April 13, 2023 • 43 mins
Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got. Taking a break from all your worries sure wouldn't help a lot. Sometimes you want to go where nobody knows your name and they're never glad you came. This is the story of a guy who did just that.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of IHEARTRADIOZ Elizabeth Z. Yeah,
you know, it's ridiculous. I have so many things, but
I have one in particular. I was thinking about that.
I was like, waiting to see as I can tell
you about this. Is it a product mashup? No darn? Yeah,
but I okay, in my head it was a mashup. Okay.
I thought it was World Dog Snorkeling Championship. I was like, dude,
(00:24):
I gotta tell Elizabeth there's a World Dog Snorkeling Championship.
Turns out I just read too fast. Sometimes. It was
the World Bog Snorkeling Championship, which makes a lot more
sense if you think about it, because you actually can't
snorkel in a bog. It's weirder to give a snorkel
to a dog. I think we do. You look anyway,
Apparently people you'll never guess where over in England they
(00:47):
go and they jump in perfectly good swamps and they
swim around for competition. Yeah, and they only do that
like though it's about like a two hundred foot stretch
of bog. And then the rules are you wear a
snorkel like scuba diving and then you just swim through
the swamp and then whoever swims through the swamp facets
with the snorkel, I guess then they throw fruit at them.
(01:08):
I don't know, something they win, I don't know whatever,
But apparently is also a triathlon where you can do
a five mile run, a twelve mile mountain bike ride,
and then the bog swim. Anyway, so yeah, there's a
there's a whole thing. I'm gonna be doing this August
twenty third of this year. I'm gonna go over. Okay,
I'm training now. I got the shin kicking training going
(01:29):
with my shin kicking Master. So now I just got
to get a bog swimmer can teach me the ways
of how I like forget that I'm in a swamp
or whatever it is it you have to do a
train Well, I hope they don't lose the snorkel. It
could be like you know those bog people all the
like really well preserved remains, you know, Yeah, that's the
anaerobic preservations, Like, yeah, that's great to slip under, like
(01:49):
join clothes are pretty weld Like there's a girl I
think that they pulled out of the bogs from I
don't know, like Caveman times. That's the that's the scientific
you're talking like real more like Pete Mossy Ball their box. Yeah,
and then they have like the one she has like
a flower necklace. That was Wow, there's zero oxygen down there.
That'll be me some days, you know, Cass, I should
(02:11):
probably really pick out my outfit then if I'm gonna
go do the box're going right, something that I want
to live for. I'm thinking sequined speedos. That'll be fun
for archaeologists of the future. Yes, you gotta gotta think
of them. Yeah, that's ridiculous, Thank you. Do you know
what else is ridiculous? Hell no, I don't living is
a hermit and surviving on stolen candy. Oh my man,
(02:51):
this is a ridiculous crime. A podcast about absurd and
outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always nine murder free
and one hundred percent ridiculous. Oh you damn right. Have
you ever thought someone was in your house without knowing
about it? Now? Actually, I've never thought that, Like, have
you ever had things go missing that are unexplained? I've
(03:11):
had weird noises occur and thought it was a ghost
before I thought it was a living person, so I'm
not the right person to ask about this. My my
mom had a dog years ago named Lucy, okay, and
Lucy was like a big old hound dog. She's dumber
and cheese like. She was not a smart way down
like yogurt super smart smart sutured w um. So anyway,
(03:37):
so Lucy the hound dog kleptomaniac okay, And like, my
mom had a neighbor who maybe wasn't like the sharpest
of wits thanks to the drink and like anything else
you could find. So Lucy started sneaking over to this
guy's yard and taking things, like first it was a
ball cap and then my mom just like went around
and put it on the guy's mailbox and like didn't
(03:58):
say anything. Um. Then she turns up with a pack
of smokes and like people shouldn't smoke, So my mom
threw the pack away. And then meanwhile, like the guy's
kind of losing what little since he has, think like
where did I leave all this stuff? So then Lucy
shows up one day in the yard with a single
raw chicken wing. All right, he was grilling. Yeah, I
(04:20):
think he was like trying to grill up a wing.
Like Parker posey and waiting for Guffman. Yeah, my favorite
scene anyway, And that's a shout out to rude dude
Phineas Gage Instagram and their lovely wife. The two of
them are Guffman obsessive. Oh I like it anyway. So
so when did you just show up with like with
like I don't know, the I don't know the bumper
of well clothes. Long story longer. The dog kept stealing
(04:43):
things until the man stopped keeping things in his carport,
everything in the car park. Lessons were learned everybody, But
you know, this isn't that uncommon, Not dog stealing cigarettes,
but people finding things going missing with no explanation. There
was a woman in South Carolina, not my mom, who
was hearing weird sounds in her house, like and then
(05:03):
nail started coming down from the ceiling through like this.
Yeah right, you're getting points of nails. Yeah, and then
like a little bit of insulation was coming through, and
so she thought maybe she had a critter living in
the attic. You would have thought, automatically goes oh, of course,
I'm like probably civil war. Goes well, did she ever
have a critter? So she sends her nephew up to
(05:24):
check and there was a man up there. Huh. In
her attic there were fastol were fast food cups filled
with his own waist. Oh god. And he had his
bed little bed area situated so that he could see
down a heating vent into the master bedroom. He was
literally crapping where he slept. Yeah, yes, oh man, and
(05:44):
where he ate I suppose. So the cops came, and
it turns out the lady knew the guy that she'd
broken up with him twelve years prior what he was
about to go to prison, and she ended their relationship.
And when was he discovered in the attic he'd just
gotten out of prison two weeks earlier. Wait, I'm a
little throne here. So he's about to go to prison.
(06:07):
She breaks up with him. She's like, this isn't gonna work.
You're going to prison. Goes to prison twelve years later,
comes out. He's like, I'm just gonna sneak back into her. Hang,
I'm gonna maybe seeping a pick up where we started first.
I'm just gonna sleep into her. I just need to
get about twelve cups of poop. I need to get
her used to my smell. Eighteen bottles a peek and
then she'll she'll be mine. All this osmotically make my prison.
What did he think would happen? Well, there was there
(06:30):
was a lady in Washington State. She called a repairman
and he had to go into the house to fix something.
And when he was down there, he discovered a dude
living in the crawl space a family of four. Well, no,
it was like a dude. She they didn't know how
long you've been down woman. No, she's like, I don't
know why she needs a date? Better man exow her house. Well,
(06:54):
like he gave out the word like, hey, this is
a place to hang out. No, this is in Washington State.
So they didn't know how long the guy had been
in the crawl space. But like she told police, things
have been off for a while, like there were weird
smells in her house that she couldn't place. It turns
out that was the stink of the weed and the
meth that he was smoking down like a meth addict,
like losing his teeth and smell just to be creeping
(07:16):
up through your floorboard. Who's smoking? Math? Is that meth?
I smell? Now in another place in North Carolina, there
was a college student who kept finding her clothes missing.
And she and I'm thinking, she's probably okay my roommates, right,
but she's like, no, they don't want my clothes or dots.
They don't have the fashion sense I do. She's found
like a handprint on the wall. And what did her
(07:38):
roommates say? It's a ghost? So like, were you her
roommates telling you a lot of us means Razer got
to be a ghost. So then one day she hears
a noise. You know how many dead people there are, Elizabeth?
