Dead Run: The Murder of a Lawman and the Greatest Manhunt of the Modern American West

by Dan Schultz

On a sunny May morning in 1998 in Cortez, Colorado, three desperados in a stolen truck opened fire on the town cop, shooting him twenty times; then they blasted their way past dozens of police cars and disappeared into 10,000 square miles of the harshest wilderness terrain on the North American continent. Self-trained survivalists, the outlaws eluded the most sophisticated law enforcement technology on the planet and a pursuit force that represented more than seventy-five local, state, and federal police agencies with dozens of swat teams, U.S. Army Special Forces, and more than five hundred officers from across the country. This is the first in-depth account of this sensational case, replete with overbearing local sheriffs, Native American trackers, posses on horseback, suspicion of vigilante justice and police cover-ups, and the blunders of the nation's most exalted crime-fighters pursuing outlaws into territory in which only they could survive.

Genres: Nonfiction, True Crime, History, Crime, Audiobook, Book Club, 20th Century

320 pages, Hardcover

First published March 19, 2013

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars
Audiobook narrated by Arthur Morey 10h 34min

In the last year or so, I have begun to become more interested in true crime stories. Dead Run: The Murder of a Lawman and the Greatest Manhunt of the Modern West is a thoroughly detailed and informative look at the events that took place on a fateful day in May 1998. Dan Schultz paces his story well as he paints a picture of all the players-the victims, the investigators, the perpetrators, the witnesses, and all the theories of what could, should, or did happen in the before, during, and after.

Schultz does all of this through a microscopic lens, that at times caused me to wave my hands with impatience as I listened to the audio. I wonder if Arthur Morey felt that way when he was reading it? But I can see that Dan Schultz wanted to give us readers the best opportunity to see this story and walk away feeling more informed rather than feeling like we had a ton of questions. Of course, that is just mere speculation on my part.

[Katherine Addison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book with some flaws.

1. It badly needed one last going over by a weapons-grade copy-editor to fix the persistent punctuation errors, the persistent confusion of "lie" and "lay," the equally persistent confusion of "may" and "might" (why do people even make this mistake? it baffles me), and the occasional use of the almost-right word.

2. It is not Schultz's fault that the narrative he's trying to tell is confusing. The crime, the manhunt, and the investigation all proceeded on different timelines, at different paces, and criss-crossing each other in knotty nodes of unanswered questions. But he makes it more difficult to follow by trying to save important information for a big reveal. (E.g., because they found Mason first, in his hypothetical reconstruction of Mason's death he posits two men whom he labels "the commando" and "the accomplice." As a reader, I naturally assumed that those two men were Mason's co-conspirators, McVean and Pilon, so that when he gets to the discovery of Pilon's body and presents his hypothetical reconstruction that Mason killed him, I got very confused. I actually had to go back and reread his reconstruction of Mason's death to notice that when he describes the two men escaping downriver in a raft, one of whom was identified as McVean, he never actually puts a name to the other guy. And isn't until much later in the book that he coyly presents the idea of a fourth conspirator. It's clear he can't name names, presumably for legal reasons, but, dude, this is what pseudonyms are for. Call him "John Doe" or "X," whatever, that's fine, but give me some kind of clear antecedent that I can use to sort things out in my head.)

3. It's clear that the manhunt was a clusterfuck from start to finish, and when he's discussing operational problems, Schultz is tactful and impartial, but he presents the evidence about who failed to do what part of their job and how jurisdictional squabbles took up a stupid amount of everybody's time and energy. The choice to sideline the Navajo Nation Police trackers, for instance, stands out painfully as a decision reached for all the wrong reasons. The contrast between the FBI behaving like the worst caricature of themselves: smug know-it-all bullies demanding first crack at evidence and witnesses, hoarding information away from all the other investigators and alienating witnesses by their antagonistic interrogation techniques: and the local cop who went in later, not treating the encounter as a battle for dominance (but instead, deliberately and cannily, offering tokens of submission), and not only got those witnesses to talk, but got information that could have been valuable if it had been elicited the first time around--that contrast also hurts. But when Schultz is talking about the parts where forensic evidence was deliberately ignored in order to maintain the story that Mason, Pilon, and McVean were all suicides, suddenly it's "the police" thought this and "the police" said that, like "the police" is the monolithic shadowy reified institution that his description of the manhunt emphatically shows American law enforcement is not. (Also, above, note that while he names the local cop, the FBI agents are just "the FBI." The Colorado Bureau of Investigation agents are likewise "the CBI." So even at the operational level, he's not consistent.) His volte-face means that the book is only about half of an analysis of why the manhunt for Mason, Pilon, and McVean was such a dismal failure (that subtitle--"the Greatest Manhunt of the Modern American West"--is ironic in a way I seriously doubt anyone involved intended).

