Dead Run: The Murder of a Lawman and the Greatest Manhunt of the Modern American West
“The West lives,” Schultz asserts, before launching into this true-crime tale of a sudden shoot-out, a canyon chase, and a manhunt that lasted for years. He means the Wild West, the West in a continual war against authority, the one still breathing behind the overlay of strip malls. This well-drawn story about three contemporary desperadoes who might have been time-sprung from a previous century will have readers amazed by how close the actions and mores are to those of the Old West. In 1998, three men in a stolen tanker truck opened fire with an AK-47 on Dale Claxton, a Cortez, Colorado, cop, on the McElmo Bridge. They shot their way through dozens of cop cars, disappearing into the canyons of the Four Corners. And there these criminals, trained in survivalist techniques, eluded the largest manhunt in U.S. history, including more than 500 officers from 51 different federal, state, and local agencies; aircraft and advanced search-surveillance technology; and Native American trackers. The three desperadoes are dead, their motives dead with them, but this manhunt story will keep the legend alive. --Connie Fletcher