larceny, which would include Colton’s crimes. Complicated relations between the two countries since
Instead, Colt veered east and flew out over the Gulf Stream. Fitting for a story that so far included UFO sites, ancient Indian burial grounds, and Bigfoot hunters, a little over four hours after he took off from Indiana, the Barefoot Bandit entered the Bermuda Triangle.
A half hour later, around 11:15 a.m., several Bahamians noticed the Cessna circling north of Sandy Point, a small village on a beach-fringed spur at the south end of Great Abaco.
The Cessna kept circling in the overcast skies, but no one paid much mind. Private planes often buzz the area, either to take aerial photos of the scenery or to scout for a likely stretch of coast to carve out a development.
Sandy Point’s airstrip serves this sparsely populated end of the island, but Colt didn’t dare use it. It was daylight, plus he figured there’d be Customs and Immigration officers there to greet planes. He’d have to execute another off-field landing. For the first time in his rough-landing career, finding “flat” wasn’t a problem. The southern tip of Great Abaco has miles and miles of pancaked land. Most of it, though, is covered in pine and scrub trees not conducive to safe set downs.
Finally, Colt settled on a section of sugary bog, the margin of a swamp covered in marsh grasses and mangrove sprouts. There’s nothing similar to the mangrove in the Pacific Northwest forest. These bushy tropical trees reach into warm, shallow seas, thriving in a saltwater environment that would kill other plants, and forming the basis of an entire ecosystem. The ground here may have appeared solid as Colt extended the flaps and made his approach, but in reality it was a sandy mix of tidal muck.
Normal landing speed on the Corvalis is 70 mph, and once it touches down on a runway, it uses about 1,200 feet to roll to a stop. As soon as Colt’s main gear hit the muck, though, it was as if he’d landed in peanut butter. The nose of the plane slammed down onto the front wheel, which burrowed into the soft sand, collapsed, and was torn from the fuselage. An instant later, the nose itself hit, with the propeller whipping into the ground, the blades bending backward like banana peels.
Instead of using four hundred yards, the plane went from flying to a full stop in an eye-bugging 150 feet.
The landing was rough enough to set off the plane’s distress beacon, which began signaling that N660BA had gone down hard at 11:44 a.m. The U.S. Coast Guard in Miami picked up the satellite signal and immediately went into search-and-rescue mode.
When Colt gathered himself and lifted the Corvalis’s gullwing door, he was 1,050 miles and a world away from where he’d taken off. He could officially check off another item from his prison collage/shopping list: the colorful Caribbean logo.
Even with the adrenaline of surviving another hairy landing, the kid from the misty cool Northwest couldn’t help but feel the saunalike assault of the July Bahamas heat, especially back in the mangroves where breath comes in moist bites. The other things that come in bites are the flying teeth, aka no-see-ums or nippers, along with the mosquitoes. In the still air of the marsh, they can be ferocious, especially on cloudy days like the fourth. As Colt climbed out and slid down the wing of the Corvalis, the local bloodsuckers must have rejoiced over the big helping of manna from heaven.
A Bahamian had watched in disbelief as the Corvalis came in lower and lower—apparently under control but far from any sensible landing spot—and then crashed into the swamp. Calls went out to the Royal Bahamian Police Force (RBPF) and Royal Bahamas Defence Force (RBDF), the country’s sole military branch.
BACK IN INDIANA, NO one suspected a thing. Even though it was a Sunday and a holiday, Spider Miller went to work. The Fourth of July weekend is a busy time for a beer distributor, especially in a college town like Bloomington. Late that morning, his cell rang, but he let it go to voice mail.
One minute after receiving the distress signal, the U.S. Coast Guard had called Spider’s brother, whose contact info was on the Cessna’s registration, to check whether it was a false alarm. Don told them he thought the plane was safe in Bloomington, but that Spider was the pilot they should check with.
When Spider retrieved his message, you could have knocked him over with an empty beer can. “It was from the coast guard’s Miami station, saying they were receiving an ELT ping that my plane had gone down in the Bahamas.” Miller figured there was no sense in calling them back until he could answer their questions, so he jumped into his car and raced to the airport. “I’m thinking, Oh hell, how can this be? I’d never heard of Abaco. I didn’t want to believe the plane might be gone, but the ELTs are accurate, they work, so I had myself prepared when I got there.”
Spider arrived at his hangar to find it filled with just an echo. He called the coast guard back shortly after noon. The second big surprise was to find out that his $650,000 airplane had been taken by a teenager who’d been on a tear across the country and who authorities suspected had been staking out the airport for a week. To top it off, he learned that his was the fifth aircraft stolen by Colton Harris-Moore, unlicensed pilot.
“Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that a kid like him was out there,” says Miller.
THE COAST GUARD ALERTED the Bahamians that the plane had been stolen. RBDF soldiers set out for the site by boat, but couldn’t get close because it was low tide. Once again a combination of luck and choosing the right spot gave Colt enough time to land and get away before the cops arrived. Part of his luck was the fact that the Bahamians didn’t send anyone overland to the site that day.
Colt and the plane sat 2.2 miles from the Great Abaco Highway, the one road that runs through the undeveloped south end of the island. If an officer had gotten within binocular range, he would have been able to see Colt moving, and possibly get men in position to intercept him. As it was, Colt almost stumbled into an RBDF trooper who got close enough to report seeing a white male “with lacerations” who ran off when he was spotted.
Whether he got cut up in the crash or picking his way through the mangroves, Colt was in good enough shape to make his way the eight or so miles to Sandy Point, a fishing village of about four hundred. The owner of a little gas station–convenience store says that sometime after dark, Colt stopped by to fill up. He broke in and left with a Gatorade and two bags of potato chips, though he’d gathered a lot more. The owner guessed that Colt may have been frightened off by someone passing by because he left a bunch of drinks and snacks on the counter. Colt then stole a brown Chevy Tahoe and aimed it north up the highway for the forty-nine-mile drive to Marsh Harbour, the island’s single-stoplight main town.
The Bahamians told the coast guard that they were planning a mission to the crash site for early the next morning and requested air support. At 6:11 a.m. on the fifth, a USCG Guardian jet detoured on its way to deliver spare parts to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and arrived on scene. The pilots had no trouble spotting the downed plane, and reported, “Does not seem to be in distress.” They stayed on-site for three minutes and didn’t see anyone in the area.
Later that morning after a four-hour slog, Bahamian police officers got to the plane. As expected, they found no one. Cushions had been taken out of the Cessna and laid on the ground in the shade of the wing. There was also a bucket beside the plane with used towelettes inside.
SPIDER MILLER WAS RELIEVED when he got ahold of the Bahamian police and they told him there was no one at the crash site. “I was happy to hear that he hadn’t been hurt and, especially, didn’t kill himself in the airplane.” Spider’s next priority was securing the aircraft. “The first cop I talked with said everything was inside the plane, my four thousand-dollar Bose noise-canceling headsets, oxygen equipment, all the valuables. So I asked him to hold on to that stuff and I’d find someone to go over and collect it from them. When I called the same cop later to say someone was on the way to get my valuables, he said, ‘We don’t have anything like that.’”
Spider hung up. “That was the second theft committed against me.” He says the third was dealing with the insurance company, which didn’t want to say the Cessna was totaled. Miller says he wouldn’t risk flying his kids in that plane again, so he had to pay the difference in value.
