Out There in the Woods

In the late summer of 2011, 35-year old Aaron Bassler, an allegedly mentally disturbed resident of Mendocino County, California, shot and killed two innocent victims - a well-liked conservationist and a much-admired city councilman and former mayor. These events sparked an unprecedented 36-day manhunt in the vast forested area east of the coastal town of Fort Bragg. The case involved local, state and federal officers from over a dozen law enforcement agencies, including various SWAT teams and the U.S. Marshals Service, an agency very experienced in searching for fugitives.However, the searchers were under the constant threat of being the next victims, and had never experienced a landscape like this. Meanwhile, Bassler had virtually grown up in this environment and knew that time and terrain were on his side. As Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman recalls, "We had little to go on other than we knew we were searching for an armed and very dangerous Aaron Bassler, and that he was out there in the woods..."