Colton Harris-Moore: The Barefoot Bandit (AKA AyleSteelya Earhart)

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Nostalgia. Nostalgia. Nostalgia. Speaking of body parts. That's a good segue for us. We're going to be talking about Colton Harris Moore today. The Barefoot Bandit. Not to be confused with the Bob Haired Bandit. Or the Barefoot Contessa. All different. Very different people. Yes. Although he's a little similar to the Barefoot Bandit. Or the Bob Haired Bandit. Oh, yeah? But nobody dies. Love that. Yeah. You told us a serial killer story, so I said, let's give him a light one. Yeah, that's probably good. You want to get into it? Let's get into it. All right, Curtis. Yeah, Curtis, hit stop. Mark it down. Put it in the Spotify comments. You'll be happy today. To be a hero for everyone. You're such a hero. Here's your pat. Pat pat. Good job. So who is Colton Harris Moore? Who is he? He was born on March 22nd. He was born. Yeah. To be somebody, first you have to be born. You do. And he did that on March 22nd, 1991 on Kamano Island, just about 60 miles outside of Seattle. It's a little sad before it gets silly, but I promise it does get silly. Okay, we love that. I mean, in the way of burglary, but. But like no one's dying. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. So he was the only child born to Pam Kohler and Gordon Moore. By all accounts, Gordon, the father, really struggled with substance. Abuse issues. And he was very in and out of Colton's life, basically for like the majority of it. That's a bummer. But he kind of, like by the time Colton was a toddler, he disappeared from the picture entirely. And I think he reentered years later, but it was a very strained relationship. Yeah. And unfortunately, Pam was left to raise her son on her own and she had her own struggles. No, or nor. Now, the first signs of trouble, as far as Colton was concerned, started when he was enrolled in preschool. Oh, really? Yeah. So the first signs of trouble, as far as I know, was when he was enrolled in high school. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. So he was enrolled in high school. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. So he was delayed no as a result of the educational testing he was put on an iep individualized education plan and placed in a special program that was designed to help him adapt yeah and i think thank goodness for this that was such a good thing but i don't think he had the home life that would support you like i think you need the balance of both to be able to adapt village and he didn't have the home life um there's not a lot of documentation about his early life but we do know a little bit about how toxic his home life was and it's really sad according to his own reports his mom was a heavy drinker and she was verbally and at times physically abusive towards him there was also just a lot of people coming and going from the house all the time why do people do this to children it's awful like i don't understand i won't get further into it because i'll just get yelled at but like i don't understand this kind of behavior yeah i don't either and the thing was some of the people like some of the men coming and going were romantically involved with pam other times there was just people there that were like sobering up or looking for a place to stay while they weren't sober and they had their own issues it was this little and it's just a little baby in the house yeah it makes me sad neighbors witnessed enough to make them uncomfortable and worried for colton's safety enough so that there were multiple reports made to child protective services and obviously those reports are not not available to the public but a 2007 psychiatric evaluation noted that there was at least 12 children who were in the house and there was 12 referrals made to child protective services by 20 2005 the fuck were they doing when i don't understand why he wasn't taken away yeah like what was any like what was happening here i don't know 12 referrals yeah it's wild jesus i think he's shameful i think the system failed him yeah i would say so that's shameful yeah i will keep my opinions to myself now as a result of his home life colton obviously wasn't able to develop a sense of basic trust or psychological health in any way whatsoever yeah like he was set up to fail for sure you know eventually and not shockingly his negative home life started having more of an effect on his behavior at school and also around town of course between 2002 and 2005 there were a lot of incident reports involving him mostly related to bullying harassment vandalism theft kind of like you name it the majority of incidents were punished within school suspension but there was one period got expelled for a more serious act of uh both vandalism and theft oh that's so bad yeah so to escape the negative home environment and all the trouble that he was getting into at school he started to spend most of his free time outside by himself in the woods and he's just he's like a young kid at this point sad like the woods like when you're younger too like the woods like you know when you're with friends you can have fun yeah to go in the woods alone as a kid it has to be really bad to find solace in a place that usually scares kids yeah absolutely you know like a vast scary area like i know obviously some kids just really like the woods and they have a perfectly fine home life but yeah put it together and it's like oh when it's like it's one thing to like hanging out in the woods like but to find like but he was living in the safety in the woods you know now around the same time that he started spending you know more of his time out there neighbors on the island started noticing things going missing from their homes unfortunately according to one neighbor ups packages would uh be delivered to homes on the street and would disappear and others noticed larger things like lawnmowers and gardening equipment going missing damn to which i'm like colton what were you doing with lawnmowers yeah and you're going from porch pirating to lawnmowing sailing away with people ships like what's going on yeah sailing away with people ships honey that's foreshadowing right there is it do you know this case or no i don't know this case you just did weirdly enough i don't you did some serious foreshadowing oh did i i did that on purpose i didn't know this case either but it's i mean it's weird that we don't because apparently he became like a national icon at one point wow yeah i must have slept through that i did too yeah it just didn't make its way over to us on the on the east coast uh one neighbor said though that he would use his dog as an excuse to go into other people's property so i think that's like what made it easier okay now by the time he was 12 colton had racked up seven criminal charges for theft seven at 12 yeah damn and he also had already served a short juvenile facility a sentence in a juvenile facility for stealing in 2004 when he was 13 he was arrested when he was caught stealing items from his own middle school and this is really sad he's like screaming out for help and attention oh this next sentence that he like what he says to somebody exactly he was asked why he was doing it and he told the principal he couldn't stop and he didn't know why oh that like breaks my heart yeah so he has like a like obviously it's not good to steal but a kid saying i don't even know why i'm doing this yeah and i can't stop yeah because that also insinuates like i'd like to i don't want i don't want to be doing this but i can't stop right oh that's really sad when it's like and he probably doesn't have like the the emotional vocabulary to really like pinpoint where it's coming from or anything or even try to say where it's coming from so he's just like i don't know i mean i think it's pretty easy to tell where it's coming from he's neglected well yeah from an outside point of view it's definitely easy and from an adult point of view so like where were all the adults to help him like i don't he's screaming out for attention