Barefoot Bandit: The Teen Felon Who Became a Folk Hero

In the winter of 2006, a small island community in Washington state—Camano Island, population roughly 15,000—began experiencing a strange string of burglaries. Someone was breaking into homes and businesses, stealing cash, food, and clothing. Occasionally, the intruder would just use the bathroom or take a shower. The culprit was eventually identified as a 15-year-old local boy named Colton Harris-Moore, and the six-month manhunt that followed was only the beginning of a two-year cat-and-mouse game that would escalate from petty theft to plane piracy, turn a teenager into an unlikely folk hero, and leave law enforcement across multiple jurisdictions utterly baffled.

The Island Fugitive

Colton Harris-Moore had been in trouble before. At age 12, he stole from his middle school and told his principal he "couldn't stop stealing"—like a compulsion. By the time the 2006 burglaries began, officials had already struggled to catch him once, resorting to an elaborate ruse where an officer went undercover as a pizza delivery driver to make an arrest.