With all that said, this is in fact a good book. Schultz's narrative style is engaging and he presents a staggering amount of information without ever getting bogged down. His discussion of why McVean, Mason, and Pilon did what they did and were trying to do what (he conjectures) they intended--and why so many people in the area supported them or were sympathetic to them or actually helped them evade the law--is thoughtful and careful, both in its discussion of the culture of the American West, the specific beliefs of the conspirators (the way that reactionary white men have worked themselves around to believing that they are the oppressed never fails to boggle my mind; see also Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith), and the weird ethical clash between the scale of right vs. wrong and the scale of government vs. the individual that ends up with people sincerely believing that shooting a police officer in cold blood is the right thing to do. He makes frequent reference to the legends of the "Old West," particularly those who have come to have a Robin Hood like mythology around them: Billy the Kid, Jesse James, especially Butch Cassidy, who hid from the law in the same canyons that these modern conspirators use. I don't know if it's intentional, but McVean, Mason, and Pilon make very tawdry hero-outlaws (just as the real outlaws of the "Old West" were more like the Clantons of Tombstone ill-repute than Newman (Cassidy) and Redford (Sundance)). I found myself wondering, if they'd actually succeeded in what Schultz hypothesizes their intent was, to blow up the Glen Canyon Dam--and it's important to remember that, despite the certainty with which Schultz presents his theory, it's still only speculation--they would still have been regarded as heroes by anyone. (Probably, the answer is yes, because our species is like that.)

There's a lot of Peter Pan in Robin Hood, and Schultz's examination of the short lives of Jason McVean, Bobby Mason, and Monte Pilon brought that out very strongly for me. These were men who were resisting taking on adult responsibilities, who were trying to carve out a space where, Lord of the Flies-like, they didn't have to answer to anyone, where they could quite literally play with guns and have camp-outs and never have to deal with the ambiguity, ambivalence, and confusion that--like it or not--is inherent in being a sapient, self-aware adult in modern (quote-unquote) civilization. I am repulsed by most of their beliefs, but even so I can feel the draw of the freedom they imagined they were winning. (Sherwood Forest=Neverland=Cross Canyon)

But their ideals were ugly and violent and narcissistic and led not to freedom but to murder, both as murderers and (if Schultz is correct) victims. After Dale Claxton was gunned down on McElmo Bridge, Pilon lasted maybe a couple of days, Mason a week, and McVean an unknown number of years (probably five or more). McVean was probably happy before karma caught up to him; he was living exactly the way he told his friends he wanted to: on his own, in the desert. McVean, the ringleader (it is so very clear that Mason and Pilon were followers; McVean was the one with the ideas), the man who pulled the trigger, used up and discarded his friends like pawns sacrificed on a chess board (it's very telling to me, somehow, that when they split up, McVean went one way on his own, and his "best friend" Mason went the other way with their fat geek hanger-on: Pilon is a weirdly perfect allusion to Piggy, even though I know better to allegorize real people), and forged onward. If he felt remorse, we don't know it, and I suspect his self-repairing ideology of persecution, oppression, and millennarian righteousness (McVean believed the Apocalypse was coming; he just got tired of waiting) kept his self-esteem intact.

Obviously, I found this book very thought-provoking; for all its flaws, it has a lot to say about one of the major fault lines in American culture.

[I apologize for the gross abuse of parentheses in this review. It's a sickness. --Ed.]

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dead Run, Dan Schultz's account of the Four Corners manhunt, which began in 1998 with the execution of an Arizona police officer named Dale Claxton and escalated into a fruitless ten-year search over hundreds of square miles, is really three books in one. At its heart is the forementioned manhunt, which involved not just multiple police precincts and Native American tribes but state agencies and even the FBI, all to capture three anti-government survivalists who stockpiled automatic and semi-automatic weapons in caches that, to this day, lie hidden throughout the American southwest. The manhunt, which should have ended after only a few hours, instead became an ongoing source of embarrassment and frustration to those involved, as inter-department conflicts, issues of overlapping control between sheriffs, and an overall unpreparedness brought the investigation to such a startling halt that the men were never captured alive.

The second story is one of geography and myth--namely, how that unique portion of the country, where four states come together in perfect right angles amid sweeping deserts, plunging canyons, and rolling hills, can make men into something more. This is, after all, the land of Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; this area of the country was borne on the sweat of cowboys and cattlemen, nurtured on the muscle of lawmen, and survives to this day on the blood of the rugged, rebellious individual. But where some find solace in the empty, lonesome expanse of desert--they live among their cattle, their few scant neighbors, and the sky, more than happy to be untroubled--others find refuge from influences they see as omnipotent, intrusive, and dangerous...namely, authority figures like local police, park rangers, and the federal government. This is an area where conspiracy theories have a greater foothold compared to almost anywhere else in the country, where outsiders in nice suits and locals in uniforms are viewed with a suspicion often tinged by paranoia and anger, and where many of these same people are surrounded by the very presence they abhor--wide swathes of federally-owned or federally-protected land. This mix--of the law and lawless--is what leads to the occasional explosion of violence like the one at the center of Schultz's book.

