By David Grant Long

Human remains found by deer hunters Sunday evening on a ledge above a remote canyon in southeast Utah are those of one of two anti-government survivalists charged with killing Cortez Patrolman Dale Claxton 17 months ago, police believe.

Cortez Assistant Police Chief Russ Johnson said yesterday that he was certain the skeletal remains, still clad in camouflage clothing and a bullet-proof vest, were that of either Alan "Monte" Pilon or Jason McVean, the subjects of a massive manhunt that extended for weeks after Claxton was riddled by automatic-rifle fire and two Montezuma County Sheriff’s officers were seriously wounded during the immediate pursuit.

A third suspect, Robert Mason, was found dead near Bluff, Utah, six days later after he wounded a San Juan County, Utah, deputy, but no definite evidence of the others’ whereabouts was ever discovered.

"We definitely believe it’s one of the two suspects," Johnson said after returning from Utah, where he met with San Juan County Sheriff Mike Lacy and FBI agents at the scene of the grim discovery on Tin Cup Mesa above Squaw Canyon, just a few miles beyond the Colorado state line.

"The body was very badly decomposed (and) wearing military-style clothing, with a Kevlar helmet off to the side of it," he added.

Ironically, the remains were found only about three miles from where the fugitives had abandoned a stolen flatbed truck in Cross Canyon at the beginning of one of Colorado’s largest manhunts, according to Johnson, an area that had been repeatedly combed by searchers in the days following the shootings.

Although hidden by vegetation, the body was situated on a vantage point that allowed a panoramic view of a road, some oilfield facilities and a broad expanse of the surrounding landscape.

"It was a great spot to sit," Lacy said.

"He was very well-concealed underneath some trees next to some rocks," Johnson said. "His gun was out in the open, but you had to get real close to see there was a person there.

"There’s no doubt that law enforcement had searched that area numerous times," he added, "but it’s one of those things where basically you almost needed to step on him to find him and if you’re 20 feet on either side, you’d never see him."

The discovery marks the only the second major development in a case that has baffled law enforcement officers since its bloody inception on the morning of May 29, 1998.

Claxton was shot repeatedly by a man who emerged from a stolen water truck wearing camouflage and a shooter’s mask, according to witnesses. The officer had spotted the truck, reported stolen in Ignacio the day before, as it traveled along County Road 27 south of town, and was tailing it until backup arrived when it voluntarily pulled over just beyond the bridge across McElmo Creek.

Claxton was riddled with bullets from a fully-automatic rifle before he even had a chance to unfasten his seat belt. The shooter had sneaked back along the passenger side of the truck and sprayed the patrol car through the windshield and the driver’s-side window with more than two dozen slugs, killing the officer instantly.

The suspects then fled along County Road F to the residence of Robert Williams, where they stole a flatbed truck at gunpoint and reversed course, wounding Deputy Jason Bishop and Detective Todd Martin in a blaze of gunfire as they headed toward McElmo Canyon.

They were last spotted when they shot at Art Hutchinson, manager of Hovenweep National Monument, shortly after he’d closed the entrance gate to protect the tourists there. Hutchinson was uninjured, although his vehicle received damage. The fugitives’ abandoned truck was found later that day concealed under some broken tree limbs.

But months of searching turned up nothing concrete – until just before dusk Sunday, the last day of deer season. Then some hunters from Blanding came across a backpack and a .308-caliber rifle lying on the ledge, Johnson explained, and noticed what turned out to be two pipe bombs partially buried in the ground nearby.

Further exploration turned up the human remains in an adjacent grove of trees, he said, and the hunters then contacted authorities in Cortez and said they believed they’d found one of the fugitives.

Johnson said although it would be difficult to determine just when the person died, "my guess is he’s been dead since close to the onset of this thing."

The cause of death was not obvious, he said, and the Utah Medical Examiner will use the dental records of Pilon and McVean to identify the remains.

"We’ll be giving that information to them shortly," he said, "and hopefully they’ll be able to do a positive identification at that point.

"We believe we know who it is, but we don’t want to say until we know for sure."

Lacy told a Durango Herald reporter that although there were no visible signs of trauma to the head, the condition of the body might make determining a cause of death difficult. The bones of the head were found in two pieces – skull and jaw – and the body had been strewn about by animals.

