In January 1883, a stranger walked into The Lodge, a saloon in the small settlement of Whitefish Valley, Montana. The temperature was well below zero, and the man was so covered in furs that patrons could not tell if he was human or beast. He introduced himself as Matthias Blackwood, a trapper with a cabin miles north of the settlement.
He spoke little about his past, but he promised to bring furs to trade by morning.
True to his word, Blackwood arrived at Harlan Powell’s general store the next day with a sled loaded with high-quality pelts. Beaver, marten, and fox were among the usual offerings. But Blackwood kept a separate bundle apart from the others.
When Powell asked about it, Blackwood said they were specialty pelts for a particular buyer in Helena.
For the next month, Blackwood appeared every ten days or so, conducted his business quietly, and vanished back into the wilderness. The people of Whitefish grew accustomed to him, though few engaged him in conversation.
In late February, a local hunter named Josiah Hudson claimed he had stumbled upon Blackwood’s cabin while tracking a wounded elk. He described an ordinary structure, but the surroundings were strange. There were no animal carcasses, no stretching frames for pelts, and no usual signs of a trapper’s dwelling.
Instead, there were odd contraptions made of wood and metal, the purpose of which he could not guess.
In early March, a fur buyer from Helena named Lawrence Merritt arrived in Whitefish, specifically asking for Blackwood. Merritt expressed particular interest in the specialty merchandise. He waited at the local boarding house until Blackwood appeared three days later.
The two men met privately in the back room of The Lodge. The next morning, both departed, Merritt back to Helena and Blackwood to his remote cabin.
Two weeks later, Martha Johansen, wife of the younger Johansen brother, vanished while gathering herbs at the forest edge. A search party found only her abandoned basket near a trail leading north, in the direction of Blackwood’s cabin. With no evidence, the men of Whitefish continued searching elsewhere.
Three days later, Blackwood appeared at Powell’s store as usual. Powell noted that the bundle of specialty pelts appeared larger than usual. When he commented on it, Blackwood said hunting had been good.
He declined an offer of coffee and left quickly, citing an approaching snowstorm.
A week after Martha’s disappearance, a second person vanished. Zachary Norris, a young sawmill worker, disappeared while delivering timber to a homestead south of the settlement. His wagon and horses were found on the road, but Zachary was gone.
In early April, Sebastian Hollister, son of the boarding house owner, decided to follow Blackwood after one of his visits. Two days later, he returned in extreme distress. He claimed he had watched Blackwood enter his cabin and heard strange mechanical sounds during the night.
Peering through a gap in a shuttered window, Hollister saw a large room dominated by wooden frames and metal contraptions. Hanging from the frames were what appeared to be animal pelts in various stages of processing. But upon closer inspection, Hollister realized they were not animal skins at all.
They were too smooth, too uniform in texture, and the shapes were wrong, too large for any animal native to the region. He fled before he could see more.
Thaddeus Ashcroft, the nearest thing to a lawman in Whitefish, organized a group of ten armed men to investigate. They departed the following morning. Only seven returned.
The official report, preserved in the Montana Historical Society archives, is sparse. It confirms the group located Blackwood’s cabin, found it apparently abandoned, and discovered specialized equipment of unknown purpose and materials of questionable origin. The personal accounts fill in the gaps.
Josiah Hudson, who was part of the expedition, wrote a letter to his brother in Minnesota. He described what they found: Blackwood was no ordinary trapper. The pelts he traded were not taken from any woodland creature.
The specialized equipment was designed for the careful removal and preservation of human skin. In a separate room behind the main cabin, they found three wooden frames bearing what remained of Harold Peterson, Otto Johansen, and James McAllister. They were still conscious when found, though they did not survive the journey back to town.
Of the missing women and young Zachary, they found only what Blackwood had already processed, stretched, tanned, and prepared for sale.
News of the discovery caused near panic. Ashcroft organized a larger party to hunt for Blackwood, but he had vanished into the wilderness.