For the first half of Dead Run, Schultz jumps between these two stories, balancing their dichotomous subjects and evocations with ease; one chapter waxes prophetic on the romanticism of the southwest with flowery language and hollow cliches that run on endlessly, while the next chapter recounts in detached, reportorial detail how the three men went about executing Claxton after hijacking a water truck. It makes for an interesting if not disquieting read, one that promises depths of information and learned analysis. It's the third portion of Dead Run, however, that is problematic. Every so often, but increasingly as the book moves towards its close, Schultz interrupts details of the manhunt itself to offer hypotheses about how each of the three outlaws met their end--the police believed each committed suicide, while some of the officials who participated in the search aren't so sure--as well as hypotheses about whether there were more than just those three. On the surface, this seems expected--after all, with no police interrogations or journals from the fugitives to speak of, Schultz must speculate as to motives and the details of their long escape with what few details he has. But Schultz's speculations go beyond fact-based at times and, in rendering a hypothesis based on the details available, shows his hand: he doesn't believe in the suicides of at least two of the men, and the third he leaves open for debate, which makes his attempts at seeming unbiased all the more painful. (In one instance, Schultz constructs an entire, multi-page hypothetical scenario involving a "commando" who murders one of the fugitives. For the longest time, I was unsure whether Schultz intended this "commando" to be seen as one of the other fugitives or a law-enforcement official.)

Despite these missteps, Schultz does a service to the reader--and to those involved--by emphasizing how the resolution that should come with a closed case has not actually been achieved in this case. Yes, it may give comfort to the victims and communities to know the three men are dead, regardless of cause, but it doesn't give due diligence to history. Outlaws committing suicide in desperation is different than outlaws killing one another to save themselves, and both of those scenarios are much different than if they were killed by an officer, agent, or self-appointed executioner. As unsavory as the details may be, they're relevant to not only understand the men themselves--what drove them, what kept them on the run, how they survived, how their lives ended--but how an incident like this can be prevented from ever happening again. Men like those who committed the crime rely on conspiratorial groupthink to support their own paranoid delusions--beliefs nurtured by mishandled cases just like this one--and it does little good to give them yet another instance of those in power with something to hide, something more to tell that goes unexplored and untold, and it feeds the monsters of our society who, living for years in their lonely caves, decide to wander out one day and terrorize others. By refusing to resolve this case once and for all, the legacy of this tragedy becomes one of incompetence rather than one of mourning and resolve; in essence, we yield our history to the monsters.


This review was originally published at There Will Be Books Galore.

[Eric_W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to this book. It was riveting. A bunch of crazies, filled with the mythological spirit of the old west that celebrated the outlaw, three nuts carrying lots of weapons, shot up and killed a local cop after stealing a water truck. Their ultimate goal remains unclear, but after the shootings, a huge manhunt involving hundreds of police and the army went looking for these guys in the desert. It has been theorized they intended to blow up the Glen Canyon dam. Had they succeeded a torrent of water would have swept everything away in its path for hundreds of miles. (The three were advocates of eco-terrorism. One of them had read the Monkey-Wrench Gang 17 times in which the target is the Glen Canyon Dam.)

From the start, the search was beset with problems. Each agency wanted to be in charge, the FBI, multiple county sheriffs, state cops, not to mention Navajo tribal police. The Navajos had the trackers but they were called off and replaced by dogs and white guys who wanted the credit. Everyone tromped over the trail making tracking almost impossible. The three bad guys, and make no mistake, they were out to kill cops, loved the desert and knew how to move about in it. The police showed up in heavy body army and the wrong clothes making their hunt miserable and life threatening as they suffered from heat exhaustion and dehydration. In one instance, the trackers were on the trail, but night came so they marked the end of their progress with a stick. The cattle who roamed around the area cared little for the stick and during the night trampled and moved it around, obliterating any semblance of trail. The attitude on the part of most law enforcement was to hurry up and catch them to get the glory. They lacked the patience of the Navaho, on whose land much of the search was focused. It was the Navaho who made most of the progress in spite of being shunted to the side by the better funded white LE.

In the end, the author makes a convincing case that one of the suspects was murdered and the scene made to look like a suicide. He cites substantial forensic evidence that support that case. Given the cross jurisdictions, incompetence, and slovenly command structure, not to mention independent actions by some of the police I am not optimistic for a good outcome given the current situation.

For a nice summary by someone who bikes and camps in the area see http://southwestguidebooks.com/fugitives.htm

[Sylvia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I lived in Cortez during the craziness of this incident, and I either knew or regularly saw some of the people involved, so I wanted to read this book as soon as I heard about it.

I can see how it could be a big challenge trying to piece together this story when so many of the facts may never be uncovered. Some of the book is quite speculative, but I'm not sure you could write a book about this incident without speculating to some degree. I have always been skeptical that all the fugitives committed suicide, but this just may be because I grew up in the area and I know that our link to the wild west of the past is still pretty strong.

I especially appreciated the respect given to the officer who died and those who were wounded. We sometimes take our police officers for granted and it was good to be reminded of the risks they sometimes take on our behalf.