Do you know how many ghosts? I mean, that's a
deep bench forget saying. So she hears a noise, is dead.
I'm just saying, here's annoise. It's coming from her closet.
(08:02):
Her thought, it's got to be a raccoon. Yeah, r
ex boyfriend, right, like x con ex boyfriend. This is
what she This is what she said to Fox eight
News in Greenboro, North Carolina. I'm like, who's there? And
somebody answers me. He's like, oh, my name is Drew.
And I opened the door and hiss in there wearing
(08:22):
all of my clothes, my socks, my shies, and he
has a book bag full of my clothes probably, so
she had a thirty year old man living in his
closet and yeah, and she was like, so she she says, like,
what are you doing in my closet? He's like, my
(08:42):
name is Joe, And so then she's chatting with him,
like trying to keep him busy while she calls the
cops asking him for fashion advice. Well, what did they
do while they were waiting? He tried on more clothes.
So the cops come and they arrest him and they
charged like this for weird squatting, right, but then he
also had other felonies for other weird stuff that he'd
(09:04):
done beyond. So then there's a guy in Japan, Okay,
and he keeps finding food missing from his house, and
so he sets up a video camera and he catches
the culprit on tape, and that's where he found out
that she wasn't breaking in, that she was already in
and she's living in a closet and we've been in
there for more than a year. Now. Here's the thing.
(09:26):
It's from a British paper where I found this and
they kept saying it was in a cabinet, and so
I think that's what they mean like a closet. I
don't think she was climbing up among the glasses in
the cabinet. She's real tiny. It's just a little little tiny,
like a little box. So um yeah, Now the guy
I want to tell you about today, our main character,
he did something similar, but not just not just not
(09:49):
for a year, not just a year. One day he
went into the woods with no intentions, no intentions to stay,
no intentions to come back out. He just wanted here.
Uncut in the moment awareness. Okay, so he just goes
on a hike one day. I want to I'm done,
I want to be present. Yeah. His name is Christopher
(10:09):
Thomas Knight. He was born in nineteen sixty five to
a working class family in rural Maine, Albion. To be exact,
they had six kids. His dad cleaned tanker trucks at
a creamery while his mom kept the house. Um, they
had like a simple farmhouse, but it was on sixty acres.
Damn right, that's a spread. They weren't rich. Well, he
(10:30):
just worked at the dairy, Like, he didn't keep the
dairy hut. They were super self sufficient and like really
clever with what they had. They had a two acre
garden that they grew food on. Yes, that's a farm.
That's like my dream. I mean, I just have what
like five raised beds. Um. They built stuff, they fixed stuff,
They made like a little hut in the woods. The
(10:50):
boys did all by themselves. The kids worked really hard.
They were awesome brainiac nerds in school. Um, that's awesome
for from where I'm standing, But the kids at Lawrence
High School in Fairfield, Maine probably didn't get with that
either way. The family were voracious readers. A neighbor said
that their house looked like a library because they were
just books and magazines. Everybody I know. His family was
(11:14):
very reserved and super private. Like I cannot stress that enough,
obsessively private. Most of the neighbors had rarely spoken to
them in like the decades that they live. Next week.
That's more than really private. Yeah, it's like intensely private. Well,
and this is what Christopher later said of his family quote,
we're not emotionally bleeding all over each other. We're not
(11:34):
touchy feely. Stoicism is expected. Okay, I'm with mom stoic
the part, but the emotionally bleeding a way to look
at it. So Chris graduates from high school. In nineteen
eighty four, Olympic fever was sweeping the nation. Oh yeah,
that has the eagle. Oh yeah, but that has nothing
to do with anything I'm telling you about. Okay, just
(11:56):
needed to get that out. Nineteen eighty four Olympic fever
was sweet been the nation. I can't America's sweetheart. So Chris,
like his siblings, he had really great grades. And just
like his siblings, he went to Sylvania Technical School in
Massachusetts after I graduated, and like his brothers before him,
(12:18):
he enrolled in an electronics course there. He completed the
program and then he got a job like installing home
and car alarm systems. His paychecks from that job earned
him a car, a nineteen eighty five subru Bratt. Oh wow,
that is an amazing not a truck truck. It's a
bad little scooter right there. He'd only been working for
(12:39):
about a year when he got into his car one
day and just started driving. He drove out of the
city limits of Waltham, Massachusetts. He headed up the coast,
passing through the sliver of New Hampshire that touches the
Atlantic Ocean. He went through Portsmouth and crossed into Maine.
He went past the Nubble Lighthouse, Zaren. Oh, not the
Nuble Lighthouse, Elizabeth. I cannot tell you how many times
(13:02):
he went through Kennebunk. I know that, but not Kennebunkport
isn't that close to the water. He went along the
rugged coast by Portland, past Yarmouth, Zaren Muth. Yes, I
would have gone. I would have stayed in port He
went past Brunswick and past the Androscoggin River. Who please,
are you kidding me? He headed to the capitol Augusta,
(13:23):
and he just kept going. Did he go up to Bahaba?
He made his way along the dense forest surrounding China Lake,
past love Joy Pond, if you can believe that, until
he reached Albion. It's a really good place his hometown. Yeah,
just chill there. Sure well. He looked up and down
the main street as he drove, and then he just
kept going, Zaron, This man, there's no stopping. Can you
(13:43):
believe it? Like he's just got his foot on the gas.
I do not doubt Christopher Thomas Knight. The more he drove,
the deeper he went into the wilds of northern Maine.
He just kept going. Until his gas tank was almost empty.
Oh come on, new Jack, throw do it? So hold on.
So he was right it in Moosehead Lake, not too
far from the Canadian border, when he decided, like, I'm
(14:04):
running out of gas, I'm gonna pull over. He pulls
the brat to the side of the road, like kind
of deep into the bushes on like a little trail.
He grabs his backpack, which was not filled with supplies.
He left his keys in the car and then just
started walking. Okay, And he kept walking and he kept walking.
He would camp somewhere for a little bit and then
head south. And this just was like days and days.
(14:27):
He followed the valleys and the streams like and at
first he was foraging for food. Do we know a
time a year? This is uh no, okay, So he's
foraging for food. He's eating berries, roadkill. Oh god, you know.
And it should be noted that his family never filed
a missing person's report. They were a really quiet family.
(14:48):
I thought that, you know, they're these like stoic New
England stock right, he didn't want to emotionally bleed all
over the cops. Well, it's like they figured, like, okay,
if my son goes off and doesn't say anything. Well,
he's on some sort of adventure and wants to be
left alone. That doesn't make sense to me, still, even
taking into account the culture, because like, what if something
bad happened to him, either it's someone else's hand or
(15:09):
his own. I don't get it. Yeah, I'm kind of
with you. But at the same time, I do know
that certain families who have taken similar stances with when
a child that they are not surprised does something like this. Yeah,
I could see that they don't. They don't have the
family like you're all on find my friends. No, no, no,
not quite like some people I know. So, um, that's
(15:29):
subru brat he was driving. Yeah, it was just a
year old when he ditched it. There's a new car. Yeah,
it was never discovered. It's pretty much probably still out
there in the woods somewhere. Oh, find my brat wallowed
by the wilderness. I want that like brat with like
a thousand miles on it. Mufferent direction. So he starts
(15:52):
making his way south from Moosehead Lake, and he starts
stealing food to live rather than eating road kill. Yeah,
he stole corn from gardens. He dug up potatoes. It
must be like summertime. Yeah, but he's not stealing from
like the houses. He's not stealing pies from window sills.
