54. The Barefoot Bandit (Colton Harris Moore)
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When all your rich people from Dallas and Houston move out here, the thieves are just drawn to them. Thieves are just wired that way. You used to not have to lock your door in Henderson County.

Joshua Paul Calhoun had earned quite the reputation in East Texas. The residents of Henderson County began to refer to him as the "Super Thief." Tractors, pickup trucks, horse trailers, or cattle. If it had wheels or hooves, Josh Calhoun would steal it and then sell it for beer money or a bag of weed. And Joshua Paul Calhoun was so much more than just an accomplished thief. Joshua Calhoun was also a bottom-of-the-barrel con artist.

During his escapades he had posed as a truck driver, a CEO of a major corporation, an astronaut, each persona less believable than the one before. He'd almost always get caught because Mr. Calhoun wasn't a very bright young man.

The Henderson County Sheriff at the time, Ray Nutt, who had become very familiar with Joshua Calhoun and his behavior, once described the super thief to the Houston press as, quote, not retarded, but there's definitely something wrong with him.

Indeed. And despite a laundry list of run-ins with law enforcement over the years, Joshua Calhoun had managed to avoid spending any major amount of time behind bars, even after strangling his new wife during their senior year of high school in February 1999. Just a few weeks after turning 18 years old, Calhoun received a slap on the wrist for what appeared to be attempted murder. He still had a whole life of crime ahead of him.

The super thief was arrested for the second time about a year and a half later for stealing a backhoe and a trailer worth $5,000 from a local defense attorney. He pleaded guilty to two felony counts and received four years of supervision and a $500 fine. Joshua Calhoun was back on the dirt streets in no time. Another second chance for the habitual fuck-up.

and Joshua Paul Calhoun used that second second chance to continue being a drunkard. In March 2006, Calhoun was arrested for his very first DWI. After his release, Joshua crashed his truck hours after picking it up from the impound. He was already drunk again, but this time he ran away from the scene. Blood was pouring out of his face. Joshua Calhoun actually called the police himself later that night from the hospital because he had a story to tell.

Two Mexican men had kidnapped him, took him to a dirt road, robbed him, stole his truck, and knocked him out cold. It's like the best country music song you've never heard, because it never happened. Joshua Calhoun was arrested on the spot and received a 180-day jail sentence, of which he would never serve a day.

because Josh Calhoun left Texas behind and fled to Westminster, Maryland, where by September 2007, he had already been arrested multiple times for driving while intoxicated, sometimes just days apart, sometimes by the same cop. One time Joshua was arrested for DWI at his house because someone had seen him smash his truck into a guardrail while leaving a bar earlier that evening. They knew it was him because he had dropped his wallet in the parking lot where it happened.

After wearing out his welcome in the "Old Line State," Joshua Calhoun returned to the "Lone Star State," where a judge sentenced him to 90 days in jail for leaving Texas without permission. Less than a month after his release, Calhoun was caught trying to steal a pickup truck and a trailer full of bulls from a well-known rodeo producer. The ranch hands held him down until the sheriff arrived, but no charges were ever filed.

Three days later, Joshua Calhoun tried to steal an airplane. Authorities say that 28-year-old Joshua Paul Calhoun deceived an airport employee into thinking he had permission to fly the plane.

On March 4th, 2009, around 7 in the morning, the Super Thief drove his truck to the tiny municipal airport in Athens, Texas. He then boarded a single propeller airplane that clearly did not belong to him. The engine wouldn't start. Assuming the battery was dead, Joshua Calhoun retrieved his pickup truck and parked next to the airplane that he intended to steal. He brought with him jumper cables that would do the job.

Meanwhile, a 65-year-old former pilot and flight instructor named Carol Dyson was watching all of this happen from across the way. Mr. Dyson did not recognize the man trying to start the airplane, which belonged to someone he knew. So Mr. Dyson drove down the runway to meet this mysterious pilot and to see what this was all about.

According to the Houston Press, Josh Calhoun told Carol Dyson that he was good friends with the owners of the plane and that they had requested that he fly to South Texas to "check out a ranch" for potential purchase, presumably. So, absolutely convinced, Mr. Dyson helped Joshua Calhoun jumpstart the engine of the aircraft. Calhoun climbed aboard and Carol Dyson drove back to his hangar.

