They diagnosed him with ADHD, parent-child relational problem, and possible depression.
On September 10, 2001, a Compass clinician described Colton: “Assertive, talkative 10-year-old who can become quite angry—but the situation with mother and her boyfriend drinking, living in a tiny trailer, mother drinking all the time, and the physical abuse Colton has gotten from boyfriend makes his anger easy to understand.”
The response was to put Colton on Prozac.
DURING THOSE FIRST INTERVIEWS at Compass Health, Colton told the therapists that he’d gotten into only a few problems so far at school and that he was determined “not to get into trouble this year.”
That same month, though, Colton began to find serious trouble outside of school.
“We’d made a path through an undeveloped property on Bretland Road, just east of Haven,” says Joel, Colton’s friend and fellow ninja. “We even built a ladder to get us down the cliff to the water.” Joel says that they were walking along the beach one day when suddenly Colton ran off. “When he comes back, he’s got a fishing pole and he tells me he stole it.” The boys headed home, and by the time they made it the short distance to Haven Place, Island County deputies were already pulling up to Pam’s. “They knew right where to go,” says Joel. “Colt gave the fishing rod back to the guy he took it from so he didn’t press charges.”
Despite the lack of charges, the Island County police made an official report of the incident, naming Colton Harris-Moore as a suspected thief. He was ten and a half years old.
A PSYCHOLOGIST REPORTED THAT Prozac seemed to only increase Colton’s “agitation,” so doctors prescribed Geodon, a big-league antipsychotic strong enough to chillax a rampaging water buffalo. The drug had just been approved that year by the FDA for schizophrenia, though it was also utilized “off label” for treating mania resulting from bipolar disorder and some cases of severe ADHD. A psychological evaluation of Colton later states: “Records are not clear as to why such a potent medicine was tried, but most likely it was to assist in behavioral control.”
Compass Health also sent someone out to the trailer for in-home family counseling. Pam says Colton participated, but that she found “little benefit” from the therapists, who were “well-meaning but ineffective.”
WHEN THE CAMANO KIDS moved on to sixth grade, it was back on the bus and across the bridge to Stanwood Middle School, home of the Spartans. That’s where, from all accounts including his own, Colton completely lost whatever constructive relationship he’d ever had with school.
“Stanwood had the normal school cliques,” says Kory. “Jocks, goths, girlie girlies… and Colton couldn’t get along with anyone. When people weren’t picking on him then he’d start it. He’d argue with everyone.”
Christa Postma met Colton that year. “Colt was always getting into trouble. He was like the kid who’s always loud in class, not being quiet when he was supposed to, disrupting everything. We’d be learning something and he’d just say his opinion on it. Like he’d say whatever the teacher was saying was ‘bogus.’”
The teachers attempted to discipline Colton, but had little success. “Usually you were sent outside the class, and then after a while the teacher would go out and talk to you. If they thought you were going to behave better, then they’d bring you back in. Colt would always get brought back in… and then get kicked out again.”
Christa, who’d been diagnosed with ADHD and ADD, says she recognized a lot of the symptoms in Colton. “I know I can be really hyper and annoying without realizing it. All through middle school I was on medication for it, but Colt said he wasn’t on anything for his ADHD. He’d be hyper and annoying, and then when people called him out for it he’d get pretty upset and then he’d be a jerk to them.”
After school, Colton and Christa hung out behind the Stanwood Library. Outside of class, Christa says Colton seemed “really smart” but unable or just unwilling to use those smarts in school. “I’d be like, ‘I have to get home and do homework or my mom will kill me,’ and he’s like, ‘Oh, I don’t need to.’ He kinda resented authority and liked being able to do whatever he wanted. He’d always say how much he hated school.”
Reports from clinicians at Compass Health who interviewed Colton around this time state that he told them that his mom was becoming “increasingly angry, does not encourage school.” Colton himself estimated that from the time he started middle school he missed about half of his classes and his mom’s response was “It’s your fault, not mine.”
