Mystery mountain man to Utah cabin owner: 'Get off my mountain'

He's eluded authorities for more than five
years, a mountain man who roams the wilderness of southern Utah,
breaking into remote cabins in winter, living in luxury off hot food,
alcohol and coffee before stealing provisions and vanishing into the
woods.

Investigators have clawed for clues,
scouring cabins for fingerprints that match no one and chasing reports
of brief encounters only to come up short, always a step behind the
mysterious recluse.

They've found abandoned camps, dozens of guns, high-end outdoor gear
stolen from the homes and trash strewn around the forest floor.

But the man authorities say is armed and
dangerous and responsible for more than two dozen burglaries has
continued to outrun the law across a swath of mountains not far from zion national park.

He's roamed across 1,000 square miles of rugged wilderness where snow
can pile 10 feet deep in winter.

And while there have been no violent
confrontations, detectives say he's a time bomb. Lately he has been
leaving the cabins in disarray and riddled with bullets after defacing
religious icons, and a recent note left behind in one cabin warned, "Get
off my mountain."

"You wouldn't want to come across that guy," said Iron County Det. Jody Edwards, who has been working the case since 2007.

Theories about his identity have ranged from
a 42-year-old man on the FBI's Most Wanted List sought for the 2004
killing of an armored-truck guard in Phoenix to a castaway from the
nearby compounds of the fundamentalist church of jesus christ of latter day saints, the polygamous sect run by jailed leader warren jeffs.

The FBI recently discounted the theory that the man was their fugitive after
authorities got the first pictures of him from a motion-triggered
surveillance camera outside a cabin showing a sandy-haired man in
camouflage on snowshoes, a rifle slung over his shoulder. The photos
were captured sometime in December.

"We believe that is not Jason Derek Brown," FBI special agent manuel johnson told The Associated Press.

However, Edwards isn't so quick to rule out
the possibility, given the close resemblance to Brown, who was raised
Mormon and is a highly educated, well-traveled avid outdoorsman.

So while detectives believe they are getting
close, buoyed by the recent photos, the shadowy survivalist remains an
enigma. No missing person report appears to fit, and fingerprints lifted
from cabins have yielded no match.

Meanwhile, cabin owners are growing more
frightened by the day and are left wondering who might be sleeping in
their beds this winter.

"He's scaring the daylights out of cabin
owners. Now everyone's packing guns," said Jud Hendrickson, a
62-year-old mortgage advisor from nearby St. George who keeps a trailer
in the area.

In November 2010, Bruce Stucki, another
cabin owner, said a burglar broke into his cabin through a narrow
window, pried open a gun case with a crowbar and laid out the weapons
but took none. At a nearby cabin, the man reportedly took only the grips
from gun handles.

"He could stand in the trees and pop you off and no one would know who killed you," Stucki said.

Some cabins he has left tidy and clean, while others he has practically destroyed, even defecating in one in a pan on the floor.

"He should know he's being followed, but I
don't think this guy is normal in any way," said Stucki, who, like many
cabin owners, has a lot of his own theories.

"He's anti-religious, waiting for the mothership to come in," Stucki speculated.

Investigators say they have found several of
the man's unattended summer camps, what they initially thought were
left behind by "doomsday" believers preparing for some sort of
apocalypse because of the remote locations and supplies like weapons,
radios, batteries, dehydrated food and camping gear.

Edwards said two camps found a few years ago
were stocked with 19 guns. One of the camps also had a copy of Jon
Krakauer's "Into the Wild," a book about a young man who died after
wandering into the Alaskan wilderness to live alone off the land.

The cabin burglar has managed to avoid being seen all but twice over the years, each time retreating into the forest.

The coffee and alcohol the survivalist
favors plays into some cabin owners' assessment that he could be a
castaway from the nearby twin towns of Hildale or Colorado City on the
Utah-Arizona border. The so-called lost boys are said to be regularly
booted from the polygamous sect there by elders looking to increase
their marriage opportunities with young women.

Unlike members of The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints, which discourages consumption of alcohol and
coffee, many of the Mormon fundamentalists imbibe.

Detectives aren't sharing their latest
assessments but "we've got a lot of leads" from the surveillance photos,
Edwards said. "I would say we're very close to making a positive ID on
him.We just got to catch this guy."

To cabin owners in southern Utah, he remains a spooky and menacing figure.

"We feel like we're being subject to
terrorism by this guy," Hendrickson said. "My wife says flat-out she's
not going back to our trailer until they catch him."

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