I'm sure he probably did that too. First it was
the gardens. Then let's say pies from window sills. Okay, sure,
(16:12):
I live in a hobo world, Elizabeth. Well, that went
on for two years. Two years, and then one day
he found the perfect spot to call home. When we
get back from this break, i'll tell you where and
how Christopher Knight decided to stay. Zaren, we're back. Hey,
(16:46):
you look at us. When we left off, Christopher Knight,
he was making his way through the wilds of northern Maine.
That's right, laid Amy Claude, eating on roadkill, stealing carrots, yes,
probably pies from windowsills, living someone's best life. I want
to make a pie, put it on the wind sile
and see what happened. I'll tell you what. I'll steal
it like you'll go over. And what are they called?
(17:07):
What do they call them squirrels? Anyway? Um? So? He
initially he stayed in an empty cabin. What do they
call them trash? What are those things? A bird? Um? So,
he stayed in an empty cabin once and he was
nervous the whole time, and he didn't think it was
worth it. The whole shelter thing too anxiety producing. Um,
(17:30):
so after that he never slept inside again. That was okay,
Then make a choice and stick with it, man. So
he started out way up by Moosehead Lake. Um, do
you know that's that's where Moosehead beer comes from. I
kind of guessed, had no idea, it doesn't. I just
made that Noway, No, I just made it up. Anyway.
He moved south and then he reached an area that
(17:50):
felt like a little more familiar to him, like he
understood the trees and the temperature and the flora and fauna.
He didn't know where he was, but he was like
more than a one hundred miles south from where he started.
He was at a place called North Pond. It's a
big pond called North Pond. Ah, that makes sense, but
it's a it's a small river. Yeah, you want to
(18:11):
in the southern part called North and everyone refers to
it as North. That way, if someone says North Pond,
you know. Well where he left the Brat and dub Brat.
She was riding with him in the car and she's, well,
summon it on the highway. I'm gonna keep going to
Nova Scotia. Your word, that had been completely unpopulated. I mean,
(18:33):
it was just there was nothing out there. Now he's wood. Yeah,
now he's in like a rural farming slash vacation. So
he's back and it's beautiful. I did Google street view
all over the place and it's and it's now that
most of the roads aren't covered, but it's gorgeous. Oh.
I drove all over the place on the click click
(18:55):
click click. I'm just going to look at then I
pan over look at that. You can see the North
Pond from here. Oh, it's just stunning. You like it
as you can drive slowly and you can no, I
just speed. I jump, I jump, I jump. Okay, So
the woods where he decided to set up shop, they
were really rugged, lots of boulders, yes, really dense under
that Appealachian style. Yeah. And there were no game trails anywhere,
(19:18):
which told him that this was not a high traffic area.
There were no like stoplights for deer. So he finds
this clearing like a like a round area of boulders.
You can't see my hand and so I'm just making
a big hug of all these boulders in this big circle,
and you had to kind of go in through a
split between them, so it's like a hinge of rock, correct,
(19:42):
And they are all these big trees over the top,
so it's really shady. He sets in more ways than
what he sets up camp. He cleared this large area
and he leveled out the dirt as best as he could,
and then he set out to stock up his little paradise. Right,
so he's like refounding America. Pretty nice one man from here.
(20:03):
So the area around North Pond, which is the Belgrade
Lakes area, it's brimming with vacation cabins in summer camps.
Were you writing real estate over here? I want to
go there so badly. It's so pretty, Chris. He's deep
enough in the woods that summer fun seekers are like
drunken high school students. They're not going to stumble upon
(20:24):
his camp. Oh yeah, But he could get close to
the cabins without being detected easily enough. He'd watch the
cabins to make sure no one was around, no cars
in the driveway, and then he'd creep up, peek in
the window, try the door and it was from these
cabins that he got himself a tent and some tarps
and a propane stove and some propane tanks and food.
(20:48):
Completely is he like just packing this stuff on his
back in hiking back And then I'll get to some
of his other techniques, so he gets the basics, then
he moves on to close another sub. He stole a
ton of sleeping bags, all right. You know, I try
to understand why his family may just let him go.
It's like he's always been a bit strange. Well, he
(21:10):
needed all the sleeping bags for the winter and the
cold bite. Yeah, yeah, and he only went out at night,
so it and in the dead of winter when it
would get super super cold, he'd get up and he'd
pace around his campsite to keep warm, like he'd turn
on the propane stove and melt some snow for water
to get all tis because he have like a pet
timberwolf at this point, no traveling everywhere with canon. I mean,
(21:31):
that's what I would be like, Yeah, I know your story.
I'd have like all the woodland creatures exactly. You'd have
a he never got frostbite, if you can believe it,
And he never got sick because he wasn't around people
to catch a cold. Sure, I get the sect the
frost bite. He didn't have stomach issues. He fell once
or twice, but he didn't break any bones. Okay, he's lucky.
(21:51):
He's not really putting himself out, and he didn't have
any dental emergencies. No, no, it was in good shape.
He stole books and so many magazines and books like tons.
He managed to swipe a giant collection of National Geographic magazines,
which he repurposed into the floor of his campsite. Oh wow,
so he leveled off the ground. But he wanted insulation
and water absorption, so he stacked the magazines into blocks
(22:15):
and basically tiled his hideaway with them. Oh okay, super
super smart. He didn't read them, though, because he thought
National Geographic was garbage, and he was a little disappointed
with the literary taste of the cabin dwellers. Like he
would take just about anything they had to read, but
he felt that they had met too many paperback pot
(22:35):
boilers and not enough of an intellectual challenge. Too much
main Native Stephen King and not enough main Native Edna
Saint Vincent Malay. Okay, so he did have strong literary opinions.
He thought he thought James Joyce was a total joke
and only loved by fake intellectuals. When he ran out
of stolen toilet paper, he wiped with pages from John
(22:55):
Grisham novels. He couldn't stand Jack Aroak, but actually he
just couldn't stand people who liked Jack Kerouacay. He was
totally over Robert Frost. Yeah, and he really really hated
Henry David throw with him. Do you know my take?
If your mother and your sister are doing your laundry
(23:17):
and bringing you food every week, that is not you
living alone in a cabin. I don't I heard that,
And I was like, I'm gonna go back. Are you
kidding me? Are you? Christopher Knight, Because that's like exactly
what he said. He goes on this rant and he's like,
you know, if my mom did my laundry when I
was out in the woods, he had dinner parties the
(23:37):
row did. So He's like, whatever I am, Christopher Knight, brother,
I'm right there. We went into the woods and got free,
well free stuff. So meanwhile, the folks at row Rome
is like a large unincorporated area along North Pond, Okay.
The people there, they felt like they were kind of
losing it. The area had been so safe, no crime,
(23:58):
but now people were finding stuff missing from their houses
and their vacation cabins. They started to talk to each
other and they found they weren't alone, so they wanted
to keep an eye open. But no one ever saw anything.
