When Matthew Tortalita first stumbled onto a camouflage backpack, tent and a gun lying in the dust and sagebrush of San Juan County's Squaw Canyon, his immediate reaction was to turn and run.
"I thought maybe I had walked up on them. The way things were scattered it looked like they'd just dropped it and ran. I wasn't about to go over there and start looking around," said Tortalita, who was hunting in the canyon on Oct. 31, with his father and nine others that day.
"When I saw the gun and the pipe bombs, well, no one hunts with that kind of big gun. I was scared. It was pretty flat there and there were only a few trees, so I turned and walked. I didn't want to make it seem obvious. I went to this little hill and walked until I couldn't see the tree . . . then I just took off."
Tortalita, of Montezuma Creek, thought he had stumbled into the lair of fugitives Alan Monte Pilon and Jason McVean, two Colorado men who fled across the southern Utah desert in May 1998 after shooting and killing a Cortez, Colo., police officer. Tennis shoe tracks in the area, a discarded matchbook, retail receipts and other garbage found by Tortalita made him think that whoever he'd found was alive and well.
That wasn't exactly the case. Tortalita had indeed stumbled onto one of the fugitives, but Alan Monte Pilon was long dead. A medical examiner's report said the 30-year-old Dove Creek, Colo., man had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound that he probably suffered within a few days of the May 29 shooting.
The discovery has earned Tortalita and his 10 hunting companions $150,000 in reward money from the FBI, which was posted for both Pilon and McVean during the manhunt that ensued after the May shooting.
Bureau officials were to present the money — $13,636.36 each — to the 11 men at a ceremony in Monticello Friday afternoon.
"It would have been better if it had come before Christmas," joked Tortalita's father-in-law, Kenneth Joe, also a reward recipient. "But it's nice. It will help everybody out with bills."
The shooting death of police officer Dale Claxton by Pilon, McVean and Robert Mason triggered one of the largest and most extensive manhunts in U.S. history. More than 500 police officers were involved in the search that lasted nearly two full months and garnered national media attention.
In addition to shooting Claxton, the three fugitives shot and wounded a park ranger at Hovenweep National Monument and San Juan County sheriff's deputy Kelly Bradford, which forced the evacuation of the town of Bluff.
Mason, 26, of Durango, shot and killed himself on June 4, 1999, near Bluff after shooting Bradford. McVean, 26, also of Durango, has never been found.
The search — and more than $300,000 in reward monies — also brought bounty hunters to the region.
But none of the 11 hunters was ever interested in the reward money or intended to comb the region's rugged terrain in hopes of snagging a fugitive, Joe said.
"There were no intentions. It was totally accidental," he said. "If it hadn't been us, it would have been somebody else."
Tortalita had never even hunted the area before. When most in the hunting party hoofed it north in search of deer, he decided to go south, following a cow trail past a small pond.
"It was the last day of the hunt," he said. "I was just trying to fill my tag."