[K.A. Krisko · Rating 3 out of 5]

As far as I know, the only book-length review of these incidents.

While it was interesting reviewing what I heard in the news and from people involved in the case, and learning some new details, this wasn't a great read. I found it repetitive and disjointed, with each of the chapters on the fugitives themselves being at the same time the best chapters and quite repetitive. I wanted to know more about their motivations, and I got some of that, but of course there's no way to be sure.

Despite the difficult-to-follow timeline and jumping around in time and space, I thought the book was going along quite nicely until the author began dealing with the eventual end of each of the fugitives' runs. There was almost an entire chapter of what I can only call the 'magic commando' hypothesis, which was nothing short of ridiculous. I almost quit reading at that point. While I won't go into detail here for those who are planning to read the book, there's no realistic way that any of that hypothesis could have happened unless the commandos were Hogwarts students with a good grasp of Apparition.

Same with the final days of McVean. The author seems, at this point, enamored with the mythology of the survivalist, able to outlast anyone and everyone in the harshest of conditions, in Hollywood fashion, for years. As this became clear, it brought into doubt, for me, earlier parts of the book that I had taken at face value. Now I'm not sure how objective any of it is.

It's not badly written, it's readable, and I appreciate that someone put at least some of the evidence together in one volume. I would have liked to see more interview excerpts, more excerpts from law enforcement reports, and some photos of the officers who were shot and wounded during the event. Recommended for true-crime readers and those interested in this particular incident, but to be taken with a grain of salt.

[Claudia Putnam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gripping read. Not sure how I missed this event as it unfolded, but I have absolutely no memory of it. Probably because I was in the middle of a divorce and it was before the Internet was big and I only kept a TV around for the occasional rented movie.

The author frames this story well, with a worthwhile discussion of our ambivalence toward outlawry, and the mythic status we grant our outlaws even as we know they did wrong. After all, as he points out (and as my in-progress novel points out), Butch Cassidy's gang often left dead bodies in its wake, but somehow it's always insisted that Cassidy himself never killed anyone. Even if that's true, it's a bit of nit--clearly he was involved in killing, and in activities likely to lead to killing.

These particular outlaws are a weird bunch and do represent the kind of mix we see in the West (and maybe in the South, though the elements might be different). They were anti-government survivalists, conspiracy nuts (how is it, exactly, that anyone fears an invasion of UN troops in support of a New World Order or any order? Since when have UN troops been effective at anything?), environmental terrorists, and guys smarter than where they ended up and consequently bitter, wanting their names in the news. (It's my contention that the desire for notoriety drives most of these types of outbursts.)

The author does a great job evoking this landscape--a very particular version of desert, and the complexity of conducting a manhunt in the area. He also does well at conveying the nuances of character--you have the sense that the lives of these people could have taken a very different turn at various junctures. And the jockeying for command among the various law enforcement agencies--with varying capacities. The locals often knew the land but were hampered by rivalries with nearby jurisdictions (the Utah County sheriff most often involved had a chip on his shoulder regarding the Navajo tribal police, who in fact were likely the most competent officers in this terrain and whose dead-on input was often ignored.

The official story is that all three of these guys committed suicide at various times, but Schultz assembles evidence/an argument that in fact they were executed (one may have been a mercy killing, or an imagined mercy killing). Which leaves you wondering who else was involved, and why further investigations (esp given that all along the police knew there were collaborators) were not pursued to find other culprits. The thought of creeps like this getting away with something rankles.

Also up for grabs is what the ultimate goal of these people was... Schultz makes a good case for destroying the Glen Canyon Dam. But we may never know, esp since the investigation was abandoned/allowed to stall. It would be good to know for sure.

The writing started out sharp and clear, but degenerated about a third in. Mostly awkward sentences, nothing worth going into great detail about, but disappointing given the early promise.

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audio # 72

[Shaine Gans · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a native to Montezuma County where some of this crime spree occurred, I appreciate the author's unfurling of this saga. The context provides about the suspects' backgrounds and lives deepened my understanding of the events that transpired. Equally, curious were the speculations about the suspects' motives and the connection to a grander plot, that fortunately was never realized.

[LibraryCin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

In May 1998, a police officer, Dale Claxton, in Colorado near the desert pulled over a truck. Nothing seemed amiss until three men stepped out of the truck – all three had automatic guns. Claxton was shot numerous times and was killed. The three set off into the desert as other police tried to chase, but were gunned down themselves (others were injured, but not one else was killed). The last of the three fugitives was found in 2007; all three had died in the desert, though the other two had been found within a few weeks of the original chase.

This was good. Starting off with the killing of Claxton and the chase got me into the book right away. Some of the investigation wasn’t quite as interesting, but it picked up every time one of the three killers was found. And, I found the biographical info about each of the three interesting, as well. The three men were all identified fairly quickly, but all three also had plenty of experience surviving on the desert.

