By Alex Dorgan-Ross and David Staats
Herald Staff Writers

CORTEZ – Three men wanted in connection with a police officer’s slaying eluded a manhunt for a third day Sunday, but authorities said new evidence gave them hope they were closing in.

There were signs late Sunday that authorities believed they had identified the fugitives. Pictures of at least one man believed to be a suspect were distributed to some officers late in the day. Authorities were preparing composite sketches for possible public release Monday, Cortez City Manager Bill Ray said.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation reported that it had "prints of value" from fingerprints taken from a truck and two guns abandoned by the suspects.

"Things are falling into place," Mike Lacy, sheriff of San Juan County, Utah, said late Sunday.

Dolores County Sheriff Jerry Martin agreed. "I think we’re very close," he said.

A Cortez police officer was fatally shot in the front seat of his patrol car Friday when he stopped a water truck that had been stolen a day earlier in Ignacio. The assailants, using automatic rifles, later wounded two Montezuma County sheriff’s deputies and fired at the superintendent of Hovenweep National Monument. Authorities said the men then fled into a canyon near Hovenweep.

Officials said Sunday that they believed the fugitives had since traveled several miles northeast of the original search area to an area east of Cahone, an unincorporated hamlet in southern Dolores County 25 miles northwest of Cortez. Authorities moved their main command post about 10 miles northeast to Cahone and concentrated their search north of the Dolores-Montezuma county line, east of U.S. Highway 666 and west of the Dolores River.

An FBI SWAT team surrounded one house on County Road N northeast of Cahone about 1:30 p.m. and entered it, but found nothing of consequence. Authorities went door to door in the area questioning residents.

"We’ve searched hundreds of houses in Dolores County," Montezuma County Sheriff Sherman Kennell said.

Authorities received numerous calls from worried residents about neighbors’ open windows and other conditions that made them nervous, and deputies investigated as many as they could, Kennell said.

Armed officers set up roadblocks on Highway 666 at the Montezuma-Dolores line and the Colorado-Utah border. They politely questioned drivers, peered into their vehicles and warned them not to pick up hitchhikers.

Investigators struggled in the hot sun to comb the dry canyons carved into the Colorado Plateau. Helicopters continued to survey the area. Tracking dogs were finding it impossible to pick up scents, and heat radiating from boulders and steep rock walls interfered with infrared sensors on National Guard and FBI helicopters trying to home in on the men at night.