More pipe bombs were found in the backpack and on the remains, Johnson said, making a total of seven. A 9 mm Glock handgun was found with the body, but neither a clip nor ammunition for the gun was discovered.

A tent was found in the bag on which the Kevlar helmet rested, and the pack contained rain gear.

An empty canteen and water bottles were also found, indicating the person had run out of that vital substance during an extremely hot period. No food supplies or wrappers were discovered in the area.

"He was pretty heavily dressed," Johnson said. "You throw a vest on and all that weight – he had a pack, Kevlar helmet, a rifle that weighs a ton, pistols, knife, pipe bombs. Weight becomes a real problem when you’re humping those hills."

The semi-automatic rifle, similar to one with which Mason injured San Juan County Deputy Kelly Bradford before reportedly taking his own life, was loaded with a round in the chamber and a full clip, he said, but it is still unknown if it had been converted to fully automatic.

San Juan officers conducted a search of the immediate area yesterday "just to make sure we didn’t have another body close to the area," he said, but found nothing to indicate the whereabouts of the remaining suspect.

"There were no signs that another person was there," he said, and no evidence the dead suspect had established any sort of a camp there.

Montezuma County Sheriff Joey Chavez told other media yesterday a more extensive search of the area would be conducted today.

Lacy, who was unavailable to much of the local press yesterday, also concluded from the condition of the remains that the fugitive had died only a day or two after they’d disappeared, according to Phil Mueller of KUTA radio in Blanding, who talked to the sheriff at the scene.

Mueller said that an additional bit of irony noted by Lacy was that a wrist watch found with the remains was keeping perfect time, but was still set on Daylight Savings Time.

Lacy described his department as "jubilant" at the find, according to Mueller, and said it confirmed his skepticism regarding alleged sightings of the fugitives on the Navajo Reservation later that summer.

"We’ve done a lot of bogus hunts where there have been reports of two people," Lacy told Mueller. "This pretty well clears that up."

Johnson said the mood of his department was guardedly optimistic.

On June 4, 1998, one of three suspects in the shooting of Dale Claxton killed himself after wounding a San Juan County, Utah, sheriff’s deputy near Bluff, Utah. Immediately, the focus of the search for the other two fugitives shifted in that direction.

Now, 17 months after Robert Mason committed suicide along the banks of the San Juan, it appears that at least one of the other gunmen never made it that far. A skeleton authorities believe is the remains of either Alan "Monte" Pilon or Jason McVean was found Sunday evening, just a short hike from the spot where the survivalists abandoned their stolen get-away vehicle.

Law-enforcement officials are speculating that he climbed to his lookout point only hours or perhaps days after the searchers’ odyssey began, and he probably never left it. He may have been dead even before Mason.

The discovery of the bones raises more questions than it answers. Why, when and where did the men separate? Was the third man with Mason, with the man on Tin Cup Mesa, or on his own somewhere else? Is it possible that he escaped while searchers were concentrating in the wrong location?

At the time, ample evidence seemed to suggest that the San Juan River was the logical place to look. There were unconfirmed reports of a boat being stolen, and San Juan County Sheriff Mike Lacy said two sets of footprints were found leading west, away from Mason’s body and down the river toward Bluff.

Only a few days later, Cortez Police Chief Roy Lane said that he was not convinced all three men had ever been in Bluff. Countering rumors that the fruitless search was being scaled back, he said that officers would once again focus on the area near the truck.

Although bunkers stocked with supplies had been found near Dove Creek, no evidence that could be connected with the fugitives was developed in that area. Meanwhile, sightings continued near the river.

A few days later a bag of corroded ammunition "consistent with what was used in the May 29 shooting" was found near Hite Crossing on Lake Powell, and a crossbow was found nearby, causing speculation that Pilon and McVean might have made their way along the river to the lake. The items, which appeared to have been buried, reportedly had not been there when a road crew worked along that route in early June. But again, the items could not be connected with the suspects.

By June 16, the search was winding down, although Montezuma County Sheriff Joey Chavez said dogs specially trained to scent dead bodies would be brought in. "Pilon and McVean are reputed to be highly skilled at survival in the desert," a Montezuma Valley Journal story reported, "but authorities want to explore the possibility they may have perished from the severe conditions or decided, like Mason, to end their lives rather than risk capture."

