One Year Ago, John Perucca Jr. Was Murdered While Hunting In The Teanaway River Basin. One Year Later, The Search Continues. For His Family, It's A Search For The Answers That Will Help Them Rebuild Their Lives. For The Police, It's A Search For Clues That Will Reveal His Killer. One Year Later, Both Are A Little Closer To The Answers They Seek. -- Finding The Strength To Carry On

It was one year ago today that searchers near Cle Elum found the body of Redmond-area resident John Perucca Jr., lying face down in the snow.

Perucca, 43, was an avid outdoorsman, a fisherman and hunter. And although the forested hills above the Teanaway River basin can be a dangerous place during elk season, Perucca's death was no accident.

The hunter had become another person's prey. Someone had stuck a knife in his abdomen, severing his aorta with a single wrench of the blade, and he bled to death.

The elk-hunting trip that Perucca and his father, John Perucca Sr., embarked upon the weekend of Nov. 17, 1990, has turned into a painstaking, yearlong hunt for his killer - and a painful yearlong ordeal for his family.

Now, detectives from the Kittitas County sheriff's office believe they may be closing in on the killer.

"Right now, we're at a significant juncture in the case," said Kittitas County Detective John Jewett, who made a trip across the Cascades to Seattle earlier this month to interview a man he calls a "person of interest."

Carol Perucca stands in the home that her late husband built east of Lake Sammamish and glides her finger along a row of family photos mounted on the wall. She lingers at one snapshot and touches the boyish face of John Perucca, a muscular, dark-haired man with smiling eyes.

Many of the photos are of Perucca outdoors, during hunting or fishing trips.

"That was his first love," Carol said. "He enjoyed being out in nature. It was just peaceful for him."

One photo shows Perucca as a 17-year-old - looking remarkably similar to the youthful shots of him as a 43-year-old. He was raised in West Seattle, graduated from Sealth High School, then from Western Washington University in Bellingham. A teacher at Issaquah High School in the early 1970s, he sold insurance before becoming a contractor.

He built not only his own house but a house for his parents, who live down the street. Perucca had three daughters from a previous marriage - Kimberly, 13, Nikki, 19 and Kelly, 22 - before marrying Carol.

"It's been hard for me, being the oldest," said Kelly. "We had sort of a falling out for a while, and only started patching things up about two years before he was killed."

One of the photos on the wall is of Perucca and his father, standing together in the wilderness. They had hunted together for more than 30 years, since John was 12 years old.

The elder Perucca went hunting again this year, but the memories of his son were with him constantly, said Perucca's mother, Betty.

"I know he misses him terribly," she said. "He'd be in an area where they hunted together, and that was hard for him."

The irony of their last hunting trip was that Perucca was worried about his father, who had had open-heart surgery that summer.

"John was just a little leery about going," Carol said.

On Saturday, they hunted together. "That was mainly so John could keep an eye on (his dad), to see how he was doing," Carol added. On Sunday, they split up, but used portable radios to check in with each other every hour.

The last time the elder Perucca heard from his son was 11 a.m. Sunday.

"He told his dad he had come across some (elk) tracks, but planned to meet up at a certain spot later," Carol said.

At first no one worried when Perucca failed to return to camp. It wasn't uncommon for him to track an elk overnight. By Monday, however, his father knew something was wrong, and a search was launched.

Perucca's body was found near Mason Creek, less than a mile from where he last radioed his father.

Since then, detectives have interviewed more than 70 people who were hunting in the area, trying to find clues to the mystery. Since the murder occurred late in the muzzleloader season, detectives questioned people who had hunting tags for the area.

In March, the Perucca family offered a $15,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction of the killer.

Still no suspects.

Last month, though, police released a composite drawing of a man seen twice in the area near where Perucca's body was found.

Detectives now know who the man is, but are saying little for the record about what they have learned since talking to him earlier this month.

What is known is that the man, who is still only being called a "person of interest," lives in Seattle. He was a stranger to Perucca, although they had crossed paths on the hunting trail three months earlier. He had also been seen in the area the weekend of the murder.

Speculation is that Perucca was killed over an elk, but Jewett declines to say more than that, for fear of jeopardizing the investigation. Eventually, detectives hope to turn what they've found over to an inquiry judge.

Although the case has received scant publicity this side of the Cascades, it's been big news east of the mountains.

"In my 19 years (as a police officer), this is only the third homicide we've had in Kittitas County," Jewett said. "And I got the other two solved."

Jewett is known around Ellensburg as someone who detests hunting and everything about it. He calls it a "slaughter" and loathes the autumn, when the hills and valleys of Kittitas County are "shot up." A year into his search for Perucca's killer, though, the analogy of the hunter is not lost on him.

"I'm a man hunter," Jewett said. "For me, there's no season and no limit."

For Perucca's family, though, the hunt has been painful, and they're growing weary of it.

"It's like we can't get on with our lives," Carol said. "To think that this guy . . . took away a father, a son, and a husband. It's such a raw feeling to think that he's free. We just want this to end."