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Thursday, March 5, 1998 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
E-mail article Print
Tracking The `Mountain Man' -- Expert Uses Footprints, Broken Twigs, Other Clues To Find Suspected Burglar
By Susan Gilmore
Seattle Times Staff Reporter
Joel Hardin has never met Mincio Donciev, the mysterious mountain man suspected of burglarizing dozens of vacation homes near Darrington over the past decade.
Yet Hardin, a famed tracker retired from the Border Patrol, knows Donciev well.
Hardin knows Donciev alternated three pairs of shoes in the years he walked a meandering trail through thick forest. He knows he started using a walking stick in the past two months. He knows he carried a heavy backpack - as much as 75 pounds - to lug out items he allegedly pilfered after break-ins at homes around the Stillaguamish Country Club.
Donciev walked and he rested, sometimes crushing small alder trees with his pack. He varied his path through the steep, dense forest near Whitehorse Mountain where he lived as a hermit until his capture Sunday night.
That he was caught at all is due, in large part, to Hardin, who was brought into the case in November by a frustrated Snohomish County Sheriff's Office, which had been unable to catch the man known as "The Bulgarian."
John Taylor, a Snohomish County deputy involved in search-and-rescue operations, had suggested Hardin.
"He was such a good tracker," said Taylor, who retired from the force last fall. He confesses to mixed emotions now that Donciev has finally been captured. "I feel sorry for the guy, but not for all the problems he caused other people."
Donciev remains at Harborview Medical Center recovering from dog bites inflicted during his capture. He is expected to face burglary charges.
Hardin, considered one of the nation's foremost trackers, worked for the Border Patrol for 25 years before retiring in the tiny farming community of Everson, Whatcom County, near the Canadian border.
In his three decades of tracking, he has found murderers and missing children, has testified in dozens of trials and, at one time, helped in the search for the Green River killer.
In recent months, Hardin helped to convict a murderer in California and searched in vain for two Alzheimer's disease victims who have never been found. He says prosecutors have never lost a case in which he has testified.
Now, at 57, Hardin spends much of his time teaching tracking skills through his company, Universal Tracking Services, and consulting on such mysteries as the Darrington mountain man.
Donciev, 68, had eluded capture for much of the past decade, though authorities knew much about him:
He was a former policeman and convicted murderer from Bulgaria who had a criminal record here. They believe he tried to burn down the Seattle house of a former girlfriend in 1985, and then disappeared.
They even knew what he looked like and put his pictures on fliers they distributed in the area.
And they knew they wouldn't capture Donciev without help. So they called Hardin. Another tracker he had trained, Phil Vining, lived in the area and joined Hardin in the search.
The first step, Hardin said, was charting the burglaries on a map to look for a pattern. Then, he and Vining and another tracker, Cathy Wilhelm, started looking for footprints, broken twigs, crushed vegetation and anything that would lead them to Donciev's trail.
Trackers call it sign-cutting, a slow, meticulous and often frustrating task that few have mastered.
"To cut means finding the evidence of the passage of a person," Hardin said. "You look for marks, scuffs, scrapes that (indicate) a person is in the area."
But searching for Donciev was not as difficult as it seemed, Hardin said.
"If you're walking in and doing a burglary and then leaving, how do you travel in and out without being seen, carrying out a backpack filled with 50 to 75 pounds of canned goods?" he said. "It wasn't a difficult tracking operation. The complexity came from the necessity to see him before he saw us in the forest."
Hardin said it didn't take long to pick up Donciev's trail, even though the suspect was careful to take different routes and not beat down a path.
Hardin figures he found signs left by Donciev as long as eight years ago and as recently as last month. Hardin and the trackers could see where Donciev stopped to rest, setting down his backpack. They found trash he discarded on the way.
Some time in the past two months, he started carrying a walking stick, Hardin said. He doesn't know why. He also changed shoes; Hardin found footprints left by three different pairs.
Though Hardin figures he spent 100 hours on the case, he didn't finish the search. He tracked Donciev about three miles into the forest before police decided to turn to modern technology. Ultimately, Donciev was tripped up by electronic sensors borrowed from the U.S. Forest Service and placed across a trail that Hardin had discerned.
"I'm glad he's in custody," Hardin said, "but I would have liked to have tracked him to his home."
He also said he would like to meet the man.
"I'd very much like to talk to the person to learn more about him," Hardin said. "It's unique to find someone who lives 10 years in the wilderness."
Susan Gilmore's phone message number is 206-464-2054. Her e-mail address is: sugi-new@seatimes.com
Copyright (c) 1998 Seattle Times Company, All Rights Reserved.
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