Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 14/02) - The antique rifle in Esther Dumas' gun cabinet may soon be going home.

The Yellowknife homemaker says the 30-30 Winchester she bought from a friend three years ago may have been the gun that killed the infamous Mad Trapper back in 1932.

When Dumas read in News/North last month about Aklavik's plans for the 70th anniversary of the Mad Trapper's death, she decided to donate the gun to the hamlet.

"I'm very spiritual and the feeling I get is it has got to go home," Dumas says. "I knew something was going to come along one day and tell me what I was going to do with it."

The Mad Trapper, otherwise known as Albert Johnson, was the subject of an epic mid-winter manhunt after he shot and wounded a police officer near Fort McPherson Dec. 26, 1931. A posse of a dozen police and civilian men finally tracked the fugitive down on Feb. 17, 1932 and in the ensuing gun battle, Johnson was killed in a shower of bullets.

Although it's unlikely anyone will be able to verify that the gun was involved in the Mad Trapper saga, the gun's previous owner, Rae Celotti, says the antique came from one of the original posse members. Her late husband, Luciano, obtained the gun in 1971 when he was working in Inuvik as a house painter. Luciano used to tell of how he got the gun from an Aklavik man who claimed he'd used the gun to fire the last shot at the Mad Trapper.

Luciano had the gun appraised at the Prince of Wales museum in Yellowknife and was told the gun was about 100 years old and worth anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000, Celotti says. She says the gun would have retained a higher value if her husband hadn't replaced the broken wooden stock or handle of the gun.

Dumas has contacted Aklavik economic development officer Lori Rose to see about donating the gun to the hamlet. "I had a couple criteria -- it has to stay in the community, it can never be sold again, it has to stay home where it belongs," Dumas says.