened towards the tail end of the US Civil War, and he had once toyed around with the idea of joining the Confederate army but didn’t want to be confined to a life of not killing indiscriminately and wandering around like a maniac.
And there ends the violent life of Levi Boone Helm. A psychopath, a serial killer, an outlaw, a cannibal, and an all-around horrible human being.
So does the Kentucky Cannibal represent a microcosm of life in the mid-19th century? I’d say no. He’s not even necessarily a product of his environment - not every man who wandered out West became a serial killer who had no problem cannibalizing his victims. That’s a pretty extreme reaction to the times. So while Boone can’t be explained away by the context this time, he certainly fits that classic Wild West caricature of the evil outlaw doing harm to the good folks of dusty settlement towns. Just like with the Donner Party, Boone Helm is just one story of the perils and perilous characters of our American frontier.
But boy was it a juicy one!
Outro
Thanks for joining me for this episode of A Popular History of Unpopular Things. My name is Kelli Beard, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the story of The Kentucky Cannibal. Thank you for supporting my podcast, and if you haven’t already checked out my other episodes, go have a listen!
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