Modern Misfits: Colton "Barefoot Bandit" Harris-Moore

De: Grant Keane

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

In July 2010, Bahamian police shot out the engine of a stolen boat in the dark Caribbean waters off Harbour Island, ending one of the most extraordinary manhunts in American history. The nineteen-year-old at the helm had spent more than two years evading the FBI, stealing five airplanes without a single flying lesson, and becoming an international folk hero with sixty thousand Facebook followers cheering his every escape. His name was Colton Harris-Moore, but the world knew him as the Barefoot Bandit.

This is the definitive account of the teenage fugitive who taught himself to fly from books and Microsoft Flight Simulator, then put that self-taught knowledge to the test by stealing aircraft and crashing them across the Pacific Northwest. The story begins not with airplane thefts but with a ramshackle trailer on Camano Island, Washington, where a neglected seven-year-old started running away to survive in the forest and breaking into vacation homes for food. By the time he walked out of a juvenile halfway house in 2008, the patterns that would make him famous were already set.

The Barefoot Bandit phenomenon divided Americans in ways that revealed deep ambivalences about authority, celebrity, and the treatment of troubled youth. Fans celebrated him as a modern outlaw in the tradition of D.B. Cooper and Jesse James, while victims watched in disbelief as the person who violated their homes became a folk hero. The psychological evaluation prepared for his trial described his childhood as "a mind-numbing absence of hope," yet the crimes that emerged from that childhood caused real damage to real people across multiple states and countries.

Drawing on court documents, psychiatric evaluations, and extensive reporting, this book follows Colton from his earliest break-ins through his dramatic capture and imprisonment, and into his largely invisible life since his 2016 release. It examines the failures of child protective services, schools, and the juvenile justice system that allowed a troubled boy to become a celebrated criminal. The result is a story that is neither simple condemnation nor romantic celebration, but the story of how this American outlaw was made.