The deputies were able to infiltrate Haven Place stealthily enough at least once, though. “Some of us were in the trees at the bottom of the road, others in the bushes closer to Pam’s,” says Wallace, who was part of the six- person team detailed to try to catch Colton.
Ed Wallace is a cop’s cop, in shape and not only a detective but a member of the Hard Entry and Arrest Team (HEAT) that busts into meth houses and does the county’s other dangerous dirty work. A second-generation Island County deputy, Wallace, at forty, already had twenty years of policing under his belt plus a stint as an army MP. In a small force (Island County has the smallest sheriff’s department, per capita, in Washington State) staff gets spread around. Wallace also serves as the department’s computer expert, and he drew the short straw and became its public information officer, tasked with dealing with the media. The Colton Harris-Moore case had Wallace wearing all of his different hats. What he wanted most, though, like all the Island County cops, was to catch him.
“Colt always counted on us playing by the rules,” says Wallace, noting that the fugitive banked on officers’ professionalism. The deputies did carry Tasers, but Wallace says no one who got within the sixteen-foot range ever felt he had a good enough shot at Colt.
Time after time, deputies waded into the sea of waist-high ferns that filled the understory beneath Camano’s tall second-growth trees to search for Colt. Especially in the summer, you can’t see fifty feet into the woods. You’d literally have to stumble onto someone or his camp as long as he kept it low profile. But even finding his camp didn’t mean cornering Colt. “He’d set up one camp to live in that had several escape routes,” says Chris Ellis. “Then he’d have several backup camps stocked with food and water in case he had to run. He always had a plan. Colton Harris-Moore was a thinking criminal by the time he was ten years old. And he wasn’t afraid. We searched one of his sites and found out later that he’d been sitting in a tree fifty feet above our heads watching us the whole time.”
All year long, Pacific Northwest forest floors remain a maze of fallen branches and slick, moss-covered logs, which made it dangerous, when they did spot him, to give chase. As Colt and Harley knew, the police were reticent to go running into the woods, with reason. One Camano deputy who chased Colt through the trees injured his knee so badly that he was out of work for several weeks.
That night on Haven Place was one of many close encounters the Island County cops had with Colton Harris-Moore during his run. “One of our guys was moving down the road and thought he heard footsteps,” says Wallace. “He froze and brought up his night vision, and here’s Colt, sauntering right down the middle of the road about twenty feet away. He lit him up with his flashlight and we jumped out, but Colt’s a gazelle and off he goes. He makes it to the woods and is running to beat all hell. We tried to chase him down, but frankly, I’m not going to run blindly through the trees and lose an eye or break a leg for a burglary suspect.”
ON SEPTEMBER 16, TWO Island County deputies arrived at the trailer. According to Pam’s sister Sandy, Pam called 911 three times during this six-and-a-half-month period to tell police that Colt was on the property and for them to come get him.
No one answered the door, but one of the deputies spotted a few items that he recognized as reported stolen—all remote control toys: a boat, a helicopter, and little ZipZap cars. There was obviously a lot more evidence around, so they arranged a search warrant. Pam still wasn’t there when the cops returned, so they climbed into the trailer through a window. They didn’t find anything inside, and began searching the rest of the property. Colt saw the cops and melted into the woods before they reached his campsite. He didn’t go far, though, and watched as the deputies struck the motherlode.
Some items they found were of obvious fenceable value, and others were useful, like the Swiss army knife, six flashlights, and four sets of binoculars—it always helps to have a spare or three. Some things, though, like the toys, seemed to have simply struck Colt’s fancy. A partial list of stolen property recovered from his campsite and a couple of caches around Pam’s lot showed his omnivorous habits.
Deputies found nine cell phones, two GPS units, four laptops (two PCs and two Macs), a video and two still cameras, an iPod and three other music players, a box of .38 bullets, several watches, eleven jewelry boxes filled with everything from pearl necklaces to pink costume jewelry, a motorcycle helmet, six
Once the coast was clear, Colt came out of the woods and scribbled a note to Pam (spelling intact):
MOM, cops were here everythings on lockdown. I’m leaving 4-Wennachi won’t be back est. 2 month. I’ll contact you they took Mell. I’m going to have my affiliates take care of that. P.S.—Cops wanna play hu!? Well its not no lil game… It’s war! & tell them that.
Pam called the sheriff’s office and told them about the note. When a deputy came to collect it, she also handed over a stolen laser construction level that had been inside the trailer.
Police say they never followed up on the one clue in the note: “leaving 4-Wennachi.” But apparently the sunny town of Wenatchee on the Columbia River east of the Cascades became a safe haven for Colton at least twice when he was on the run over the following years.
CASA, THE CAMANO ANIMAL Shelter Association, is the island’s home for homeless dogs and cats. It consists of a compound of metal buildings and fenced yards exactly one-quarter mile from the tiny Island County Sheriff’s Office cop shop on East Camano Drive—so close that you can walk or drive between them without leaving the parking lots of various county buildings. CASA has a contract with the county to temporarily house impounded pets, and that’s where the deputies took Melanie at least twice while Colt was at large.
“They were chasing Colt through the woods one night,” says Pam, “and he called me on his cell phone saying come get his dog because he had to let go of her. So I drove down—it wasn’t even half a block away—and this lady officer says, ‘You can’t have her because she’s evidence.’ And I said, ‘What is she gonna do, get up on the stand and testify?’”
From all available records, it appears Melanie stayed faithful to Colt: the cops were never able to get her to roll over and speak.
At least one of the times they grabbed Melanie, the cops did it specifically to try to lure Colt into coming to rescue her. If this was a war, Melanie was, for a while, a POW.
North and east of CASA lie patches of woods, and that’s where a squad of deputies hid to wait for Colt. To ensure their success, they also stationed two deputies inside the animal shelter. Anyone approaching the CASA compound had to cross at least one road and some open ground before getting to the building or the little copse of trees just south of the fenced dog pens. If the officers outside saw someone approaching, they’d radio the inside team. If somehow Colt or an “affiliate” was able to sneak up to the building unseen, the deputies inside would hear him breaking in and would call in the outside troops. They all settled in, daring Colt to try to break Melanie out of the slammer. They waited… and waited… and waited. Sometime in the night, the ambush went askew. According to a source familiar with the operation, the officers inside CASA left their positions because they got cold. They snuck out stealthily so Colt, if he was watching, wouldn’t see them and realize it was a trap. They did such a good job, though, that the cops staked out in the woods didn’t know they’d left.
The inside officers eventually returned to their post and once again the trap was set. Only one problem: no bait. Melanie was gone. Someone had gotten past the surveillance, found the right cage, sprang Melanie, and then made it out again—this time with beagle in tow—all without being seen. Or heard, as anyone who’s ever walked into a kennel knows the racket the dogs make whenever someone new walks in.
That’s the kind of stuff legends are made of.