obviously yeah and like obviously there's a lot going on at home and it's well documented i mean there's 12 referrals right it's a cps it's like what how did this go on for so long yeah but the arrest at that point earned him a 30-day stay at the denny youth center in everett and upon his release he really that was when he like kind of like permanently moved into the woods damn because he just didn't want to go back home with his mom that's great and he was like 12 or 13 yeah he was young at that point uh after his release local police on the island were planning to keep tabs on him because by then he had earned himself a reputation yeah but unfortunately they learned that colton was not going to be easy to keep track of or to keep out of trouble oh man so that they did try yeah but he was tough to keep tabs on i mean he's living off the grid i was gonna say now in the late spring of 2006 the residents on the island once again started noticing things going missing from their homes but colton's back yeah well they immediately knew who was responsible but this time it wasn't just ups deliveries or lawnmowers small potatoes small potatoes indeed because police now thought he was stealing credit cards or at least copying down the information which he was using then to order things online oh no colton this is bad and that wasn't the biggest problem now he was 15 years old and six two whoa and rumored to be carrying an automatic pistol and a can of a can of bear spray oh no yeah so this has escalated yeah that's scary it's very scary he's obviously dealing with a lot he's a woman if you're willing to go into somebody's home to copy down their credit card information anytime you're willing to go into somebody's home like that yeah things have gotten scary definitely now with the exception of some bullying in school and the damage caused to property from vandalism or from breaking and entering he had never been particularly violent in the past so the news that he was carrying a loaded gun was a game changer yeah because like where did that come from yeah and they also knew that he had a significant amount of survival gear including a police scanner and a radio which had been paid for with stolen credit cards well and i guess when you really think about it this is in washington right and he's living in the wilderness yeah he probably should have a gun yeah you know like like that to me i'm hoping maybe it was just survival people i'm hoping like you know i mean like he's living in the wilderness in washington there's lots of i mean it very well could have been grizzlies in washington yeah i think so terrifying when he has bear spray too yeah um the thing i don't think he ever shot at anybody like human so yeah so maybe you might be onto something there uh i think yeah he there are grizzlies i thought those things will fuck you up i fucking i can't that's the other thing it's like the question that we ask women the man or the bear in the woods and it's like for him your mom or the bear and he chose bears like that's really that's really sad now knowing that capturing him peacefully and without incident wasn't going to be maybe as easy as it had been in the past police turned to his mom pam for help hoping that she might know the best way to bring him in if they'd asked any of the school administrators to bring him in they would have said no they would have said no they would have said no they would have said no they would have said no they would have said no they would have said no teachers counselors or people at cps who had worked with colton they would have known that pam wasn't necessarily their best ally in getting help for her son which is crazy that they didn't talk to anybody who he was around yeah you know what i mean like that there were 12 referrals to cps like that that tells you at least something that something is awry i don't get it yeah but they were like hey pam what do we do yeah you know and uh she said no 15 year old kid i don't care how big and strong you are can do all those things and i'm like i don't know what to do with you break-ins that's ridiculous so she just didn't believe that i mean she she would know and then when uh asked if she knew where her child was she denied having any information and she told a reporter i'm glad somebody's harboring him at least he's warm and has a full belly because i'm not gonna do it so you're his mom yeah like what the fuck now for weeks police hunted colton from one end of the island to the other but they always seem to just be one step behind him and the problem was he had spent years exploring in the woods and on the island by himself so he knew the area better than even they did yeah you know and while they tracked him he kept right on stealing from the residents on the island and occasionally would stay in empty vacation homes when the weather was too bad wow it seemed impossible though that one teenage boy could go undetected for that long and that's probably because it was even though pam denied knowing anything about his whereabouts or which locations he might be found in in the woods she was not being entirely honest well he did spend a lot of his time on the run from uh police that summer and in into the fall he did return home regularly to eat and to shower oh and then he would head back out to whatever campsite he made for himself so i think he was able to spend short periods of time at home but then had to get out well i think he knew to use the facilities and then i think he knew the appropriate times to to go home i think a lot of people with who have parents that struggle can understand that like he was like you know maybe around this time i'll go home and i'll be good yeah and then i'll head out before it gets bad again yeah that makes sense now it was at one of those abandoned campsites though that local police found something that gave them the idea that he was doing this apparently they had just missed him he had already fled but they found a dozen pizza boxes collected in a pile huh and they reasoned that if he had ordered pizza it likely had to be delivered to an address you can't just say the woods yeah no you can't one five five the woods in washington uh and there was likely only one person on the island who wouldn't have turned him in so investigation waited until the next time colton ordered a pizza to be delivered to his mother's trailer at haven place and when that call came in one night in late june 2006 they sprang into action knowing he was definitely going to flee as soon as he saw anyone who wasn't the pizza delivery driver they parked a ways down the road and they started brainstorming ideas on how to catch him before he made a break for it and when they spotted the delivery driver coming down the road one of the deputies flagged him down and explained the situation oh he was probably like i'm just trying to deliver pizza man yeah like that's just your job and you're like god now i have to be part of a sting operation he's like this is literally my after-school job please shit i almost called out tonight i should have honestly well so they asked if they could borrow his shirt and his hat and after putting on the delivery driver disguise the deputy grabbed the roof sign from the driver's car and put it on his car which obviously was undercover and then pulled into the trailer or not into the trailer but into the um into even place pam kohler's house a few minutes later he returned to his partner with colton handcuffed in the back seat of the car dang that was too easy yeah so after honestly it wasn't though because at that point he had been on the run for several weeks i just mean like when it finally came down to it it was like just dressed up as a pizza delivery person yeah it's true just go to his mom's it's always the simplest answer so he was finally off the street and sentenced again to 30 days at denny youth center uh for theft of items valued at $3,700 damn and also failure to appear in court for a previous hearing he was released in july of 2006 and just one week after his release the da filed an