HUFFPOST LIVE

I'll  be appearing on Huffpost Live -- today at 1:30 PM EST (10:30 AM PST) -- for a segment on "Criminals We Love." The panel will be discussing the Mountain Man of Utah, the Hermit of Maine, and Colton Harris-Moore our own Barefoot Bandit.

HuffPost Live "Criminals We Love"

Another Quick Colton Harris-Moore Update

According to San Juan County prosecutor Randy Gaylord, the victims of the Anacortes plane theft (which Colton Harris-Moore pleaded guilty to once but is now being charged with a second time by Skagit County) are indeed already on the restitution list.

Says Gaylord: “The restitution order included $27,606.12 to Global Aerospace for repair of the 2008 Cirrus SR-22, N47LG (parts and labor)."

Global Aerospace is a California-based insurance company that specializes in aviation. They, presumably, held the policy on the Anacortes Cirrus and already reimbursed the plane's owners for the repairs, and thus they would be the ones eligible to seek restitution from Colton. 

For now, Harris-Moore's best chance to pay that restitution, which totals more than $1.3 million, lies with a potential movie deal where 20th Century Fox agreed to pay for Colton's life rights, with all of his proceeds going to the crime victims.   

LET'S PLAY DOUBLE JEOPARDY!

Answer: Colton Harris-Moore

Question: Who cannot be charged (again) for the theft of the Cirrus SR22 from Anacortes airport?

Oops goes the prosecutor… Not only did the Barefoot Bandit plead guilty to the federal crime of piloting the Anacortes Cirrus without an airman’s cert, the charge was also a last-minute addition to the collection of capers wrapped up in Colton’s Washington State plea deal. Since the plane landed on Orcas Island in San Juan County, our prosecutor out here, Randy Gaylord, added the crime under his jurisdiction.  

The good news for Colton is that this means Skagit County cannot try him for a crime he’s already pleaded guilty to and is serving time for.

Bad news for Colt is that Skagit filed two charges, one for the plane and another for breaking into the airport to get the plane. That charge was not included in the previous deal and could be prosecuted.

The airport charge, though, is burglary in the second-degree. First timers found guilty of this charge in Washington State usually don’t even go to jail. Folks with slight criminal records might get a few months. Colton, of course, has a book-length rap sheet at this point. The Skagit prosecuting attorney also asked for “exceptional” sentencing provisions, which means the judge could go above guidelines. In the big book (the one that they throw at you) most felony charges, including burglary 2, carry a ten-year max.

So the question is: When someone from Skagit County heads down to the court to take back the paperwork for the first degree plane theft charge, do they just quietly grab the entire packet and drop the whole thing? By filing a charge that will be dismissed due to double jeopardy statutes it shows that they haven’t spent too much time yet doing research on the case. If they release the other count, they can drop the risk that they’ll waste taxpayers’ money on a prosecution that seems likely not to add any time to Colton’s sentence.

As for the victims… presumably the Anacortes plane owners (or their insurance company) are already even on the restitution list. I’m checking that now.     

ANOTHER SHOE DROPS FOR BAREFOOT BANDIT

Almost three years to the day after a stolen plane nearly crashed the 2010 Winter Olympics, Colton Harris-Moore has been charged with the crime. Well, re-charged… 

On February 10, 2010, with security on both sides of the Canadian/Washington State border supposedly on double-extra-super high alert for the Vancouver Olympic games, a red-and-white Cirrus SR22 with the tail number N47LG was stolen from an Anacortes airport in Skagit County, Washington. Air traffic controllers – unaware it had been pirated – tracked the plane on radar from the moment it lifted off. The Cirrus not only flew to the edge of the Olympic no-fly zone, it was also transmitting the wrong transponder codes. Fighter planes stood by ready to scramble, but the order was never given, and the radar contact eventually disappeared over Orcas Island.

The following morning, the $650,000 plane was found stuck in the mud alongside the Orcas Island Airport’s taxiway. Three things made Orcas residents (as well as a host of law enforcement agencies) immediately suspect Colton Harris-Moore.

The SR22 was the same model Colton had stolen the year before for his first night flight – which took off from San Juan Island and also landed on Orcas.

Soon after the Olympic plane landed, there was a high-profile burglary at Orcas Home Grown Market where – after emptying the registers and busting open the surveillance system – Colton had famously spent the time to draw 39 chalk footprints along with a jaunty “C-Ya!”

The third factor that led to suspecting Colton was… well, duh, this was a plane theft.

After Colton was finally caught in July 2010, the theft of the Anacortes Cirrus was included in negotiations when Colton’s defense attorneys, John Henry Browne and Emma Scanlon, attempted to broker a “global” plea deal. Even once the feds split off into a separate deal that included all the crimes charged in states other than Washington, the defense team tried to strike a deal with all the various Washington jurisdictions. After long delays, the Skagit prosecutor finally pulled out of the negotiations and withdrew his charges while reserving the right to arrest CHM for the plane theft at a later date.

That date turned out to be February 8, 2013.   

As far as the outcome if this goes to trial – and Colton’s possible defense against these new old charges… It looks like a tough one to escape for the Barefoot Bandit. Beyond the physical evidence police collected at the scene and the Cirrus’s Pilot Operating Handbook found in the “nest” Colton made in an Orcas hangar, the stickiest fact is that as part of his federal plea agreement, Colton has already admitted to flying Cirrus N47LG from Anacortes to Orcas. He pleaded guilty to piloting that plane without a valid airman’s certificate – a federal offense.

It remains to be seen whether this will add up to more time in prison for Colton or simply be a waste of time and money just to add another concurrent sentence that he can serve along with his federal and Washington State sentences.

