Answers Vanished Along With Four Corners Outlaw

As far as hiding places go, this rough-hewn land of remote caves, deep twisting canyons and impenetrable underbrush is as good a place as any to hide. This is where three modern-day desperadoes went to ground, in the rugged badlands of the Four Corners. This is where an eruption of violence on a spring day brought back memories of the region’s bloody past: shootouts with lawmen, a frantic chase by a posse and a careening escape across the desert and into the wild.

It is here that three men--described by authorities as anti-government, end-of-the-world-fearing survivalists--sprayed 26 bullets into Dale Claxton on May 29, 1998, killing the Cortez police officer while he was behind the wheel of his squad car. That unleashed a six-day rampage in which the men engaged authorities in furious gun battles before fleeing into the harsh landscape.

Over time, the land has given back two of the outlaws. First was Robert Mason, 26. Cut off from his companions and cornered by authorities, the youngest fugitive killed himself a few days into the manhunt. Then, more than a year later, any chance of unraveling the mystery of what they were up to grew dimmer when deer hunters stumbled across the body of Alan “Monte” Pilon, 31, just before dark on Halloween at Tin Cup Mesa, across the border in Utah.

That leaves Jason Wayne McVean, 28. The leader, the triggerman, according to authorities, and onetime welder who feared Armageddon, is still at large. He may be living in the back country and surviving with the help of anti-government sympathizers, authorities theorize. Or, like his companions, he may have crawled into a canyon and put a gun to his head--a final defiant gesture, “so we don’t get the satisfaction of killing him,” said one police officer.

The rampage did not end with the killing of Claxton. With police in desperate pursuit, the men stole two vehicles and eventually wounded two sheriff’s deputies and shot at scores of others. Then they disappeared on foot into territory well known to them, seeking refuge in vast canyon lands where officials say they had hidden caches of supplies.

The men escaped a massive dragnet that has been called the largest manhunt ever in the Southwest. At its height, the operation brought together 500 searchers from 41 law enforcement agencies. Night vision helicopters, urban SWAT teams, bloodhounds and Navajo trackers all failed to flush out the men.

The pursuit has been fictionalized in a current bestseller by Tony Hillerman, “Hunting Badger.”

A coroner ruled that Pilon shot himself in the head with a pistol within days of his getaway. He had shrugged off a 100-pound pack loaded with explosives and hidden himself in dense juniper branches. A rifle mounted on a bipod was facing out, and a 9-millimeter pistol was near his right hand. He was found wearing a bulletproof vest and a military helmet, with pipe bombs attached to his body. His wristwatch was still ticking.

Casino Robbery May Have Been the Plan

Roy Lane swivels behind his desk, revisiting the awful week that doesn’t seem to go away. For 19 years the chief of police here, Lane has had time to consider what motivated the violence that took the life of Claxton, the first police officer in the city’s 114 years to be killed in the line of duty.

“I’ve thought and I’ve thought and I’ve thought,” he said. He believes, after retracing the killers’ steps and since they arrived at the busiest time of day, that they were targeting either an armored car or a nearby casino.

The casino is a gaudy roadside gambling hall operated by the Ute Mountain tribe. Lane’s theory is that the men planned to rob the armored truck carrying the casino’s take to the bank in Cortez and had knowledge of the truck’s schedule.

This helps explain why the men stole a water truck--an ungainly getaway vehicle. Lane theorizes that the truck would have been used to run the armored car off the highway. Another theory holds that the truck’s 3,360-gallon tank was to be packed with homemade explosives; the massive Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona might have been the target, some say.

Slain Police Officer Had Traded Shifts

Whatever scheme they did have went sour when Claxton spotted the truck, which had been reported stolen from a business near Durango. Claxton, a 45-year-old father of four, wasn’t supposed to be working that day. He agreed to trade shifts with another officer and left home early. He returned home at one point to take his young son to school. As he left the school grounds, he saw the water truck. Claxton called for backup and followed the truck as it rumbled south along Route 666, the Devil’s Highway.

Suddenly the truck stopped and a man police believe was McVean jumped out and fired 15 shots through the windshield of the police car, then moved and ripped off another 15 rounds through the driver’s side window.

The truck roared off and continued for several miles to where a construction worker was loading a flatbed truck. A man dressed in camouflage clothes, a face mask and goggles pointed a gun at him and took the truck. The gunman rendezvoused with his two compatriots and they ditched the water truck.

The yellow flatbed sped along a county road and came up behind Montezuma County Sheriff’s Deputy Jason Bishop. Bishop had just heard his dispatcher say that the murder suspects had hijacked another vehicle. The truck the dispatcher described was looming large in his rearview mirror.

One of the occupants fired a rifle at Bishop, and the bullet glanced off the back of his head. The stolen truck pulled alongside and a man straddling a pile of lumber in the back let fly a fusillade of bullets.