Minutes later, Mr. Dyson said he witnessed the plane speeding down the runway with the cockpit door wide open. It lifted into the air and flew east for about two miles before turning around and crashing into a pasture just outside of Athens' city limits. Joshua Calhoun was fine. Other than some minor cuts and bruises, he walked away clean, and he probably could have escaped scot-free had he not left the pickup truck that was registered in his name back on the runway.

Two hours later, the police arrived at the airport to investigate. In the middle of recounting what he had witnessed, Carol Dyson noticed that Calhoun's abandoned truck was inching across the runway at a glacial pace. The police jumped in their cars and sped towards the truck. When they got close, a man hopped out of the slowly moving vehicle and walked towards them. It was Joshua Calhoun. He explained that he had purchased the airplane on the internet with $52,000 that he had saved from working in the oil field.

and while actively bleeding from the fresh, open wounds in his face, he told the cops that he was just as surprised as they were that it was wrecked. Calhoun said he had loaned the plane to a friend who must have crashed it, but the cops immediately recognized the name of this supposed friend because it belonged to someone that had just recently died. No airplanes were involved. Joshua Paul Calhoun was arrested. From jail, he told the Athens Review, "I've always been fascinated with flying.

Then Calhoun bonded out on $50,000 and reportedly fled the country, although another attempted plane theft at the same airport a few months later leaves that matter up for dispute. However, on July 23, 2009, the day he was supposed to appear in court for the plane theft, Calhoun was spotted driving a 1993 Ford F-250 across the border from Mexico into the United States.

He told the border agents that he was a doctor returning from scouting locations for a new office in Mexico. According to a federal complaint, the agents then ran Joshua Calhoun's license and were alerted that he should be considered armed and dangerous. When they asked him to exit his vehicle, Calhoun started it instead.

Border agent Cynthia Sandoval attempted to open the truck and remove the keys. Calhoun stepped on the gas and sped away, dragging agent Sandoval over 40 feet down the road. Border agent Cynthia Sandoval suffered only minor injuries, and Joshua Calhoun got away. But less than a week later, he reappeared in Henderson County when he and a friend were persuaded to sell crystal meth to an undercover cop at a liquor store in a town called Gun Barrel City.

But again Calhoun got away by driving off-road across the state highway, even after the cops shot out the tires of the truck which was driven by Calhoun's friend. The next day, according to the Houston Press, Joshua Calhoun stole a truck equipped with the oil well drilling equipment from a construction site in Big Sandy. Calhoun was busted when he passed by the owner of the equipment coming the other direction on the highway.

This incident is not to be confused with the time that Calhoun stole and crashed a tanker truck that contained over 4,000 gallons of diesel fuel. Yet again, Joshua Calhoun spent an insignificant amount of time in jail. Again, according to the Houston Press, despite all of his arrests over the years, the longest sentence Calhoun had served to date was 241 days for violating his probation with a failed marijuana test in 2004.

It wasn't until June 18th, 2014, that 34-year-old Joshua Calhoun's 15-year crime spree came to an end, but not without a high-speed chase near Lake Palestine, where he drove through someone's front yard and ran two bystanders off the road. Although he was able to escape temporarily, police discovered Calhoun sitting on the front porch of a house nonchalantly as if he owned the place.

If the sweat stains and scratches all over his body from running through the woods weren't a dead giveaway that he was the man behind the wheel, authorities found a Whataburger receipt in the truck that led them to surveillance footage from the restaurant that sealed the deal. Joshua Paul Calhoun was sentenced to 15 years in prison for evading arrest and using a stolen vehicle as a deadly weapon. He is eligible for parole in 2032.

As outrageous of a story as it is, from the car chases to the airplane crashes, the life and crimes of the super thief remained local. Other than Paul Knight's piece in the Houston Press, the only mentions of Joshua Paul Calhoun are found in small East Texas newspapers. Perhaps Calhoun wasn't a sympathetic enough figure. Maybe a drug addict constantly stealing things wasn't shocking enough news. Maybe it just slipped through the cracks.

Whatever the case may be, the super thief was entirely ignored by the national media. The same cannot be said for Colton Harris Moore, also known as the Barefoot Bandit, who, as a teenager, committed a string of burglaries in three different countries while running from law enforcement, the media, and his past. A 17-year-old kid from the Pacific Northwest becomes an unintentional international folk hero on this episode of Swindled.

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He started down the path of criminality, if we can call it literally, to eat. When he was younger, his mother was not taking care of him and was using food stamps for beer and things. And so he would break into cabins and things in Camino Almond just to get food. One would think that growing up on Camano Island would be paradise for an adventurous child.

