Eric Frein: Lost in the Woods

By Charles Peirce, Esquire

14 October 14

s it just me, or does the fact that already it's been more than a month -- and $1.4 million a week, according to some reports -- and they still haven't found alleged cop-killer and survivalist fugitive Eric Frein down in Pennsylvania indicative of something more than Frein's finely honed woodchuck skillz? To recap:

Frein allegedly ambushed two troopers Sept. 12 outside the state police barracks in Blooming Grove Township, Pike County. Lying in wait in the woods outside the barracks with his .308 caliber rifle, Frein, reportedly a skilled sharp-shooter, allegedly killed Cpl. Bryon Dickson and critically wounded Trooper Alex Douglass. Police say Frein spent months - perhaps years - planning the crime and fled into the deep woods around his parents' Canadensis home after the shooting.

In their search, police have found Frein's diary, and a couple of pipe bombs he left behind, but they haven't found him. This is starting to remind people that it took them five years to find Eric Rudolph, who carried out the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta in 1996. Suspicions remain that there are a lot of as-yet-unindicted accessories after the fact who helped Rudolph evade police.

Part of Rudolph's folkloric appeal to some people was the idea that he made it out there alone, using the skills of a crack survivalist. As I discover while talking to citizens in and around Murphy, his reputation didn't completely collapse in the wake of his arrest, but the details of his capture have led many to shift from asking whether he had help to who was involved. FBI agents are still patrolling the hills with dogs, looking for more camps and evidence of accomplices, but if they've found anything, they're not telling. "We're basically under orders from the Department of Justice to keep a lid on all information until the trial," says an FBI spokesman. "If there's anything that's worthy, it'll come out then."

Now we have Frein, a Balkan War re-enactor -- Yes, there are such things -- still on the loose, and similar questions arising as to whether or not he has a sub rosa support staff of likeminded individuals helping him evade capture.

"It's a clusterf-," said the insider, who confirmed the accuracy of my earlier post and updates on the dragnet. "The locals [local police forces] know more than they're telling the state police and the feds."

There might be a number of reasons for this, and none of them are good. In the precincts in which Frein formed his world view, there is a strongly held belief that local sheriffs are the only authentic law-enforcement officials. In many places, this has led to a split between local authorities and "outside" institutions like the state police or the FBI, who are seen as illegitimate. Or it may be as simple as the local cops wanting to make a high-profile arrest. In any case, if there is even a suspicion that Frein's getting help on the ground, that says a lot about where parts of this country are headed, and none of them are good, either.