Hot on the trail

A team of expert tracker trainers is in the valley this week, working with local law enforcement officers and search-and-rescue members. On Wednesday, they were to work on a staged murder near Columbia Falls. Instead, some members wound up going to the Glacier Mountain Shadows-Western Inn to use their skills in a real investigation.

Flathead County Sheriff's deputy Tom Snyder is coordinator of search and rescue for the county. He invited Joel Hardin, professional man-tracking instructor from Everson, Wash., and his expert team to teach the fine points of tracking in a three-day training.

Hardin, Snyder said, "is probably the best man tracker in the U.S."

Among his instructors were the person in charge of King County's major homicide unit, the president of the North Idaho Trackers that were involved in the Coeur d'Alene triple homicide Groene investigation, and a member of military Special Forces.

"It is an exceptionally talented group of instructors," Snyder said.

Coincidentally, the team was staying at Glacier Mountain Shadows, where three fires were reported at about 2 a.m. Wednesday, according to Fire Investigator Pat Walsh of the Sheriff's Office.

Firefighters from Badrock and Columbia Falls departments "did an excellent job" of containing the fires, said Chief Rick Hagen of the Badrock department. Twenty-three firefighters responded to the call, stopping the fires from spreading.

The motel was evacuated after smoke alarms awakened guests. Even as they were hurrying out into the night, the trackers were noticing shoe prints that might be evidence.

After daybreak, the instructors divided into teams, with sheriff's deputies Bill Emerson, Lance Norman, Jordan White and Snyder working with the instructors to collect evidence.

What they look for is as detailed as bent blades of grass, Snyder said.

Seaux Larreau, an instructor who trains military professionals, demonstrated how shoe prints are located and marked. On a wooden ramp, he tagged a print that appeared to be work boot, such as a Red Wing brand. He pointed out another impression where the lugs on the bottom of a boot bit into the wood surface.

The prints could have been made by firefighters, motel guests, or someone who spread the flammable liquid that fueled the fires.

"It's a process of elimination," Larreau said.

Some shoe prints, particularly those in grass or gravel, are difficult to photograph. Students in the training learn to draw the impressions they can decipher, rather than take pictures. The length of the print is measured, along with the width at both the toe and heel.

Prints in grass and soil around the motel were made within the past 12 hours, Larreau determined. They were invisible at first glance until he pointed out the outline of the shoe or boot.

"We don't teach them anything they don't already see," Larreau said. It's just a question of perception.

He says tracking training is akin to the way a child reads a book. At first, the story is understood through the obvious - by interpreting pictures and drawings. As a child learns to read, another layer of perception is added through language.

On Wednesday, students were learning the language of tracking. Deputy White, who had some tracking training at the law-enforcement academy, was fine-tuning that skill. As a group of trackers stood and talked, he found a burned match on the ground that appeared similar to others at the scene. It hadn't been on the ground long. Maybe it was related to the fires; maybe it wasn't.

It's not for trackers to interpret what they find.

"We just mark it up for the investigators to come bag it and tag it," Larreau said.

The investigators are the local fire-investigation team, composed of officers from several local agencies.

While the trackers gathered their evidence, Walsh gathered his own from the floors, walls and ceilings of the rooms that burned.

He was in the same part of the valley exactly a week ago, when a suspected arson fire burned a small building near the Ol' River Bridge Inn.

Walsh will merge his evidence with what the trackers find.

Remy Newcombe from Idaho said that's how the evidence she gathered at the triple murder in Coeur d'Alene this summer was used. She put together a report and passed it along to investigators.

"You don't know in the end what they'll put together," she said. Sometimes, the evidence the trackers find "is the thing that solves the case."

Wednesday's work was all about crime-scene investigation, but the same techniques work in finding a missing person in the woods. That's why Snyder combined search-and-rescue volunteers and law-enforcement officers for this week's training.

It's not the first time a real-life situation has materialized for students, Hardin said. He's been at training sessions where someone got lost in the area of the training and students participated in the search.

It might be the first time, though, that a motel was torched just rooms away from where the instructors were staying.

Reporter Chery Sabol may be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at csabol@dailyinterlake.com.