The island, located in the Puget Sound, north of Seattle, has forests, beaches, and state parks. There are hiking trails and biking trails and plenty of wildlife, including the snowbirds that return to their vacation homes every summer. Commando Island seems like an ideal place for the outdoorsy type, which is how one might describe a young Colton Harris Moore. But Colton Harris Moore's childhood on the island was anything but ideal.

Pamela Harris, Colton's mother, was an alcoholic, usually unemployed. Some say that Pam drank and smoked while she was pregnant with Colt in 1990, the beginning of a turbulent relationship with her son that would continue even after he was born. Colton's father, or the man who was presumed to be Colt's father, was a man named Gordon Moore. He was also a drunk, an abusive one, who spent most of Colton's childhood in and out of prison.

In May 2003, Gordon was arrested for pushing Colton to the ground and grasping his son's throat. Colton, who was 12 years old at the time, had reportedly thrown a baseball-sized rock at his father because he did not want to partake in the family barbecue. Those type of behavioral issues had become a common occurrence. Pamela was apparently angry with her son for calling the cops on his father. Colton's father was apparently angry too because he never came back.

Gordon Moore cut off contact with Pam and her son and relocated to Las Vegas, reportedly. No divorce necessary since he and Pam were never married. In fact, Colton's parents had been separated for a while by that point. Pamela had married a different man named William Kohler, who by all accounts Colton adored. But William had died a few months earlier from unknown causes. It's presumed that his lifelong love of heroin played a role.

That left mother and son living alone in a small trailer in the woods. Surrounded by cedar trees, plastic tarps, and broken down pickup trucks, the family survived on disability checks that Pam received for a broken back she had suffered during one of Gordon's more physical drunken rampages. But she did not always share. Oftentimes, Pam would spend the money on beer and cigarettes and lottery tickets while Colton's stomach rumbled the walls of their trailer home.

If that wasn't bad enough, when Colton misbehaved, Pam would scream at him and break his toys. Colt would fight back. Neighbors would call the cops. Over the years, Child Protective Services had visited the household on at least a dozen different occasions. It was a never-ending vicious cycle that can take its toll on a developing brain.

And Colton's mother knew that, although her son was creative and intelligent, there had always been "something off" about him. "Sort of a disconnection," she said. At school, he would not listen to the teachers. He was getting into fistfights on a regular basis. Even before that, when Colton was two years old, Pam claims her son used to literally bash his head against the wall in fits of rage. It was obvious that the boy needed help.

And Pam says she tried to get him help, but just gave up at a certain point. Besides, Colton was at his best when he was just left to his own devices. He had an extreme amount of self-focus. He would spend days at a time in the woods alone or keep his head buried in books about airplanes, his most favorite thing in the world.

But as he aged, his behavior had grown more concerning. Six months after his father had abandoned Kamano Island, 12-year-old Colton Harris Moore was arrested for breaking into the middle school he attended. He had used a butane lighter to burn a hole in a window through which he entered. Once inside, Colton stole a laptop and a package of blank CDRs. Colton Harris Moore pleaded guilty for those transgressions and was given 56 hours of community service and six months of supervision.

It was his first conviction for possessing stolen property. Colton would have three more by the time he turned 13. He would also have a new friend, his only friend, besides his dog, an older kid named Harley Davidson Ironwing. I repeat, Harley Davidson Ironwing, a derelict who was basically supporting himself via home burglaries.

Harley's mother was an addict. His father, an avid biker, clearly, had died of leukemia when he was four. A Native American foster family adopted Harley at age six, which completed his badass name. Harley Davidson took Colton Harris Moore under his iron wing and tutored his protege on the finer details of breaking into houses. He taught Colton how to pick locks, convert stolen goods to cash, and stay invisible. Colton Harris Moore was a natural.

He loves his money like I do. Harley told the Everett Herald about his friend. He wants the same thing, just to have money. To sit on a pile of cash, to throw it up in the air and have it showered down. Nobody in town really talked to him or liked him. I don't know of any friends he had besides me. He's like I am. He's smart. He learns real quick.

you just gotta take the time to show them. It came natural to me because I've done it for a while, but him, he was kind of still new at it, so I had to help him out a little bit. I would go out there at nighttime, catch a light bus, get out there. He'd come and pick me up. We'd go and do our burglaries. We were hitting about, I'd say about 15, 20 houses a night.

