Colton Harris-Moore is like a regular American teenager, but he has had a taste for extreme crimes, including stealing and joy-riding multiple airplanes, and triggering an international manhunt with a $10,000 bounty. All before he was even old enough to buy a beer. How’d he pull it off? Let's investigate and explore what happened when this crazy kid tried to fly one of those stolen planes 1,000 miles from America to Cuba, without a single flying lesson. Here's the unbelievable story of Colton Harris-Moore, the barefoot bandit.
Who Is Colton Harris-Moore?
Even before he became entangled with the law, Colton Harris-Moore wasn’t exactly your average kid. Born on March 22nd 1991 to parents Pamela and Gordon, Colton grew up on Camano Island, in the Puget Sound off the coast of Washington. According to most accounts, Colton’s early years were pretty grim. His family lived in a rundown trailer park, and Pam and Gordon weren’t exactly model parents.
Colt was just a toddler when his father abandoned the family, and his home life became even more turbulent with his mother’s drinking problems. He was only four when neighbors began calling child protective services who responded to multiple disturbing reports about Colton’s welfare. Despite his difficult start in life, Colt had big dreams, mainly to become an airplane pilot, a detail worth remembering for later in our tale.By age seven, Colton had taken to running away from home on a regular basis, often camping out in nearby forests for days on end. It was these escapes from his troubled home life that prompted the beginnings of his criminal career. With no money to keep his survival supplies topped up, Colton took to stealing whatever he needed from local houses.
At first, Colton’s light-fingered mischief was relatively small-scale. He would slip into homes simply to take a bath or maybe swipe a tub of mint-chip ice cream from the freezer. But it didn’t take long for young Colt to get a little more brazen with his break-ins. Allegedly, one incident saw him use a homeowner’s computer and credit card information to mail order himself some bear spray and a pair of $6,500 night-vision goggles.
As you can probably tell, Colton’s thievery quickly escalated from an act of necessity to impulse. He was suspended from school multiple times for theft as well as vandalism, while outside the classroom he continued his spree of burglaries; and nowhere and no one was off limits. One time, Colton broke into a police patrol car, stealing a laptop, rifle and ammo. Another time he hit a local fire station where he pilfered an infrared camera, which officials believed he intended to use to heat-scan homes he wanted to burgle, to check if anyone was home before breaking in. What was more, Colton appeared to have taken to doing his burglaries in bare feet, presumably being a quieter approach than wearing shoes. It was a move that gained him the moniker: the Barefoot Bandit.
Aransas Pass Police Department looking for barefoot bandit seen stealing from cars by KIII 3 News Overall, it’s thought that Colton racked up over 50 burglaries around Camano in his pre-teen and teenage years. The thing was, he’d gotten so good at it that, catching him was becoming quite the ordeal for police. But this was just the beginning.
The Barefoot Bandit
Despite being pretty much just a kid, Colt quickly mastered the art of playing a barefoot game of hide-and-seek with Camano Island’s police force, using the forests he knew so well to evade capture for his crimes. A sizable amount of Camano Island is made up of thick forest, and, from the road, you can't even see past the first line of trees. Tracking anyone in these dense woodlands is near-impossible, particularly when that someone is armed with years of experience roughing it in the wild.
Colton had become a sort of teenage Houdini, never staying in one spot too long, leaving only abandoned campsites for police to find, but no clear tracks to where he’d gone. He'd even visit his mother’s trailer every now and again for some of her special homemade hash browns for breakfast, before hotfooting it away again without saying where he was going, which frustrated police to no end when they found out.
But despite his nomadic talents, Colt’s days of woodland wandering were occasionally cut short. One of Colton’s most notable captures came about when detectives noticed his abandoned campsites were often littered with dozens of empty pizza boxes. The next time Colton phoned in an order to his mother's trailer, deputies attached a pizza-delivery dome to the roof of an unmarked patrol car and delivered him quite the surprise. He was busted.Between the ages of 12 and 15, Colton had spent more time in juvie than most kids spend in McDonalds, racking up four stints overall as well as countless hours of community service. In this time, Colton expanded his criminal repertoire, and charges against him ranged from vandalism, to breaking into his school after hours, to of course, more theft. In February 2007, 15-year-old Colton was midway through breaking into a house when a neighbor spotted lights being turned on despite knowing the owner was out of town. After a tense two hour standoff with police, Colton was finally arrested, charged with three counts of felony burglary, and slapped with a three year sentence at the Green Hill maximum security juvenile center.