arrest warrant for him related to theft and use of credit cards in excess of five thousand dollars oh no now that was a felony that would have say felony yeah that's felonious so he would have been in a juvenile facility for years if convicted eek now knowing that he was facing significant jail time he fled yeah and hid out as you can imagine in empty vacation homes and basically it just went right back to life as it was before but obviously there are only so many places you can hide on an island especially when everybody on the island knows you by sight alone yeah now this time he managed to evade police for seven months using his usual routine of moving from one campsite to another stealing from houses on the island yada yada in that time there were several close calls typically when they would come out the back door or he would hide in the brush of a tree line and just like watch them and she's is she like cooperating um because otherwise she's harboring a fugitive well the thing is she wasn't harboring him because he wasn't staying there but is that what you have to do like she's feeding and i don't know and allowing him to be at her house without calling the police yeah that's true harboring i would think so i don't think they went after her for that for whatever reason harboring there's no specific legal time limit such as 24 or 48 hours that allows you to safely or legally shelter a runaway minor or a fugitive without notifying authorities but could they prove it if he wasn't there when they got there you know what i mean maybe that was the trouble well if he's just like running out the back door but then they're like not fine i think he later admitted that i don't think they knew that yeah you know what i mean yeah who knows i don't know i'm just wondering why she's like just bopping around harboring a fugitive i know it's just bopping around harboring a fugitive like it's just strange yeah i mean they also could have got her on a number of other yeah they have charges that it doesn't seem like they're just working yeah you know and i think their main focus was colton yeah so on these occasions the officers would typically get her on a number of other charges and they would get her on a number of other charges and go through his stuff confiscate any stolen items that they could find and they would match each piece of a of like any stolen good with a police report of the stolen good yeah on one occasion they found something at one of the campsites that at the time didn't mean much but ultimately it would become quite illuminating it was a flight training magazine that had been delivered to pam kohler's address and i just like light training yeah i just want you to put that in your back pocket for now huh comes back later okay so colton's months-long uh run from police finally came to an end in february of 2007 when one of the residents on the island called the sheriff's office to report the lights on in a home of a neighbor who was not supposed to be on the island for like several more months so empty vacation home that night a dozen officers from different law enforcement agencies surrounded the house and they urged him to surrender so when he made no move to come out they decided to try a different tactic and somebody went to go pick up pam and bring him or bring her to the house and they decided to try a different tactic and somebody went to go pick up it was only at his mother's urging that he finally gave up and came out of the house wow which is very surprising that he still like has that they have some kind of connection yeah relationship or connection nobody can know everything about what happened between them exactly so now this time law enforcement officials were not taking any chances he was locked up in the island county juvenile detention center and they set the bill at twenty thousand dollars which nobody in his life was gonna be able to pay for pay. And in addition to the original charges that initially caused him to go on the road, or on the run excuse me he had racked up 10 new burglary and theft charges and was now facing even more serious consequences years and years like a long time now despite the serious nature of the crimes and the months of anxiety that colton had inflicted on the island the island residents i know because no matter what no matter how this ends and no matter what the situation was that's really scary that he was just like skulking around this island stealing from people like that's fucked up well that's it you can have sympathy for like what he went through and the fact that like he's living in the woods and whatnot but you also at the same time have to have sympathy for the people on the island who are being terrorized they were all victims of this like that's really scary a six foot two teenager armed with bear spray and a pistol breaking into your house and using your fucking credit card i'd be pissed yeah which is like can be absolutely catastrophic for a lot of people like it can be debilitating to have somebody steal your credit card and like it takes forever to get it fixed yeah or even just to break into your house like to violate your sense of safety like that exactly so it is important to acknowledge yeah for sure like you know it's just i feel bad for everybody i do too and with all that being said there were still a lot of people who had sympathy for colton though like that it seems like a really nice community yeah uh sergeant bryant legassi said he can be personable he could win you over convince you he needs support and resources and then break into your home too like that's scary even neighbors though several of whom had been victims of his crimes themselves recognized that yes he had committed serious crimes but he hadn't gotten to that place on his own i think that's the thing that's like lingering throughout this is like this isn't somebody who just made a decision later in life right this isn't like after having all the opportunities in the world yeah one neighbor said the kid needs help he's screaming for it hopefully he pulls himself out of that lifestyle before somebody gets hurt which is these are like really great people to be considering that you know you go you go washington you go washington now according to most people familiar with the case the biggest negative influence on colton's life was his parents especially his mom and then of course the numerous men drifting in and out of their home which is so sad and then eventually negative influences your parents yeah because eventually his dad came back into the picture and was very abusive it's really sad oh my god yeah but by the time he reached high school colton had become a savvy enough criminal that he was no longer acting alone post-arrest interviews and psychiatric evaluation revealed a lot about how far gone he was and really at that point how uninterested he was in turning things around oh no in his mind his thefts and burglaries were part of what he perceived as a war on the local police motivated not warring the local police though you're hurting your community and the people who like do support you he did not see it like that at the time i would say and he felt that he was he was motivated basically for what he considered their targeting him from an early age he did not have i don't think he had a concept of right and wrong at this point no i don't think he was really taught that no you know now to that end he recruited another local teenager and i need you all to just take a seat if you're if you're standing up i'd like you to sit down local teenager 17 year old harley davidson iron wing harley davidson yes okay harley davidson iron wing you know yeah we like a bike so that's who was recruited by colton and the sheriff's office believed that yeah that was who was helping colton in his latest crime harley don't do it harley you've got you've got an important responsibility of a brand on your shoulders it's true uh harley himself had a really tough life i read like a separate article about him it was pretty similar to colton's life but an older woman took him