The Barefoot Bandit

by Bob Friel

  Chapter 17

  On March 1, 2005, the employees at the Stanwood Library arrived to find three windows broken. Beneath one of the windows were footprints made by someone hoisting himself up to the eight-foot-high sill. There was also blood splatter from the burglar apparently cutting himself on the glass. Once inside, he took the $61 in the cash box.

  The Washington State Police crime lab tested the blood and found there was only a 1-in-150,000,000,000,000,000 chance that it hadn’t dripped from Colton Harris-Moore. “I think that one’s bullshit,” says Pam. “Why would he go in the library? I don’t think they even collect fines for overdue books anymore.”

  On March 7, Colton was sent to Echo Glen Children’s Center, a medium/maximum-security juvenile facility in Snoqualmie, Washington, sentenced to six weeks for theft 2 and theft 3. From this point on, there wasn’t a single moment in Colton Harris-Moore’s life when he wasn’t under investigation, wanted on warrant, or actually serving time.

  Colt left Echo Glen at the end of April, and in May was again expelled from Stanwood Middle, this time for “continual disruption to the educational process and danger to self and others.” The expulsion led to another week in juvie because getting into trouble in school was a violation of his parole. Pam told the court that Colton wasn’t following “reasonable household rules,” which also violated his parole.

  On November 22, another alarm went off at Elger Bay Elementary School. When the deputies arrived, they found Pam’s black Mazda pickup in the parking lot, filled with stolen computer equipment. Inside the school, they discovered shoe prints and Colton’s fingerprints. They impounded Pam’s truck and arrested Colton for the theft of an Apple computer and accessories.

  By December 2005, at least twelve referrals to Child Protective Services had been recorded regarding Colton. Whenever there was a big fight at home now, though, Colton ended up going to jail. On Pearl Harbor Day, another domestic disturbance call led to Colton’s being arrested again for assault on Pam.

  Despite failing grades and multiple suspensions and expulsions, the schools continued to socially promote Colton. He was enrolled in high school and then, in a last-ditch effort to keep him in the educational system, he was transferred to a high school with alternative programs. However, the school reported to the court that Colton didn’t attend classes, another parole violation. He also didn’t show up for his community service, and then he got hit with another PSP in the first degree.

  Colton served another fifteen days, and by the time he got out, the police already had another piping hot arrest warrant ready to serve, this one for the Stanwood Library job. Deputies went to the trailer to collect him, but Colton ran off into his woods. He was now beyond catch-22: he had to go to school or violate his probation, but if he showed up at class the police would nab him on the outstanding warrant. So Colton went on the lam for the first time.

  Though the Haven Place trailer was still more like the Thunderdome (Colton told a psychologist that it was during this time in 2006 when “she told me that she wished I would die”), he sometimes stayed with Pam. Other nights, the fugitive camped in the woods. The rest of the time, police believe, he either squatted inside unoccupied homes or crashed with friends, successfully eluding capture for two months. Island County deputies swung by the trailer every so often and noticed a leaning tower of pizza boxes in the bushes. Playing a hunch, they asked the pizza place to let them know the next time they had a delivery to Pam’s address. According to the Island County Sheriff’s Office, one officer donned the pizza guy’s jacket and cap and carried the pie to the door. He saw the silhouette of someone peeking out the window at him, but the disguise worked, because the door opened and there stood Colton expecting some tasty ’za. Instead, the cop gave him a big smile and said, “Hello, Colt.”

  It was revenge of the Noid. Colton turned to Pam, deflated. She looked up, realized what had happened, and told the officers preparing to cuff her son, “That was a good idea!”

  IN JUNE 2006, COLTON began serving a thirty-day sentence at the Denney Juvenile Detention Center for the Stanwood Library burglary. At his hearing, his probation officer offered the court this assessment: “Colton is a fifteen-year-old young man with extensive criminal history with juvenile court. Colton and his mother live alone on Camano Island. She continues to minimize his criminal behavior and make excuses for him. The one positive thing that Colton has going is that he doesn’t use drugs or alcohol.”