Two years into his sentence, Colton, now 17, had surprisingly become quite the model inmate. As reward for his good behavior, he was transferred to a minimum security facility to serve the rest of his time. Big mistake. Because our Barefoot Bandit spotted an opportunity almost immediately.
On the evening of April 29th 2008, when guards at the fenceless facility were conducting the usual nighttime bed checks, Colton was no where to be found. He had escaped. It’s reported that Colton pulled off his getaway by squeezing out of a second story window of the facility. Whether he’d been faking his good behavior in max-security to get transferred somewhere easier to escape from is unclear. But what was clear was that the Barefoot Bandit was at large once again.Six weeks after Colton’s escape from juvie, authorities had still found neither hide nor hair of the teen fugitive. That was until, just after midnight on July 18th, local reports led sheriff’s deputies on Camano Island to give chase to a black Mercedes that had been seen driving erratically. As police cars closed in, the mysterious driver of the Mercedes suddenly jumped out and disappeared into the woods. When police searched the Mercedes they found an assortment of stolen credit cards, cell phones, and a digital camera the driver had used to take some self-portraits. Gazing up into the lens from one of his forest hideouts was a very familiar face. It was Colton.
Fake Pilot On The Run
Only Colton knows his exact movements for the next few months. But, when police on Orcas Island, a couple hours’ drive northwest of Colton’s Camano home turf, began receiving an onslaught of burglary reports, there was a strong sense of déjà vu. Reports of how Colt made it to Orcas Island vary, but most believe it was by means of a stolen boat. Either way, he was making his presence on the island abundantly clear.
It's reported that, at some point, Colt ventured into the mountains of Orcas Island and set up camp close to his next target: the island’s one small airport. It was here he set his biggest plan into motion, and began channeling all his energy into making a childhood dream of his a reality. In the months that followed, Colton would cycle ten miles a day, on a presumably stolen bicycle, from his mountain campsite to the fences of Orcas Island airport. There, he would spend hours watching planes taking off and touching down, as well as familiarizing himself with the site’s comings and goings.
Eventually, Colton started sneaking into the airport’s numerous hangars to swipe aircraft manuals, which he took back to his camp to spend the night studying. Colt also taught himself his way around a cockpit via hundreds of online videos as well as reportedly making use of Microsoft Flight Simulator, a favorite game of his since childhood.
By early November, Colton decided he’d learned enough. It was time to take to the skies for real. On the morning of November 11th, 2008, driven by a feeling he later described as a pull he couldn’t resist, Colton made his way through the airport’s fence, into one of the airport’s locked hangars and slipped inside a single-engine Cessna airplane. Armed with nothing but the sheer determination to recall everything he’d ever read about flying, the Barefoot Bandit rolled out onto the runway. The euphoric countdown to takeoff coupled with the realization of a lifelong dream was overwhelming. So much so that, when recalling the experience later, Colton admitted he didn’t quite grasp the impossible odds that stood against his life in that moment. Unbeknownst to Colton, 50mph winds were blowing over the runway that morning, conditions in which no experienced pilot would ever attempt to fly. Regardless, Colton took off into the skies successfully. Astoundingly, it was later revealed that this wasn’t only the first time Colt had piloted a plane, it was the first time he’d set foot on one, period. But to make the risky situation worse, the Cessna’s GPS navigation system failed within minutes of takeoff, leaving Colton flying blind with no means of direction. Panicking, Colton sped 13,000ft upwards into the clouds, escaping the worst of the wind, but unwittingly leaving himself surrounded by nothing but whiteness. He began experiencing a phenomenon called spatial disorientation; losing sense of his position in the sky.
Suddenly, the jet engine stalled midair sending the Cessna spinning towards the ground as Colt’s short life flashed before his eyes. In what can only be described as a fight and flight response, Colt’s instincts took over, and he was somehow able to pull the aircraft into recovery and climb into the air once again. Eventually, the plane began running low on fuel, forcing Colton to attempt a landing. He shakily descended, selecting a flat patch of fields, lining himself up, and flew lower, lower, lower until it was crashed. On November 28th, police discovered the crashed Cessna on the grounds of Yakama Indian Reserve in Central Washington, around 200 miles south of Orcas Island. The plane itself was visibly damaged, with its landing gear destroyed but there was no sign of its daredevil pilot, aside from a telltale puddle of vomit inside the cockpit. The Barefoot Bandit had gotten away again.
