Bob Friel - The Barefoot Bandit

Deer Harbor Inn was the first resort on Orcas, renting tent cabins in the late 1800s to supplement the income from the owner’s apple orchard. A small hotel and restaurant were built after the turn of the century. Since 1982, it’s been owned by the Carpenter family, with two brothers, Matt and Ryan, running the restaurant and rental homes. In late August, someone had broken into the inn and gotten hold of Ryan’s credit card. The thief had been smart enough to not actually take the card, though, just the numbers and security code, so Ryan didn’t have a clue until he opened his statement and saw that he—or at least his identity—had ordered more than $3,000 in spy cameras and other electronics plus a $900 high-tech flight helmet. When Ryan contacted the sellers, they said that their records showed that the gear had all been successfully delivered to Orcas Island. But not, of course, to Ryan.

Back in Eastsound, someone broke through a window at Wildlife Cycles on North Beach Road. He passed over models worth three times as much to snag a particular bike—a Gary Fisher, designed for both street and rugged trail. The burglar raided the cash drawer, spilling bills across the wooden deck as he rolled his new bike out the front door. A computer company in town also suffered a breach of security, with $8,000 worth of software and equipment ordered online using its accounts. The shopping spree included hacking and spyware programs designed for identity theft, along with more infrared spy cameras.

Over at Smuggler’s, near the airport, manager Mike Stolmeier opened the door to the resort’s sauna at 10 p.m. and found a “big, tall, gangly kid” sitting inside. “We get moochers sometimes,” says Stolmeier. “So I said, ‘Okay, this isn’t working, you gotta go.’ I didn’t pay much attention to him since he didn’t give me any guff and just got up and left.”

One odd thing that Stolmeier did notice was that the kid sitting in the sauna with the heat turned up was fully clothed and had a big backpack on the bench next to him.

SEPTEMBER ROLLED AROUND AND it was time for the Brodys to cast off on their long-awaited Pacific cruise. They boarded the ship on September 19. Ellen had lugged along a large laptop since her little netbook had been stolen. As soon as they settled in, she bought a package of onboard Internet minutes, enough, she thought, to cover their entire monthlong vacation.

The first time she signed on, up popped a note from eBay congratulating her on making the winning bid for a smartphone.

“Uh-oh, we’ve got a problem,” she told Martin. The next email was from PayPal: a receipt on her account for the $320 phone. “It was the worst feeling in my life,” she says, suddenly realizing that the person who’d eaten their Honey Bunches of Oats had also scanned her home computer and found the document where she kept all her account numbers and passwords. Goldilocks had stolen her identity and was on a shopping spree.

Ellen immediately sent a flurry of emails, trying to cancel the purchase and change all her accounts. The retailer had already shipped the phone and told her to simply refuse the package. When she contacted the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office, though, they said not to do that. They asked if she’d agree to have them post a deputy inside their house, using the package as a trap. It sounded like a good plan, and the Brodys agreed.

On September 23, the local courier alerted deputies that the package had arrived on the island. The following day, police set up a stakeout at the Brodys’ with the phone left on the front porch. On the evening of the twenty-fifth, a retired schoolteacher who serves as a reserve deputy waited alone inside the house. He later told Martin Brody that around 8 p.m.—still twilight in September’s long days—he was standing in their kitchen when he heard a key slide into the deadbolt lock. The deputy hadn’t locked the door, and was very surprised to hear someone try a key because he knew the locks had just been changed.

The door swung open and in stepped a young man the deputy describes as “NBA big.” The cop yelled, “Freeze!” But the kid didn’t. Instead, his hand went to his side and then quickly came up holding something metal.

According to Brody, the ex-schoolteacher said he suddenly found himself in a fiery, choking mist of pepper spray. After firing the spray, the tall young man had immediately spun and fled back out the door. The deputy chased him outside and saw him fly off the porch without seeming to touch the stairs. Then, still moving at full speed, the suspect made the ninety-degree turn past the Brodys’ koi pond, leaped down another half flight of stairs, vaulted a railing, and scrambled across a large moss-covered boulder before vanishing into the twilight.

After his capture, Colton Harris-Moore told a similar story, with a few different details: When he went to pick up a package he’d had delivered to a rural Orcas home, he noticed that the inside lights weren’t quite the way he’d left them. He crept up to the porch, opened the door, and found himself facing a cop who was sitting in a rocking chair. Colt said the deputy aimed a laser-sighted pistol at his chest and started laughing. Colt never mentioned the pepper spray, but says he turned and ran, escaping by scaling an eight-foot-tall rock “like a vampire.”

(A third version of the story comes from the police report of the incident that San Juan County declined to release, despite multiple public records requests. I was able to see the report only after it was included in a defense filing for Colt’s federal sentencing in January 2012. In his report, the deputy admits he was sitting in the living room when the tall suspect spent “10–15 seconds attempting to unlock” the open door. He writes that after the suspect finally entered the home, “I stood up, announced myself by stating ‘Police officer, get on the ground’ and began to train the department issued taser on the subject while taking the device off safe.” He says the suspect—who Colt’s defense team agrees was Colt—immediately turned and “bolted” using “great speed and agility.” In the official report, the deputy says he didn’t see Colt fire the pepper spray, and only noticed it irritating his eyes and throat when he reentered the home after watching Colt run off.)

The Brodys got the bad news aboard ship. “They could have had him right then and there,” says Martin, “but they blew their chance.”

He and Ellen had a creepy feeling that was confirmed when they returned to Orcas and discovered that one of their new spare keys had been taken from their cupboard. They also found that one of their window locks had been disabled but made to look like it still worked. The burglar had set it up so he’d always have a way to get into their home.

They wondered why they’d been targeted again, then suddenly understood: Their cruise papers had been on the kitchen counter during his first stay in their home. “He knew exactly when we were going and how long we’d be gone,” says Martin. He also knew he had Martin’s bike to use—again.

Their phone bill and online charges showed that the burglar moved in, like an uninvited house sitter, on the same day they left. Two calls were made from their phone to the mainland Washington home of a prison buddy of Colton Harris-Moore’s.

“He thought he had a safe place to stay for a month,” says Martin. “And he would have if Ellen hadn’t checked her email.”

The Brodys rekeyed again, fixed their window lock, and added sticks to all their windows. Ellen then spent several months trying to clear the charges from their PayPal account. Half a year later they still had eye-burning traces of pepper spray on their furniture, even after multiple cleanings. Martin’s Gary Fisher bicycle—which had been stolen for the third time while they were on the cruise—was never returned.