The belief in skinwalkers, common among so many Navajos, is the one that bothers him most and for good reason. In times of troubles, when people seek a scapegoat, the notion of a skinwalker being the cause gives a person reason to kill the skinwalker, who is another human being. He encountered a triple murder by one man who then killed himself early in his police career, we learn in "The Blessing Way", the first book in the series, the one man believing the others to be skinwalkers and Leaphorn did not act on that knowledge as quickly as he later thought he might have. As a police officer, he arrests murderers, along with the FBI, who are formally responsible to prosecute homicides on the reservation lands. Times of troubles may be fatal medical problems for the one seeking a scapegoat when there is no cure. This to Leaphorn is superstition that would be helped greatly by seeking treatment and by accepting current knowledge of health and disease, then accepting fate in the Navajo way. The skinwalker has many attributes that are not human, such as the ability to turn into birds or animals, to fly, and to put a bit of bone into a person, thus marking the person for death.