in and she is actually the one that named she renamed him harley davidson oh my god he was born harley but i she changed his middle name and uh she he took her last name and she was good to him but then i think there were like other kids in the house that weren't so good to him but yeah it sounds like he he had a tough time too oh it's sad that's sad i know this reporter i think it was um i think it was like cbs news or you know one of those yeah like met up with harley and he wouldn't let him buy him a meal he was like no no like you don't have to and like he was like i don't know i don't know i don't know his bus got delayed and he sent him an email and was like like basically like being accountable for time it was just like very he had a very like i can't think of the word um i'm literally brain dead hold on when you're like two things at once like um like but they dichotomous dichotomous yeah it was a very dichotomous person yeah but looking back um harley davidson ironwig wasn't surprised that he got caught up in colton's life in 2009 he told a reporter back then i was a troublemaker he had come to me everyone knows i'm a criminal oh that's that's even sadder it's just like i mean he was 17 by this point so it's like you gotta start you gotta start writing the ship babe well and colton's getting older too he's a nice guy now like let's go now it all started in 2006 when colton enlisted harley to help him burglarize empty vacation homes on the island hitting several homes a night over time they taught each other various tricks of the trade like how to turn out cabinets and rifle through doors with like incredible speed so they're basically teaching each other how to become career criminals awesome yeah now despite uh harley's participation in the robberies on the island the focus of the district attorney's attention still remained colton by the time he was finally captured he had burned through a lot of the sympathy and goodwill that members of law enforcement had for him that's the thing the older you get and the more you're doing this the less people are gonna be like you know he had a tough childhood it's like you gotta grow out of this turn it around babe this isn't these aren't your things right these aren't your things you're scaring people you're violating people's homes and security that's fucked up it is i know you're not like physically hurting people but emotionally emotionally and financially yeah people but what he did still have going for himself at least at this point was that he was still a juvenile and again most importantly like you said he still hadn't hurt anybody during the commission of his crimes it was also worth noting that he had no history of drug or alcohol abuse which was a point in his favor as far as law was the law enforcement members were concerned and according to the psychologist who completed one of the evaluations he underwent she uh they wrote while colton surely has developed some destructive habits of over the past two years he is not deeply a deeply anti-social youth and more than anything he wishes for the opportunity to take up a healthy trajectory of school and work so there was like this glimmer of hope underlying in there well that's like more than anything he wishes like to turn this around is like interesting it is yeah because it's almost like he's fighting himself yeah you know absolutely so the fact that he was a non-violent offender and was not likely to be a danger to anybody was significant that the prosecutor was willing to be somewhat lenient and when he was ultimately arrested for like the 450th time he was sentenced to three years in a juvenile facility wow but he was never one to stay put very long no matter where he was or who sent him there oh no colton so he was to serve this particular sentence at the green hill school which is a part of washington state's correctional system uh designed to serve offenders under the age of 18 however after about six months in the locked facility he was transferred to griffin home which is a halfway house in renton about 70 miles from the island things actually seem to be going in the right direction at this point but then nobody really knows why on april i think he just went back to his old ways on april 30th 2008 he was sentenced to three years in a juvenile facility and he was he slipped away from the halfway house in the middle of the night and just went back on the run the call of the woods it's almost like you know when people have spent a really long time in prison yeah they like sleep in the bathroom yes they don't like they can't all that space yeah they can't like acclimate to like the bigger it's like he had acclimated to the wild to the woods essentially yeah now the escape hardly came as a surprise to the staff though one counselor said he's a very angry young man who has yet to accept the truth and he's not going to accept the truth responsibility for previous actions he still brags about outrunning the police for several months and that's not good no that's not showing that you're growing babe and again it's like he has this dichotomous personality where like like he wants wishing for a better life he wants a job he wants to go back to school but then he like can't fight it and is sitting and is still angry and still bragging about inflicting this kind of like he's saying it's on the local police but it's you know you're inflicting this on your community as well you're not that i don't think removed i i don't think it was like lost on him but i think for him the primary focus was law enforcement yeah because that was his aim but it's like you need to think about the collateral damage happening yeah when you also have to think about authority figures in his life yeah i don't think he ever learned to trust authority he doesn't have respect respect or anything like that so when the news of colton's escape broke the next day a wave of anxiety shot through the island um who were informed that colton was likely armed with a pistol still in a statement to the press island county sheriff mark brown stressed the very serious nature of colton's escape and made it clear that his number one priority was to protect residents he told a reporter i'm concerned because of the magnitude of what he did i don't want that to happen again i'm doing everything i can to get back to get him back into custody like the residents of the island he believed that having left the halfway house colton almost would have certainly run to the only place he'd ever known the island so everybody was on high alert two days after he fled griffin home someone reported that colton was fishing at lake key in arlington which is 50 miles north of that halfway house damn and if that were accurate it suggested that he was actually moving further away from the island not closer to it but sheriff brown's instincts proved to be spot on just a few days after the first sighting in arlington the sheriff's office on the island received a report that somebody had broken into the fire station in the middle of the night and stole an infrared headset the like the ones that are used to locate victims in like low visibility which those are important for firefighters to have well and what the fuck do you need that for like hello is that like nighttime maybe even would it help with that maybe i guess but there was no question who took it damn a few weeks later island county deputy bill uh bill vaughn spotted a mercedes sedan driving erratically and as he pulled up closer intending to hit the lights and pull the driver over the driver spotted him hit the gas and before vaughn he was in a high speed chase across the island shit vaughn and his partner chased the mercedes through the small winding streets of the island community until it started finally the car started to slow down as they reached um elder bay grocery and it was there to the deputy surprise that the driver opened the door and jumped from the moving vehicle what it all happened rolled literally it all happened in a flash but the driver got up from the ground and when he did vaughn