Colton Harris-Moore: The Barefoot Bandit’s Crime Spree

Colton Harris-Moore, the Washington teenager nicknamed the Barefoot Bandit, carried out a two-year crime spree from 2008 to 2010 that ran through eight U.S. states, parts of Canada, and the Bahamas, and included burglaries of vacation homes and a bank, thefts of cars and boats, and at least five small airplanes he taught himself to fly and crash-landed. He was captured in the Bahamas in July 2010 at age 19, pleaded guilty to seven federal felonies and 33 Washington state felonies, and served roughly seven years before being released into work release in September 2016.

How the Spree Started

Harris-Moore was 17 years old on April 22, 2008, when he escaped from a group home in Renton, Washington, where he had been serving a three-year juvenile sentence for burglary. He had grown up on Camano Island in rural Washington and already had juvenile convictions for burglaries there, many committed without shoes on. The nickname came from that habit and from a note he left at a veterinary clinic in Raymond, Washington, signed “the Barefoot Bandit.”¹

Once he was on the run, a pattern emerged. He broke into unoccupied vacation homes for food, laptops, cameras, credit cards, and electronics. He took cars and boats when he needed to move. He left evidence deliberately, including a self-portrait shot with a stolen camera in July 2008. Investigators eventually linked him to roughly 65 to 70 criminal investigations and more than $3 million in stolen or damaged property.²

The Stolen Airplanes

What set Harris-Moore apart from a typical serial burglar was that he stole and flew airplanes. He had no pilot’s license and no formal training. He taught himself from flight manuals, online procedure quizzes, and computer simulators including Microsoft Flight Simulator and X-Plane.³ He crash-landed every plane he took.

The known thefts stretched over about 20 months:

November 2008: a Cessna 182 stolen from Orcas Island, Washington, crash-landed on the Yakama Indian Reservation with mangled landing gear and propeller.³
September 11, 2009: a Cirrus SR22 worth roughly $500,000 stolen from Friday Harbor, Washington, flown about 10 miles, and crash-landed on Orcas Island.⁴
September 29, 2009: a Cessna 182 stolen from Bonners Ferry, Idaho, crash-landed in a timber clear-cut near Granite Falls, Washington, decelerating from nearly 130 mph to a stop in under three seconds.³
July 4, 2010: a Cessna 400 stolen from Monroe County, Indiana, flown roughly 1,200 miles to Abaco Island in the Bahamas, and ditched in swampland. The emergency locator beacon activated on impact and eventually led investigators to him.³

The Multi-Agency Manhunt

As the crimes crossed state and national lines, the pursuit scaled up. The FBI took the lead and offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to his arrest. Other participants included the U.S. Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and sheriff’s deputies from at least six counties.²⁵ Helicopters, man-trackers, and SWAT teams were used. FBI Special Agent Steven Dean told reporters that Harris-Moore had “turned from a regional nuisance into an international problem.”

In September 2009 he burglarized the Islanders Bank in Eastsound, Washington, in the San Juan Islands, a crime that later formed one of his federal charges.⁵ From Washington he moved east through Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, and Indiana before his final flight south.

Capture in the Bahamas

After ditching the Cessna 400 on Abaco Island on July 4, 2010, Harris-Moore was tied to at least seven burglaries there before stealing a 43-foot power boat from a marina on Great Abaco.⁶ The Royal Bahamas Police Force tracked him to Eleuthera Island. Before dawn on July 11, 2010, officers cornered him near a dock. When he tried to flee by boat, police fired at the engines to disable it and arrested him.² He was 19.