Two months later, a fur trader matching Blackwood’s description appeared near present-day Bonners Ferry, Idaho. Calling himself Jeremiah Caldwell, he brought exceptional pelts and a separate bundle of specialty merchandise. Two residents disappeared during his month in the area.
He departed suddenly.
Six weeks later, a similar figure appeared in a mining camp in Eastern Washington Territory, following the same pattern: exceptional furs, mysterious separate merchandise, unexplained disappearances, and a sudden departure. Throughout 1883 and into 1884, reports of a tall, bearded trapper with similar trading patterns and coincidental disappearances emerged across the Pacific Northwest.
In September 1884, a startling development occurred. Lawrence Merritt, the fur buyer from Helena, was found dead in his office. The Helena Independent reported signs of violence and unusual mutilation.
The coroner’s report confirmed the complete removal of Merritt’s skin.
A ledger found among Merritt’s possessions contained coded entries dating back years. When deciphered, it revealed a network of buyers and sellers trading in what was euphemistically called anthropological specimens. The names included wealthy collectors from New York, San Francisco, and even Europe.
A Pinkerton detective named Raymond Walsh was hired by the Montana Territorial Government to investigate. His 1886 report described a shadowy market for preserved human skin, catering to a small but financially significant clientele of collectors fascinated by human variations. These individuals, typically of substantial means, collected specimens displaying interesting markings such as tattoos, unusual pigmentation, or scarring.
The more rare the specimen, the higher its value.
The investigation identified several suppliers operating independently across the western territories. Matthias Blackwood was just one of several individuals harvesting human skin for profit. What set him apart was the quality of his product.
Evidence suggested Blackwood developed methods to remove large sections of skin while keeping the victim alive, resulting in specimens of superior flexibility and durability.
The investigation identified 17 disappearances across Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon territories that fit the pattern. The actual number of victims was likely much higher.
Blackwood himself was never apprehended. The last confirmed sighting placed him in a logging camp near Astoria, Oregon in early 1886. After that, the trail went cold.
The investigation into the trade network continued for several years, resulting in the arrest and conviction of three collectors and two other suppliers. Merritt’s client list led to several prominent individuals quietly leaving their communities under clouds of suspicion, though many escaped formal charges due to their wealth and influence.
In 1901, renovation work on a building in Helena that had once housed Merritt’s fur trading business uncovered a hidden room containing wooden frames similar to those described in the Whitefish cabin, along with specialized tools and chemical supplies. Most disturbing was a leather-bound journal written in the same cipher found in Blackwood’s cabin.
When translated, it revealed that Merritt had not merely been a middleman. He had been Blackwood’s teacher. Merritt had learned techniques for human skin preservation during his time as a medical orderly in the Civil War.
After the war, he discovered a market for preserved human skin among wealthy collectors. Initially, he harvested from the already deceased, but as demand grew for higher quality specimens, he began experimenting with harvesting from living subjects.
Matthias Blackwood, whose real name was never discovered, had apprenticed with Merritt for several years before establishing his own operation in northern Montana. The journal suggested there were at least three other apprentices trained by Merritt operating throughout the western territories.
The final verified document related to the case is a telegram sent from a sheriff in northern California to Helena authorities in 1904. It reads simply: a man matching Blackwood’s description was found dead, apparently of natural causes. No identification was found.
The notable feature was extensive scarring consistent with partial flaying of skin.
Whether this was indeed Matthias Blackwood is impossible to verify. If it was him, there is a certain poetic justice in the fact that his body showed evidence of having been partially subjected to the same treatment he had inflicted on so many others.
The story of Matthias Blackwood faded from public memory as the frontier era gave way to the 20th century. In 1952, a doctoral student at the University of Montana named Harrison Miles stumbled upon the case while researching frontier justice systems. His dissertation, titled The Commerce of Human Remains on the American Frontier, 1865-1900, devoted a chapter to the Blackwood case.
