Four Corners Manhunt, part four

Part four in a behind-the-scenes look at covering a huge manhunt for cop-killer fugitives Robert Matthew Mason, Jason Wayne McVean and Alan “Monte” Pilon, in the Four Corners region of southeastern Utah in May 1998. Rising early, we drive back to the first roadblock. Staffing it are the four officers who nearly shot us last night. They check our IDs again and start joking, “To get through, you’ve got to give us some food.” “How about some donuts, guys?” I ask. “Donuts!” says a cop with a machine gun. “Listen to this guy!” “No, really,” says the reporter. “I’ve got a box of donuts!” There’s not much to shoot at the roadblocks so we drive 60 winding canyon miles to Cortez, Colorado. It’s the town where this all started, where the first cop was murdered. At the hospital we ask a group of nurses where the two wounded officer’s rooms are. They tell us the room number and as we walk to the room they start wondering who we are (my two cameras probably don’t help our anonymity). They stop us and say they’ll go ask if it’s OK to visit the injured men. The word comes back from both rooms: No. We protest further and a nurse gets a doctor to ask one officer while another nurse tells us we need to leave. The doctor comes back with the word that it’s OK to talk to one of the wounded officers, But no cameras. I follow anyway and sit on a chair just outside the room. Maybe they’ll let me get something. Officer Todd Bishop tells his story. He responded to the area where the cop-killers had been spotted. As he drove around the neighborhood they pulled out right behind his patrol car. He looked back and saw a man in the passenger seat wearing an army helmet and pointing an SKS assault rifle at him. The man fired. Officer Bishop stepped on the gas as a hail of bullets stormed into his car, one lodging in his head. His girlfriend said, “It’s still in there, see?” and she pulled his hair out of the way to show us. There were a lot of flowers around the room, left by well-wishers. I asked if I could get a photo of flowers. Officer Bishop agreed to a photo of himself in his hospital bed. It was a great exclusive. No one else had talked to him. We returned to our hotel to send the photo and story. We hung around Blanding for the night, in case anything broke on the story. The next day we returned to Salt Lake City. part one, Four Corners Manhunt part two, Four Corners Manhunt part three, Four Corners Manhunt