  ACCORDING TO KORY BRYAND who was also doing short stints in juvenile detention, Colton had as much trouble getting along with the kids in juvie as he did on the outside. “All the guys in there had problems with him. Colt would just talk crap all the time. The only reason guys weren’t beating him up is that nobody wanted to go on lockdown.” The threat of being confined to his room without privileges didn’t worry Colt, though. “He got put on lockdown for backtalking the COs [corrections officers].”

  While Colt was inside, Island County deputies were busy investigating a stolen credit card that was used in May to make ATM withdrawals and to buy a laptop and wireless router—cash and goodies worth $3,708.57. They traced it to Colton.

  “Colt always had money from credit cards,” says Harley. “That’s how you could tell he was smart… you have to be pretty smart to get the pin off a credit card.”

  Mike Bulmer remembers that even back in middle school Colton had a debit card hidden in the woods. “He’d say, ‘Don’t follow me,’ and he’d go off and get the card and then we’d go get the money out of an ATM. He’d give me some and some other guys some, like he was doing it to kinda get friends.”

  Colton walked out of the detention center on July 7… now really determined not to go back.

  During Colton’s legal limbo, he and Pam headed off island for a family reunion. They arrived at Sandy’s spread in Arlington with Pam’s little pickup loaded down with bales of hay they’d picked up for a relative’s horses.

  “I hadn’t seen him for a long time,” says Colt’s oldest cousin. “He gets out of the truck, tall, thin, and barefoot.” Colt, she says, visited with Sandy’s horses and played croquet with his second cousins while the adults hung out and talked. “When Colt came over to the picnic table where the adults were, he was very polite and quiet.” Once he felt comfortable, she says, his sense of humor started to come out. “We’re all smart-asses in our family, and he fit in. He also had that typical teenage sarcasm.” Colt spoke a lot about Melanie: “He kept saying how much he loved that dog.” His other big topic was airplanes.

  “It’s wide open out there, with a lot of planes flying overhead, and every one that flew by, Colt was ‘Oh that’s a blah blah blah blah’; he knew every detail about every plane. I was amazed.” Someone at the table asked him what he wanted to be. “He said, ‘I’m going to be a pilot.’ We all knew that he’d been getting into trouble, and Sandy said, ‘If you keep out of jail.’”

  Colt, says his cousin, was calm and cool “until Pam started needling at him. She told us about his violent rages when he starts running around screaming and tearing things up. She said that one night she was on the computer and Colt wanted to use it. She wouldn’t get off, so he picked it up and threw it out the window.”

  That image, says his cousin, didn’t fit the Colt they saw in front of them, who was “quiet and respectful to all the other adults.” It was obvious, though, that there were issues between him and Pam. “They just sat there sparring, she’d push his buttons and they’d fight over anything and everything… really weird.”

  She says Pam complained that Colton had stopped taking his meds. Colt said that he stopped because he didn’t like them. “She also told us that Colt wouldn’t go to therapy anymore ‘because he thinks he knows more than they do.’”

  His cousin says Colt got madder and madder until he finally ran off to the horse barn. “Pam yelled after him, ‘Yeah, run away, that’s what you always do, Colt, run away!’”

  ON JULY 14, 2006, THE Island County prosecutor f
iled two counts for the credit card crime: theft in the first degree and a PSP. Colt was ordered to appear before the court. Knowing there could be only one outcome from the hearing—more jail time—he skipped it. On July 28, a warrant was issued for his arrest and Colton Harris-Moore was once again a kid on the lam.

  The fact that he was on a small island with limited room to run didn’t faze Colton. He took one of Pam’s tents and set up a campsite in the thick brush at the front southwest corner of her Haven Place property. He set up fallback camps at other spots and, according to Harley, he also spent time sheltering with people willing to help him. Colt didn’t just lie low and hide out, though; he actually stepped up his criminal activities.

