Courtesy Roman Kamensky(CRESCO, Pa.) — The mountain dragnet for accused cop killer Eric Frein concentrated Friday on a sprawling abandoned hotel in an area that Frein has been known to visit.
A heavy police presence was at the Buck Hill Inn near the town of Cresco in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Police asked the press to stay back because it was an “active scene.”
“Search teams are searching and clearing the Buck Hill Inn, an abandoned resort…Frein has been known to visit the area in the past and it is a large facility that needs to be cleared,” state police said on Friday. “There has been no sighting there or no one specific reason as to why it is being searched.”
Frein has been on the FBI’s Most Wanted list and the subject of a massive manhunt since he allegedly ambushed two Pennsylvania state troopers on Sept. 12. He is a self-taught survivalist, a weapons expert and a war reenactor who specializes in Eastern European armies, police and colleagues have said.
Searching the Buck Hill Inn, once listed among the country’s top 10 convention centers, is a daunting task, with several large buildings with hundreds of rooms. At its peak in the 1980s, it had over 400 guest rooms, an indoor swimming pool with a retractable roof, a dining hall, several lobbies and a massive stone porch with a view of the Pocono mountains.
The hotel has been closed since 1991 and photos from inside the building show rusting staircases, peeling paint, an empty pool and signs of rot in the warren of stairways, hallways and rooms.
Police and civilians in the area have spotted who they believe is Frein several times, but always at a distance that made it impossible to capture him. They have also found diapers believed used by Frein as well as Drina cigarette packs, a Serbian brand.
Frein is believed to be armed with a .308 rifle with a scope, police have said, and is considered to be extremely dangerous.
Follow @ABCNewsRadio
Copyright 2014 ABC News Radio