saw the the car as it turned out belonged to a neighbor of pam's who was away in another state at the time that the car was stolen and when colton ditched the vehicle it continued rolling because like you just said he literally tucking yeah until it slammed into the side of a cafe next to the grocery store now luckily vaughn had the presence of mind to rush over to the building and turn off the gas tanks holy shit or that could have ended in like a straight-up explosion but it didn't see and this is where it's like now you are endangering everybody around oh yeah for your own personal safety and that's fucked up what are you doing yeah so bill's sighting of colton confirmed what everybody already suspected that he had definitely returned to the island and was back up to his old ways but even worse now ratcheting it up a notch yeah to members of law enforcement it gave them a new lead and something to work with but there was also something about his return that felt like an offense sheriff brown said he spit in the eyes of law enforcement he spit in the eyes of juvenile services that tried to help him and now he spit in the eyes of citizens that have tried to help him like people were yeah the goodwill's gone yeah i mean he really could have caused catastrophic damage there yeah and actually i should like the the police were really pissed off at this point obviously but still the locals had like a little bit of sympathy left for him resident patrick campbell said he's a kid who's basically being a dumb kid but if he keeps doing what he's doing he could be a dead kid i mean yeah the fact that people are still concerned yeah i don't know if i would categorize this as being a dumb kid no it's definitely a lot yeah i feel like it's getting a little worse yeah that's very kind of them to give such grace it is now with no way to locate him and little chance of capturing him at this point the sheriff's department turned to the only person who seemed capable of getting through to him his mom pam wow now she was mostly cooperative so you asked that earlier i think yeah i think that maybe is how she got away with yeah not aiding and abetting a group um and she acknowledged that she did occasionally get calls from her son but she didn't think there was anything she could do to help the police bring him in she told a reporter i talked my head off about turning himself in and he said he's working on it i really just don't think he'll do it in the summertime who wants to leave the good weather and go to jail i mean that's valid he said pam that's that's valid she's like i'm trying but he loves this i love that she's he's she's like you know what the kid loves the sun like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know what pam he he loves a summer vacay he wants to go to jail tan who among us can understand this correct who among us like wants to be inside in the summer and i love she was real she was she was real she was very ready from the real house time she was being real now for months investigators on the island felt like they were stuck in a flashback to the previous year when they chased him all over the island but literally could never catch him but this time his crimes were getting a lot more serious obviously he had literally almost blown up a cafe and also he was stealing items from people's homes and continuing the credit card theft but on top of that he had stolen a car like we said yeah and had also been caught on camera trying to break into atms get it together which i'm like damn and also this is an island how could you not catch him breaking into atms it's a really pretty island it is it's good yeah now perhaps the most alarming was an incident in june 2009 when somebody broke in to an island county deputy's car and stole a rifle oh that's not good chamber of commerce president josh flickner said instead of this punk kid that deserves to be in jail now you have this guy who's armed yeah that's scary with a fucking rifle yeah and uh and uh i also just want to say i know i said that it's a pretty island so like you shouldn't try to break into the atm i don't mean like if it's an ugly island you should try to break into the you know what's sad i just have to be clear about no guys you know what's sad like most of you listening wouldn't think anything about that there's at least five of you who started a friend it was like elena hates ugly islands and says to break into atms i'm already drafted a comment so thank you for clarifying i just needed to be clear jesus christ you sometimes it's hard you guys you make it you make it tough in these streets i just had to so justice for ugly yeah yeah they ugly islands deserve atms as well yes in peace okay i want to be clear on my stance oh man anyways so the most on the island the pretty island the 2009 rifle theft was evidence that colton was still lurking about but pam didn't think so she said they don't know what they're talking about i know he's not around here and the island county sheriff's office knows that too oh okay it doesn't seem like they did got it pam it's unclear whether she believed if she was telling the truth or if she was just covering but it did not take detectives to prove that colton was indeed on the island like they believed in september sharon mud arrived to work at the grocery store in east sound one of the larger communities on the island also don't take a shot every time i say on the island on the island it's starting to like lose it is all meaning yeah but they're they just stay on this island they do we're on an island but she discovered that the store was ransacked on the island on the island like people would die if they took a shot every time i said that don't do it when people check the security for the island they don't do it they don't do it they don't do it they don't do it when police check the security footage people just let anyone and got the tapes people come into the store for the day they're just like can i check those out honestly look there should have been like neighborhood watch or something at this point it is an island it is in fact so they saw the intruder break into the store uh drive a pallet jack around causing a lot of damage and then steal a large number of items before leaving the store oh so that's so shitty it is like my sympathy has run out for him i get it i'm sorry that's shitty behavior it gets a lot people are gonna show up at work now they're working at a grocery store you're having a bad morning and you show up to work and now you gotta clean up this mess yeah come on and things were like damaged because he's driving around a pallet jack and he doesn't know what he's doing yeah i mean this is like the office episode where michael completely ransacks the warehouse and then he's like don't worry we'll have someone clean this up and the warehouse guy is like we're the ones who have to clean this up that's how i feel about you can relay anything back to the office parks and rec gilmore girls are supposed to be the ones who clean this up and i will continue it's incredible it's a talent it is no it actually is i think you should we should sign you up for america's got talent thanks and they can just say things to you and you can be like okay i'll be like wait there is an episode that corresponds with one time sabrina was cast i can so while watching the footage deputies noticed that the intruder had what appeared to be a t-shirt wrapped around his left hand uh presumably to cover an injury sustained during the break-in class and when they searched the store investigators found blood drops that were eventually matched to none other than colden harris moore dna yeah now his crimes at first probably seemed random and juvenile yeah but there and there was a kind of logic to some of them even if he didn't recognize it in previous sprees he was stealing from neighbors to buy things like camping gear to make life outdoors more comfortable and sustainable but his latest crime spree had a kind of like oblique objective that seemed to be less about amassing goods than it was about finding