15 to 20 houses a night, sometimes together, sometimes alone. Colton and Harley were coming out with cell phones, jewelry, iPods, anything worth a buck, or sometimes nothing at all. Sometimes Colton would break into a house just to take a shower.

It didn't take long for the local police to figure out who was responsible. They connected Colton Harris Moore to the string of burglaries because he had used a stolen credit card to purchase almost four grand worth of computer equipment. They'd also found the stash of stolen goods he had hidden in the woods. But every time authorities tried to take Colton into custody, including two times where they caught him in the act, he would simply outrun the police and get away, and there was no catching him.

At 15 years old, Colton Harris Moore was a physical specimen. 6'5", 200 pounds. It's amazing he was able to hide anywhere. But he did. Using tents, empty vacation homes, and random people's couches.

Many in the community believed that Colton was living in the woods full time. It was rumored he was carrying a gun. The legend was growing by the day. Everybody's starting to lock down and get worried now, you know. In the old days, we all just hid our keys in the ignition. We can't really do that anymore, which is kind of sad.

People on Commando Island and the surrounding areas began to lock their doors. They stopped leaving their vehicles running unattended. Everyone was worried about the teenage bandits that struck under the cover of darkness. Wanted posters featuring Colton and Harley's faces were posted in the windows of every shop in town. Enough was enough. One night in February 2007, a neighbor noticed lights on inside of a vacation home that usually sat dormant during the winter.

Police surrounded the home and Colton Harris Moore surrendered. Harley Davidson Iron Wing turned himself in two days later. In March 2007, Iron Wing pleaded guilty to charges of trespassing and unauthorized use of a vehicle. He was sentenced and served nearly a year in juvenile detention.

According to the Everett Herald, soon after his release, Harley broke into a church's safe in the middle of a Sunday prayer service. He was arrested again and sentenced to three years in prison. After serving some of that time, Harley Davidson Ironwing was transferred to a work release program in Seattle.

On October 20th, 2009, he was permitted to leave the supervised housing for a scheduled job interview, but he never returned. Carley was found a week later when he was arrested for shoplifting at the Everett Mall. Back in 2007, Colton Harris Moore pleaded guilty to three charges of burglary. He was sentenced to three years of juvenile detention at a facility in Renton, Washington. Kamano Island could finally sleep again knowing the serial burglar was off the streets.

But that relief would be short-lived. On April 29th, 2008, about 14 months into his sentence, Colton Harris Moore slipped out of his assigned bunk bed. When the coast was clear, he escaped through an open window and into the night towards Commando Island. Colton Harris Moore was headed home. Support for Swindled comes from Rocket Money.

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In the months following Colton Harris Moore's escape from the youth detention center, a rise in home burglaries swept across Kamano Island.

No one had seen Colton in the area, probably due to the fact that there was a felony warrant out for his arrest, but local authorities assumed the recent resurgence of break-ins was more than just coincidence. Well, police believe it was Colton Harris Moore who hit a number of businesses last year, but it is certainly the speculation of the town that he's back. There was reason to believe that Colton Harris Moore was back.

The methods were similar, and some of the businesses and houses that were broken into during the original spree were hit again. Colton's mother Pamela Kohler also admitted that her son had visited. She said she had cooked breakfast for him one morning before sending him away. She did not want to be charged with harboring a fugitive.

Pamela told the Everett Herald that she tried to convince her son to turn himself in, but she wasn't hopeful about that prospect. Quote, I really don't think he'll do it in the summertime. Who wants to leave the good weather and go to jail? Not Colton Harris Moore, who was finally spotted in Kamano Island on July 17th, 2008, three months after his jailbreak.

Island County deputies spotted Moore in a black sports car last night, speeding and driving erratically. When they tried to pull him over, he jumped out of the moving car. The officer picked a lit area, hoping that he would pull over to the right. Instead of pulling to the right, he went to the left and then into the Elger Bay, southwest corner of the Elger Bay grocery. A dumpster stopped the car from going into the store, but it didn't stop Moore. He ran off before police could catch him, launching an island-wide search.

Colton Harris-Moore had gotten away, again, but he'd left behind a backpack in the stolen Mercedes that he had abandoned. Inside of that backpack, police found a digital camera containing self-portraits of Harris-Moore. In them, Colton is lying on his back in a wooded area, holding the camera above his face. He's wearing a black polo shirt with an embroidered Mercedes logo on the breast. There's junk food scattered around his head. He looks completely at ease.

