Convict Eludes Grand Canyon Search : Manhunt: Police roadblocks back up traffic at national park. The Arizona prison escapee has demonstrated extensive outdoor survival skills.

By ERIC MALNIC and MARY TOLAN

July 2, 1992 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Ariz. — Police roadblocks backed up traffic here on Wednesday as authorities pressed their manhunt for an escaped convict who has stolen cars, taken hostages and used backwoods survival tactics to elude his pursuers for seven weeks.

Danny Ray Horning, convicted of aggravated assault, kidnaping and armed robbery during a 1991 bank holdup and accused in a California warrant of a 1990 dismemberment slaying, fled from the state prison in Florence on May 12, disguised in a laboratory coat, officials said.

Since then, Horning, 33, has led the FBI, state police and park rangers on a chase across the rugged northern Arizona wilderness, living off the land, breaking into cabins, taking hostages at gunpoint and stealing cars when he can’t travel on foot.

The latest clue to his whereabouts came on Tuesday, when searchers near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon recovered a car he had stolen.

Horning was nowhere to be found, but officials say he may have hiked a trail down to the Colorado River, 4,000 feet below, to hole up in one of the hundreds of isolated gulches that etch the sides of the 250-mile-long chasm.

More than 350 law enforcement officers deployed against him on Wednesday sealed off the roads surrounding the South Rim, checking every vehicle that passed in and out of the area.

Hikers were stopped and searched.

“They even had me pull my socks down and take my sunglasses off,” said Brad Walk, 22, of Atlanta.

As the busy Fourth of July weekend approached, there was an unusually heavy law enforcement presence in and around the park. Helicopters hovered overhead. Skilled trackers--some using dogs--combed the maze of paths along the South Rim and prowled the steep trails leading to the river and into the isolated gullies on either side. A Special Weapons and Tactics team was sent to patrol the riverbanks.

“Horning’s resourceful, and he’s shown us he’s very comfortable in an outdoor environment,” said Allan Davison, a special agent from the FBI office in Phoenix. “There are numerous trails, and he’s shown us that he can move great distances in a short period of time. . . .

“He could be anywhere in the national park, and it’s big. We’re faced with a very difficult task.”

Horning is not the romantic figure that some may think, Davison said.

“This guy is an armed and dangerous criminal,” the agent said. “He’s stuck guns in people’s faces, taken them hostage, taken their money. . . . He’s not the Rambo type. He’s anything but a hero.”

Davison said Horning was serving three life sentences stemming from the bank robbery and was facing a warrant for the murder in Stockton when he escaped from the prison about 50 miles north of Phoenix on May 12. Police say that a few hours later, he broke into a ranch house and took three pistols.

In the days that followed, as Horning continued to elude the growing force of pursuers, word of his resourcefulness began to circulate.

Turning back on his own tracks and moving in figure-eights, he confused the dogs attempting to track him. Disappearing from one area, he would suddenly pop up miles away.

“We’re dealing with the ultimate outdoorsman,” said Capt. Sam Whitted of the Coconino County Sheriff’s Department.

On June 11, after breaking into a cabin near Pine and dining on canned mandarin oranges and tuna, Horning left behind a note that read: “Thanks for the use of your home! You can tell the cops to send my backpack to my folks’ house. And stop following me.”

A second note was found in a stolen pickup truck: “Thanks for the donation and the use of your truck. . . . I really ran it rough, so you’ll want to give it a good going over.”

But another, less appealing, picture of Horning began to emerge, according to Davison.

The agent said that in a subsequent tape recording, Horning told authorities to send him money and release his brother, Jerry, from prison, saying he would take hostages and kill them if his demands were not met. Jerry Horning, 40, is serving a 29-year-sentence on a sex charge involving a minor.

On June 25, Danny Horning abducted a couple from a parking lot east of Flagstaff and forced them to drive with him to the South Rim, stopping along the way to pick up a shotgun he had stashed near Interstate 17, officials said.

According to police, Horning told the couple: “If a cop stops me, I’ll have one minute to decide whether or not he recognizes me. If he does, I’ll have to blow him away. I’ll have nothing to lose.”

After spending the night with the couple at Grand Canyon National Park, Horning tried to abduct a family of six from a parking lot near the park headquarters, police said. The plot was foiled when a teen-age boy in the family ran away screaming, and Horning drove off with the couple he had abducted in Flagstaff.

When park rangers gave chase, Horning fired several shots at them that missed, abandoned the car and the couple and fled on foot into the woods, officials said.

Neither the couple nor the family were identified.

Sheriff’s deputies said that three days later, on Monday morning, Horning stole a station wagon at gunpoint from an Oregon couple near Grand Canyon Village.

On Tuesday morning, the station wagon was found abandoned where it had struck a tree, near Grandview Point, about eight miles east of the village.

Once again, Horning was nowhere to be found.

The roadblocks set up to catch him left the usually filled campgrounds along the South Rim half empty Wednesday afternoon.

“It’s kind of neat, but kind of weird,” said Wendy Hiendlmayr, a resident of Maine who was visiting the park with her husband and 10-year-old daughter, Kara. “And it’s a little bit scary.”

Malnic, a Times staff writer, reported from Los Angeles. Tolan, a special correspondent, reported from the Grand Canyon.