Stuff just kept disappearing. So a legend was born. The
North Pond Hermit was to blame, gave the name. They
weren't wrong. Chris was a hermit in all but the
(24:19):
religious sense. Hermits go away from society as a means
to get clarity, to get closer to their higher power
or powers. They renounced worldly concerns and pleasures. This is
very us for some people, and we hear about hermits
and stories fictions. Watch Northern Exposure. Yea, they have a
great one, Adam, who goes off and does exactly this.
He's the hermit who's stealing stuff, but he's a Gormet chef,
(24:42):
so he steals like Gormetradians. Go on. There was that
super filthy seduction of a young woman by a hermit,
and Pacaccio is the t Cameroon. Oh wow, did you
know that that section of the book was a northern
exposurecaccio is the camera on the book was so filthy
that it wasn't translated in English until the twentieth century,
(25:02):
and it was written in thirteen fifty. Oh wow, I
got a copy of If you want to break into
we'll do a reading later. So then there's Nietzsche's Thus
spoke Zarathustra. Zarathustra is a hermit who calls time out
on his isolation, pops out of his cave. Society declares
that God is dead. Yeah, Chris Knight though he was
in the woods with no interaction or connection with human beings,
(25:24):
but he had no desire to go out and share
with society the things that he'd learned. What did he learn? Yeah? Please,
what did he learn? Elizabeth? In an interview with writer
Michael Finkel, he wrote, Michael Finkel wrote a really great
book about Chris Knight called The Stranger in the Woods.
It's a great book. Here's what Chris had to say.
I did examine myself, he said, solitude did increase my perception.
(25:47):
But here's the tricky thing. When I applied my increased
perception to myself, I lost my identity with no audience,
no one to perform for. I was just there. There
was no need to define myself. I became irrelevant. The
moon was the minute hand, the season's the hour hand.
I didn't even have a name. I never felt lonely,
(26:07):
to put it romantically, I was completely free. Wow. It's heavy,
and it's like I'm you. I've read about, you know,
obviously your diaries from cowboys who experience a lot of
time alone and life alone and out on their own,
and they say things very similarly, not quite so poetically
or with so much thoughtful and meaningful examination of the self,
(26:31):
but they get to the same levels of like, you know,
the moon is your our hand, and the idea of
like you know, you don't need a name, and your
identity merges with the oneness of everything. And it's interesting
how the freedom is the loss of the self. Yeah, yeah,
somehow the self is the prison. Well, to be irrelevant
is to be free. Yeah. Well. They also goes with
(26:51):
the Buddhists with like, you know, once you have a self,
you're suffering. Like as soon as you have one, that
that's it. Brother, you are your own prison. This is
wild ugly. So there's Chris. Yeah, living in the woods,
stealing to survive. He stole himself a nice Columbia jacket. Uh,
he had a little radio, and he stole a lot
of junk food. Was he talking to himself? Because his
(27:12):
language skills are pretty good for someone who wasn't speaking
for not so much. He actually was hard for him
to start talking again. Yeah, could you hear that? So he,
like I said, radio, he did listen to Rush Limbaugh.
His like entertainment. Okay, um, well know in music, you
know who he really really loved Leonard skinnerd He was like,
(27:33):
in a thousand years, people are going to be listening
to Leonard Skinner. That's what he said. Dead serious. I
mean I would have gone with if you had to
pick the genre. Yeah. Anyhow, so all this junk food, right,
he would really like he got so he really is
the free bird. Yeah. Sorry, he got crazy into the
(27:54):
junk food. Flashlights, batteries, rope, chocolate bars, frozen Burritos's this
thing turn on and turn offs, deodorant, boots, duct tape, spices. Okay,
thermometers or as they say, thermometers, hand sanitizer, clothes soap,
(28:15):
which is what I call laundry detergent I do, and
it annoys everybody whatever watches pillows, mouse traps, and these
are just things. We all both know what they are.
This is what he's stealing. I got this shampoop. He
would quote unquote borrow a canoe to steal big stuff.
So he would like take a canoe out, steal the stuff,
(28:38):
bring it back, and then he'd sprinkled pine needles all
over it so it looked like it hadn't been moved.
But anyway, he used the canoe to steal a mattress
in a box spring what and a bed frame. Yeah,
so he had that all. He had a bed frame,
mattress and then his tent and tarps. Wow, no wonder,
he's judgment and no wonder. The locals are like goodness,
(28:58):
like my bed's gone. Yeah. So yeah. He kept a
bugout bag with backup supplies away from the campsite and
never in like if he ever got made and he
had to get out of there as winter would approach,
he'd ramp up his supply heist. It wasn't just the
cold weather that kept him from journeying out in the winter.
He didn't want to leave tracks in the snow. Yeah,
(29:18):
that would lead right back to him. People meanwhile start
getting burglar alarms. Don't forget that Chris's one and only
job had been installing burglar alarms. So much for that,
so people bought dead bolt locks. They kept guns in
the house. There was this one guy, Neil Patterson. He
stayed up at night with a three fifty seven magnum
lying in wait for the hermit. He stayed up for
(29:40):
two weeks straight, every night shoot and then he gave
up because you know, it's like, he can only do
that for so long. The anger only so long. Chris,
he kept stealing and staying one step ahead. One jackpot
for him was the Pine Tree Camp. And here's how
the camp has described on its website, quote, Tucked along
(30:00):
the shore of beautiful North Pond in Rome, you will
find what, at first glance looks like a quintessential Maine
camp under a canopy of pine trees. Look a bit closer,
and you'll see why many refer to this place as
heaven on Earth. It's Pine Tree Camp. Pine Tree Camp
opened its gates in nineteen forty five as a summer
camp for children with physical disabilities. Over the years, it
(30:21):
has evolved into a place where children and adults with
disabilities are able to participate in all the recreational activities
for which Maine is known all year long. The barrier
free setting, along with an amazing staff, ensured that activities
like swimming, fishing, kayaking, hiking, boating, and even camping in
a tent under the stars are all completely accessible to all.
(30:41):
Participating in activities that take people beyond their disability has
a tremendous impact. It builds self esteem and self confidence.
That experience, coupled with meeting friends who understand and experiencing
the feeling of acceptance, is transformational. This blaze sounds amazing,
and I'm pretty annoyed that he stole from them. So
I have to admit that I made a donation to
(31:01):
them as I was researching this, because I felt guilty
about cutting up about it and then finding out that
he took from kids with disabilities. Are you kidding me? Yeah? Whatever? Surprised?
I mean, like, I'm not going to reck wag my
finger out him. I liked that he's an equal Opportunities Yes,
but I was just that's a line to fire. Look,
I'll steal from handicapped children, stand over your grandmother. I
(31:23):
don't care. I'll steal for anybody. He crossed the line
for me on that, So anybody my favorite Elizabeth. If
you want, you can donate to Pine Camp. Just google
it anyway. Pine Tree Camp was a prime target of his.
Though they okay, if it's repeated, I'm with you. Yeah,
it was repeated. It was a one time thing. I'm
not weird. They had lots of supplies. Obviously, I have
(31:45):
all these people. They were going to have tons of food.
