AUDASE

‘Barefoot Bandit’ Pleads Guilty to 2-Year Theft Spree

By WILLIAM YARDLEY NY TIMES                                                          

SEATTLE — Colton Harris-Moore, the teenage fugitive who became known as the Barefoot Bandit during his two-year crime spree, pleaded guilty here on Friday to seven federal charges, including stealing airplanes, a boat and firearms and transporting them across state and sometimes national boundaries. He faces up to six and a half years in prison.

Mr. Harris-Moore, who inspired Facebook tribute pages and supportive T-shirts (“Momma Tried,” one said) for his remarkable ability to elude law enforcement over the years, smiled occasionally in court but said little beyond “Yes, sir” to Judge Richard A. Jones of United States District Court, and “guilty” seven times.

For all of the spectacle surrounding his case, Mr. Harris-Moore reached a plea deal with the government in part by pledging that he would not profit from publicizing it in the future. A Seattle entertainment lawyer, Lance Rosen, said Friday that he was negotiating the sale of rights to Mr. Harris-Moore’s story but that any proceeds would go toward the more than $1.4 million in restitution Mr. Harris-Moore owes for the planes, boat and other items he stole.

After Mr. Harris-Moore entered his plea in federal court, Jenny Durkan, the United States attorney for Western Washington, told reporters, “Should one dime cross palms, it comes to the government.”

Mr. Harris-Moore grew up poor and a victim of abuse on Camano Island, north of Seattle in Puget Sound. He was charged with his first crime at 12 and began his spree after escaping from a juvenile halfway house in April 2008. Over the next two years, Mr. Harris-Moore broke into banks, stole Cessna airplanes, a 34-foot powerboat, semiautomatic pistols and a stream of Ford trucks and Cadillacs before finally being caught after crash-landing a plane on Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas on July 4, 2010. He had no formal flight training.

He is scheduled to be sentenced in October. But before then, state prosecutors in four Washington counties are expected to pursue as many as 40 charges, included first-degree burglary in which a handgun was involved, a charge that could keep him in prison longer than the federal charges do.

Asked in court how many years of school he completed, Mr. Harris-Moore, now 20 and a high school dropout, replied, “10 years.” His lawyer, John Henry Brown, told reporters after the hearing that Mr. Harris-Moore hoped eventually to attend college to study aviation and engineering.