In a Bahamian court he pleaded guilty to illegally landing a plane and was sentenced to either three months in jail or a $300 fine. The U.S. Embassy reportedly paid the fine.⁷ He was deported on July 13, 2010, appeared first in federal court in the Southern District of Florida, and was then transferred by U.S. Marshals to Seattle to face federal charges.⁸

Charges and Sentence

On June 17, 2011, Harris-Moore pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Seattle to seven federal felonies:⁹

Bank burglary
Two counts of interstate transportation of a stolen aircraft
Interstate and foreign transportation of a stolen firearm
Being a fugitive in possession of a firearm
Piloting an aircraft without a valid airman’s certificate
Interstate transportation of a stolen vessel

He also pleaded guilty to 33 state felony charges in Washington.¹⁰ His defense attorney, John Henry Browne, later called it the “plea bargain of a lifetime” because it folded roughly 100 possible charges into a single package.¹¹

On December 16, 2011, an Island County Superior Court judge sentenced him to 87 months on the state charges. On January 27, 2012, U.S. District Judge Richard A. Jones imposed the maximum recommended federal term of 78 months plus three years of supervised release. Judge Jones described the conduct as “reckless” and ordered the federal term to run concurrently with the state sentence but consecutively to the juvenile sentence Harris-Moore had escaped from in 2008.¹²

Restitution and the Movie Deal

The federal plea agreement fixed victim losses at a minimum of $1,409,438.⁹ Harris-Moore agreed to give up any money he might earn from telling his story, with a court-appointed special master directing the proceeds to victims. U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan said at the time of the plea that Harris-Moore “will not make one dime from his crimes.”¹³

Twentieth Century Fox bought the film rights to Taking Flight, journalist Bob Friel’s book about the case, and hired Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black to write the script.¹⁴ Reports valued the deal at up to $1.3 million, though the studio called that figure “highly exaggerated.”¹⁵ Whatever the total, it covered his restitution in full. The court received $135,558 in 2012, and a final $900,000 payment was made to the U.S. Marshal’s office in November 2015, closing out the debt.¹⁶ Harris-Moore said, “I have absolutely zero interest in profiting from any of this.”

Release

Harris-Moore served time first at Walla Walla State Penitentiary and was moved in May 2012 to the general population at Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen, Washington.¹⁷¹⁸¹¹

Why the Case Drew a Fan Base

While Harris-Moore was still on the run, Facebook fan pages supporting him drew tens of thousands of followers, reaching more than 85,000 by the time of his arrest. Supporters framed his crimes as targeting the wealthy. Criminologist James Alan Fox compared the fascination with Harris-Moore to the historical outlaw appeal of figures like Jesse James and John Dillinger, saying his elusiveness made the story feel “entertaining” to the public.¹⁹ Commentators compared the story to the film Catch Me If You Can.²⁰ Residents of Camano Island, where many of the early burglaries happened, objected to the glorification and to the idea that anyone might make money from the crimes.

1
The Daily Herald. Key Events in the History of Colton Harris-Moore
2
The Daily Herald. After Two Years, One Chapter of Colton Harris-Moore’s Escape Comes to a Close
3
Rolling Stone. The Airplane Thief
4
The Guardian. Colton Harris-Moore: Barefoot Bandit
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FBI. Camano Island Man Sentenced to 78 Months in Prison for Multi-State Crime Spree
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The Guardian. Barefoot Bandit Arrested in the Bahamas
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BBC News. Barefoot Bandit Deported From Bahamas
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CNN. Barefoot Bandit Case
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U.S. Department of Justice. Colton Harris-Moore Pleads Guilty to Federal Charges
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ABC News. Barefoot Bandit Sentenced by Federal Judge in Seattle
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San Francisco Chronicle. Barefoot Bandit Has a Job When He’s Released
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U.S. Department of Justice. Colton Harris-Moore Sentenced to 78 Months
13
The Hollywood Reporter. Colton Harris-Moore Aka Barefoot Bandit Plea Deal
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The Seattle Times. Barefoot Bandit Sells Movie Rights
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CNN. Barefoot Bandit Movie
16
The Seattle Times. Hollywood Studio Pays $1 Million to Settle Barefoot Bandit’s Restitution
17
The Oregonian. Barefoot Bandit Colton Harris-Moore Moved to Stafford Creek
18
KGW. Colton Harris-Moore Out of Prison Into Work Release
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The Christian Science Monitor. Barefoot Bandit Fans Flock to Facebook to Offer Support
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The Guardian. Barefoot Bandit: Generation Y Hero