CBS reported that after abandoning the plane wreck, Colton hopped on a freight train and travelled over 500 miles to Reno, Nevada. After that, he disappeared from the cops’ radar for months, with the leading theory being that the underage fugitive lied about his age to get a job at a casino. After his stint in Nevada, Colton stole a series of cars to stay on the move, traveling between Reno, Sacramento and Eastern Washington. But make no mistake, just because Colton was out of sight, the authorities were still very much plotting to bring him to justice. In March 2009, Colton was charged in absentia at the Island County juvenile court with ten counts of assorted thefts and burglaries from his 2008 crime spree around Camano and Orcas islands. Throughout the summer of 2009, Colton resumed his old habit of island hopping between Camano and Orcas, breaking and entering and burglarizing as he went.
On September 11, Colton stole a Cirrus SR22 plane from the San Juan Island airport and flew back to Orcas Island for the final time, landing on the airport runway. From there, he stole a boat and sailed to Point Roberts on the border of Canada, beginning the Canadian leg of his bizarre misadventure.
After over a year spent on the run, it’s safe to say that Colton’s lonely existence was starting to take its toll. But little did he realize that some unexpected accomplices were just around the corner. While driving around the outskirts of Abbotsford in British Columbia, Canada, local musician James Donnelly had just pulled over after his van started making some strange noises. While popping the hood, James noticed the tall figure of a young man emerging from some nearby trees. Dressed in a black hoodie and cargo pants thick with mud, the mysterious kid said his name was Shawn, and asked James if he could hitchhike a ride east. On the drive, James noticed the boy seemed a little skittish, ducking down when passing police cars and keeping very quiet. But when he started talking about how easy it is to hop the US-Canadian border, James quickly realized he didn’t have the average teenager on his hands. What he didn’t realize was this teenager was Colton Harris-Moore. James took Colt to meet his bandmates and they spent the evening jamming around a campfire. It was around two weeks after Colton left that James and his buddies found out who he was, when they saw a headline that a SWAT team was now on their mysterious hitchhiker’s trail.
After his stint with the musicians, Colton got to traveling again, leaving a trail of burglaries across British Columbia, eventually coming to a stop in northern Idaho. On September 29, Colton broke into an airplane hangar in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, and made off with yet another Cessna. Colton later revealed that Camano Island had been his intended destination, but the plane ran out of fuel around 250 miles into his flight, resulting in a
crash-landing near Granite Falls, Washington. During their investigation of the scene, police discovered Colton’s DNA inside the crashed aircraft, as well as a set of bare footprints.
Teen Burglar Eludes Wash. Police for 18 Months by Associated Press As police began hunting for the perp in a nearby forest, they were forced to back off when they heard a gunshot nearby, fired in warning. This was the moment that Colton Harris-Moore’s antics went beyond a rebellious kid playing games with the law. As far as police were concerned, he was now an armed and dangerous 18-year-old adult who could do some real damage if they didn’t catch him soon.
Teen Fugitive Becomes National Celebrity
Despite Colt’s growing infamy among police units across the country, in a bizarre twist, he’d simultaneously been amassing quite a cult following among the public. By mid-2010, more than 85,000 people had joined various Facebook pages and online fan groups in support of Colton and his campaign of crime. Some fans even went as far as producing Barefoot Bandit merch to wear to encourage Colt to stay on the run.
Adding further fuel to this media fire, attorney Jim Johanson publicly announced that he’d be willing to represent Colt free of charge if he turned himself in. Not only that but an anonymous donor offered Colton the promise of $50,000 if he surrendered to the police by 3pm on June 8th.
The deadline passed, but the Barefoot Bandit remained elusive.
Colton continued to leave breadcrumbs hinting at his movements, including scrawling chalk footprints as a calling card at burglary sites, and leaving a $100 cash donation at Vetters Animal Hospital in Raymond, Washington, with an attached note ceremoniously signed off by the Barefoot Bandit himself. By this time, Colton was wanted for more than 100 crimes across Washington, Idaho, and Canada, including the theft of at least 14 cars, and multiple airplanes.