a thrill yeah like in the beginning that i think that's where the sympathy comes from is it's like oh man like he's living in the woods he needs this gear to survive now he's just like fucking shit up everywhere that's the thing yeah that's why my sympathy ran out now if you remember like because i did tell you to put this in your back pocket during one of the previous searches for colton years earlier they found that flight training magazine at one of his campsites and they didn't think much of it at the time like they were like i guess he's just being entertained but since then he's been a part of the camp and he's been a part of the camp and he's been a part of the camp obtained a lot of a lot more flight manuals and a dvd that provided instructions on how to fly an airplane i think he's gonna steal an airplane maybe or i think that might be in his thought perhaps i'm detectiving you're on to something I know. I don't know how you do it. I know, it's crazy. Now, up to that point, he had stolen many cars, even a few motorboats, actually. Whoa. Yeah, don't laugh. Motorboats. Motorboats. But he took those for joy rides and then abandoned them. But his real goal, you got it, girl, was to steal an airplane. An airplane. An aeroplane. I don't know why I said an airplane. An airplane, I tell ya. He's gonna steal an airplane. He's gonna take to the skies. It's crazy. So, in the fall of 2008, he broke into Bob Rivers' airplane hangar, rifled through various boxes until he found the keys to Bob's 1999 Cessna 182. Airplanes just have keys? Yeah, girl. They're not pushed to start? I don't know. I don't know what I thought it was, but. No, I literally have no idea. He just. That's crazy to me that you can just find the keys to an airplane. You gotta, like, turn the engine. Just be like, ooh. I guess. Whoa. Yeah. I wonder if they are pushed to start now. Maybe. Google it. What was this, a Cessna? Yeah. Yeah. Still keys? They still use physical car-like keys to operate. Damn, they haven't even adapted to the days. Damn. Or the times. That's crazy. Well, so he found the keys. He did. And that same night, he just took the plane out flying. He just took to the skies. Straight up. Yeah. He flew, quote, clear across Washington's Cascade mountain range, probably reaching altitudes of more than 7,000 feet. Wow. Yeah. That's scary. Several years later, when he was arrested, he described the flight in an interview with 48 Hours. He said the weather that night was not ideal for flying. And he said, winds spun the plane upside down. Turbulence caused the plane to dive several thousand feet. What the fuck? That's my nightmare. And he doesn't know what he's doing. No, he's read some magazines. He just watched a DVD and read some magazines. He knows what he's doing. Bob Rivers, whose plane it was, also remembered the day of Colton's flight. He was at home when he heard the weather. The weatherman described the conditions on the radio, and he said, the pilot in me immediately thought, I'm glad I'm not flying in that. Ironically, about that time, my airplane was flying right overhead. Fuck. Like, imagine realizing that. Like, later being like, yeah. My airplane. That's sad. I heard it was like, oh, some idiot's flying a plane. Like, what an idiot. It's your plane. It's my fucking plane. And it's a teenager flying it. Insane. After flying about 250 miles. Wow. Colton crash landed the plane. Wow. And somehow escaped with no injuries. Now, he's just surviving plane crashes? He's surviving plane crashes. But also, I can imagine that Bob was pretty fucking pissed, because I don't think planes are cheap. Justice for Bob. Truly. Bob didn't take that plane out. He knew it was a bad idea. He knew better. I would be so pissed if a teenager stole my fucking airplane and crashed it. They went joyriding in your fucking Cessna? Like, 250 miles away. I'd be pissed. Yeah. Now, so he survived and was like, fine. And then, about a year later. About a year later, he stole, I think it's called a Cirrus CR-22 from the San Juan Airport in Washington. What? And flew it about 14 miles to Orcas Island. What? Just stole another airplane from an airport. So now this is his thing? Yeah. Yes. Okay. Very much so. And then people with flight experience found the idea that somebody could learn how to fly a plane by reading about it to be impossible. Flight instructor Jim Grant said, I doubt you could actually teach yourself to fly a plane. But apparently, in addition to reading flight manuals and watching DVDs, later, Colton said he was also a big fan of Microsoft Flight Simulator from the time he was a kid. Okay. So that helped too. Yeah, that totally explains everything. I also was like, hey guys, I think you're missing the part where he crashes the airplanes. Yeah, but still, how does he even get it up in the air? It's insane. Like, that's crazy. It's absolutely bonkers. It also makes me think, like, potential wasted. Because you did figure out how to fly this from flight simulator. And like, all that. It's like, that's pretty, as a teenager. That actually is really nuts. Like, I'm like, okay, there was something there that could have been used in a positive way. That's chutzpah. That's a lot of things. It's your favorite word, hubris. It is. That's definitely hubris. Yeah. So yeah, he just stole a few planes. Wow. Okay. The vehicle and airplane thefts elevated his crime spree to a whole new level. Literally. Yeah. By the winter. The actual skies. By the winter of 2010, he was suspected of stealing airplanes and other vehicles as far east as Illinois. Whoa. Typically taking them for a ride before abandoning them wherever he landed or crashed. Or crashed, she says. He just keeps crashing planes? Yes. I think ultimately, he crashed five planes. He's crashing planes and walking away. Yeah. I don't know how to handle this. Isn't that bonkers.com? I'm upset. Does it make you feel a little better? I guess. Because they're also small planes, too. Driven by like a 17-year-old, I think. Yeah. Who just watched flight simulators. And read magazines. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah. But like before, the thefts never involved violence or confrontation. But the fact remains that because he was not a skilled pilot and was crash landing people's planes, it was only a matter of time before somebody got hurt. Yeah. He's crashing. Like, how can he possibly be hitting unpopulated areas every single time? Yeah. It's remarkable. Yeah. Now, at the same time, his antics were starting to earn him a reputation outside of the Pacific Northwest. Not in Massachusetts, apparently. No. I can't believe this didn't get to us because I was in high school, too. And it seems like the people that became very, like, infatuated with his story were my age. That's crazy. It is. By the beginning of 2010, he appeared on several national news programs, which apparently I wasn't watching. More as a human interest story than anything else. Like, check this kid out. Literally. We don't know where he is. He's just stealing planes. I think that. That was basically the script. Tune in. More on this at 7. And you tune in and they're like, yeah, he's stealing planes. This is crazy. And he's walking away. He's crashing them. Fucking nuts. Isn't that nuts? Back to you, Judy. More at 10. As a result, other news outlets started taking an interest in this fugitive teenager and his fucking remarkable abilities. Yeah. Not just to operate an aircraft, but also to continue evading police at this point nearly two years. Yeah, he's stealthy as hell. He is. Soon his face was appearing on t-shirts and t-shirts and t-shirts and they were being sold from this like random Seattle print shop and orders were coming in from all over the U.S. and even further, like abroad. Can we get it together? We love an anti-hero. Like, what the fuck is going on? Yeah. The press coverage eventually led to informal fan groups popping up on social media and he had kind of become a folk hero. That's social media for you. Yeah. I mean, this was like the. The beginning of Facebook, so. Now, for the most part, the