Thread by @egavactip

1. Extremist #FlashbackFriday. On this day 20 yrs ago, anti-gov't extremist & fugitive Alan Pilon was spotted by a couple of Navajo kids in the Four Corners area. He, Jason McVean and Robert Mason had stolen a water truck (for reasons that remain unknown) and killed a police

2. officer who had spotted them. They escaped into the wilderness, sparking one of the largest manhunts in the west. At some point they apparently split up. Authorities found Mason, who shot and wounded a deputy before killing himself as the law closed in. The others vanished.

3. When the kids spotted Pilon, he had been on the run in the wilderness for two months, eluding hundreds of searchers. Navajo trackers tried to trail him but rain eventually washed away his tracks. However, 17 months later, deer hunters came across Pilon's skeleton. He had died

4. in the wilderness. Many years later, in 2007, about two miles from where they found Pilon's body, a rancher came across McVean's skeleton, along with an AK-47 and a backpack with pipe bombs. The "Four Corners Patriots" had killed one police officer and wounded three others,

5. but none of them lived to tell the tale themselves. What their original plans were remain in dispute. Some theorize they wanted to make a large vehicular bomb out of the truck, others say they wanted to crash it into a casino to rob it.