Colt’s escapades had kicked up a storm of attention; with wanted posters plastering neighborhoods, helicopters using infrared to scan Washington’s forests, and news channels building a frenzy of public interest. Colton knew that if he stayed in America, his days on the run were shortly numbered. So, the Barefoot Bandit hatched a plan to escape one last time, and this time, it was set to be permanent.For the next month, Colton’s grand plan saw him heading eastward, stealing multiple cars to bounce between Idaho, Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois. On July 3rd, 2010, another Cessna was reported stolen from an airport in Bloomington, Indiana and it didn’t take police long to figure out who was responsible. Colt later revealed his intended destination was Cuba, due to its lack of extradition treaties with the US. The idea that Colton could potentially live out his days in peace, with no risk of being forced home for prosecution, made it the perfect solution. Now it was just a matter of getting there.
Arrested In The Bahamas
Unbelievably, Colton’s shaky piloting experience flew him over 1,000 miles south of Indiana. At this point, the aircraft’s gas tank ran dry, just shy of his Cuban target, sending him crashing into a sandbank in the shallow waters of the Caribbean. Colton had survived yet another plane wreck and after wading into shore, soon realized he was in the tropical Bahamas.
Despite the welcoming soft sand under his bare feet, with no extradition loopholes to rely on, he was in deep trouble. To make matters worse, the FBI was now on Colton’s case, and as soon as they pieced together that he’d landed in the Bahamas, they launched a full scale manhunt complete with a $10,000 reward to anyone who could provide information leading to his arrest. The Barefoot Bandit was out of his depth, and the net was closing in.
After the crash, Colton first travelled to a nearby fishing village where he survived off food stolen from local stores and restaurants. But with the chase approaching fever-pitch, Colton hopped into a stolen speedboat and jetted towards the nearby Harbor Island where he hoped he’d find a better place to hide. There, he snuck into a hotel where he was quickly spotted by security guard Kenny Strachan, who recognized the bandit immediately. Kenny hastily phoned in the police and soon enough, the typically picturesque paradise was crawling with cops and other officials, all combing the island in search of the Barefoot Bandit.
That night, at around 2am, Colton made a break for a small boat docked along Harbor island’s shoreline and sped off into the dark water. He was spotted, and with the police refusing to give up on the opportunity to finally catch the kid they’d been tailing for more than two years, they borrowed a boat and gave chase. Despite their shouts for him to stop, police quickly realized Colton wasn’t going to give up. They had no choice but to pull out their guns to take aim. Shots rang out across the water, and Colton’s boat came to a sudden stop. Thankfully, the police were actually aiming their shots at the boat’s motors to stop the boat and Colton was completely unharmed. But despite being grounded on a sandbar, Colton initially refused to surrender, brandishing a stolen gun. Thankfully, detectives were able to talk him around and he was finally arrested and deported to Miami to await trial, all in bare feet of course! Colton’s time on the run was finally over. But his story certainly isn’t.
Court Case
At the time of his arrest, the 19-year-old Colton was wanted by the FBI, US Marshals, Homeland Security, dozens of police departments across America, Canadian police and the government of the Bahamas. Once back in the States, Colton was transferred from Miami to the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac, Washington, while police attempted to piece together precisely how many crimes Colton was responsible for.
At first, Colton insisted on pleading not guilty to the charges set against him, but much to the dismay of his defense team, prosecutors successfully proved his culpability in countless felonies racked up across three different countries. By the time they were through, Colton was staring down the barrel of potentially decades in prison for his crimes and realized he was going to have to compromise.
So, on June 17th, 2011, Colton pled guilty to a number of charges including burglary, interstate transportation of a stolen aircraft, being a fugitive in possession of a firearm, and piloting an aircraft without a valid airman's certificate. In a six page letter addressed to Judge Vicki Churchill in December 2011, Colton put his guilty pleas into writing.
