BIG BEAR LAKE,
Calif. (AP) -- Karen and Jim Reynolds say they came face to face
with fugitive Christopher Dorner, not on a snow-covered mountain trail,
but inside their cabin-style condo.
During a
15-minute ordeal just a stone's throw from a command post authorities
had set up in the massive manhunt for the ex-Los Angeles police officer,
the couple said Dorner bound them and put pillowcases on their heads.
At one point, he explained that he had been there for days.
"He
said, `I don't have a problem with you, so I'm not going to hurt you,'"
Jim Reynolds said. "I didn't believe him; I thought he was going to
kill us."
Police have not commented on the
Reynoldses' account, but it renews questions about the thoroughness of a
search for a man who authorities declared was armed and extremely
dangerous as they hunted him across the Southwest and Mexico.
Remains
found in the burned cabin where Dorner made his last stand Tuesday were
positively identified Thursday through dental examination, said Jodi
Miller, spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County sheriff-coroner.
The
department did not immediately disclose the cause of death, and
officials said the autopsy report was still being completed. Toxicology
tests could take weeks.
Meanwhile, court
documents show Dorner gathered information on a women's basketball coach
and her fiance before he apparently killed them earlier this month.
The
Orange County Register reported that Irvine police believe Dorner
researched Monica Quan, 28, and her 27-year-old boyfriend, Keith
Lawrence. The records also say Dorner may have had documents containing
information about Quan and her family.
Police
tied Dorner to the slayings after reading a manifesto he wrote in which
he sought revenge against those he believed ended his law enforcement
career. Quan's father represented Dorner during a disciplinary hearing.
The
search for Dorner began last week after authorities said he had
launched a deadly revenge campaign against the Los Angeles Police
Department for his firing, warning in the manifesto that he would bring
"warfare" to LAPD officers and their families.
The
LAPD had said protection details for about 50 officers and their
families would be maintained until the remains in the cabin were
positively identified. The details had already been reduced, and the
last of them were called off Thursday morning, police spokeswoman
Officer Rosario Herrera said.
The manhunt for
Dorner brought police to Big Bear Lake, 80 miles east of Los Angeles,
after his burned-out pickup truck was found abandoned last week. His
footprints disappeared on frozen soil and hundreds of officers who
searched the area and checked out each building failed to find him.
"They
said they went door-to-door but then he's right there under their
noses. Makes you wonder if the police even knew what they were doing,"
resident Shannon Schroepfer said. "He was probably sitting there
laughing at them the whole time."
The notion
of him holed up just across the street from the command post was
shocking to many, but not totally surprising to some experts familiar
with the complications of such a manhunt.
"Chilling.
That's the only word I could use for that," said Ed Tatosian, a retired
SWAT commander for the Sacramento Police Department. "It's not an
unfathomable oversight. We're human. It happens. It's chilling (that) it
does happen."
Law enforcement officers, who
had gathered outside daily for briefings, were stunned by the
revelation. One official later looking on Google Earth exclaimed that
he'd parked right across the street from the Reynoldses' cabin each day.
The
Reynoldses said Dorner was upstairs in the rental unit Tuesday when
they arrived to ready it for vacationers. Dorner, who at the time was
being sought for three killings, confronted the couple with a drawn gun,
"jumped out and hollered `stay calm,'" Jim Reynolds said in a news
conference Wednesday night.
His wife screamed
and ran downstairs, but Dorner caught her, Reynolds said. The couple
said they were taken to a bedroom where Dorner ordered them to lie on a
bed and then on the floor. Dorner bound their arms and legs with plastic
ties, gagged them with towels and covered their heads with pillowcases.
"I really thought it could be the end," Karen Reynolds said.
The
couple believed Dorner had been staying in the cabin at least since
Feb. 8, the day after his burned truck was found nearby. Dorner told
them he had been watching them by day from inside the cabin as they did
work outside. The couple, who live nearby, only entered the unit
Tuesday.
"He said we are very hard workers," Karen Reynolds said.
After
Dorner fled in their purple Nissan Rogue, she managed to call 911 from a
cellphone on the coffee table. Police said Dorner later killed a fourth
person, a sheriff's deputy, during a standoff, and died inside the
burning cabin where he took cover during a blazing shootout.
San
Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon said Wednesday that his deputies
shot pyrotechnic tear gas into the cabin, and it erupted in flames.
While
authorities have not corroborated the couple's account, it matched
early reports from law enforcement officials that a couple had been tied
up and their car stolen by a man resembling Dorner. Property records
show the Reynoldses as the condo's owners.
The
sheriff's department has refused to answer questions about how one of
the largest manhunts in years could have missed Dorner.
During
the search, heavily armed deputies went door to door to search roughly
600 cabins for forced entry. Many of the cabins were boarded-up summer
homes.
Authorities said officers looked for
signs that someone had forcibly entered the buildings, or that heat was
on inside in a cabin that otherwise looked uninhabited.
Helicopters
had landed SWAT officers in a lot near the Reynoldses' condo, and
through the weekend they stood in plain view from the cabin, gearing up
in helmets, bulletproof vests, with assault weapons at the ready.
According
to the Reynoldses, the cabin had cable TV and a second-story view that
would have allowed Dorner to see choppers flying in and out.
Timothy
Clemente, a retired FBI SWAT team leader who was part of the search for
Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph, said searchers had to work
methodically. When there's a hot pursuit, they can run after a suspect
into a building. But in a manhunt, the search has to slow down and
police have to have a reason to enter a building.
"You can't just kick in every door," he said.
Officers
would have been approaching each cabin, rock and tree with the prospect
that Dorner was waiting there with a weapon that could penetrate
bulletproof vests. In his manifesto posted online, Dorner, a former Navy
reservist, said he had no fear of losing his life and would wage
"unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" and warned officers "you will
now live the life of the prey."
Even peering
through windows can be difficult because officers have to remove a hand
from their weapons to shade their eyes. Experts said it is likely
officers may have used binoculars to help examine homes from a distance,
especially when dealing with a man who had already killed three people,
including a police officer.
In many cases, officers didn't even knock on the doors, according to searchers and residents.
"If
Chris Dorner's on the other side of the door, what would the response
be?" Clemente said. "A .50-caliber round or .223 round straight through
that door."
Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press. All rigths reserved.