  For one thing, he had to feed himself and he’d learned the hard way that it wasn’t as simple as waiting for the pizza guy to show up. Fortunately, all of his childhood ramblings around the island came in very handy. He knew every forest path and every backyard in the South End. He also knew the trusting nature of the community, where few people bothered to lock their doors or worried about security.

  Chapter 18

  It was a battle of wits, and I guess I lost,” laughs Jack Boyle (not his real name).

  Jack certainly didn’t come to the battle unarmed. He has a graduate degree in nuclear engineering from MIT and a forty-year career at a prestigious university—nine as dean of the graduate school.

  Jack and his wife, Louise, bought a piece of South End Camano back in 1978. Their two acres straddled South Camano Drive, with the building site atop a 140-foot bluff overlooking the waters of Saratoga Passage. The other acre was across the road, a thickly wooded buffer that backed up to an undeveloped patch at the top of Haven Place. The Boyles and their kids camped on the property until 1991, when they built a summer home.

  “We’d been told to only use local people when we built or we’d run into all kinds of trouble with permits and things,” says Louise. “There’s a lot of insider stuff that goes on. The people in the interior of the island are all full-time residents and they kind of own the island, while a lot of people on the coast are just vacation homeowners and are looked on as interlopers.” She says the split goes beyond who spends the most time on the island. “Waterfront property is very expensive, interior property very cheap, and that tends to cause a social divide. It’s really two cultures.”

  Still, the Boyles loved the island and their terrific view. In 2002, the now-retired couple decided to give Camano a full-time try. When designing their vacation home, they hadn’t bothered planning for all the storage space necessary in a permanent home. Island folks usually even go beyond that and keep a large larder so they don’t have to hit the grocery store as often. To rectify the situation, the Boyles enclosed the crawlspace beneath the house, creating a basement. Part was walled off as a little workshop for Jack’s tools, and another room served as a wine cellar, which they kept fully stocked with about a hundred bottles. The rest was space for household stuff and, because the kitchen didn’t have enough cabinet room, food. The big freezer and shelves were filled with everything from frozen fruit to Frappuccinos.

  The Boyles found themselves going down to the basement several times a day and never thought of locking the door. In late 2004, Louise began having little inklings that something was off. “I’d always be saying to myself, ‘I could’ve sworn I bought a case of Coke,’ or ‘I knew I had this or that in the food reserves.’ I’d go down and the shelves were looking empty.” This went on for more than a year. “I kept thinking, I’m losing it,” she says, laughing.

  Then, one evening in the summer of 2006, Louise asked Jack to take a gallon of milk down to the basement fridge. The next morning when he went to get it for breakfast, it was gone. Now they definitely knew they weren’t imagining things. Jack went out and bought a lock for the door. “Half the time we’d forget the key and have to come back up,” says Jack. So they hid the key on a hook underneath the trellis near the door. “It probably took him three seconds to find that.”

  Not long after they’d put the lock on, the Boyles were woken at midnight by an alarm going off next door. Someone had stolen Jack’s bolt cutters out of the basement and used them to cut a padlock off the neighbor’s storage shed. The next morning, they found the bolt cutters on the path that led through their woods to Haven Place.

  Jack and Louise began to talk to neighbors and discovered that there were a lot of similar things going on. Then an Island County detective came to their door. He showed them a picture of Colton, saying the department had good reason to believe he was the one breaking into area homes. The cop asked if they’d noticed their front door. “There were pry marks where someone had stuck a crowbar and tried to force the door open,” says Jack. In their front garden, Louise’s cat statue had been tipped over, “obviously someone looking for a hidden key.” Someone had also tried to pry open their locked mailbox.

  The Boyles had installed a security system when their home was built, but never used it unless they were going out of town. Now they began to turn it on every night. Knowing that the basement key “hidden” under the trellis was still the weak link, Jack bought an expensive combination lock that didn’t use a key but opened with a punch code.

