THE NEWS CHICK BLOG

How local mantrackers view crime scenes

May 1, 2012, 6:46 PM | Updated: May 2, 2012, 9:51 am

A footprint on a sidewalk. Broken twigs and torn leaves in a forest. Nearly invisible scuffmarks on a linoleum floor. Those clues tell specially-trained investigators a lot about a criminal suspect or missing person.

Police with those skills are called mantrackers, trackers, or sign cutters. They’re rare.

The King County Sheriff’s Department has three deputies who are certified trackers. Those deputies believe more police officers should be trained in the unique tracking method.

FootprintHighlightedWhen Troy Chaffee and Kathy Decker look at a picture taken on a steep incline of Rattlesnake Mountain, they see something most of us would miss. Instead of mud and a few leaves, they see an “obvious” footprint.

“You can see there’s damage to the twigs, and broken twigs. Flower petals have been knocked off and stepped on,” says Deputy Chaffee.

In the photo to the right, I’ve added black circles to highlight the pink petals that caught their attention.

“You can see how life like they still are,” Deputy Decker says. “They’ve recently been kicked off the plant. They’re not wilted, they haven’t been rained on extensively, they haven’t been dried by the sun.”

That kind of detailed observation helped Chaffee, and another King County Sheriff’s tracker, realize they had a boot print from Peter Keller – the man suspected of murdering his family in North Bend.

Based on the condition of the plants that were disturbed, they knew Keller had been through the area Wednesday night. It was Thursday afternoon when Chaffee found the footprints that eventually led to the discovery of Keller’s bunker where the suspect killed himself.

“To learn to see this evidence, you first have to have an understanding and a belief that it exists, which is fairly simple if you think about it,” says Decker, King County’s first certified tracker. “When we move about our environment, when we walk across the ground surface we always leave evidence of our passage. Even if we’re standing around, not doing anything, there’s still information that we were there for a period of time.”

Mantracking is about training your eye to not only see the evidence, but to interpret it. Evidence can include footprints, scuffs, scrapes, and broken vegetation outdoors or carpet prints, scuff marks, paint scrapes and various clues inside. And that’s just the beginning.

KathyDecker, who has been with the King County Sheriff’s Department for 26 years, first heard about mantracking in the 1990s from Joel Hardin.

The now retired U.S. Border Patrol agent runs a private training and consulting business where he teaches tracking, goes on search-and-rescue missions, and consults with prosecutors and defense lawyers as an expert in criminal cases.

“It involves a tremendous amount of patience and persistence,” Decker says. “This is not something you can learn to do overnight. This takes years and years and years of training with a constant need to update skills.”

Hardin has been somewhat controversial in the legal community.

He says he can tell a person’s country of origin, or race, through tracking. Hardin says, for example, Americans always have somewhere to go in a hurry and tend to take longer strides.

Decker admits when she first started mantracking she didn’t know how to “sell” the skill to her coworkers.

Her track record of successfully processing hundreds of crime scenes speaks for itself.

Chaffee’s first exposure to tracking was watching Decker investigate a mass murder scene in Carnation, Washington on December 24, 2007. The murders took place in the home of Wayne and Judy Anderson. Six people were killed.

“I was amazed at what came out of that. I was floored,” Chaffee says. “For years, even all the years I spent with Army CID (Criminal Investigation Department), I’ve been walking over evidence.”

Chaffee says becoming a tracker has helped him do a more effective job at crime scenes. He is also a bomb technician with the King County Sheriff’s Department and his dog is trained to find firearm evidence.

“When somebody goes out in the woods and takes a gun that they’ve used in a crime and tosses it hoping nobody finds it again, I’ll go out there with my dog and search,” he says. “Tracking narrows it down for me. If I can track someone to the point where they stopped and threw that gun, I now go down from searching five acres, to maybe 30 feet.”

Mantracking is more common in the military and with search and rescue teams than with police departments, in part because of the amount of time training and continuing education takes. Snohomish and Thurston Counties each have one officer certified in tracking.

By LINDA THOMAS

The News Chick Blog

The wife of Seattle attorney Danford Grant moved his car away from one of the alleged crime scenes ...

No Author

Equal justice for Seattle lawyer accused of several rapes?

Has accused serial rapist Danford Grant gotten preferential treatment because both he and his wife are Seattle attorneys?

12 years ago

The Seattle-based I Can Has Cheezburger network now includes 60 humor sites. Many of their 90 emplo...

No Author

Seattle humor network, built with funny cat pictures, becomes a reality TV show

A small Internet empire with a funny name has billions of page views on its network of 60 humor websites based in Seattle. Now, I Can Has Cheezburger has a reality TV show too.

12 years ago

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spent a combined $30.33 every second this election cycle. Wa...

No Author

Democracy and dollar signs – 2012 campaign spending

Washington initiative campaigns spent $34 million trying to win your vote, while President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spent a combined $30.33 every second this election cycle.

12 years ago

Chef Tom Douglas says Seattle’s restaurants are ‘a little homemade’ compared with...

No Author

Chef Tom Douglas says ‘Seattle is a funny restaurant town’

Chef and restaurateur Tom Douglas, with 13 Seattle restaurants and more on the way, says Seattle is a "funny restaurant town."

12 years ago

Investigation continues into why a commander of the Bremerton-based Stennis carrier group was remov...

No Author

New ‘crazy’ conspiracy theory on Stennis Rear Admiral

The Pentagon shoots down theories about why the commander of the USS Stennis Carrier Group was removed from duty and sent back to the homeport in Bremerton.

12 years ago

Seattle photographer Paul Souders captures an adult polar bear up close in Hudson Bay in Churchill,...

No Author

Seattle photographer comes face to face with a polar bear

A wildlife photographer, who lives in Ballard, has taken thousands of stunning shots. None put him on "a razor's edge" more than a series of photos swimming with a polar bear.

12 years ago

How local mantrackers view crime scenes