that the CPS case worker assigned to Colton Harris-Moore claimed “little recollection of the family.”
Two days later, on January 16, 2004, after another fight with Pam, Colton was brought before a judge and had his personal recognizance revoked for “continuing assaultive and threatening behaviors toward his mother.” He was placed in juvenile detention for eleven days.
The stretch in juvie appeared to have an impact on Colton. He agreed to more counseling. Pam took him for another mental health assessment in early February, and Barkdoll noted that “Colt has been complying with mental health intervention involving both counseling and medications.”
In a later psychological evaluation, it’s noted that the one medication that seemed to work for Colton was Strattera, but that he stopped taking it with no reason given. Pam isn’t clear on the timing or the particular drug— whether it was the Prozac, Geodon, Strattera, or others—but she remembers taking him off one of them.
“He was seeing a psychiatrist who put him on some medication,” she says. “But he got so depressed on it. He sat down in my front yard next to my chair and just hung his head. And God, he would never hardly ever sit down. It scared me. So I stopped giving it to him, and I stopped taking him to that doctor because he wanted to just keep trying different medications. I said, ‘Colt’s not going to be used as a guinea pig!’”
Testing patients on different ADHD meds and antidepressants and fine-tuning the dosage before finding the most effective ones—“a trial and error process,” as the Mayo Clinic refers to it—is extremely common. It often takes as long as eight weeks for the drugs to show results.
SADLY, BY THE TIME his probation officer noted that Colt was cooperating, the adolescent had already set in motion a freight train of additional troubles for himself.
On February 6, Colton was found guilty of another PSP 3, adding six months probation and sixteen hours of community restitution. (In Colton’s early sentences, judges allowed hour-for-hour credit toward community service if Colton agreed to attend counseling and mental health treatment.) A week later, felonies were filed for the Thanksgiving tear, and Colton’s rap sheet also listed as “still pending” another burglary in the third degree, theft in the third degree, two counts of burglary in the second degree, three counts of malicious mischief, and one count of reckless burning. One week before his thirteenth birthday, Pam called the cops again after she and Colton had a fight. He was hit with assault 4.
On March 16, a walkie-talkie and a video camera disappeared from Stanwood Middle School. Five students fingered Colton. When the principal confronted him, Colton said he “could not stop stealing and did not know why.” After several rounds of phone calls from the school administrators, Pam finally admitted that the missing stuff was at the trailer and agreed to return it.
They expelled Colton for the rest of the year. His probation officer tried to use that to get him sent to juvenile prison, but the judge let him stay free with tighter restrictions. Barkdoll believed Colton snowed the judge, writing that Colt “seems to have been somewhat opportunistic in the community though presents as well behaved and remorseful when before the Court.”
In April, Colton was charged with trespassing in Stanwood. It was also the month he and Pam got a new next-door neighbor.
CAROL STAR MOVED TO Haven Place so she’d have room for her horses. She bought an existing house and cleared the land for stables and paddocks. She describes Haven as a great place to live—with a couple of exceptions. Instead of stopping by with welcome baskets, the folks along Haven came with warnings about Colt.
“People told me, ‘Do not let him in your house because he’s going to scope out what you have and come back and get it.’ They said he’d been stealing stuff in the neighborhood since he was eight years old. And that he’d even tried to steal the contractor’s Caterpillar when my house was under construction.”
From the stories, Carol half expected Damien from
After all the teasing about his raggedy clothes and suspect hygiene when he was a boy, Colton had begun taking responsibility for his appearance. He took charge of the laundry at home and paid careful attention to his grooming. “He dressed well, had the best tennis shoes on, and nice clothes,” says Star. Often, though, she says she saw Colton wandering around “looking lost,” and started to feel bad for him. “I don’t think he had a lot of friends, and it seemed like he just wanted to befriend people.”
However, any camaraderie she might have had with Colton got off to a bad start when his best friend tried to eat one of hers. “Colton’s dog came into my yard, trapped my cat against a wall, and tried to kill it.” Star rushed out and saved the cat just in time. “His dog had a telephone cord around its neck, which I thought was pretty weird, but I grabbed it and tied it to my fence. I figured Colton would come over and get it eventually, and he did. I screamed at him, ‘If your dog is over here again trying to kill my cat I’m going to call the Humane Society.’ And that opened the vendetta for him… A month after that he ripped me off the first time, climbed through an open window and stole my computer, some cameras, and other electronics.”
Star says she knows it was Colton even though the police never charged him or anyone else with the crime. “The cops came and said, ‘Oh, it looks like dogs were in here running around.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, they might have because the burglar didn’t close the door and it was open all night long. Do you think the dogs stole my computer, too?’”
Even though she lived alone, Star says she was never frightened of Colton. “I don’t think he’s the type of person that would hurt somebody. The only way he could survive was to break into houses to get food and steal stuff to sell because Pam wouldn’t feed him even though she always had money to buy beer.”
Just in case, though, Star went out and bought a gun. “And when I got it, I made sure I went out back and shot it just so they knew I had one.” She says that was as much about Pam as it was about Colton.
During her six years on Haven Place, Star says she often heard Pam yelling at Colton and Van. “She used to scream at her boyfriend just like she’d scream at Colton.” At one point, Star couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “She’s screaming at Colton, saying all kinds of filthy things, and I was outside in the yard and finally yelled, ‘Shut up, Pam, I’m tired of listening to you!’ Pam screamed back, ‘Fuck you!’”
Star says another neighbor got even more fed up when Colton allegedly broke into her trailer through the skylight and stole a computer she’d been using to write a book, with no backup saved. “She was pissed!” remembers Star. “She drove over into Pam’s front yard and just sat there blasting the horn. Pam came running out of the house screaming and calling the police.” According to Star, the neighbor yelled back that she just wanted Pam to know what it felt like to be disturbed like she’d been when she was ripped off by her son.
FINALLY, SUMMER ARRIVED on Camano. Residents and vacation homeowners scraped and repainted their boat bottoms, strung fresh line on their fishing reels, and readied their crab pots and clam rakes. Elger Bay Grocery stocked up on bait and beer, and Friday traffic piled up on the bridge. Skies went blue, seas laid down, and days stretched out. It was a great time to be an island boy with a faithful dog and access to a boat.
It was also a good time to own waterfront property at Utsalady Point, like Glen Kramer and his wife. In 1998, they moved full-time into a home that’s been in his family since 1957. Houses on the point stand gable to gable atop narrow lots, but their yards roll straight onto a fine gray sand beach dimpled with white clam shells.
In summertime, boats pass back and forth across the serene blue background of Skagit Bay, providing Utsalady residents an ever-changing view. As if the sunny scene could get more bucolic, Glen Kramer regularly saw a young boy buzzing by aboard a small outboard boat, his beagle up at the bow, its nose in the breeze. In the back of Kramer’s mind he thought it unusual that every day the boy and his dog were on a different boat, but he shrugged it off.
On the twenty-second of July, Glen and his wife came home after a short trip to Stanwood. He glanced out the window and instantly noticed that his dinghy was gone. A quick scan with binoculars picked up a strange scene.
“Here’s this kid a ways down the beach carrying my outboard—I could tell it was mine because I’d bought it used from a rental outfit and it still had their big silver sticker.”
Kramer hurried down and approached the lanky boy he recognized as the same one he’d seen zipping around. Colton was just about to attach his motor to someone else’s boat, a Zodiac inflatable.
“I said, ‘Hey, that’s my outboard! What are you doing?’” says Kramer. “And he instantly started in on a story,