As the reward grew, nonsensical tips arrived as well, including one by a man who said he’d seen the suspects at a truck stop near Roswell, N.M., dressed as priests.

Hopes were stirred in early July by a report that a 9-year-old Navajo girl had seen two armed men approach a Montezuma Well Company water truck. The girl told police that the men disappeared quickly into the brush when she yelled at them. She identified Pilon and McVean from their photographs and said one had been limping. Pilon had broken his leg a year before in a motorcycle accident. For a while, everyone rooted for the young girl to collect the reward, but no further information developed from that sighting.

That same week, Lacy reported that members of a special weapons and tactics team sent in response to the girl’s report heard two men, apparently Pilon and McVean, "talking, giggling and splashing around in the river" just 30 yards away one night. Hampered by dense vegetation along the river and night-vision goggles that had stopped working, and aware that the suspects had already shot four of their comrades, the officers did not attempt to approach the men.

The next morning, dogs given the scent of the fugitives led searchers to the banks of the river at the spot where the men had been overheard, and footprints allegedly matching those of the suspects were found. The suspects themselves, however, were not, and attempts to burn the brush from that area of the river were unsuccessful.

A former Green Beret, attracted perhaps by the bounty and the challenge, visited the area and reported locating the suspects’ tracks along the river. He left soon after that, apparently after having a difference of opinion with officials.

At that point, a new policy was instituted to prohibit the release of information about the searches. San Juan County Commissioner Mark Maryboy, also a member of the Navajo Tribal Council, explained that police were concerned the fugitives might have contact with friends or relatives who were helping them elude the dragnet by relaying such information.

The next week, a variety of sightings continued to confound officials. Navajo Police Chief Leonard Butler said he believed Pilon and McVean were within an area four miles long between the canyon walls along the river; they weren’t located. Officers spotted two men moving around a campfire eight miles west of Montezuma Creek, and flashlight beams moving around. Searchers the next day reported a still-smoldering campfire, a Pringles potato-crisp can and a Gatorade bottle, but no tracks, a situation Butler deemed "puzzling."

Alerted by spooked cattle, San Juan County deputies reported hearing a man cough and the crunching of brush in an area west of the campsite. Escape routes were sealed off; searchers came up empty. An hour and a half later, Navajo police spotted two men running west in a nearby clearing. The pair ducked back into the heavy brush. Searchers followed criss-crossing tracks through the area but found no one.

"At one point we felt we were within 15 to 20 yards of the suspects," Butler said. But by mid-July, after numerous unsuccessful searches in 100-degree heat, he ordered the search to be scaled back once more.

Montezuma County Sheriff Sherman Kennell, concurring with the decision, said that none of his officers had seen a single footprint or any other strong evidence McVean and Pilon had ever been in the area of Bluff and Montezuma Creek.

Sporadic sightings continued, however. On July 27, several separate witnesses reported a man carrying a backpack limping out of an arroyo 10 miles north of Montezuma Creek. A Navajo man, Billy Dishface, described seeing one man, walking with a limp, come up out of a canyon near his house. Dishface also reported some supplies missing from his home.

A Mesa County, Colo., resident waited two days to report seeing two suspicious men in a remote campsite on BLM land near the Utah state line. Their unfriendly attitude and one’s resemblance to Pilon led the men to believe they might be the fugitives.

Jet-skiers on Lake Powell told authorities they had seen two men walking on the slick-rock above the Deep Canyon finger of the lake. The witnesses told authorities at Lake Powell National Recreation Area headquarters that the men’s appearances matched those on a wanted poster they were shown, and that the men had been carrying a bucket and a long object wrapped in plastic. A search of the area yielded only some vague footprints.

Throughout the months following the fugitives’ shooting spree through Montezuma County, witnesses consistently reported seeing two men. Now that the body of one has apparently been found far away from those sightings, area residents wonder what to think.

Did one suspect – perhaps trying to reach Pilon’s home in Dove Creek – make his way back up Cross Canyon after spending weeks, perhaps months, along the San Juan River?

One eyewitness reported seeing only two men in the stolen flatbed truck as it sped past him on County Road 25 on May 29, 1998. Had one gunman fallen from the truck before that point, or perhaps never climbed in, and made his way down to the San Juan River while the other two fled to Cross Canyon?