Arctic Manhunt is a dramatic forensic documentary about finding the mysterious man at the center of the largest manhunt in Canadian history. Forensic investigation and creative reenactment, this pure history special offers a stylized, atmospheric exploration of one of Canada’s greatest unsolved mysteries.
On Christmas Day 1931, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, assisted by Aboriginal trackers, approached a country cottage near the Arctic Circle. There they questioned an unknown trapper about a broken trap, but were met with a firing response. Over the next 49 days, the RCMP crossed the Arctic Circle in one of the largest criminal raids in Canadian history, where they endured harsh weather conditions and engaged in firefights with the mysterious fugitive they were pursuing. At the end of the catcher’s suicide, police found $2,400 in cash on him, but nothing that could identify him or show why he ran away.
Some have speculated that he was a member of the Chicago gang linked to Al Capone, while others suspected him of being a murderer responsible for a string of unsolved murders throughout the Great White North. Others thought he was just a hapless North Dakota farmer. Despite photographs and fingerprints, law enforcement agencies across North America have been unable to identify the mysterious man. Nearly 80 years later, forensic scientists are exhuming the fugitive’s remains to establish his identity once and for all.
Using skeletal remains and facial reconstruction techniques, forensic scientists piece together a story about the RCMP hunting a mysterious man across the Canadian wilderness, but their only hope of finding a positive identity is to obtain a reliable DNA sample from the fugitive’s remains. The criminal profiler provided additional insight in an effort to fill in the details of who this fugitive was and what he was running from.
Arctic Manhunt travels through time and space, transporting viewers into the past to imagine the events of the manhunt and into today’s forensic laboratories where scientists are working to close a decades-old cold case.
