Is The Mad Trapper an Aviator
from North Dakota?
Bennie and the Profile
Ben Larson's Profile
Ben Larson
in the North Dakota Military Men, 1917-1918
Name: Ben Larson
Birth Date: 17 May 1898
Military Date: 25 Jan 1918
Military Place: Minneapolis, Minn
Army Number: 1,335,100
Enlistment Type: Enlisted
Registrant: no, under age
Parents Origin: naturalized citizen
Occupation: Farmer
Comments: enlisted at Minneapolis, Minn., on Jan. 25, 1918; sent to Jefferson Barracks, Mo.; served in Aviation Mobilization Depot, Camp Sevier, S. C., to March 21, 1918; Company A, 2nd Balloon Squadron, to March 22, 1919; 1st Balloon Company, to discharge; overseas from March 29, 1918, to June 5, 1919. Engagements: Defensive: Champagne-Marne. Offensives: Aisne-Marne; St. Mihiel; Meuse-Argonne. Defensive Sectors: Lorraine: Champagne; Ile-de-France. Discharged at Camp Dodge, Iowa, on June 19, 1919, as a Private.
An American balloon observer prepares to ascend in a captive balloon for a reconnaissance mission. Photograph from the U.S. Air Service in World War I: Volume 1.
The Mad Trapper Profile
Some of the Behavioral Analysis was straight-forward common sense like being an outdoorsman and a builder. But I really went out on a limb with my Aviation profile.
This was very early in the Age of Flight, only 14 or 15 years after Orville and Wilbur Wright and Kittyhawk. But I had confidence even then about the Aviation indicator. Only a year earlier, a survey of serial killer professions had listed Aircraft Mechanic and Assembler as the number 1 skilled job of serial killers. So it wasn’t that big a leap. So the Profile was largely correct if we're talking about Ben Larson.
However, I did lean toward him being an Incel and someone who was an outlaw or was living an outlaw lifestyle in his mind. But I didn't commit to those theories.
Fortunately I didn't because they were both wrong. He was with Tillie Larson for 9 years before disappearing and she had five kids. He was not an outlaw in any shape or form. Constable William Carter was right—Ben Larson was "a cornered animal" and acted like one.
Almost everything else, we got right. I would also include participation in the war, which I also leaned toward but did not commit to. He was in the Balloon Companies in WWI. The only thing that we got wrong was that his father was always there and appeared to be a solid father figure and a hard-working farmer and family man. That would explain his not being in the criminal classes or an outlaw in any way.
Here is a family photo with Ben, his parents and his brothers. Ben is the middle child on the right. Otto, the youngest, also went to Canada and disappeared in the 20s.
"War plus 20 years equals Serial Killer."
Peter Vronsky in his book Sons of Cain: A History of Serial Killers from the Stone Age to the Present
Serial Killer or "Cornered Animal*"
*QUOTE/ Constable William Carter, The Carter Report