Navajos to resume search for suspected killers
Copyright © 1999 The Durango Herald. All rights reserved. Jan. 21, 1999

By Joshua Moore
Herald Staff Writer

Encouraged by new reported sightings of two suspected cop-killers, Navajo Nation police will return to Southeast Utah to search for the two men.

Navajo Nation Police Chief Leonard Butler said Wednesday that his investigators had interviewed at least five people near Montezuma Creek, Utah, who said they had seen men resembling Alan "Monte" Pilon, 31, of Dove Creek and Jason Wayne McVean, 27, of Durango within the last month. Butler called the sightings "credible."

He said several residents reported seeing two suspicious fires, one on a ridge about two miles south of Hatch, Utah, Jan. 15, and the other about half a mile west of that location early Jan. 16. SWAT teams investigated the fires and found some footprints near the second fire, but those footprints appeared to have been made by flat-soled cowboy boots, Butler said.

Authorities said footprints believed to have been left by the fugitives in Cross Canyon and near Montezuma Creek during the summer were made by army boots.

Butler said residents have also reported seeing vehicles in unusual areas near Montezuma Creek, and the SWAT teams will investigate those sightings as well.

Butler said he was planning to meet with Navajo Nation investigators and SWAT leaders today to evaluate the sightings.

"We’ll probably send two or three teams, but money is always an issue," Butler said. "We’re going to try and pinpoint the sightings on a map, and then we’ll start investigating."

Butler said he hoped the teams could begin searching within the next two weeks.

Pilon and McVean are suspected of killing Cortez police officer Dale Claxton and wounding two sheriff’s deputies on May 29 before fleeing into Cross Canyon, northwest of Cortez. A third suspect, Robert Mason, 26, of Durango, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound June 4 about 10 miles west of Montezuma Creek.