They'd been hit by him before, they knew it was
only a matter of time before he came back. They
did not raise a child army to go after him.
He would hit properties multiple times, so average about forty
burglaries a year. That's a lot. That's like obviously, you know,
(32:06):
a little less than one a week or like three
a month. Basic. You know, he's pretty active. It's not
like he's doing big you know. Anyway, Yeah, I mean,
but that's like I'm just thinking about the travel. Like
if you like, got like a listen, does you have
a natural like on Wednesdays I like to shot. You know,
he didn't know what day was what He completely lost
track of time. He had no idea. Does he keep it?
Did he create his own count? No, he didn't keep
(32:26):
it journal, He didn't do any of that. He was
just he was just in the moment, right, yes, of course.
So this one local guy, he said he was hit
about twice a year. Quote, I'd leave him a note,
don't break in, just tell me what you need. I'll
put it by the side of the road. And he
never did. He never left him a note. And he's
just like, whatever, I'll tell me what to do. Free.
So there's this game. Warden Sergeant Terry Hughes determined to
(32:50):
put an end to the looting. Of course, he's yeah.
He sets up a high end motion detector alarm behind
the ice machine in the kitchen of Pine Tree Camp. Okay,
the alarm didn't ring at the camp. It rang at
Terry's house. So when we get back from this break,
I'll tell you if Terry's trap worked. Tonight. Hey is Aaron,
(33:29):
Welcome back? How are you doing? Lad? Sit down all right,
I'm sitting. Close your eyes. Oh, I want you to
picture it. It's the wee hours of April fourth, twenty thirteen.
The number one song in the country is Thrift Shop
by McLamore and Ryan Lewis featuring wands or wands or somebody.
(33:50):
None of this matters to you. You're a giant Costco
sized bag of large marshmallows, and you're on a shelf
in the pantry of the Pine Tree Camp in Rome, Maine.
You hear a noise creaking floorboards. It's that guy. He
was here a couple of weeks ago and he stole
a key chain off a hook in the hall. You
(34:12):
could see him from your spot on the shelf. He's
whistling to himself as he walks to the shelves and
starts putting stuff in his backpack. Last time he took
your buddy the value pack of Hershey Bars. You and
the Graham Crackers stared helplessly as the chocolate was whisked
away into the night. Gone was the promise of the
(34:32):
Melty Union. The three of you were waiting for a
little melty thrubble. You watch as the man grabs bag
of Smarties candies. He giggles into light. You consider smart
he's a lesser candy. But you know what, who are
you to talk? You're a marshmallow. He takes his time,
He peruses the shelves. He grabs some cans of coffee
(34:54):
and bags of potato chips, and then he uses that
purloined key from the hook in the hall to get
access to the walking and freezer. He's in there a
while illegally shopping. He comes back out with his arms
full of hamburgers, sides of bacon hot dogs, and as
he passed the shelves, he reaches out and he grabs you. No,
(35:14):
his rough hands squeeze your bag and you gasp. You
didn't think it would end like this. You look over
and you see a pair of eyes peeking in the window.
You let out a little squeal. You recognize them. It's
the game Warden Terry Hughes. The door to the kitchen
flies open, and you and the hermit are blinded by
a flashlight. You, though, can make out a barrel of
(35:37):
a gun behind the light. Terry, you know the bags
of marshmallow have great vision, great night vision. Get on
the ground, yells Sergeant Hughes. The hermit complies, He drops you,
and you slide along the warm wood floor and come
to rest against an industrial oven. This is all too
much for a bag of marshmallows. Sergeant Hughes then calls
(35:57):
main state trooper, a woman named Ian Perkins Vance and
she's on the scene almost immediately. She's also been waiting
for this moment. She's just hepped up. The cops are
stunned that this is their hermit. Super clean cut, very
put together, you know, no facial hair thanks to all
the stolen razors. He had really nice clothes on, very
well taken care of. It took them a while to
(36:21):
get him to open up, but he finally told them
who he was. He said, I don't have an address,
I don't have a car, I don't have a job.
I got nothing. They asked him how long he'd been
in the woods. Here's how Michael Finkel put it in
his book. Quote. Night thought for a bit, then asked
when the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster occurred. He had long
(36:41):
ago lost the habit of making time in months or years.
This was just a news event, he happened to remember.
The nuclear meltdown took place in nineteen eighty six, the
same year Knight said he went to live in the woods.
He was twenty years old at the time, not long
out of high school. He was now forty seven, a
middle aged man, Oh my god, he spent the entire
(37:02):
twenty seven years. He was in the woods for twenty
seven years, years his formative years, not his reclining, retiring years.
He wasn't the old man in the woods. He's out there.
I just really like trees. You know, who needs to
date or crime. He committed well over a thousand break
(37:22):
ins in that time. Good on him, and they think
it's probably way more than that except for Pine Tree Camp, yes,
of course obviously. So he was having a tough time
with this sudden reimmersion into society. He didn't know how
to talk to people or how to act. Oh. Yeah,
it's like when I first started seeing people in person
after the COVID lockdown, Like I had zero small talk
(37:43):
skills were pretty feral. I would just sort of short circuit.
I was more awkward than normal, Like I don't know
what okay, I gotta go like, don't pet me. Why
I'm not a cat? So like quit. No, Chris Knight
hadn't spoken to anyone in nearly thirty years. He was
still wearing the thick gold rim glasses that he had
(38:04):
on as a young man when he walked into the wilderness.
This is a man who went out to them on
his own, who wears prescription. You know what, that's an inspiration,
totally brave Bold. While he was awaiting trial, two of
his brothers came to see him, and obviously none of
them recognized rised each other. Um, I mean the brothers
recognized themselves, but one of them like was like, Okay,
(38:27):
I gotta prepare for this. I gotta meet my brother.
And he goes into the washroom and splashes water on
his face and he was like, wait, who are you?
Who is anybody? He like he got that clarity from
his brother telepathically. It was so awesome and it was
a ghost. Um. We don't know about like the family's
(38:49):
relationships because obviously they're so terribly private. We do know
that his father passed away before his arrest, before he emerged,
and Chris was listed as a survivor in the bituary.
So they kind of just imagine somewhere this. Did you
ever have friends? Like? I don't know, maybe it's just
I've never had friends. If you have some friends, you
will usually have a dude. Usually it's a guys and
(39:11):
I just not take anybody, but you know offensive guy
who's just you can tell like I'm just gonna go
off to Alaska types I'm gonna go off to you know,
Goose Lake. And in Canada, it's like you can just tell.
And then they go off and they do it and
you never see them again, and everything's cool, and the
family's like, well, we always knew he was gonna do it.
This was like, yeah, I've I've known a few guys
(39:32):
and the families are you done to people? But it's
like they were just not meant to be a human,
Like they got the wrong body. You know, It's like
they was meant to be like a stork or or something.
So bag of marshmallows or in my case, a bag
of marshmallows. So in October twenty thirteen, Chris pleaded guilty
to thirteen counts of burglary and theft in the Kennebec
(39:54):
County Superior Court. He got seven months in jail, and
he'd already served most most of it, so he only
had a week left on his sentence and he had
to he still though, he had to go meet up
with a judge once a week when he was out,
and he was told either get a job or go
to school. How wow would it be? That we go
to prison after living in the main woods for twenty
(40:15):
seven years. Right, Well, that was hard for him. I
think that is the worst punishing thing you could probably be. Yeah.