Colton currently resides in Stafford Creek Corrections Center serving out his 87-month WA State sentence and his 78-month federal sentence. The Skagit County prosecuting attorney, Rich Weyrich, has reportedly asked a judge to allow for “exceptional” sentencing provisions for these new charges, presumably so he can try for a sentence that will keep Colton Harris-Moore in prison beyond his current time due.

The plane theft would normally carry a maximum sentence of 10 years, with sentencing guidelines bringing that down to five or six years. By my calculations (I’m not a lawyer, so if you’re considering stealing five planes, a dozen boats, a bunch of cars and other stuff, don’t calculate your prison time by my estimates; please consult a real attorney), Colton has about three years left inside on his current sentences, followed by probation. He’s been in custody since July 11, 2010 when he was captured in the Bahamas after a 3 a.m. boat chase that ended when Bahamian police shot out Colt’s escape boat’s engines.

Colton’s flamboyant defense attorney John Henry Browne has responded to the resurrected charges by questioning whether his client or the Skagit prosecutor is the juvenile in this case.  

THE BAREFOOT BANDIT, NAUGHTY & NICE FOR THE HOLIDAYS

Just received this from my publisher in time for the first gifting season since The Barefoot Bandit was released, making it a cheap ($3 eBook and $10 hardcover!) stocking stuffer for the readers on your list:

We wanted to let you know that Hyperion has lowered the price of several of our key backlist ebook titles, including THE BAREFOOT BANDIT, for the holidays. These ebooks are available at a temporary low price (most are $2.99 or below, depending on the e-tailer) from now through 1/8.

AMAZON

B&N NOOK

APPLE iTUNES

HIGHWAY OF TEARS TV

British Columbia's tragic tale of missing and murdered women along its "Highway of Tears" is getting its highest profile attention this Saturday when CBS 48 Hours airs a full hour on the story.

I've been working with the CBS team on this ever since my article on the highway, The Vanishing, appeared in Outside Magazine last summer. It's a tough topic with a lot of sadness and anger, especially since none of the cases had been solved, leading to a lot of frustration among the victims' families and their communities.

Remarkably, during the filming of the show there was a huge break in the case. It doesn't solve everything, but it's a big step and offers a lot of hope to the many families still waiting for answers.

Here's a sneak peek at the beginning of the show, which will air on CBS this Saturday, November 17, at 10 PM.

 

Major Success in Highway of Tears Serial Killer Case

Bobby Jack Fowler circa 1972

Good police work by the persistent Mounties in the Vancouver forensics lab resulted in the oldest DNA offender hit in INTERPOL history and the solving of a terrible crime that happened nearly 40 years ago.

According to RCMP Inspector Gary Shinkaruk who heads the Special Projects Unit in Northern British Columbia, in July of 2007, technicians were able to sequence DNA from evidence found with the body of 16-year-old Colleen MacMillen who’d been murdered and dumped on a logging road back in 1974.

The results, though, didn’t match any of the DNA profiles in the Canadian databases. Early this year, they decided to try again, this time using a more advanced sequencing technology that allowed them to run the profile with INTERPOL (the international organization which connects police forces from 190 countries, allowing them to cooperate on investigations). Interpol, in turn, ran the profile with the FBI’s CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), which connects samples from federal, state and local US police forces. And that’s when bells started ringing.

Down in Oregon, they had the DNA profile of a monster named Bobby Jack Fowler. Fowler was a rapist, kidnapper, arsonist, alcoholic bar-brawler, and all-around asshole who drifted from state to state and up into Canada working as a roofer and at other blue collar jobs. He was serving time in an Oregon prison for rape and kidnapping when, in 2006, lung cancer cheated the lethal-injection needle Fowler might have gotten if Oregon prosecutors could nail him for as many as seven murders – including four teenage girls –they now believe he committed.

Fowler’s history of violent sexual attacks, his MO of hunting female hitchhikers (all four of the Oregon girls were taken from roadsides), and his timeline that puts him in Canada in the 1970s – and of course now the evidence that he killed 16-year-old Colleen MacMillen – has the RCMP’s E-Pana Unit looking at him as the lead suspect in at least two more of their Highway of Tears cases – and there are another seven where he hasn’t yet been ruled out as the killer.

The two cases they believe show strong links to Fowler are the murders of Pamela Darlington and Gale Weys, both 19 years old when they were last seen hitchhiking along one of BC’s desolate, rural highways. In November 1973, Darlington was beaten to death and later found at a park near Thompson River, partially clothed with bite marks on her body. At the time, a train crew passing through Kamloops noticed a man in a 1950s Chrysler driving suspiciously, trying to race the train to first one then another crossing. Fowler, police say, is known to have preferred old cars, beaters, that sources report he drove until they died.

Gale Weys was last seen at 9:30PM on an October night in 1973 when she left her job at a service station and walked out to the road to hitchhike home to her parents’ house in Kamloops, BC. Her nude, decomposed body wasn’t found until a year later.

Fowler was arrested in 1995 when he beat a woman and attempted to tie her up after telling her that he knew women liked to get raped. She escaped by jumping naked from a motel room’s second story window. Fowler died in jail at age 66 while serving time for those charges.

With two 19-year-old girls taken within a month in 1973... then Colleen MacMillen murdered less than a year later... And four Oregon teenagers in the 1990s… These crimes could just be the beginning of the horrific story of Bobby Jack Fowler.  

Seeing as serial killers are usually at their most prolific during their 20s and 30s, and Oregon investigators convinced that this sadistic psychopath was still murdering girls in his mid-50s, you have to assume that there are an awful number of cold cases going back to at least 1960 that police across the U.S. and Canada will be reviewing very closely to see if there are any links to Bobby Jack Fowler.