RatherBeFlying
9th Oct 2009, 03:40
Police suspect 'Barefoot Burglar' is stealing, crashing planes - CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/08/washington.barefoot.burglar/index.html)The 18-year-old man police call the prime suspect does not have a pilot's license. But he does have a nickname -- "The Barefoot Burglar" -- and a Facebook fan club, which compares him to Jesse James "without the murders" and exhorts: "Fly, Colt, Fly."
Police say Colton "Colt" Harris-Moore has been linked to crimes in five counties involving planes, luxury cars and boats. He's known to alternate between squatting in vacant vacation homes, which he allegedly burglarizes, and roughing it in the woods.
Since November, police say, at least three small, private planes have been stolen and flown away. The latest to go missing crash-landed last week in a clearing in Granite Falls, Washington, after running out of fuel, police said.
The rough landing damaged the Cessna 182, which along with its instruments is worth more than $500,000. But authorities said the plane's pilot appears to have walked away unhurt.
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The theft of a Cessna 182 from the San Juan Islands in November jogged Wallace's memory. He recalled what he had found on a computer he said Harris-Moore used. "He had looked at flight manuals and how to fly a plane," he said.
Another theft of a small experimental plane had been reported in September. John Zerby, undersheriff of San Juan County, said police don't think the two thefts are a coincidence. "This doesn't happen here, that's why we think they go together," he said.
Police say Colton "Colt" Harris-Moore has been linked to crimes in five counties involving planes, luxury cars and boats. He's known to alternate between squatting in vacant vacation homes, which he allegedly burglarizes, and roughing it in the woods.
Since November, police say, at least three small, private planes have been stolen and flown away. The latest to go missing crash-landed last week in a clearing in Granite Falls, Washington, after running out of fuel, police said.
The rough landing damaged the Cessna 182, which along with its instruments is worth more than $500,000. But authorities said the plane's pilot appears to have walked away unhurt.
.
.
.
The theft of a Cessna 182 from the San Juan Islands in November jogged Wallace's memory. He recalled what he had found on a computer he said Harris-Moore used. "He had looked at flight manuals and how to fly a plane," he said.
Another theft of a small experimental plane had been reported in September. John Zerby, undersheriff of San Juan County, said police don't think the two thefts are a coincidence. "This doesn't happen here, that's why we think they go together," he said.