In the letter, Colton expressed remorse for his wrongdoings and put out a heartfelt apology to all those who’d fallen victim to his crimes over the years. He also spoke of his difficult childhood, describing it as one he wouldn’t wish on his darkest enemies. However, Colton also did everything he could to speak well of his mother despite his terrible childhood, stating that she was never to blame and that he made his own choices.On January 27th, 2012, Colton was officially sentenced, with prosecutors pushing for nine years and eight months in prison as punishment for his multiple crime sprees. However, after reading Colton’s letter detailing his unenviable early years, Judge Churchill took pity, stating that while a bad upbringing doesn’t excuse criminal behavior, she recognized that in this case it had definitely affected Colton. In the end, the judge ruled that Colton would serve a maximum of six and a half years behind bars. In addition to time served, Judge Churchill also ruled that Colton was to pay restitution for the planes, cars, homes and search operation costs to apprehend him, which amounted to a staggering $1.4 million You may be wondering how he was expected to pay for that. Well, it was later revealed that before going to jail, Colton had signed a deal for roughly that amount with none other than 20th Century Fox who were looking to make a movie out of his story. Under the terms of his plea agreement, Colton forfeited any right to profit from selling his story, so the movie deal money went straight to his various victims. With that settled, in April 2012, at just 21 years old, Colton Harris-Moore was taken to the Washington State Penitentiary and placed in solitary confinement for his crimes.
On arrival, young Colton was placed in what’s known as intensive management, which is usually used to keep the most dangerous inmates away from a prison’s general population. Here, he spent all his time alone in a cell which he was only allowed out of five times per week for a mere hour at a time. While Colton was being kept alongside Washington’s most nefarious prisoners, many of which were facing the death penalty, his isolation, police said, was actually meant to protect him. Given the media attention his case had attracted, Colton was considered a high-profile convict who might find himself a target if mixed in among other inmates. Despite these well-meaning intentions, Colton’s treatment caused outrage among his fans, the media, and his legal counsel who stated that, as a non-violent offender, it was absurd that he should be kept in identical conditions to those of the worst killers. Thanks to the outcry, Colton found himself transferred within just three weeks to the medium-security Stafford Creek Corrections Center. On September 2nd, 2016, Colton was released from prison to serve the rest of his sentence via supervised probation.
He moved into a halfway house in Seattle and started a clerical job with none other than the lawyer who defended him in court, John Henry Browne. But, even after everything he’d been through, the Barefoot Bandit wasn’t about to settle for a normal life. He still had grand plans for himself: grand flying plans.
Barefoot Bandit Redemption
In December 2016, a few months after Colton’s release, fans were elated to see an update from the Barefoot Bandit through a Go Fund Me page. On the page, Colton had set out a mission: to raise $125,000 to help him pay to put himself through flight school to become a fully-fledged, and legal, airplane pilot.
Almost immediately, fans began flooding the page with donations and messages of support. But, in a tragic twist, the page suddenly disappeared. A few days later Colton revealed that once the feds found out about the page he was promptly
forced to shut it down. Despite having paid off the vast majority of the $1.4 million owed to victims with the money from his movie deal, he still had around $129,000 outstanding, meaning that flight school was still off the cards until he’d settled his crime tab. But even with the blow, the Barefoot Bandit persevered.In 2017, Colton took part in an interview on Seattle’s KTTH 770 talk radio. In the interview, Colton reflected on his life, expressing regret for his actions’ consequences, for others, as well as limiting his own prospects. Looking forward, he recalled how his lifelong interest in airplanes continued to be his main motivator.
Discussing how flying made him feel, he said this: "It’s this uncontrollable obsession... It’s something that you have dreamt about and waited for your entire life. And out of all the possibilities of that moment, no matter what scenario or situation you could find yourself in, that one moment, you were exactly where you were supposed to be, and I wonder if I’ll ever feel that again." For Colton, it seems,
his wild choices may have been a way of gaining a sense of control over what was a very chaotic life. When asked about his future, Colton said: "I think it’s gonna be difficult to have a normal life. I really do. In fact, I don’t think I’m ever going to have a normal life."As of 2024, it’s unclear exactly what Colton is up to these days. Aside from occasional, very rare interviews, his social media pages and blog have all been inactive for years now. Not super surprising, it's safe to say he’s had enough of the spotlight to last several lifetimes.
Whether he’ll ever get his legal pilot training remains to be seen, considering the legal and social consequences of his chaotic adventure on the lamb will always loom over him. But what a ride it was. Colton Harris-Moore, a young man famous for disappearing, we’ll see you when you reappear.
If you were amazed at the unbelievable story of Colton Harris-Moore, you might also want to read about
Frank Abagnale from Catch Me If You Can. Thanks for reading.
