Tracking a killer's trail: Think "CSI," but low-tech

EATONVILLE, Pierce County — The trackers arrived early on a drizzly morning at a crime scene that a homicide detective called "a forensic nightmare."

A thicket of blackberry vines and dense woods surrounded the elderly victim's ramshackle trailer. Nearby, rusted overturned cars, a van and a travel trailer spewed garbage. The driveway into the property was littered with flattened tin cans.

Ever since May 16, when a Pierce County sheriff's deputy went to Roy Park's home to check on his welfare and found the man's body buried beneath brush, clues to the homicide had been difficult to find, and the trail was growing cold.

But on Monday, Pierce County homicide Detective Bruce Larson turned to a "new" old skill: a team of trackers with skills similar to what hunters use in tracking game through woods, but tailored for tracking humans. Suddenly the crime scene bristled with clues that had previously been overlooked.

As tracker and King County Sheriff's Deputy Kathleen Decker and two volunteers studied the scene, bent and broken blades of grass revealed where the body had been dragged from a grassy spot near Park's beehives — the site of the slaying — down into a gully. Barely perceptible indentations in the soil told of an escape route. The sweep of grass showed where a car had traveled.

In an era when law enforcement has turned to high-tech gadgets and forensic science to help uncover clues at crime scenes, the ancient skill of tracking has largely gone overlooked, experts say.

While search-and-rescue teams have often used tracking to find missing persons, it's only more recently being used as a tool in crime-scene investigations. Decker is leading the push in King County.

Trackers like Decker understand that human presence forever alters the land. Leaves bruise underfoot. Small rocks are displaced. Twigs bend. It's these subtle clues that can tell an investigator many things — from the size of the suspect or his behavior, to the path of entrance and exit.

Raised on Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie novels, Decker, 44, worked for years on King County's homicide unit, but her love of the outdoors led her to tracking.

On her own time and with her own money, she took classes from retired law-enforcement officer and professional tracker Joel Hardin, who operates one of the country's oldest training programs for trackers.

Decker became a journeyman tracker, and now teaches it as coordinator of the King County Search-and-Rescue unit.

She is often called on to track at crime scenes in King and neighboring counties, aiding in a number of searches that have led to the discovery of key pieces of evidence.

After she attended her first lecture on tracking in 1998, she came away shocked that tracking wasn't a routine skill being taught in law enforcement.

"There aren't a lot of law-enforcement officers who want to pony up a couple thousand a year for classes" and spend their vacations taking them, she said. And since tracking requires continuing education, it can be expensive for police departments.

Decker has tracked at the scenes of arsons, numerous murders and the December 2005 abduction of 10-year-old Adre'Anna Jackson of Tillicum, Pierce County.

In the shooting death of a man found not long ago near Interstate 90, she was able to determine that the wound was self-inflicted by noting that there was no sign of a fight or struggle, and by examining footprints and determining that they belonged to only one person.

In the death of another man near Renton a few years ago, she determined by the number of broken shrub branches, crushed leaves and the condition of the body that a group of people had carried the victim up a hill. One of the suspects pleaded guilty; the others have not been charged.

The challenge of persuading officers to study tracking is that many see it as linked to clairvoyance or believe "you have to be born with native blood or kin to Daniel Boone to do it," said Hardin, the professional tracker. Many have the attitude that "you're going to tell them something that will cause them to close their eyes and hum" from boredom.

Decker, too, has tread lightly in introducing it to her department, at first just using tracking terms in her homicide reports. But success — and there are many cases she can't talk about because they have yet to go to trial — is the best measure of tracking's effectiveness.

Sgt. Mark Toner, of King County's Major Crimes division, says all his deputies now take tracking classes to help them become aware of the minutiae at crime scenes.

"In this day and age there's so much cutting-edge stuff — DNA and all that — tracking takes us back 200 years to stuff that has worked all along. It's not [something you might see on the TV show] 'CSI.' It's not flashy. It's down to earth and it works," Toner said.

At the Eatonville crime scene, Decker closely examined bits of dark, rotting leaves.

"Now this is good wilt," consistent with leaves that would have been damaged in May — at the time of the murder, she said. Then she straightened and noted a break in the brush ahead.

"You see how tangled this nettle is? Something came in here and did that." Although deer and elk are common in the area, she ruled them out and pursued the trail.

Besides the date of the murder, Larson, the homicide detective, purposely did not give the trackers information about the case to avoid influencing their findings.

So when Decker led him into the woods to show him how the suspect might have waited and watched the victim before the slaying, Larson was impressed.

He was even more impressed when volunteers Duncan Smith and Carol Peterson, a married couple who turned their love of the outdoors into professional tracking, called to report "flagging," seeing grass bent toward them, a sign that a car had traveled down a dirt road and turned around.

While sometimes the information gathered from tracking simply helps to portray what a suspect did and the path taken, at other times it leads to evidence, including DNA, that can be used to identify a suspect.

In this case, broken grass led to "physical evidence of significant value," Larson said. He wouldn't be specific, to avoid revealing key points of the investigation.

Nancy Bartley: 206-464-8522 or nbartley@seattletimes.com