Colton Harris Moore continued to evade arrest for the remainder of the year, and he continued to pillage Kamano Island and the surrounding communities, including Idaho and British Columbia. The teenager was suspected in over 100 burglaries of houses, grocery stores, banks, fire stations, and patrol cars. He had reportedly stolen more than $1.5 million worth of goods.

Well, that seems like a weird comparison. However, the teenager and the founder of the Pan-Islamic Terrorist Organization did share a common interest in airplanes.

In addition to bicycles, cars, and boats, Colton Harris Moore had stolen a single propeller plane from a small airport on Orcas Island on November 11th, 2008. He taught himself how to fly by studying aircraft manuals and playing flight simulator video games. During his first flight, Colton was in the air for three and a half hours. It was the highlight of his life, a euphoric experience he had dreamt about since the day he was born. Colton Harris Moore belonged in the air.

The next day, tribal police on the Yakima Indian Reservation discovered an abandoned airplane that had crash-landed on the east side of the Cascade Mountain Range. There was dried vomit in the cockpit, but no pilot to be found. Investigators at the time chalked it up to drug cartels. They are usually the only ones bold enough to steal an airplane.

The second time Colton Harris Moore stole an airplane was on September 11th, 2009. He flew it 10 miles from Friday Harbor back to the airport on Orcas Island. That trip took place at night, completely undetected. Two and a half weeks later, Colton stole a third plane, this time in Bonner's Ferry, Idaho. He flew the plane more than 250 miles west to Granite Falls, Washington, where he ran into severe weather and crash-landed in a field of tree stumps.

According to Rolling Stone, investigators later determined that the pilot was so afraid that the plane would explode, he kicked open the passenger door to escape. Investigators also later determined that that pilot was Colton Harris Moore. They found his DNA in the cabin of the aircraft.

There were also bare footprints leading from the airplane to a makeshift camp in the woods. The same bare footprints that were found in the hangar where the plane was stolen in Idaho. Gardner says Harris Moore jimmied open the door to his hangar and took off in his airplane last September. Authorities found that plane four days later in western Washington in Snohomish County. Tonight, Gardner says the teenage serial burglar deserves to be locked up.

As authorities closed in on this barefoot bandit, a gunshot rang out nearby. The manhunt came to an end. There was no trace of Colton Harris Moore. It was never determined if Colton fired that shot at the police, but from then on, he would be considered armed and dangerous. "I always figured the cops would kill him," Pamela Kohler told the Everett Herald, adding that if that's what happens, then it's supposed to happen.

but that it would not diminish the amount of pride she felt for what her son had accomplished. "I hope to hell he stole those airplanes. I would be so proud," she said. "But put in there that I want him to wear a parachute next time." I said if he stole the airplanes and can fly, I'm proud of him flying. Because he's never had a lesson. He crashed three times, right? Yeah.

He has evidently one of those phones like our president and can't be traced. I think it's a Blackberry. Oh, he's very smart. Go on. You compared him to Einstein, I believe. He's two or three points below Einstein. Do you feel any sense of responsibility here, ma'am? No, I don't. No, and everything was fine on your end, huh? I think it was. Did you know he was living out in the woods? Huh?

Why is the preteen son out living with friends? Why isn't he at home and going to bed on time, going to school and stuff like that? If he came here, he knows he would be arrested. No, but I mean back in the day when all this started. Was he living there when he was 14? Well, I tried to get him into the Seattle Children's Hospital, and they told me on the phone they would not accept his insurance. Oh, well, here we go.

Meanwhile, the legend of Colton Harris Moore was growing. He had been on the run for over a year, leaving a collection of victims and admirers in his trail.

A man in a nearby town started a Facebook fan page for Colton Harris Moore, the Barefoot Bandit, which, at its peak, was followed by 100,000 people. Other fans were writing and recording songs about him and uploading them to YouTube. There was even merchandise, t-shirts featuring the face of Colton Harris Moore with the words, Mama Tried.

But the barefoot bandit mania had not captured the imagination of everybody, especially those who had been personally affected. You can, you know, create songs and put Facebook pages up, but it's a criminal is the bottom line. They said he shot at a policeman, he stole a policeman's gun. I have absolutely no respect for him. I know that there's this folk hero, cult hero kind of thing going on out there, but the guy's just a...

just a blatant criminal. He's a criminal. He's hurt people. He's damaged people. Average people. Middle class people. We want him stopped. Most of us want him dead. Period. Armed militias patrolled the streets. Townspeople raised money to hire a bounty hunter. And a local attorney eventually offered Colton $50,000 to turn himself in. But the barefoot bandit was nowhere to be found.