A Colorado state trooper and a Cortez police officer converging on the scene were caught in the barrage. Their vehicles were torn apart by bullets. Another sheriff’s deputy, Todd Martin, crouched behind his patrol car. A blast from an assault rifle blew out his knee and another ripped open his upper arm.

The truck and the men roared through the south gate of Hovenweep National Monument and shot at a park ranger. They vanished into the Cross Canyon wilderness area. Authorities found the truck two hours after the shootout partially covered with brush and abandoned in an area that is the gateway to Monument Valley and Mesa Verde National Park. To the southwest is the sprawling Navajo Reservation.

Atop the red sandstone bluffs and mesas, along the river, in abandoned uranium mines, deep in 10-foot-wide slot canyons--the land offered so many hiding places.

A massive manhunt became a jurisdictional nightmare. “You had one municipality, three counties, three states and one sovereign nation on the Navajo Reservation, all wanting jurisdiction,” Lane said.

During the search, the town of Bluff, Utah, was evacuated and the authorities shut down the San Juan River, which police feared would be used as an escape route. Tracking dogs were brought in but lasted only hours in the wilting heat.

Fugitives Play Tricks on Searchers

Complicating the searchers’ efforts were clever tricks employed by the fugitives: They walked on tiptoes to disguise their footprints as deer tracks; in riverbeds, they hopped from rock to rock; one man who had a distinctive size 13 boot changed shoes early in the chase. After a week, authorities didn’t know much about the men they sought, but they knew they were good.

“It’s like they dropped off the face of the Earth,” Lane said.

There was one more burst of violence: Mason, alone and hunted, allegedly shot at a social worker who was eating lunch at the edge of a stream. His suicide six days into the hunt was the first clue that the three might not have been traveling together.

When authorities searched the men’s homes they found a trove of extremist manifestoes, including anti-Internal Revenue Service material taken from the Internet and a copy of “The Anarchist Cookbook,” hand-drawn maps marking hidden caches of food and water, and a list of police radio frequencies in the Four Corners.

A portrait of the men, who all lived in Durango, Colo., began to emerge. Mason’s brother, who works for the Colorado Department of Corrections, said Robert held anti-government beliefs. McVean, Mason’s lifelong friend from Durango, was fond of the late writer Edward Abbey, and a dog-eared copy of “The Monkey Wrench Gang” was found among his belongings. The book tells the story of eco-terrorists who plan to blow up the Glen Canyon Dam.

Authorities point out that everyone targeted by the men, including the social worker who was driving an official car, worked for the government, while the construction worker they stopped went unharmed.

Pilon, chubby and described as a mama’s boy, grew up in Dove Creek, where his mother is a beautician and his father a butcher. Doug Funk, editor of the weekly newspaper Dove Creek Press, said Pilon was angered when the paper published an account of his drunken-driving conviction. “He was crabby, but I didn’t think he was going to shoot me,” Funk said.

Police say Pilon had recently attended a paramilitary camp organized by the Four Corners Patriots, a small group of militia types.

There remains today sentiment in favor of the men, especially for McVean, who may still be roaming the canyon lands. The myth of his being a survivalist is strong. A combined reward of $327,000 has failed to bring him to justice.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s been getting help from the start,” Lane said. “There’s a strong anti-government feeling in this part of the state, and some people think he’s a hero.”

Still, some residents would just as soon McVean never emerge from the wilderness, keeping his own company and his secrets.

The toll the men have taken in violence and grief has been enormous. Deputy Bishop left the department after recovering from his wounds, and Deputy Martin recovered after an arduous rehabilitation. The financially strapped Navajo tribal police have spent $700,000. Lane says his staff was so exhausted during the early days of the search that police from Farmington, N.M., 70 miles away, worked the night shift here.

The officer who traded shifts with Claxton has quit the Police Department and, Lane said, in his anguish attempted suicide. People speak of finding an end to the mystery, even as they admit it’s unlikely.

“I still firmly believe he’s out there,” Lane said of McVean. “In my opinion, he will never be taken alive. He won’t allow it.”

In Dove Creek, where Pilon’s family buried their son two weeks ago, Funk of the Dover Creek Press said: “One cop here said he wished they’d find McVean’s body and on it would be pinned a long letter, explaining everything. That would be nice.”

And at Hovenweep National Monument, where on some days coyotes are all that moves, rangers report that from time to time the three fugitives’ names appear in the guest log book, with a message: “You haven’t caught us yet.”

Times researcher Belen Rodriguez contributed to this story.

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1. Officer Dale Claxton shot to death: May 29, 1998ay 29, 1998

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Fugitives’ Bodies Found:

2. Robert Mason: June 4, 1998

3. Alan Pilon: Oct. 31, 1999

Los Angeles Times