Because all three were found dead, it is speculation about what happened and why they did what they did, but it seems likely they were on their way to a different big crime, but got interrupted with Claxton pulled them over. The police also put out there, for all three of the gunmen, that they’d each killed themselves, but (according to the author) the evidence doesn’t really point to that.

This is a good book about a crime I hadn’t heard about (though I’m sure there are plenty who llived closer to the area who would remember this). It was unfortunate there were no references included in the book, though.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is very hard for me to judge. Schultz seems like he probably does a good job balancing the various interests involved, and seems like he's aiming at the truth, but he does this weird thing where occasionally he'll lapse into long stretches of essentially narrative fiction imagining what may have been happening, with zero evidence - and it's not entirely clear how much of it is just a flight of fancy and how much of it is based on some actual reasoning. For example, he has one interlude where he suggests that someone who died alone (and there's no direct evidence for exactly how this happened) was singing a specific song to themselves when they died - WTF?

The other confusing thing about this book is that he sorta jumps back and forth in time in a way that I found hard to follow. I'm still not entirely sure when each of the involved parties was supposed to have died, and when precisely they were found, for example.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Near the end of May, 1998, three men stole a water tanker truck near Cortez, Colorado. Cortez policeman Dale Claxton happened to be the first law enforcement officer to spot the truck. The three men inside wore balaclavas and camouflage. They were also armed to the teeth. When Claxton pulled up beside the truck he was shot 20 times before he could fully draw his weapon.

This started a manhunt involving local law enforcement, FBI agents, reservation police, and national guardsman and wasn't resolved for years. The three men were survivalists familiar with the desert areas around the four corners area where Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico meet.  They were also supporters of a movement exemplified by Timothy McVay. It was their plan to use the water tanker to create an explosion that would have made Oklahoma City seem small.

The three were largely off the radar before the incident. An investigation with unclear leadership eventually identified the three, more from tips from acquaintances than any luck matching fingerprints. One by one they were found dead. One by suicide, though evidence also points to a police assassination. Another either by suicide or from shooting by the third member who went missing for years until a cowboy found his remains.

Dan Schultz's descriptions of the crime and subsequent manhunt are full of both gory and fascinating detail. In addition to reviewing police reports he interviewed people directly and indirectly involved in the investigation. Most startling are the interviews he did with medical examiners whose findings were sometimes discarded in favor of a more complimentary police version of events. He also delves into the movement that took the men's natural dislike for police and turned it into a military type assault. Law enforcement was definitely the target, with nearby civilians clearly spared during firefights. 

It is vivid reporting, giving the reader a cinema-like reading experience. Using forensic evidence he's able to trace actions of the killers literally step-by-step. Add that to police interviews and written reports and he's able to make this an amazingly clear narrative.

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part of the reason I liked this audio book so much is that I live where the story is set in the 4 Corners region of Colorado. Maybe it is morbid curiosity too but I found the true-crime drama quite captivating. Dan obviously did exhaustive research and was very well versed on the local area. The crimes against law enforcement officers can be a little gory and very sad, so beware. I liked that way that the author did not take the "party line" explanations for what happened on face value and presents his own solution that better fits the evidence. He does go into a lot of detail describing certain aspects such as the situation with Glen Canyon dam and his philosophy of the wild west in the beginning. But overall, it is a good story, good narration and worth the read.

[Kristy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book detailed how the elements of anti law enforcement and anti government beliefs mixed with firearms can snowball so out of control. It was very interesting to read how the efforts by police to try to catch the perpetrators were foiled by the complicated wilderness in the Four Corners area and the politics of state jurisdiction, but the biggest hindrance was the rogue behaviour of 3 men armed to the teeth with sophisticated high powered weapons and a thirst to use them.

[Ronnie Cramer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many reviews call this book 'gripping' and it is certainly that. The descriptions of the gun battle and subsequent manhunt are absorbing and often made it hard to put the book down. However, a huge portion of the story remains unknown and there are many pages of conjecture, which made for a somewhat unsatisfying read overall.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good true crime book. It took place in my home town that I left when I was a child so it was interesting. As a former CSI myself, it was interesting to hear the investigative process during that time. The challenges of the terrain and lack of technology aren’t any challenges I’ve faced so was interesting. The narrator on the audiobook did a great job.

[Ann Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book knocked my socks off. The details resulting from intense research & interviews left some questions unanswered, but resolved so many other loose ends I did not hear about @ the time & thru the subsequent years. Previously I questioned the viability of a Montezuma county area militia. I no longer have any doubts.

[Mark Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

“On a sunny May morning in 1998, three friends in a stolen truck passed through Cortez, Colorado, on their way to commit sabotage of unspeakable proportions.”

In “Dead Run,” Dan Schultz looks back over the last fifteen years at a sensational crime that began with the brutal murder of a small-town cop at McElmo Bridge and he lays out his case that the trio of men had their sights set on blowing up one of two dams, either the Glen Canyon or the Hoover.

“Dead Run” is a gripping true-crime account, well told by an award-winning reporter who thoroughly researched the series of harrowing events and pieced together one of the largest multi-state, multi-agency manhunts in recent history.