From prison, Harley Davidson Ironwing also weighed in on Colton's saga. He is good, Harley admitted, but added, quote, he needs to quit taking pictures of himself. Ironwing also asked reporters to pass along a message to his friend on the run, quote, stay out until help can come. If Harley Davidson Ironwing was referring to himself, Colton would be waiting for a while.

because as soon as Harley was released from custody, he was arrested again. Meanwhile, Harris-Moore's former accomplice appears in court today. 20-year-old Harley Davidson Iron Wing didn't show his face when pleading not guilty to an assault charge. He is accused of knocking over an elderly man in Stanwood last month while fleeing a grocery store with stolen cheese. In February 2010, Colton Harris-Moore reemerged on Orcas Island in a plane stolen from Anacortes.

Within hours, not far from where he landed, a grocery store was burglarized. A stolen airplane and grocery store burglary complete with telltale chalk outlines of bare feet has folks on Washington State's San Juan Islands worried the burglar known as the Barefoot Bandit has returned. Whoever it was took cash and food, including a very expensive blueberry cheesecake, and left behind these chalk footprints and a note that said, "See ya."

In the following weeks, Colton tried to break into a hardware store. He was also captured on surveillance video at a marina moments before a fishing boat was stolen. The vessel was later recovered floating captainless off the southern tip of Commando Island, but authorities suspected that the barefoot bandit was on the move, and they were right. At the end of May, a handwritten note was recovered at a veterinary clinic in Raymond, Washington, about 100 miles south of Seattle.

The note read: "Drove by, had some extra cash. Please use this money for the care of the animals." A $100 bill had been included. The note was signed: Colton Harris Moore, aka the Barefoot Bandit, Kamano Island, Washington. Investigators seized the note and the $100 as evidence. When Colton's mother heard the news, she replaced her son's donation to the clinic with $100 of her own.

On June 1, 2010, a stolen boat from southwest Washington was found in Oregon. That same day, a car was stolen from a small airport close to where the boat was anchored. A week later, a Cadillac Escalade in McMinnville went missing after a burglar failed to steal a plane.

That Escalade was recovered the following day at a small airport near Ontario, Oregon. It had been ditched in favor of a pilot's truck, which was found two days later near Boise, Idaho. The police could not keep up, but the trail reappeared on June 13, 2010. A car stolen in Wyoming was recovered near a small airport in Spearfish, South Dakota. No airplanes were missing.

Five days later, a family in Yankton, South Dakota returned from vacation at 3 in the morning to find a naked teenage boy inside of their house. The homeowners tried to apprehend the intruder but stopped in their tracks when a laser sight was pointed at them. I have a gun, a voice in the dark warned them. I'll shoot. I'm screaming at him, get out of my house, what are you doing in my house? And he said, stop, I've got a gun, I'll shoot, I'll shoot.

Like usual, Colton Harris Moore was able to escape before the police arrived. Detectives discovered that there had been break-ins attempted at 12 other homes in the area and that a minivan was missing. The manhunt stretched further east towards the end of June. The barefoot bandit continued to hop from stolen car to stolen car and continued his attempts at breaking into planes everywhere he went.

On July 3, 2010, in Bloomington, Indiana, he was successful. Colton Harris Moore boarded a single-engine Cessna 400 airplane inside of a locked hangar at the Monroe County Airport. The keys were still in it. 1,200 miles and 11 hours later, the barefoot bandit came to a rough landing in shallow shoreline waters.

The crash triggered the airplane's emergency locator beacon. That's how the FBI learned that the Barefoot Bandit was no longer in the United States. He was in Great Abaco, an island in the Bahamas, where within hours, burglaries were on the rise.

Let me tell you about this man.

A fugitive teen who's gained mythical status for eluding the law since 2008 may have crash-landed in the Bahamas. Police are investigating whether there's a connection between 19-year-old Colton Harris Moore and a plane that was stolen from Indiana and found crashed in shallow waters off Abaco Island. By the time rescuers reached the crash site Sunday, nobody was inside the plane.

But U.S. authorities say the heist has similarities to other thefts attributed to the Washington state teen who has no formal flight training. A statement on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Nassau says the teen may be hurt. Colton Harris Moore was not hurt. He spent his first few days on Great Abaco Island, breaking into at least seven homes and businesses to steal cash and food, before commandeering a boat and motoring it south to the island of Eleuthera,

Bahamian authorities were hot on his heels. The FBI had alerted them that the barefoot bandit faced federal criminal charges in the United States for stealing property and airplanes, and that he was now on the loose in their country. There was a $10,000 bounty on information leading to his arrest. We want to get him, FBI Special Agent Stephen Dean announced. He's turned from a regional nuisance into an international problem.