According to Pam, Colton would stay up all night playing video games and then be too tired to go to school the next day. His favorite game at the time was Grand Theft Auto. “Then I got interested in that one!” says Pam. “I said, ‘Give me that thing, I want to see what I can do with it.’ And then Colt went to bed and I was staying up playing it! He got up a couple hours later and said, ‘Are you still playing that?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I like killing those hookers on the sidewalk!’”
When Colton came home from middle school having failed all of his classes, Pam went to the superintendent to insist that he be held back a grade. “They said, ‘Well, we don’t do that.’”
Stanwood Middle asked Pam to come in for a crisis meeting about Colton. (Pam claims she went to every meeting they ever asked her to attend: “I was a very involved parent.”) Pam says she sat at a big table with a large group of teachers and school counselors who were trying to figure out a way to get Colton engaged in his education. “They said he was being disruptive in class, that he was basically uncontrollable… and I tend to believe that about him.” A coach suggested sports, and Pam says she pleaded, “Just don’t make him stronger! He’s strong enough.” She says she was frightened of Colt by this point, because he was getting bigger and she felt he had a serious anger problem.
The South End kids who rode Island Transit with Colton on those days he did go to school saw that anger. “He’d get really loud,” says Kory. “He’d be arguing with the other kids, and when the drivers tried to settle it down he’d curse at them and sometimes they’d throw him off the bus.”
Failing in school, virtually free of supervision at home, and rejected by almost all of his peers due to his antisocial behavior, Colton found acceptance with someone a couple years older, a curly-haired little guy the other kids called the Hobbit.
Harley Davidson Ironwing says he had a rep around Stanwood as a bad guy, and that’s why Colton Harris- Moore sought him out.
Born in Loveland, Colorado, Harley wound up in Stanwood via foster care. He and his siblings were taken away from their parents when Harley was four, and he can’t remember how many families he went through before ending up in Washington State with Karen Ironwing. Karen changed Harley’s middle name to Davidson because… well, it was apparently just too tempting.
Harley speaks with a soft drawl when he says that he doesn’t do well with authority figures, including cops and teachers. He ran away from home early and often, and told police when they caught him that he’d rather go to juvie than back home because his foster brothers beat him up all the time. Even when he was living on the streets, though, Harley attended school almost regularly and made it to eleventh grade before dropping out. However, he was only halfway through sixth grade at Stanwood Middle School when he was charged with his first felonies.
One of Harley’s claims to fame as a young hood happened April 25, 2002. “I was hanging out with my best friend one night and he got hungry,” remembers Harley. “We were near an espresso stand, so I broke in and got him a couple of those sugar cookies with the pink frosting.” It might’ve been too much sugar. “After that, we decided it’d be fun to try to blow up the police gas station.”
The following morning, the Stanwood police got a call about two kids stuck in a clothing donation drop-off box near the Thrifty Foods. A deputy helped firemen extract Harley and his best buddy from the metal container. Both boys smelled like smoke and their fingers were blackened. There seem to be few times when Harley doesn’t fess up to his crimes, and he told the deputies how, after the pink cookie caper, he set out to create a Hollywood- worthy explosion at the gas station “because we were bored.”
Harley said he dribbled diesel over the pumps, stretched out the hoses, and then stuffed newspaper in one of the nozzles. Worried it might go up before they’d gotten far enough away, Harley added another piece of paper to lengthen the fuse. He lit it and they jumped on bikes they’d stolen earlier that night. They waited… and waited… No boom. Harley tried again, but it still didn’t quite work like it does in the movies.
After confessing everything, Harley pulled out of his handcuffs and tried to escape. He made it outside, but a female officer ran him down on the street. Harley struggled, and three deputies took him to the ground, then put him in hobble restraints for one of his many rides to the Denny Youth Center.
Harley scoffs at the foster care, school, social services, and juvenile justice systems and whatever help they offered him while he was growing up. “Nothing in the system could have prevented me from becoming a