He talked about how it was like all this noise
totally that was just like so foreign to head. Yeah,
I couldn't sleep by that. Yeah. Oh yeah, and like
eating and everything. Now back at the camp site, they
had to spend a ton of money cleaning it out
because he had like this I'd say, I don't know,
(40:37):
half acre or so of his garbage dump that he
made his own nidden, yeah, basically, And so they had
to go and like clear all that out and kind
of move it. But it's so rugged to get in there.
It was hard. From what I read in the book
and then a bunch I read all these newspaper and
magazine articles, it didn't seem like he had a substance
abuse problem. It did not know, but he was. He
(41:00):
had to agree not to drink again, and I didn't
quite understand. He drank a lot to prep for the
winter and get fattened up. And he actually worried because
he was eating so much sugar and drinking to fatten
up that he worried he was going to get diabetes,
and then he did kind of tip some back, But
it wasn't like he was an alcoholic in terms of
everything I read, so I thought it was a weird
detail that he had to kind of report in. It's
(41:21):
so interesting. He chooses the life of a bear pretty much.
He now lives a very quiet, private, light life in Maine,
inside indoors. I thought that this passage from Michael Finkel's
book was fascinating. Quote. At a homeowner's meeting in two
thousand and two, the hundred people present were asked who
had suffered break ins. Seventy five raised their hands. Camp
(41:43):
Fire hermit stories were swapped. One kid recalled that when
he was ten years old, all his Halloween candy was stolen.
That kid is now thirty four, So Zarin, what's her
ridiculous takeaway? I bet they miss having the hermit, right.
You know, they hated it when it was happening. One
dude want to get us three fifty seven and spend
(42:05):
two nights up. But I bet now that he's gone
and done and over with, they miss him. Yeah, yeah, well,
I think that's the thing. Like it was so much
intrigue and it's exciting and it's story, and it's like something.
The bonds them all, they all have their stories. He
becomes the legend of the area. Yeah. One guy, he
was Chris Knight, was wearing like some of the clothes
that this one guy had had stolen from him and
he just didn't He's like, all right, well whatever, those
(42:26):
are his clothes now? Yeah, exactly. So that's it. That's
my story. That's great. You can find us online at
Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. Email us at
ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, download the iHeart app
and leave us a talkback. It's a thirty second voicemail,
totally anonymous, totally legal tool. Do it next time. Ridiculous
(42:54):
Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaron Burnett, produced
and edited by Dave Cooston. The Chattahoochee River Reeper researches
by four service three star General Marissa Brown, an outraged
cabin owner, Andrea Song sharpen Tier. The theme song is
by Thomas Grab Me the Chips, Ahoy Lee and Travis
Hey give me some of Them. Ding Dong's Dotton executive
(43:14):
producers are subru Brats, Then Bolan and Bill Brownrida QUI
see it one more time? We dequeus. Ridiculous Crime is
a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts to my heart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(43:36):
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of IHEARTRADIOZ Elizabeth Z. Yeah,
you know, it's ridiculous. I have so many things, but
I have one in particular. I was thinking about that.
I was like, waiting to see as I can tell
you about this. Is it a product mashup? No darn? Yeah,
but I okay, in my head it was a mashup. Okay.
I thought it was World Dog Snorkeling Championship. I was like, dude,
(00:24):
I gotta tell Elizabeth there's a World Dog Snorkeling Championship.
Turns out I just read too fast. Sometimes. It was
the World Bog Snorkeling Championship, which makes a lot more
sense if you think about it, because you actually can't
snorkel in a bog. It's weirder to give a snorkel
to a dog. I think we do. You look anyway,
Apparently people you'll never guess where over in England they
(00:47):
go and they jump in perfectly good swamps and they
swim around for competition. Yeah, and they only do that
like though it's about like a two hundred foot stretch
of bog. And then the rules are you wear a
snorkel like scuba diving and then you just swim through
the swamp and then whoever swims through the swamp facets
with the snorkel, I guess then they throw fruit at them.
(01:08):
I don't know, something they win, I don't know whatever,
But apparently is also a triathlon where you can do
a five mile run, a twelve mile mountain bike ride,
and then the bog swim. Anyway, so yeah, there's a
there's a whole thing. I'm gonna be doing this August
twenty third of this year. I'm gonna go over. Okay,
I'm training now. I got the shin kicking training going
(01:29):
with my shin kicking Master. So now I just got
to get a bog swimmer can teach me the ways
of how I like forget that I'm in a swamp
or whatever it is it you have to do a
train Well, I hope they don't lose the snorkel. It
could be like you know those bog people all the
like really well preserved remains, you know, Yeah, that's the
anaerobic preservations, Like, yeah, that's great to slip under, like
(01:49):
join clothes are pretty weld Like there's a girl I
think that they pulled out of the bogs from I
don't know, like Caveman times. That's the that's the scientific
you're talking like real more like Pete Mossy Ball their box. Yeah,
and then they have like the one she has like
a flower necklace. That was Wow, there's zero oxygen down there.
That'll be me some days, you know, Cass, I should
(02:11):
probably really pick out my outfit then if I'm gonna
go do the box're going right, something that I want
to live for. I'm thinking sequined speedos. That'll be fun
for archaeologists of the future. Yes, you gotta gotta think
of them. Yeah, that's ridiculous, Thank you. Do you know
what else is ridiculous? Hell no, I don't living is
a hermit and surviving on stolen candy. Oh my man,
(02:51):
this is a ridiculous crime. A podcast about absurd and
outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always nine murder free
and one hundred percent ridiculous. Oh you damn right. Have
you ever thought someone was in your house without knowing
about it? Now? Actually, I've never thought that, Like, have
you ever had things go missing that are unexplained? I've
(03:11):
had weird noises occur and thought it was a ghost
before I thought it was a living person, so I'm
not the right person to ask about this. My my
mom had a dog years ago named Lucy, okay, and
Lucy was like a big old hound dog. She's dumber
and cheese like. She was not a smart way down
like yogurt super smart smart sutured w um. So anyway,
(03:37):
so Lucy the hound dog kleptomaniac okay, And like, my
mom had a neighbor who maybe wasn't like the sharpest
of wits thanks to the drink and like anything else
you could find. So Lucy started sneaking over to this
guy's yard and taking things, like first it was a
ball cap and then my mom just like went around
and put it on the guy's mailbox and like didn't
(03:58):
say anything. Um. Then she turns up with a pack
of smokes and like people shouldn't smoke, So my mom
threw the pack away. And then meanwhile, like the guy's
kind of losing what little since he has, think like
where did I leave all this stuff? So then Lucy
shows up one day in the yard with a single
raw chicken wing. All right, he was grilling. Yeah, I
(04:20):
think he was like trying to grill up a wing.