Police in the Bahamas recovered the stolen boat in Eleuthera within days. Burglaries in the area had already begun and Colton Harris Moore was having no trouble blending in. There were plenty of tourists and boats around the islands for the annual regatta, but his anonymity did not last long. On July 11th, 2010, according to NBC News, witnesses on Harbor Island recognized the barefoot bandit and called the police.

When the police arrived to investigate at around 2:00 a.m., Colton stole another boat and sped away. A high-speed chase ensued until Harris-Moore reportedly bottomed out and became stuck in a sandbar. Bahamian police then disabled both of the engines on his boat with bullets. Colton Harris-Moore had nowhere else to go.

Everybody was screaming, "You're caught! Put down your weapon! Stop!" He proceeded to put the weapon to his head saying, "I'm gonna kill myself. I won't go back to jail. I can't go back to jail." Authorities say Colton Harris Moore put a gun to his head when his back was against the wall, but ultimately he tossed it overboard along with his laptop computer, then surrendered. Colton Harris Moore has since denied that sequence of events. He said there was no gun and there was no sandbar.

Either way, he was in custody. And true to form, he was barefoot when arrested. After two years on the run, the so-called barefoot bandit accused of robbing people in eight states and two other countries is in jail this morning in the Bahamas. I am pleased to say that the suspect, who has been positively identified as Colton Harris Moore...

aka the barefoot bandit, was flown to the capital city of Nassau, Bahamas under police escort and remains in police custody. Acting on information received from members of the public, the police responded to a sighting of the suspect in Harbor Island. After a brief chase, the suspect was taken into custody without incident. Police officers were able to confiscate a firearm and other items of evidential value.

Of course, the first thing the American media did upon hearing the news of Colton's arrest was stick a microphone in front of his mother's face. What do you want to say to Colton? All I'm going to say is he's safe and I'm happy and I love him and I miss him. How soon will you see him? As soon as I can. Are you planning on going to the Bahamas? I haven't decided. Have you been able to talk to him at all?

I missed his call because I was on the phone and he called my sister. Has he been saying how he's been treated down there at all to anybody? He said he's fine. Colton Harris Moore was not fine. More than $3 million in damaged and stolen property had been attributed to him. He was the suspect in more than 70 criminal investigations in the United States, not to mention the charges pending in the Bahamas.

On July 13th, 2010, Colton Harris Moore pleaded guilty to illegal entry to the Bahamas and for illegally landing a plane. He was sentenced to three months in prison along with a $300 fine, but as part of the plea deal, he was extradited to the United States that same day. Hey Colton, how you doing? How you doing, man? We love you, man. We love you.

On June 17, 2011, Colton Havis Moore pleaded guilty to seven felony charges in a United States federal court, including two counts of interstate transportation of a stolen aircraft and piloting an aircraft without a valid airman's certificate.

The other charges included burglary, interstate and foreign transportation of a firearm, being a fugitive in possession of a firearm, and interstate transportation of a stolen vessel. Per the terms of his plea deal, Harris Moore agreed to not receive any financial gain from telling his story, including from selling the movie rights for $1 million to 20th Century Fox. All the profit earned from such ventures would be used to pay the $1.4 million in restitution he owed to his victims.

In addition, federal prosecutors recommended that Moore be sentenced to six years in prison. He has taken the first step to accept responsibility for his actions. Mr. Harris Moore will spend a significant time in prison.

Six months later, in Washington, Colton Harris Moore pleaded guilty to dozens of state charges. He was sentenced to more than seven years in prison concurrent with the federal time.

It's no stretch of the imagination to say that I'm lucky to be alive," Colton reportedly told the judge. "I find you guilty as charged. I do think that this case is a tragedy. It's a tragedy in many ways, but it's also a triumph of the human spirit in other ways.

As I've said, I've read all the documents and sympathize with the defendant for the terrible upbringing that he has. As one person, I think it was your investigator, indicated, it was a mind-numbing absence of hope.

