across the street shining his flashlight and yelling, “Stop, Colton! Sheriff’s office. You’re under arrest!” Colton took off, but not before grabbing the box. The deputies chased him, but Colton vaulted a fence into a horse pasture and then easily outdistanced them. The last they saw of him was as he rounded a barn and ducked into the dark woods. Word had gone out, though, that if there was any chance at all of catching him, pull out the stops and run Colton down. The deputies called it in and Sheriff Brown loosed the hounds.
Island County and Snohomish County deputies responded and set up a containment perimeter. K9 teams loped in from both Everett and Marysville, and followed Colton’s trail into the trees. The dogs searched until 8:48, but couldn’t track him down. The only thing the police came away with was their fake package, which Colton had dropped in the pasture.
With the close calls coming more frequently, Colton decided to head someplace where he felt safe.
On February 8, Dave, a neighbor of the Wagners’—Colton’s summer family from a few years back—was out taking a walk when he saw a tall teen near the top of the Wagners’ driveway. It was already dark, and the kid had what Dave described as a “miner’s lamp,” meaning a headlamp, on top of his baseball cap. As they passed, Colton said, “Good evening. Nice night for a walk, huh?” Dave answered, “Yeah,” and continued toward his house. Something didn’t feel right, though, and he swung around to take another look. The kid had vanished. Like everyone else on the island, Dave knew about all the recent break-ins. He hurried into his yard, where he could see the waterfront side of the Wagners’ house. Lights were burning inside, so he called Doreen Wagner.
“I told him we had a couple of lights on timers,” remembers Doreen. “But he said there was a bright light on in the back bathroom where I knew we only had a little night-light.” Dave told Doreen that they’d been having trouble with a burglar on the island and this could be him. He hung up and called the cops, telling them he thought he had just seen Colton Harris-Moore and knew where he was hiding.
Inside the Wagners’ summer house, Colton grabbed a bottle of water and popped a Hungry-Man TV dinner in the oven. He’d already washed his previous night’s dishes and placed them neatly in the sink drainer. He’d also made his bed and hung up his bathroom towels. According to Bill Wagner, he’d even vacuumed. Again and again over the course of his time on the run, whenever Colt stole into people’s lives by staying in their homes or driving their cars or boats, he seemed to go out of his way to prove, maybe just to himself, that if he had nice things he could take care of them—that it wasn’t his fault he grew up in a dumpy trailer.
Colt lifted the television off its stand and put it on the floor so its light wouldn’t be as noticeable from the outside. Now he was ready to just chill.
The first Island County cop who arrived at the Wagners’ was a plainclothes detective. He pulled up in an unmarked car shortly after 9 p.m. and quietly approached the house on foot. Other than the glow coming through the trees from a few neighboring homes and the distant twinkle of lights on Whidbey Island, the area was completely dark. The detective inspected the front of the house, found nothing amiss, and then walked around the corner toward the side facing the water.
Inside, Colton took his Hungry-Man out of the oven and forked it onto a plate. He carried the food and water over to the TV and sat down on the floor to eat.
As the detective cautiously stepped along the side of the house, trying to keep silent and out of sight so he could surprise whoever was inside, he was suddenly blasted by a blinding light. He’d walked under a motion detector.
The cop continued around to the back of the house and found the sliding glass door opened slightly. He got on the radio, called for backup, and waited outside until two more deputies showed up. When they entered the home, the first thing they noticed was the smell of food. They cleared the place room by room, but Colton, of course, was gone; he’d bolted out the back door the second he saw the lights pop on. What the cops did find, though, was evidence that Colton had been using the Wagners’ home for quite a while—and taking good care of it.
Nothing was missing except for food. None of the Wagners’ belongings was out of place, all the beer was still in the fridge, even a big jar of change had been left untouched. In a closet they found a sleeping bag with some of Colton’s things rolled up inside. All the beds were made, but one of the officers noticed a strange lump under the covers in the master bedroom. It was a black can of UDAP Bear Spray, the magnum size.
Down in California, Doreen hadn’t connected anything to her little Tarzan, but asked Megan to look up the
The police already knew Colton’s fearless affinity for going back to crime sites, so they asked the Wagners for permission to install a silent alarm at their home and wired it to the cop shop.
COLTON WENT TWO MILES UP the west side of the island, back to the yellow, lap-sided home with six steep gables on Sea Song Lane. Despite Harley’s lesson about nighttime burglaries—Don’t turn on the lights!—Colton flipped on a light in one of the property’s outbuildings. A woman who lives in the farmhouse across the street spotted it and told her husband. He looked over but the Sea Song house itself—partially screened by tall evergreens along the fence line—was dark.
The next evening, a cold and clear Friday, February 9, Colton was inside the house and back on the homeowner’s computer. Across the street, the neighbors had been keeping an eye out and suddenly saw a light in the window. This time they called the police.
At 7:49 p.m., Colton opened his mellenie010 email and saw the letter from Bev pleading that he turn himself in. If it swayed him in the slightest, he didn’t have a chance to act on it. By coincidence, Geof Davis was a mile south of Sea Song, over at the Mabana Fire Station, where there was a meeting going on. The subject: what to do about Colton Harris-Moore. There was a deputy there, and a radio call came in at 8:15 saying that two Island County cops were just up the road and had someone cornered inside a home. They believed it was Colton. Geof and the deputy jumped into a car and drove to Sea Song.
A detective on scene noticed a second-floor gable window was open. He called out, “Colton? Colton?” More police arrived and pulled on tactical gear. Colton peeked out the window and saw he had no chance of escape. He picked up the phone and called his mom.
Colton told Pam where he was and said that a SWAT team had him surrounded. He was in a panic, “What do I do? What do I do?” Pam told him that he was going to turn himself in, but that he should wait until she got there.
“Colton?” The detective continued to call up to the window. Finally, Colt answered, saying he was talking to his mom.
Pam hung up and immediately called Bev. She told her she was scared that the cops were going to hurt Colt and that she wanted to get as many people over there as possible. Bev said she was on her way. “It was easy to find the right place,” says Bev. “There were already so many cop cars there with their lights flashing. They’d blocked off the road south of the house and a crowd was starting to gather.”
At least a dozen officers from Island and Snohomish Counties arrived on scene. Cops in tactical gear spread out around the home while the others manned the front and kept the civilians back. Even Sheriff Mark Brown showed up.
Bev found Pam, who was with Van. Pam says she asked the police if she could go in and get Colt, but they refused. The homeowner’s brother arrived and told the police where they could find a key. “Word started spreading around that Colt might have a gun,” says Bev. “It was very melodramatic, and I started wondering maybe they actually were doing it so they could hurt him.” She asked Pam and Van to take her hands and said a prayer for Colt’s safety.
Another ten minutes went by and Colton still refused to come out. Deputies finally put Pam on the phone and asked her to “talk him out.” Pam told Colt that there were plenty of witnesses around and even a couple of TV cameras, which was both good news and bad news as far as Colton was concerned. They talked for ten minutes and then Pam put Bev on the phone.
“I told him to just come out, that no one’s going to hurt him and the cops aren’t going to go away… He said, ‘I know… but could you just go home? This is embarrassing, I don’t want you to see me like this!’ I told him okay, that I’d leave.”
A minute or so later, at 9:30 p.m., Colt was outside and in handcuffs, being led to a squad car. His nearly