Like Parker posey and waiting for Guffman. Yeah, my favorite
scene anyway, And that's a shout out to rude dude
Phineas Gage Instagram and their lovely wife. The two of
them are Guffman obsessive. Oh I like it anyway. So
so when did you just show up with like with
like I don't know, the I don't know the bumper
of well clothes. Long story longer. The dog kept stealing
(04:43):
things until the man stopped keeping things in his carport,
everything in the car park. Lessons were learned everybody, But
you know, this isn't that uncommon, Not dog stealing cigarettes,
but people finding things going missing with no explanation. There
was a woman in South Carolina, not my mom, who
was hearing weird sounds in her house, like and then
(05:03):
nail started coming down from the ceiling through like this.
Yeah right, you're getting points of nails. Yeah, and then
like a little bit of insulation was coming through, and
so she thought maybe she had a critter living in
the attic. You would have thought, automatically goes oh, of course,
I'm like probably civil war. Goes well, did she ever
have a critter? So she sends her nephew up to
(05:24):
check and there was a man up there. Huh. In
her attic there were fastol were fast food cups filled
with his own waist. Oh god. And he had his
bed little bed area situated so that he could see
down a heating vent into the master bedroom. He was
literally crapping where he slept. Yeah, yes, oh man, and
(05:44):
where he ate I suppose. So the cops came, and
it turns out the lady knew the guy that she'd
broken up with him twelve years prior what he was
about to go to prison, and she ended their relationship.
And when was he discovered in the attic he'd just
gotten out of prison two weeks earlier. Wait, I'm a
little throne here. So he's about to go to prison.
(06:07):
She breaks up with him. She's like, this isn't gonna work.
You're going to prison. Goes to prison twelve years later,
comes out. He's like, I'm just gonna sneak back into her. Hang,
I'm gonna maybe seeping a pick up where we started first.
I'm just gonna sleep into her. I just need to
get about twelve cups of poop. I need to get
her used to my smell. Eighteen bottles a peek and
then she'll she'll be mine. All this osmotically make my prison.
What did he think would happen? Well, there was there
(06:30):
was a lady in Washington State. She called a repairman
and he had to go into the house to fix something.
And when he was down there, he discovered a dude
living in the crawl space a family of four. Well, no,
it was like a dude. She they didn't know how
long you've been down woman. No, she's like, I don't
know why she needs a date? Better man exow her house. Well,
(06:54):
like he gave out the word like, hey, this is
a place to hang out. No, this is in Washington State.
So they didn't know how long the guy had been
in the crawl space. But like she told police, things
have been off for a while, like there were weird
smells in her house that she couldn't place. It turns
out that was the stink of the weed and the
meth that he was smoking down like a meth addict,
like losing his teeth and smell just to be creeping
(07:16):
up through your floorboard. Who's smoking? Math? Is that meth?
I smell? Now in another place in North Carolina, there
was a college student who kept finding her clothes missing.
And she and I'm thinking, she's probably okay my roommates, right,
but she's like, no, they don't want my clothes or dots.
They don't have the fashion sense I do. She's found
like a handprint on the wall. And what did her
(07:38):
roommates say? It's a ghost? So like, were you her
roommates telling you a lot of us means Razer got
to be a ghost. So then one day she hears
a noise. You know how many dead people there are, Elizabeth?
Do you know how many ghosts? I mean, that's a
deep bench forget saying. So she hears a noise, is dead.
I'm just saying, here's annoise. It's coming from her closet.
(08:02):
Her thought, it's got to be a raccoon. Yeah, r
ex boyfriend, right, like x con ex boyfriend. This is
what she This is what she said to Fox eight
News in Greenboro, North Carolina. I'm like, who's there? And
somebody answers me. He's like, oh, my name is Drew.
And I opened the door and hiss in there wearing
(08:22):
all of my clothes, my socks, my shies, and he
has a book bag full of my clothes probably, so
she had a thirty year old man living in his
closet and yeah, and she was like, so she she says, like,
what are you doing in my closet? He's like, my
(08:42):
name is Joe, And so then she's chatting with him,
like trying to keep him busy while she calls the
cops asking him for fashion advice. Well, what did they
do while they were waiting? He tried on more clothes.
So the cops come and they arrest him and they
charged like this for weird squatting, right, but then he
also had other felonies for other weird stuff that he'd
(09:04):
done beyond. So then there's a guy in Japan, Okay,
and he keeps finding food missing from his house, and
so he sets up a video camera and he catches
the culprit on tape, and that's where he found out
that she wasn't breaking in, that she was already in
and she's living in a closet and we've been in
there for more than a year. Now. Here's the thing.
(09:26):
It's from a British paper where I found this and
they kept saying it was in a cabinet, and so
I think that's what they mean like a closet. I
don't think she was climbing up among the glasses in
the cabinet. She's real tiny. It's just a little little tiny,
like a little box. So um yeah, Now the guy
I want to tell you about today, our main character,
he did something similar, but not just not just not
(09:49):
for a year, not just a year. One day he
went into the woods with no intentions, no intentions to stay,
no intentions to come back out. He just wanted here.
Uncut in the moment awareness. Okay, so he just goes
on a hike one day. I want to I'm done,
I want to be present. Yeah. His name is Christopher
(10:09):
Thomas Knight. He was born in nineteen sixty five to
a working class family in rural Maine, Albion. To be exact,
they had six kids. His dad cleaned tanker trucks at
a creamery while his mom kept the house. Um, they
had like a simple farmhouse, but it was on sixty acres.
Damn right, that's a spread. They weren't rich. Well, he
(10:30):
just worked at the dairy, Like, he didn't keep the
dairy hut. They were super self sufficient and like really
clever with what they had. They had a two acre
garden that they grew food on. Yes, that's a farm.
That's like my dream. I mean, I just have what
like five raised beds. Um. They built stuff, they fixed stuff,
They made like a little hut in the woods. The
(10:50):
boys did all by themselves. The kids worked really hard.
They were awesome brainiac nerds in school. Um, that's awesome
for from where I'm standing, But the kids at Lawrence
High School in Fairfield, Maine probably didn't get with that
either way. The family were voracious readers. A neighbor said
that their house looked like a library because they were
just books and magazines. Everybody I know. His family was
(11:14):
very reserved and super private. Like I cannot stress that enough,
obsessively private. Most of the neighbors had rarely spoken to
them in like the decades that they live. Next week.
That's more than really private. Yeah, it's like intensely private. Well,
and this is what Christopher later said of his family quote,
we're not emotionally bleeding all over each other. We're not
(11:34):
touchy feely. Stoicism is expected. Okay, I'm with mom stoic
the part, but the emotionally bleeding a way to look
at it. So Chris graduates from high school. In nineteen
eighty four, Olympic fever was sweeping the nation. Oh yeah,
that has the eagle. Oh yeah, but that has nothing
to do with anything I'm telling you about. Okay, just
(11:56):
needed to get that out. Nineteen eighty four Olympic fever
was sweet been the nation. I can't America's sweetheart. So Chris,
like his siblings, he had really great grades. And just
like his siblings, he went to Sylvania Technical School in
Massachusetts after I graduated, and like his brothers before him,
(12:18):
he enrolled in an electronics course there. He completed the
program and then he got a job like installing home
and car alarm systems. His paychecks from that job earned
him a car, a nineteen eighty five subru Bratt. Oh wow,
that is an amazing not a truck truck. It's a
bad little scooter right there. He'd only been working for
(12:39):
about a year when he got into his car one
day and just started driving. He drove out of the
city limits of Waltham, Massachusetts. He headed up the coast,
passing through the sliver of New Hampshire that touches the
Atlantic Ocean. He went through Portsmouth and crossed into Maine.