  So… the Boyles were more than surprised when a neighbor who’d come up for the weekend went into the woods across the road to clear some brush and surprised a burglar in Frappuccino delicto. The perp took off through the trees toward Haven Place before the neighbor got a look at him, but he left behind his partially consumed, highly caffeinated picnic. He’d polished off a can of Diet Coke, four Nature Valley Sweet & Salty bars, a jar of gourmet jelly, and at least two Starbucks Frappuccinos, leaving behind all the empty wrappers and jars, along with nine Fraps out of a twelve-pack and a Ziploc of frozen strawberries.

  The neighbor called Jack, who went up the trail and couldn’t believe his eyes. “That’s our stuff!” He went to his basement and found the door closed and locked. Inside, though, the cupboard was most definitely bare.

  They called the sheriff but say they just got a shrug. This kind of thing and worse was happening all over the South End and the deputies didn’t have the time or inclination to investigate a minor pantry raid. It was up to Jack to put on his figurative tweed thinking cap, go Sherlock, and try to solve a classic “locked room” mystery.

  “I finally remembered that when I first bought the fancy lock I’d spread out the parts and instructions in the basement, but didn’t get it installed that first day.” On a hunch, Jack went to his filing cabinet and pulled out the paperwork for the lock. “One page was missing,” he laughs. “The page with the combination. He’d gotten in, figured it all out, and only taken that one page.”

  Jack reset the combination, but their stuff continued to walk away: two-thirds of a case of Diet Coke, half a case of classic Coke, more specialty jellies, an eight-pack of tuna, a carton of protein bars…

  The basement door lies beneath their bedroom window and Louise’s superpower is her hearing. A number of times she awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of their neighbor’s hot tub going when they weren’t on the island, and she’s sure Colton was sneaking in for soaks. But she never heard anyone rummaging in the basement. Again and again they’d set their security system—which showed all doors alarmed—then go to bed. No alarms would go off, but they’d get up to find that more stuff was missing—more snack bars, two cans of whipped cream, Dijon mustard, flaxseed meal…

  It drove Jack crazy. One day he opened the door and it finally struck him. The basement alarm worked via a sensor in the door jamb and a magnet on the door itself. When the door closed, the magnet armed the switch. If the door opened, pulling the magnet away, the alarm went off. Now, staring at the door, something didn’t look quite right. Jack suddenly realized what it was. “He’d unscrewed the magnet from the door and glued it to the sensor so it would never go off!”

  Jack was impressed. Despite the fact they were always home during the burglaries, they say they never
felt threatened. Unlike a “typical” invasion by teens, they also say there was never any malicious damage, nothing else was ever disturbed in the basement, and the wine and hard liquor were never even touched.

  To Jack, it was more like trying to outsmart a Mensa-level raccoon. He bought motion detectors and positioned them around the house. Each one went off with a separate custom recording that would alert them: “Someone at basement door,” “Someone at front door,” and so on. They were very high-tech.

  Next to go missing were a box of Kleenex, Ziploc bags, more fancy jam, one of Jack’s backpacks, a bunch of drill bits, and two boxes of Christmas lights. “The most poignant,” says Louise, who kept a running tally, “were the Christmas lights.”

  “I couldn’t figure out for a long time how he got around the motion detectors,” says Jack. “Then I finally pulled down one of the sensors. Here he’d taken the batteries out and then put it back up so I wouldn’t know it was disabled.”

  It got to the absurd state that after each raid Jack would automatically walk up into the woods knowing that he’d find a trail of wrappers, cans, and other litter scattered along the path that lead directly to Haven Place. This raccoon had no compunction about crapping up the forest. After calling the police, Jack would go out to clean up.

  It wasn’t until months later that the Boyles noticed that the cordless phone they kept in the basement was missing. They found it in their neighbor’s dog house, which sat within range of the transmitter. The black Lab never used its dog house and was quickly ruled out as a suspect.