The story isn’t conjecture-free, but Schultz’ case is convincing. His efforts to document what happened—and why—are compelling. At times, Schultz seems a bit overly enamored with the dam explosion scenario and how much one of the three outlaws revered George Hayduke (the fictional ex-Green Beret Vietnam vet who is the star of Edward Abbey’s “The Monkey Wrench Gang”) and the eco-terrorism that the novel espoused.

The story begins with a stolen water truck on the outskirts of Durango. Water trucks from “Overright Trucking” were borrowed all the time. A brand new truck was missing; it happened. The three men in the cab, however, had a plan. And automatic rifles. They were dressed in camouflage. The next morning in Cortez at McElmo Bridge, Officer Dale Claxton spotted the truck after having read a routine police bulletin about the case.

The white water truck was hard to miss—a four-thousand-gallon tank, New Mexico plates and “Overright Trucking” on the doors. Claxton was filling in for a colleague, who was attending training seminar. At 9:24 a.m., he radioed Cortez police dispatcher that he had spotted the Mack truck.

“Dead Run” breaks down the day-of incident in great detail. All the random vehicles in proximity to Claxton’s slaying are identified. Witnesses who saw Claxton trailing the truck tell their version of events. The perspective of fellow police officers is recounted—and the McElmo Bridge scene comes into full relief. Schultz doesn’t flinch in capturing the violence.

But the hunt has just begun. Schultz breaks down the day-by-day search for the killers and intersperses portraits of the three men—a pair of good friends (Jason McVean and Bobby Mason) and an odd acquaintance (Alan Pilon). None of the men were ever captured by police—though their remains have since been located. Mason was found a few days after Claxton’s murder. Mason had wounded another police officer in a shootout. Pilon’s body was found in 1999, though his cause of death remains a mystery (a mystery Shultz explores at length). McVean’s remains were found in 2007, although precisely when McVean perished—and how—is a source of controversy.

Schultz’s description of the inter-agency police work is, to put it mildly, discomforting. The idea that three men could escape into the desert and elude the efforts of 500-plus officers (representing more than 50 law enforcement agencies) seems improbable. But it happened. The three were survivalists who no doubt had planned for such a scenario, but Schultz details how egos, politics, borders and a lack of leadership added to the lack of coordination. He also underscores the idea that the three men could have relied on help from sympathizers. The three men were hardly alone in their anti-government views.

Schultz lays out the facts as he seems them and draws a reasonable conclusion that a “sinister plot” was underway. The manhunt that began in Cortez happened well before the heightened security sensibilities of 9-11 but three years after the attack in Oklahoma City.

Schultz makes a strong case that Officer Dale Claxton’s seemingly routine stop of a tanker truck near McElmo Bridge may have led a series of major embarrassments for law enforcement but it also put a stop to a potentially devastating attack that would have significantly altered the landscape and caused widespread devastation—devastation of “unspeakable proportions”—downstream from the dam.

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review title: The decline and fall of the Modern outlaw
Schultz tells an intriguing tale of three loners who leaped and lost. But what were they reaching for?

A police officer in a small western Colorado town pulls over a tanker truck suspected of being stolen, and the brutal chain of violence unleashed that day in 1998 set in motion the manhunt and mystery that Schultz documents. I picked this book up because the title and the dust jacket photo reminded me of Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men", and the back cover review comparing Schultz's true-crime story to McCarthy's iconic novel sold me. The comparison is apt; the desperation and desolation of the characters and locales of the fiction and the history match.

From the murder of the local policemen the story blooms within minutes to a chase through the far reaches of the Four Corners region of Colorado and Utah, and then settles into a weeks long investigation and manhunt as clues tie three young men to the stolen truck, the traffic stop murder and the flight from the vengeance seeking lawmen on their trail.

But in the world before September 11, the shape of the political landscape was formed by private quasi-religious, quasi-military, proto-environmentalist militia on one side and the wake of the Ruby Ridge and Waco failures of law enforcement on the other, and the three suspects were militia trained and desert-ready. With caches of arms, ammunition, and food hidden in the canyons, and friends and fellow militia members within reach, the manhunt comes up empty handed and parts of the mystery remain unresolved for nearly a decade, and much of what has been officially resolved remains speculation even after Schultz's research and writing.

Schultz does a good job of telling the facts in plainspoken spare language worthy of a noir mystery. He weaves together facts from the many different investigating teams from the multitude of overlapping jurisdictions, and makes it clear when he is combining facts and extending them by logic or speculation. The book indeed moves with the quick but measured pace of No Country and keeps the reader's eyes moving ahead to the next sentence, paragraph and page.

One area of speculation is the motive of the seemingly random active of property theft. Piecing together an impressive strong of circumstantial evidence, logical deduction worthy of Sherlock Holmes, and disparate facts scattered in isolated case files, Schultz finds a frightening piece of American eco-terrorism as the motive. While not documented with evidence that would earn a conviction in a court of law, the logic is hard to escape, that a simple stolen vehicle stop put in motion the string of events that, though unsuccessful in solving the mystery, may have saved thousands of lives and billions of dollars of property damage.