Four years into his prison sentence, in December 2015, Colton Harris Moore launched his own website, which housed a personal blog.

across multiple posts. For the first time, the barefoot bandit shared insight about certain aspects of his two-year-long crime spree. He wrote in depth about what it felt like to steal an airplane and why he did it. Quote, I stole airplanes because I belong in the sky. My element is flight. I risked my life to fill that and I would do it again. But the next airplane I am in will be the one I am training in.

Colton remained hyper-focused on aviation. He spent his time in prison studying aeronautical engineering. He planned to design and build airplanes upon his release. An executive at the Boeing company caught wind of Colton's passion for flight and began to mentor him. Colton had also become good friends with the owner of one of the planes that he had stolen. Opportunity was falling from the sky.

Another post on Colton's blog addressed the Fox deal that paid back 95% of what he owed in restitution. Colton wrote that he hoped the movie never happens because his life hasn't even started yet. Quote,

To be fair, this podcast is way longer than five minutes. But needless to say, Colton Harris Moore's disdain for the media was evident. He had even included a message on the front of his website announcing that he would not be granting interviews.

"Please do not approach or contact me," he wrote. The answer is, and will remain, a resounding no. But things changed when Pam got sick. She had been diagnosed with lung cancer and did not have long to live. Colton knew that by the time he got out of prison, his mother would be gone. So he launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to have his mom cryogenically frozen like Ted Williams. It was the only way he would ever be able to see her again.

And the Barefoot Bandit granted interviews to radio and television stations for the first time to drum up support. We're not talking about a garage freezer here. It's a multi-week process to bring somebody down to minus 196 degrees Celsius. And they can remain at that temperature indefinitely for thousands of years. It's Pam's only hope. The doctors have completely given up on her. You can...

Colton's funding goal of $308,000 was never reached. Pamela Kohler died on May 17, 2016. In July 2016, Colton Harris Moore was released on probation to a halfway house.

His defense attorney gave him a job doing low-level clerical work. Of course, Colton would have much rather been flying. He was always working on that goal. The same month that he was released, Colton launched another GoFundMe to raise money for flight school training, but his probation officer vetoed the idea and claimed any money raised would go towards paying his remaining restitution. "I feel like my dream has been crushed," Colton later tweeted.

A heavy past was keeping him grounded, and he was afraid it always would. He told Cairo Radio, I think it's going to be difficult to have a normal life. I really do, he said. In fact, I don't think I'm ever going to have a normal life. I'm just going to have to focus on the things that are important to me and be around like-minded people, and those people are out there.

But as far as my notoriety goes, that was never something that I really aspired to create. It just sort of happened. And, you know, looking back, I spent a lot of time in the woods and running around, and so I wasn't really aware of how big everything was. And it...

It just kind of snowballed. I've always tried to tell this to people. If it was up to me, nobody would know who I am. I really do not enjoy the notoriety. I don't enjoy the publicity. I don't go by the name Barefoot Bandit. My name's Colton Harris Moore, and I think that...

The past is the past. That's the most important message I have. The past is the past. And I made a lot of mistakes in my youth, and I'm all grown up now. And it's pretty much as simple as that. Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, a.k.a. Deformer, a.k.a. Trevor Davidson Ironwink.

Special thanks to Shea from the podcast All Crime No Cattle for his help on this episode. Make sure you check out their show if you are into Texas true crime. For more information about Swindled, you can visit swindledpodcast.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at Swindled Podcast. Or you can send us a postcard at P.O. Box 6044, Austin, Texas 78762. But please, no packages. We do not trust you.

Swindled is a completely independent production, which means no network, no investors, no bosses, no shadowy money men, no mentors from Boeing. And we plan to keep it that way. But we need your support. Become a valued listener at patreon.com slash swindled.

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Thanks for listening.

So that's why I, Leroy Luna, have created a podcast called Excuse Me, That's Illegal, where we'll take a hardcore look at some softcore crimes. No TED Talks on Bundy here. The letters BTK won't be coming from these lips, unless he had a brother that used to steal library books. Suppose I'd be willing to go balls deep into that one if that were the case.

Anyways, you'll hear stories such as the Mad Pooper, a female jogger who wreaked havoc in a Colorado Springs neighborhood, using one family's front yard as her own personal dumping grounds. If this kind of content sounds like it's up your alley, excuse me, that's illegal. It's available right now on all your favorite podcatchers. So come join me. I'll be right here waiting for you.

Thanks to SimpliSafe for sponsoring the show. Protect your home this summer with 20% off any new SimpliSafe system when you sign up for Fast Protect Monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash swindled. That's simplisafe.com slash swindled. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.