Boone Helm, The Kentucky Cannibal

When you think of modern day cannibalism, people often think of the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer and some others.   But Kentucky also gave birth to a notorious criminal and cannibal.

Boone Helm

Levi Boone Helm was born in Lincoln County, Kentucky on January 28, 1828 to Joseph & Nancy Wilcox Helm, a well respected family.  

While Boone was just a boy, his family moved to Jackson Township in Missouri.   In 1851 Boone married 17 year old Lucinda Frances Browning in Monroe County Missouri, and fathered a daughter, Lucy.  Soon Boone became known for his heavy drinking, riding his horse into the house, and beating his wife.  Having enough of the beatings, Lucinda petitioned for divorce.  Boone’s father paid for the divorce.

Having bankrupted his parents and ruining his family’s reputation, Boone decided to move to California in search of gold.  Helm asked his cousin Littlebury Shoot to accompany him. Littlebury, after first agreeing to the trip, backed out.  Boone, becoming angry at Shoot’s refusal to accompany him stabbed him to death.  

After killing Shoot, Boone headed for California alone.  However he was pursued by Shoot’s brothers.   They captured him. Boone’s antics in captivity landed him in a mental asylum.   While in the asylum, Boone convinced a guard to take him on long walks through the woods.   It was during one of these routine walks that Boone escaped.

Boone once again headed toward California, where he allegedly murdered several men in various altercations. To avoid arrest and vigilantes, Boone teamed up with six men. It was to these men that Boone confessed to eating some of his victims either all or in part.  Bonne was quoted as saying “Many's the poor devil I've killed, at one time or another... and the time has been that I've been obliged to feed on some of 'em.”

As they continued on their way, the party was attacked by Native Americans, forcing them into the wilderness. Short on food & supplies, the men killed their horses, ate the meat, and made snowshoes out of the hides. The journey took its toll on the party, eventually reducing the party down to just Boone and a man called Burton.  When Burton could go no farther, Boone left him. He returned when he heard Burton taking his own life.  Boone ate one of Burton’s legs and wrapped the other leg to take with him on his journey. 

Boone eventually reached San Francisco where he killed a rancher who had befriended him and taken him in. Boone then traveled to Oregon.  There he continued his criminal ways by robbing people for a living, often murdering them in the robbery.

In 1862, Boone gunned down another victim named Dutch Fred after a night of drinking at a saloon.  Boone fled of course. While on the run he ate another fugitive who had accompanied him.

Boone was captured by authorities.  He reached out to his brother “Tex” for assistance.  Tex, using a large sum of money, paid off all of the witnesses. Unable to convict him, the authorities set Boone free and he returned to Texas with his brother. It wasn’t long until he began his killing spree again.

Eventually Boone was apprehended in Montana.

By this time Boone had aligned himself with Henry Plummer and his gang. Boone was arrested and tried.  At the trial, Boone allegedly kissed the Bible and began to blame his friend and fellow gang member Jack Gallagher for the crimes that he himself had committed.

Boone, Gallagher and other members of the gang were hanged in Virginia City, Montana in front of a crowd of 6,000 people.  When Gallagher was hanged, Boone allegedly said “kick away old fellow. My turn next. I’ll be in hell with you in a minute.”

When the executioner approached Boone, a Southern sympathizer in the Civil War, Boone allegedly shouted “every man for his principles! Hurrah for Jeff[erson] Davis! Let’er rip!” And he jumped off the hangman’s box before it could even be kicked away. 

Boone was buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery in Montana.

But why was he hanged?  One would think it was for the murders he had committed. Some may think it was for his cannibalism.  But Victor E. Everhart, PhD stated that Boone and his comrades were hanged for attempting to burn Virginia City in 1863. 

So the story ends there, right? Well not hardly.

At the same time Boone was killing and cannibalizing the West, another cannibal had surfaced, He was known as “Mountain Phil.”

Captain Wiliam Drannan, a protégé of Kit Carson, stated that a “Mountain Phil” lived on Cherry Creek, where present day Denver is located.   Phil was living with an Arapahoe woman.  Phil told Carson that he was broke and offered to trap for him that winter if Carson would furnish him an outfit.

Carson apparently knew Mountain Phil before this meeting, because his reply was “All right, Phil, but you will have to stop alone, for none of my men will live with you.”  Phil replied that he and his wife would live alone away from the other trappers.

Drannan asked Carson why no one would live with Phil.  Carson responded “Phil is a very bad man, and I have yet to hear the first man speak a good word for him.”

The following February, Drannan asked trapper Charlie Jones to go to Phil’s camp to see how he was getting along. When Jones returned, he reported that Phil had abandoned his camp. Then he gave a more gruesome report — left behind in the teepee were human bones and scraps that indicated “beyond any doubt” that the trapper had killed and eaten his wife.

Drannan and his companions didn’t understand.  Jones responded “boys, if I should tell you what I know about Mountain Phil, you wouldn’t believe it.  But as sure as you live, he has killed his squaw and eaten most of her, and he has left his camp.”  Answering insistent declarations that he was mistaken, Jones stated that he had seen the squaw’s bones in Phil’s cabin.  And further investigation developed the fact of Phil’s cannibalism beyond a doubt.

Sometime later Carson met Phil again and he lectured him about his conduct, stating “Phil if ever you and I are out together in the mountains and run short of provisions, I will shoot you down as I would a wolf before you get hungry.”  Phil asked “why?”  Carson responded “Because I wouldn’t take the chance of being killed and eaten by a cannibal like you.”

So how does this relate to Boone Helm? Well when Boone escaped from the asylum as mentioned earlier, he headed for California, which was just then booming.  That would have started Helm westward at about the right time for him to have shown up in the wilderness around Cherry Creek (present day Denver) as “Mountain Phil” after a slow trip across the plains, during which westerners would have had time to hear of his reputation as a killer and general bad man, even though there was no suspicion of cannibalism. 

Were “Mountain Phil” and Boone Helm the same person? Both men were cannibalistic, and both died in 1864.  The possibility is very real. You can decide for yourself.

Sanders County Independent Ledger, Thompson Falls, MT,  October 31, 1934