TO the FBI he is a brazen teenage criminal with a price on his head but to his fans the “Barefoot Bandit” is a folk hero with a huge online following.
Colton Harris-Moore, a lanky 19-year-old, has just added to his cult status by crash-landing a stolen aircraft in the Bahamas. He is now an international fugitive from justice.
Detectives are searching the sun-soaked Abaco islands after Harris-Moore apparently flew from Indiana to the Caribbean, stole a car, broke into a restaurant and then performed his usual vanishing trick.
For more than two years the outlaw has left the authorities struggling in his wake as he went joyriding in planes, boats and cars. He became known as the Barefoot Bandit last autumn after police found footprints in an Idaho airport hangar from which an aircraft was stolen. The teenager walked away unhurt after crash-landing 420km away.
Part Huckleberry Finn, part Catch Me if You Can hero to many, he has more than 70,000 Facebook fans, YouTube ballads dedicated to him, a book being written about him already optioned by a big Hollywood studio and a website gathering donations for a legal defence fund. Irritated authorities have posted a $US10,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
Harris-Moore grew up on the heavily wooded island of Camano in Puget Sound, north of Seattle. He started living in the woods at seven and his mother, who supports his escapades, has said that he displayed an early love of thieving. His first conviction came at the age of 12.
He was arrested for burglary in 2006 after officers, acting on a tip, found out that he was in an empty house ordering pizza. He was sentenced to nearly four years in juvenile detention but in 2008 slipped out of an open window after he was transferred to a halfway house.
Since then he has been linked to dozens of break-ins at hardware stores, homes and restaurants in the Pacific Northwest, each time disappearing into the woods to evade capture.
The teenager has been revelling in his fugitive status. In February a stolen aircraft mysteriously landed on Orcas Island in Washington State before someone broke into a grocery store, stole a large tray of croissants and chalked cartoon feet leading out of the door with the message: “C-YA!”
He left $US100 at an animal hospital with a note saying “drove by, had some extra cash. Please use this money for the care of animals.” He signed his note “The Barefoot Bandit”.
The fugitive then stole a $US450,000 yacht.
Recently, small towns in the Midwest began noticing break-ins at airports and other locations. A family in Yankton, South Dakota, returned from a holiday in June to find a nude man in their home: police believe it was Harris-Moore. He pointed a laser beam at the homeowner’s eyes and vanished.
From there he is suspected of stealing several cars to travel from Nebraska to Iowa and then Illinois. On Sunday the owner of a $US600,000 Cessna 400 reported his light aircraft stolen when its emergency transmitter started sending a signal from the Bahamas. It appeared that Harris-Moore had stolen the plane from a locked hangar at Monroe County airport.
The Cessna was found crashed in about three feet of water near Sandy Point airstrip off the coast of Abaco Island. Local police have been handing out wanted posters.
The fugitive’s biggest supporter is his mother, who believes that he has been unfairly accused and stresses that he is non-violent. Pam Kohler told one reporter last year: “I hope to hell he stole those airplanes – I would be so proud. But put in there that I want him to wear a parachute next time.”
A couple of weeks ago, she said she hoped that he would flee the country. She told a Seattle newspaper: “He ought to steal a plane and get the hell out of the States.”
The Colton Harris-Moore Fan Club page on Facebook describes him: “Colton Harris-Moore is Western Washington’s new Jesse James (without the murders). Without a doubt one of the greatest and most notable outlaws to come from an otherwise boring area.”
Police remain unimpressed. An FBI Special Agent, Steven Dean, said in Seattle: “He’s gone from being a regional nuisance to a national nuisance to, if this is him again, an international criminal. It is irresponsible and sad that people are creating a hero out of a criminal.”
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