Which leads back to my allusion in my review title. Schultz begins his book by explicitly linking these modern outlaws with the legendary outlaws of the old Wild West. But while the outlaws of Jesse James and Pat Garrett's generation fought for their own lives, liberty, and loot, these modern outlaws had all of those things secured. Even though a key tenet of their militia political philosophy was that their American liberties were being restricted, these modern outlaws were in truth insiders in the privileged modern American political system, fighting for the ephemeral philosophies of a political party masquerading as environmentalist religion. Some might call that motive ennobling, I call it eviscerating. Give me the good old fashioned self-interest of Jesse James. That is the true nobility of the American outlaw.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Dead Run, Dan Schultz reveals the history of one of the biggest manhunts in modern history after three young men gunned down a deputy in Cortez, Colorado in 1998 after the deputy had the misfortune to pull them over in a stolen water tanker. All three men had survivalist and weapons training and the circumstances surrounding the manhunt for them still have unresolved questions almost twenty years later.

I'm torn between 2 and 3 stars on this one and have many conflicted feelings about it. On the one hand, it's a very intriguing story that still has unresolved questions and mysterious circumstances and that sort of thing requires at least some amount of speculation. And Schultz brings up some very interesting points and contradictions. On the other, Schultz has to be one of the most melodramatic, purple prose laden authors I've read. I was listening to the audiobook on a long trip and the overwrought phrasing had me giggling through the first half of the book, even when it was supposed to be serious. And Schultz lingers on gruesome details about the deaths worse than a dime novel. Finally, as someone who grew up in the southwest, specifically the nearby town of Durango and is familiar with many of the areas that this event happened in, it could not be more obvious that Schultz is an outsider trying to define a region he's not familiar with. So, as I said, I'm conflicted on how I feel about this one.

Overall, I'm going to bump it up to 3 stars just because the story was so compelling, enough that I got drawn in for the second half of the book, even with my gripes about Schultz's writing style.

[Erick Njenga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book.

[Stacy Beck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since my husband & I were taking a road trip through this part of Utah & Colorado, he suggested we listen to it. It’s usually not my genre, but listening to it together while passing through these towns was really cool. When this all took place back in 1998, we were actually taking a road trip to Durango and passed officers everyone during this manhunt. Very interesting story and the possible answers to why these three men gunned down a police officer, and what they may have been planning.

[Pamela Grim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so glad not to have read any reviews of this book before hand because I found most criticism wanting. The opening of this book is perhaps one of the most gripping I have heard. (Book experienced as audiobook which may have made it even more engrossing.) I do not want to give away too many of the books twist so this limits my discussion of this book in detail, however I can say the events and the long shadow of what might-have-been that these events evoked are scrupulously detailed without halting the force of narrative flow.

Others complain that much speculation necessarily accompanies this nonfiction work, however, when speculation is necessary, it seems well founded, and the tale is compelling enough to overcome any hesitation in its telling just because we don't know in detail every jot and tittle of the main actors thoughts and motivations. From the first moment on a bridge when a 16 year old boy looks down the barrel of gun and thinks, "I'm going to die," to the last, ultimately unknowable actions that bring the denouement I can only comment this author for detailed research and elegantly conveyed prose. Well done.

[River James · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1998 returning from my first Grand Canyon River trip we made a last stop for gas in our Penske rental truck in Ship Rock, NM. Maybe 6-8 of us were illegally riding in the back of the truck with the raft gear and a good Samaritan called the police hoping to get the reward for the outlaw cop killers on the loose. A road block awaited us in Farmington with countless officers on edge prepared for a show down. They pounded on the back of the truck saying to open slowly with hands clearly in view. Alan, who had cut off his dread locks during the river trip, tried some humor to diffuse the situation. "We are not the raft guides you are looking for". Not so much. I took a deep breath realizing this could go one of two ways. As we came into full view there was a palpable exhalation from the officers with drawn weapons in the glaring light.
This book is really interesting for me, not sure about you. The writing is pretty average, but the story isn't.

[Tbone · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked this book. It was a great story and my heart went out to law enforcement and to the famalies of the criminals. It is a pretty crazy story that happens to be true and is a little scary when you realize how people will kill innocent people all for some crazy idealogy or conspiracy theory. Great book though , well written. Was easy to get into and I " wanted" to read it!

[Isis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reverted to the library and I didn't care enough to renew it. I found it rather dull because it recounted every little detail ("look at my research!") rather than delving into theories and the mindset of the killers. (Compare to Columbine, by Dave Cullen, which I loved.)

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

True crime. Anti-government paranoia boils over in the Four Corners region when members of self-styled militia steal a tank truck and start shooting. An anti-federalist tin-star sheriff impedes the investigation. Were the fugitives trying to blow up the Glen Canyon dam?

