by TeckXKnight » Sat May 17, 2014 2:22 am
Odds are that the criminal had substantially more Int*Stealth than your tracker has Per*Exp. Your tracker has something around 35 Exploration and 20 Perception but consider that most players are going to be aiming for 100 intelligence, sometimes as much as 125 even without the intent to do ill, since you need intelligence for Attention Limit. That means to match your tracker, the murderer likely only needs 6 or 7 stealth. A dedicated criminal will have much more than that. They could easily have 4x Int*Stealth as you have Per*Exp but my bet is that they have considerably more.
Your best bet to track the scents is to constantly reload the area. Have your tracker enter and exit a nearby house within sight to keep reloading the area to see if they can notice the scents. The bigger the gap, the lower the odds they'll show up. Likewise, if the criminal has substantially better stats than your tracker, you may only be able to get one or two scents total instead of the dozens you'll need to successfully track them down.
Edit: Chances are you'll only find vandalism scents. It sounds like your villagemate was a criminal, which is how he was killed while offline. The killer broke his hearthfire and then summoned him elsewhere with scents to kill him.