attention and fandom surrounding him and his crime sprees was from a lot of people who never met him and knew very little about his history. But there was one person who seemed very eager to hitch a ride on Colton's newfound fame. Who was it? For her entire life, Pam Kohler had been ignored and dismissed by everyone she met. And now it seems she was more than happy to use her son as a pipeline to her own pseudo fame. Wow. What an asshole. I'm like, you never even. I don't want to say too much, but I'm like, you didn't really do a lot for that kid. Yeah. And then you're just like, oh, I can be famous now. And you're hitching on to his fame as like an international fugitive. Like, what the fuck? I mean. Or national, I should say. Well. Oh, okay. National for now, babe. See? There we go. So, what the fuck? So, any time a reporter wrote a story about Colton, which happened a lot, Pam found a way to make herself one of the main characters, eventually to the point where it was annoying the residents of the island. Yeah, because I'm sure they're like, hey, this is at our expense. Yeah. So, can everybody stop? And also, like, you're kind of at least part of the reason why he is doing this. One resident wrote in a letter to the editor of the Daily Herald, as his enabler, I have no doubt that if at any time he needed moral guidance, she was out to lunch. Wow. So, they were like, fuck you. Like, come on. That's a good boom roasted. Yeah. Now, by the spring of 2010, his story made it to shows like Dateline, 48 Hours. Apparently, we were living under rocks at this point in time. Yeah, what the fuck was I doing? Because I was. I was watching Dateline at this point in time. Yeah, like, what's going on? But true to form, the press looked for a unique angle that would catch on with the public, and they found it in a pretty unusual place. By then, Colton had stolen several planes, like I said, also cars, boats, valuables, you name it. But all of his crimes were committed when the victim was away, and he never seemed to consider all the evidence that he was leaving behind. But of all the things that could have caught journalists' attention, it was the fact that at most of the crime scenes. At most of the crime scenes, investigators found bare footprints. I was wondering where that came in. So it became, he was the Barefoot Bandit. Okay. So simple. So simple. I feel like we could have come up with a cool airplane name. I know, because that's not really telling me the story. The Pilot Bandit. The Barefoot Bandit. It's not really telling you the story. No. Writer. Ugh. Can't put me on the spot there. I mean, airplanes, like. You gotta, like, add aviation into it somehow. You know? I'll steal ya, Earhart. I like that you made it a drag name, Mikey. What the fuck? Mikey's in the stew today, and he. Mikey showed up for work just then. Mikey just pulled a drag name right out. Right out. The gays are clicking their fingers. That's. Index to thumb finger right there, babe. What did you say? Yeah, that's. I can't come. I was gonna try for aviation something. That's not good enough. Forget the Barefoot Bandit. Yeah, forget that. That would, like, in parentheses for this episode to be titled. Yeah. Period. Yup. That was iconic. Wow. The fact that that just came into your brain. Yeah. showed up he yeah clocked in bitch you gotta race so by early spring colton celebrity had overtaken the more significant facts of the case like the fact that he was um a fugitive suspected of over 50 burglaries yeah and he had i mean caused incalculable damage to private property including airplanes but it's fun yeah super fun but while the press and the public were uh caught up in his anti-hero status and his bare feet law enforcement officials in and around the island had not lost focus and the victims also hadn't forgotten their losses at the end of may colton's exploits were getting bigger and more daring and around that time he was caught on security camera stealing a sport fishing boat and taking it for a drawer ride and then just abandoning it in the harbor because that's the other thing like the thing that pisses me off is i'm like that's not yours yeah you're taught that as a kid or you should be taught that you were a kid it's not yours you don't get to and also it's not even like he's taking it for a joy ride and bringing it back no he's just leaving he's just abandoning things or crashing things it's like you're destroying them afterwards that's shitty yeah well and while the crime like this particular one might have been similar to those that he'd committed in the past the difference now was that he was leaving his usual territory the and the island community that had kind of really given him a long leash to make mistakes now he was six foot five six five yeah he's a tall ass motherfucker whoa and he's 18 years old he wasn't a kid anymore and the risk to his own or other safety increased exponentially especially the farther away from home that he was going so as summer neared the entire island community started to suffer as a result of colton's newfound fame once popular with tourists the kamano's island tourist industry saw a sharp decline in visitors yeah they don't want to get stolen from them even the housing market had seen a decline because people didn't want to buy a house in an area where a high-profile burglar was constantly on the loose he wasn't even caught that's the thing one realtor explained he had quote been forced to explain to homebuyers that the island is still a safe community he just spent more time talking about security systems which sucks also like if you have to talk me into a security system before i've even bought this house yeah it's a no i don't love that so hoping to see the case come to an end peacefully and without incident on the island came together and they hired everett washington bounty hunter mike rocha a bounty hunter it's like dog damn we probably a better person i was just gonna say that they were like track this boy down and get him prosecuted the local police welcomed any support in capturing colton but they stressed that apprehension is only one piece of the work the real hurdle was going to be putting together enough evidence to keep him locked up yeah so for more than a month the bounty hunter and the detectives worked separately because they could not work together and they were tracking colton's movements based on crimes committed with a similar mo from washington to oregon to indiana which is insane when you think about how far spread that goes when a string of crimes matching colton's history occurred in iowa in mid-june it became apparent that he was moving towards us to the east moving towards us we had no idea we didn't even know and he was likely aware of that event and he was likely aware of that event and he was likely aware of that event manhunt was underway finally on june 6 investigators caught a break when a plane was stolen from indiana and discovered crashed in the bahamas from indiana to the bahamas an international incident like i told you i knew you were on to something within a few days an fbi lab processed the dna collected from the fucking crashed plane site and found that it was a match for colton harris moore he's walking away from another plane crash another one completely out of his element now in the bahamas and without any real resources to speak of finally investigators had gained an advantage over him working with local bahamian authorities american law enforcement officials started interviewing recent robbery victims on the island and put together a timeline kind of putting a path of where he had been the saga of the barefoot bandit finally came to an end on the evening of july 11th when a bahamian resort manager and ward got a text message from a friend that said the barefoot bandit is at your marina what a call can you imagine what a call to get now immediately she contacted the security manager at the resort and told him to start searching the marina for people with no shoes for barefoot motherfuckers which i could assume there's a lot in the bahamas