[Michael Oakley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this very well written. It was easy to read and the flow was appropriate.
A couple of the side stories seemed overly detailed for what they were. I can understand including them, but I think the information could have been conveyed more concisely.

[Kater Cheek · Rating 4 out of 5]

True crime isn't my favorite genre, so I'm not sure why I got this from audible. Maybe it was the nice cover photo. I'm glad I did. It's a gritty and fascinating story about three anti-government gun nut types who stole a water truck and ended up killing a cop that incited a massive manhunt for them in the four corners region.

I really enjoyed both the depth of the research and the skill of the writing. Schultz deeply investigated this murder and revealed it in a way that maximized the mystery behind it. If he had begun a few years earlier, he might have been able to discover more than the police eventually did. He walks a careful line, telling you all the evidence in such a way that you will come to your own conclusion as to the real story, without actually telling you things that haven't been established as true, except at the end when he says "here's a story."

To me, the most fascinating part was when Bobby's body was found. Here we have these guys who will shoot government officials on sight, including and especially cops, and what do the cops do but prove their point for them. Or maybe it wasn't cops. Maybe there were other militia guys out there who did it.

The main thing that keeps this from being in my "best book of the year" category (I only give five stars if the book is absolutely stellar) is that I was disappointed at how many mysteries remained when all was said and done. There was a fourth guy who had been interviewed and knew a lot about the plot, (which might have been to blow up the Glen canyon dam), and he was dead by the time the book was published. But did anyone have copies of those interviews? What was the guy's name? Who was he? Do we know anything about him?

Schultz whispers at a deeper conspiracy, but then he backs off. I can't say I blame the author; I personally would not want to dig too deeply into the secrets of gun nuts who almost certainly were willing to kill even their own friends to keep the secrets hidden. I just found it disappointing as a reader.

Since I'm from Arizona and have been to the four corners region on several occasions, I found the wild-west romanticism of the region to kind of miss the mark. It's not the the wild west days of Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp weren't fascinating, it's that there's so much about that area and the people who live there NOW that's interesting. Going back a hundred and fifty years ago feels like a nod to people who don't know anything about the west and find it foreign and exotic. I would rather have had some more recent examples of this cowboys and outlaws behavior to back up the supposition. Like, "twenty years ago, someone was caught stealing cattle and he disappeared" or "Federal Surveyors reported being shot at when they came out here back in the 60's" rather than "That one famous thing that you (who know nothing about this area) know about defines the culture of this region." I would rather have had more description of the actual people who live there now and recent events than relying on the shorthand of a Hollywood stereotype to fill in the gaps.

Since the militia movement so strongly influences the story, I would have liked to know more about those people. Why weren't they interviewed? Why did we not learn more about the other people who trained with them? Is it because they wouldn't talk to reporters, or because Schultz couldn't find them? As fascinating as this book was, it leaves more questions than answers.

I think this would be a great book for a book club because Schultz seems sympathetic with neither side, and because it touches on a lot of debatable topics. Gun control. Environmentalism. The irony of anti-government, anti-law enforcement types who call themselves "patriots" and "militia." And above all, the question of what really happened. Who really killed these guys? I'll keep my eye out for the book that finally tells the rest of the story.

[Anthony Meaney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating story about three misfit survivalist/wannabe ecoterrorists who steal a water tanker in what appears to be a plan to blow up a dam but it all went awry when a police officer did a routine stop of the vehicle and then the shooting started.

When the smoke cleared a lawman was dead and three fugitives managed to elude a massive manhunt.

What happened to them ultimately is a mystery. All three turned up dead with bullet wounds to the head. Police consensus is suicide. The author wants to draw a more sinister conclusion of renegade cops dealing out their own brand of frontier justice.

The problem is he gets too lost in his theory and once he goes down that track he doesn't want to get moved off.

For 95% of the book this isn't a huge deal but near the end when he tries to wrap it up in a neat little bow the threads don't tie up so neatly.

Schultz' contention is that at least one of the fugitives was spotted at least several times for as many as two years after the shooting. The official line from police is that since all bodies were found within 5 miles where they ditched their getaway vehicle, all three committed suicide within 5 days of the original shooting.

The author feels that this isn't the case and points out that Navajo trackers (whom he goes out of his way to praise as being one of the best police outfits on the case) were finding evidence that at least one of them was still alive years later.

But he also wants us to believe that rogue cops in the heat and confusion of the early weeks of the search dispatched all three in summary executions. This makes some sense since there was a tremendous amount of confusion and internecine bickering between a variety of police organizations during the early days of the pursuit.

However if one or two of the fugitives remained alive for some time afterwards then only one police force could conceivably committed the "murder" and that would be the same Navajo police force he praises so highly throughout the book.

Occam's razor suggests that the three would-be "monkey wrenchers" panicked when their plans for glory went awry and decided they wouldn't be taken alive. Not as sexy as rogue swat teams roaming the Utah desert doling out their own brand of vengeance but probably the most likely scenario.

Still a great read (or listen if you get the audible book) hence I am giving it 4 stars.