The dissertation was deemed too disturbing and was significantly edited before being accepted.
In 1967, author Nathaniel Rhodes discovered Miles’s original manuscript while researching unusual crimes of the American West. His book, The Skinner of the Northern Woods, The True Story of Matthias Blackwood, was published in a limited edition. It received little attention outside a small circle of true crime enthusiasts.
What makes the Blackwood case particularly disturbing is not just the horrific nature of his crimes, but the revelation that he was part of a larger network trading in human remains. A network that included wealthy, respected individuals who collected preserved human skin as others might collect art or rare books.
Blackwood had developed a proprietary chemical solution that prevented harvested skin from deteriorating while maintaining its flexibility and natural appearance. This innovation allowed him to command premium prices. While other suppliers offered stiff, discolored specimens, Blackwood’s reportedly retained an uncanny lifelike quality for years.
The market was surprisingly extensive. Beyond wealthy private collectors, there existed a shadow network of medical schools, anatomical museums, and scientific societies that would purchase such items under the guise of educational purposes. Merritt maintained connections in both worlds, the legitimate fur trade and the clandestine commerce in human remains.
One of the most chilling aspects of the case emerged in 1892 when a wealthy San Francisco businessman named Victor Cranston was arrested for unrelated financial crimes. A search of his mansion revealed a hidden room containing an extensive collection of preserved human specimens displayed like a museum. Cranston had commissioned detailed provenance documentation for each specimen, including the name, age, and origin of the individual.
Many victims had been specifically chosen for particular physical attributes, unusual scarring, or distinctive markings such as tattoos.
Cranston’s personal journals revealed a man who viewed his collection as a scientific achievement. He wrote at length about the anthropological significance of his collection and seemed genuinely unable to comprehend why others might find it disturbing.
The investigation effectively ended in 1898 when federal authorities concluded that most active participants had either been arrested, fled the country, or gone underground. Detective Walsh insisted the network remained operational, merely more cautious.
There is evidence to suggest Walsh was correct. In 1962, an elderly man named Howard Merritt died in Portland, Oregon. Among his possessions was a locked trunk containing documents identifying him as the grandson of Lawrence Merritt.
The trunk contained journals written in the same cipher used by Blackwood and the elder Merritt, along with business records dating from the 1920s through the 1940s.
When deciphered, these documents revealed that Howard Merritt had continued his grandfather’s business well into the 20th century, though on a much smaller scale. Rather than harvesting from living victims, he sourced his specimens from morgues, medical schools, and funeral homes using bribery and falsified documentation. His client list included wealthy collectors who maintained the tradition begun in the previous century.
The most recent entry in Howard Merritt’s ledger was dated 1958, suggesting the trade continued well into the modern era.
The Montana Historical Society still maintains a sealed collection of artifacts from the Blackwood case. Among these items is a leather-bound journal recovered from Blackwood’s cabin, written entirely in his personal cipher. Despite multiple attempts over the decades, only about 60% of this journal has been successfully translated.
The remaining pages contain what one cryptographer described as a more complex variant of the cipher.
In 2015, a graduate student in cryptography proposed using advanced computer algorithms to attempt a new translation. The proposal was initially approved but was subsequently withdrawn after concerns were raised about the potential uses of such information if it did indeed contain detailed instructions for Blackwood’s preservation techniques. Some knowledge, it was decided, was better left undiscovered.
The forest where Blackwood’s cabin once stood has long since reclaimed the site. No physical trace remains. Yet something of the horror lingers in that place.
Forest rangers report that certain areas near the suspected location of the cabin are consistently avoided by wildlife. No birds nest there. No animals make their dens in the vicinity.
The story of Matthias Blackwood may be more than a century old, but the questions it raises about what lies beneath the surface of civilization remain as relevant and as unsettling as ever. The wind still howls through the mountain passes around Whitefish in winter, carrying with it the whisper of a history most would prefer to forget.