2 fugitives long gone from Four Corners hideouts, tracker says

Jason McVean and Alan Monte Pilon, the two Colorado men who have evaded police in the Four Corners region since June, may be long gone from their hideouts along the San Juan River, a Colorado tracker says.

Don Bendell, Canon City, Colo., made his fourth trip to the area last week, spending seven days rooting through the river brush and climbing its canyon walls in an attempt to locate the two suspects.Bendell found three hidden Anasazi ruin sites that he believes were used by the fugitives as hideouts. All three were tucked into canyon walls about 100 feet above the river. They range in location from just south of the town of Aneth to about seven miles west of Montezuma Creek.

"I didn't find signs of fire or weapons, but I did find some physical evidence, shotgun shells and wrappers from military ready-to-eat meals that indicate they were there," he said. "And it wasn't long ago because the ruins were clean. There were no cobwebs like you would have seen if no one had been there."

The walls and floor of the ruins bore scratch marks that appear to be from long-barreled guns, he added. The footprints near the ruins matched those Bendell has seen of Pilon and McVean but were several weeks old, he said.

"I`m convinced they've been gone from there for about two weeks," Bendell said, adding his discoveries match the hunches he'd developed after making his previous three trips.

The last confirmed sighting of the two fugitives was more than a month ago when a 9-year-old Navajo girl spotted the men snooping around a water truck at a Montezuma Creek business. She positively identified both McVean and Pilon in photographs, Navajo Nation police said.

More recently, there have been reports that one man dressed in camouflage was seeing walking near Hovenweep National Monument. He was headed north and carrying two large rifle-type guns.

Bendell is convinced the man was Pilon and that he's headed back to Dove Creek, Colo., where he was reared and where his family still lives.

As for McVean, Bendell believes he is either dead or headed south to Texas, where his mother lives.

"But they could be anywhere," he conceded.

The manhunt for McVean and Pilon began May 29, after the two men shot and killed Cortez, Colo., police officer Dale Claxton and then fired upon two other Colorado deputies.

The fugitives and a third suspect, Robert Mason, led officers on a chase across southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah and were finally spotted in Bluff about 25 miles north of the Ar-i-zo-na/-Utah border.

In Bluff, Mason shot and wounded a San Juan County deputy sheriff and then turned his gun on himself, inflicting a fatal wound to his head.

More than 500 officers from more than 51 different agencies have been involved in the search for the fugitives.

A reward of more than $335,000 has been offered by the FBI and local Colorado agencies for information leading to the arrest of the two men.