Colton Harris-Moore: “Catch Me If You Can” Teen Eludes Detectives
From CBS News:
EASTSOUND, Wash. (CBS/AP) It is a scene straight out of the movie “Catch Me If You Can.”
In the darkness of this sleepy island town, the beam of a deputy’s flashlight caught the back of a lanky teenager wanted in a notorious 18-month burglary spree.
The teen glanced over his shoulder, and then vanished into the woods. “He virtually vaporized in front of me,” deputy Jeff Patterson recalled.
Such encounters have become all too common on the bucolic islands north of Seattle as police hunt for an elusive thief whose crime spree is quickly becoming a local legend. Colton Harris-Moore is suspected in about 50 burglary cases since he slipped away from a halfway house in April 2008.
Now, authorities say, he may have moved on to a more dangerous hobby: stealing airplanes.
The saga continues, as Harris-Moore keeps finding new ways to embarrass police by slipping through their grasp.
The 18-year-old typically breaks into businesses or unoccupied vacation homes, lies down on the couch and then dashes into the woods if confronted. He earned himself the nickname of “the barefoot burglar” by committing some of his crimes without wearing shoes.
But authorities say the case has taken on a dangerous new dimension now that Harris-Moore is apparently joyriding in small aircraft.
[Read more at CBS News]