probably it's a little tough but uh she contacted the police while her manager started looking now eventually the security manager spotted colton prowling around the docks and called out to him he was trying to steal a boat yes so he started he starts running because the guy called out to him of course the guard chased colton in a large loop until they ended up back at the docks where colton tried and failed to start several of the smaller boats before eventually successfully starting a larger fishing boat unfortunately though he misjudged the tides and his inexperience with a larger vessel caused him to ground the boat on the rocks immediately after he pulled away which also uh i'd be fucking pissed because now you fucked up the boat you ground a boat like that's really bad knowing the game was over he pulled a gun from his waistband and placed it against his head oh no and tossed a backpack full of stolen items into the harbor it took some time but local police were eventually able to convince him to put the gun down and surrender and after two years on the run from the police years his war was finally over two years and several planes five and several plane five planes who knows how many boats cars credit cards all of it damn now a week after his initial arrest he was deported to uh miami and then taken into custody by the fbi within a few days he was flown back to seattle he didn't fly no he didn't they they he was like you want me to yeah he's like i can raise here they were like no um he was indicted on numerous charges including burglary destruction of property and evading the police by that time he was exhausted from all the running and his lawyer monique gomez explained he just wanted to go home oh that's really sad really sad but like well it's a little too late for that buddy the sadness of the of the little kid is not hitting me as hard but it's also the sadness hits me a little bit because i'm like you don't really have a home i know that's true you know and i'm also like do you mean your mom's house or do you mean the woods yeah now given the extent of the crime spree and the number of states now involved yeah his pre-trial hearing was very long very complicated finally on june 18th 2011 almost a full year after he was captured in the bahamas he appeared in a seattle court where he pleaded guilty to seven federal charges quote including stealing airplanes a boat and firearms and transporting them across state and sometimes national boundaries and i oop anti-motherfucking oop yeah so he entered a plea um which was that plea was part of a larger plea deal arranged with the prosecutor's office that included his promise not to um attack the police he was also accused of profiting from his own story at all because they were like this is a story so oh you could make so much money on this story and we will find out just how much you could make oh shit there was a provision carved out that would allow any sale of his story to contribute to the 1.4 million dollars in restitution that he owed to the victims of his crimes i thought it would be more to be honest i know well two years 2010 so many big things hold on let's see because think about how many planes he's ruined well you also have to think of how many planes he's ruined i wonder how many people were able to prove that like it was their plane that's why it's like it's clearly a lot more than that yeah that's all they could do that would be like 2.1 million dollars now um now six months later he he appeared in coopville washington court where he pleaded guilty to 33 state charges for burglaries committed on and around kamano island he held back tears when the judge announced that in exchange for his guilty plea he would be sentenced to seven years and three months in state prison which honestly is like not that hefty of a sentence when you think about it it's happened here the sentence was actually a compromise between the state's request for the maximum of nine years and the defense's request for six years and it was also heavily influenced by his history of abuse that he had suffered his lawyer john henry brown said later i'm not surprised that colton survived five plane crashes but i'm completely surprised that he survived his mother oh that's horrific and that also tells you just how bad things were surprised that he survived five plane crashes yeah but his mom was a difference like that's really sad it's horrific now he ultimately served five years of the sentence before being transferred to a work release program in uh september of 2016 wow by 2019 he was able to pay a large portion of the restitution back to the victims wow thanks to 20th century fox who purchased the rights uh to his story for a movie oh shit apparently the movie stalled but it seems that the last colton said about this entire ordeal is i've learned from my past i do not run from it but instead try to embrace it for the better i hope to serve as a model for people who have hard lives and feel hopeless i saw it every day when i was confined and i have seen it in the world upon release wow and now he's just like seems like he's on the straight and narrow i hope so the last update that i saw was that he was in some kind of like real estate venture okay so he seems like he turned his life around all right i am all for you didn't physically harm anyone so i'm all for you getting it together yeah that is the story holy shit i cannot believe we had never heard of this how did we not i don't know did anyone else hear about this dave did nobody did did you hear about it no dave was telling me about it and i was like fuck yeah shit so none of us heard about it okay i'm glad we're not alone i'm so glad because i thought everyone in the room was going to be like actually it was on the news every single day you were literally under a rock yeah yeah wow that's a crazy one shout out to dave for finding that hell yeah here's a fun fact for you the tin can was invented 48 years before the tin can opener was invented the fuck were they doing in those 48 years lots of looking at cans did they have peel-offs at that point or is that like a really new innovation i don't know huh i'm frustrated for those 48 years so yeah because what are you doing you have to get really banging it against a rock probably getting real primitive up here sharp knives but then you have to think like if you open it with like a sharp knife is there shards in your food well that's the thing it's like you gotta be careful hold on i'm i gotta see how they were opening cans before that all right before no before the can opener was invented people had this is from google had to use heavy duty tools or makeshift method methods there was the hammer and chisel obviously that's fun so like you know about that they did knives bayonets and axes and then like you just said yeah bayonets okay okay and then rocks and smash stones see okay we were on it we would have figured it out that's so crazy i feel okay about those 48 years now we we had come up with several of those yeah and it was ezra j warner so shout out to your boy ezra i love that name i do ezra is a great name ezra is a cool name yeah i like ezra from dancing with the stars me too i'm sort of the girls i'm he's my winner yeah yeah ezra freck ezra freck maybe yeah him tatiana oh and mara okay our favorites i've been waiting to say this like i'm wanting to say this everybody vote for tatiana but because the scores that she is getting are not applicable to her dances and i've had enough me too fun fact to end this whole thing i've had enough fucked fact fucked fact i'll punch you in the face if you don't vote for tatiana period and i'll watch so 21523 or 21325 can't remember tune in vote whoa i know that was impressive thank you so much holy shit i'm newer so i didn't have that kind of information and it's tatiana with a y t-a-t-y-a-n-a vote for her do it because i also love yon i do too and that's dancing with the stars with us thank you we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird as weird as us you and i'll see you in the next one Thank you.