The Times took a look at the real “Barefoot Bandit,” the super-macho and heroic young man who could lift planes with his bare hands and run around the world without shoes on while eluding authorities after breaking out of a Washington halfway house. (Until he was caught in the Bahamas earlier this month.) Yeah, him. Except, the Times reveals Colton Harris-Moore to actually be a boy who was “alone and hungry,” diagnosed with depression and ADD, and the son of a woman who “screamed things at him so vicious” neighbors cringed. Early social workers reported that he wanted his mom to stop drinking and smoking, to “get a job and have food in the house,” but she “refused.”
“By the time he was 10, an investigation involving ‘negligent treatment or maltreatment’ had been initiated … Ms. Kohler [his mother], 59, declined to be interviewed. A lawyer she has hired to handle news media inquiries and film and book proposals based on her son’s story said he had not seen allegations of abuse against Ms. Kohler in public records.”
So this paragon of motherhood is now fielding book proposals? Yikes. The Bandit, on the other hand, is “not into” his Facebook fame, according to his lawyer.
