About 40 Navajo Police Special Weapons and Tactics members scoured the rocky desert between Montezuma Creek and Hatch, Utah, for two suspected cop-killers Monday, but discovered little more than a few boot prints.

Navajo Nation Police Chief Leonard Butler said the teams performed several sweeps of the area north of Montezuma Creek on Sunday evening and Monday, where several people have reported seeing men resembling Alan "Monte" Pilon, 31, of Dove Creek, and Jason Wayne McVean, 27, of Durango. Residents in the area also reported seeing two suspicious fires in the area, one late on Jan. 15 and the other early on Jan. 16.

Butler said two SWAT teams would continue to search the area between Hatch and Montezuma Creek throughout Monday night.

"We’re trying to get all the reports together, because they seem to be concentrated in a particular area," Butler said Monday. "We’re trying to figure out why anyone would do a campfire up there."

Butler said the SWAT teams had examined some flat-soled boot prints found near the campfires, but were also examining some lug-soled boot prints that resemble tracks found in Cross Canyon and near Montezuma Creek during the summer.

Butler said the SWAT teams had made a plaster cast of one of the boot prints, but said he had not been able to compare it to casts made from other tracks found during the nearly 8-month-old manhunt.

"They are similar lug-soled boots, but we haven’t been able to get a comparison yet," Butler said. "They are similar to what we’ve been tracing all along."

Pilon, McVean and a third man, Robert Mason, 26, of Durango, are suspected of shooting Cortez Police officer Dale Claxton seconds after Claxton stopped the three men in a stolen water truck May 29 in Cortez. Mason was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound June 4 about 10 miles west of Montezuma Creek.

During the summer, SWAT teams battled temperatures over 100 degrees while searching the red rock canyons for Pilon and McVean after a 9-year-old girl reported seeing two men matching their description trying to steal a water truck in Montezuma Creek. Despite several close encounters with men resembling the two fugitives, neither man was ever caught.

Butler said the SWAT teams had searched throughout Sunday night in cold, windy conditions.