SEATTLE — The former fugitive who became known to the world as the “Barefoot Bandit” is about to be released from prison and will take a part-time job with the Seattle attorney who represented him in court.
John Henry Browne, a high-profile attorney whose clients have also included serial killer Ted Bundy, confirmed Wednesday that Colton Harris-Moore, 25, will do clerical work and answer telephones in his offices after he’s released from prison to a halfway house.
“He’ll be looking for full-time work and will eventually be going to school,” Browne said.
According to Browne’s recently published autobiography, “The Devil’s Defender,” the attorney said he took Harris-Moore’s defense for $1 paid by Harris-Moore’s mother.
He negotiated a plea agreement that sent Harris-Moore to prison for six and a half years, but has resolved dozens of federal and state charges pending against him since his escape from a juvenile halfway house in 2008.
By the time he was arrested in 2010 after a boat chase in the Bahamas, Harris-Moore was something of a folk hero, with a huge following on social media and articles of his exploits in major national publications.
Browne also helped Harris-Moore work out a movie deal that resulted in a Hollywood studio coming up with more than $1 million to pay restitution that Harris-Moore owed for wrecking cars, crash-landing three stolen airplanes and dozens of thefts and burglaries. Harris-Moore has received no money from the deal, Browne said Wednesday.
Browne said the job offer was part of a deal he had made with him years ago.
Harris-Moore’s formal release date from Stafford Creek Correctional Center in Aberdeen is Jan. 17, according to the state Department of Corrections. Browne said he was being moved to a halfway house as early as this week.
According to court records, Harris-Moore turned to crime as a child out of hunger and neglect from his alcoholic and abusive mother. Pamela Kohler, of Camano Island, died of cancer earlier this year even as Harris-Moore, from prison, desperately tried to raise money to freeze her body so she could be cured of cancer later.
Browne said the death was hard on Harris-Moore, but “in some ways I think it was a relief and has freed him.”
Harris-Moore was first jailed as a 17-year-old, and was serving time for burglary at a juvenile halfway house when he escaped in 2008. For the next two years, he evaded capture while committing a string of break-ins and thefts, often leaving a telltale sketched bare footprint at the scene.
He hid out in the forests of Orcas Island in the San Juans and squatted in the attic of a plane hangar at the airport. He flew a stolen plane from Washington across the country to the Bahamas, where he was captured.