He went past the Nubble Lighthouse, Zaren. Oh, not the
Nuble Lighthouse, Elizabeth. I cannot tell you how many times
(13:02):
he went through Kennebunk. I know that, but not Kennebunkport
isn't that close to the water. He went along the
rugged coast by Portland, past Yarmouth, Zaren Muth. Yes, I
would have gone. I would have stayed in port He
went past Brunswick and past the Androscoggin River. Who please,
are you kidding me? He headed to the capitol Augusta,
(13:23):
and he just kept going. Did he go up to Bahaba?
He made his way along the dense forest surrounding China Lake,
past love Joy Pond, if you can believe that, until
he reached Albion. It's a really good place his hometown. Yeah,
just chill there. Sure well. He looked up and down
the main street as he drove, and then he just
kept going, Zaron, This man, there's no stopping. Can you
(13:43):
believe it? Like he's just got his foot on the gas.
I do not doubt Christopher Thomas Knight. The more he drove,
the deeper he went into the wilds of northern Maine.
He just kept going. Until his gas tank was almost empty.
Oh come on, new Jack, throw do it? So hold on.
So he was right it in Moosehead Lake, not too
far from the Canadian border, when he decided, like, I'm
(14:04):
running out of gas, I'm gonna pull over. He pulls
the brat to the side of the road, like kind
of deep into the bushes on like a little trail.
He grabs his backpack, which was not filled with supplies.
He left his keys in the car and then just
started walking. Okay, And he kept walking and he kept walking.
He would camp somewhere for a little bit and then
head south. And this just was like days and days.
(14:27):
He followed the valleys and the streams like and at
first he was foraging for food. Do we know a
time a year? This is uh no, okay, So he's
foraging for food. He's eating berries, roadkill. Oh god, you know.
And it should be noted that his family never filed
a missing person's report. They were a really quiet family.
(14:48):
I thought that, you know, they're these like stoic New
England stock right, he didn't want to emotionally bleed all
over the cops. Well, it's like they figured, like, okay,
if my son goes off and doesn't say anything. Well,
he's on some sort of adventure and wants to be
left alone. That doesn't make sense to me, still, even
taking into account the culture, because like, what if something
bad happened to him, either it's someone else's hand or
(15:09):
his own. I don't get it. Yeah, I'm kind of
with you. But at the same time, I do know
that certain families who have taken similar stances with when
a child that they are not surprised does something like this. Yeah,
I could see that they don't. They don't have the
family like you're all on find my friends. No, no, no,
not quite like some people I know. So, um, that's
(15:29):
subru brat he was driving. Yeah, it was just a
year old when he ditched it. There's a new car. Yeah,
it was never discovered. It's pretty much probably still out
there in the woods somewhere. Oh, find my brat wallowed
by the wilderness. I want that like brat with like
a thousand miles on it. Mufferent direction. So he starts
(15:52):
making his way south from Moosehead Lake, and he starts
stealing food to live rather than eating road kill. Yeah,
he stole corn from gardens. He dug up potatoes. It
must be like summertime. Yeah, but he's not stealing from
like the houses. He's not stealing pies from window sills.
I'm sure he probably did that too. First it was
the gardens. Then let's say pies from window sills. Okay, sure,
(16:12):
I live in a hobo world, Elizabeth. Well, that went
on for two years. Two years, and then one day
he found the perfect spot to call home. When we
get back from this break, i'll tell you where and
how Christopher Knight decided to stay. Zaren, we're back. Hey,
(16:46):
you look at us. When we left off, Christopher Knight,
he was making his way through the wilds of northern Maine.
That's right, laid Amy Claude, eating on roadkill, stealing carrots, yes,
probably pies from windowsills, living someone's best life. I want
to make a pie, put it on the wind sile
and see what happened. I'll tell you what. I'll steal
it like you'll go over. And what are they called?
(17:07):
What do they call them squirrels? Anyway? Um? So? He
initially he stayed in an empty cabin. What do they
call them trash? What are those things? A bird? Um? So,
he stayed in an empty cabin once and he was
nervous the whole time, and he didn't think it was
worth it. The whole shelter thing too anxiety producing. Um,
(17:30):
so after that he never slept inside again. That was okay,
Then make a choice and stick with it, man. So
he started out way up by Moosehead Lake. Um, do
you know that's that's where Moosehead beer comes from. I
kind of guessed, had no idea, it doesn't. I just
made that Noway, No, I just made it up. Anyway.
He moved south and then he reached an area that
(17:50):
felt like a little more familiar to him, like he
understood the trees and the temperature and the flora and fauna.
He didn't know where he was, but he was like
more than a one hundred miles south from where he started.
He was at a place called North Pond. It's a
big pond called North Pond. Ah, that makes sense, but
it's a it's a small river. Yeah, you want to
(18:11):
in the southern part called North and everyone refers to
it as North. That way, if someone says North Pond,
you know. Well where he left the Brat and dub Brat.
She was riding with him in the car and she's, well,
summon it on the highway. I'm gonna keep going to
Nova Scotia. Your word, that had been completely unpopulated. I mean,
(18:33):
it was just there was nothing out there. Now he's wood. Yeah,
now he's in like a rural farming slash vacation. So
he's back and it's beautiful. I did Google street view
all over the place and it's and it's now that
most of the roads aren't covered, but it's gorgeous. Oh.
I drove all over the place on the click click
(18:55):
click click. I'm just going to look at then I
pan over look at that. You can see the North
Pond from here. Oh, it's just stunning. You like it
as you can drive slowly and you can no, I
just speed. I jump, I jump, I jump. Okay, So
the woods where he decided to set up shop, they
were really rugged, lots of boulders, yes, really dense under
that Appealachian style. Yeah. And there were no game trails anywhere,
(19:18):
which told him that this was not a high traffic area.
There were no like stoplights for deer. So he finds
this clearing like a like a round area of boulders.
You can't see my hand and so I'm just making
a big hug of all these boulders in this big circle,
and you had to kind of go in through a
split between them, so it's like a hinge of rock, correct,
(19:42):
And they are all these big trees over the top,
so it's really shady. He sets in more ways than
what he sets up camp. He cleared this large area
and he leveled out the dirt as best as he could,
and then he set out to stock up his little paradise. Right,
so he's like refounding America. Pretty nice one man from here.
(20:03):
So the area around North Pond, which is the Belgrade
Lakes area, it's brimming with vacation cabins in summer camps.
Were you writing real estate over here? I want to
go there so badly. It's so pretty, Chris. He's deep
enough in the woods that summer fun seekers are like
drunken high school students. They're not going to stumble upon
(20:24):
his camp. Oh yeah, But he could get close to
the cabins without being detected easily enough. He'd watch the
cabins to make sure no one was around, no cars
in the driveway, and then he'd creep up, peek in
the window, try the door and it was from these
cabins that he got himself a tent and some tarps
and a propane stove and some propane tanks and food.
(20:48):
Completely is he like just packing this stuff on his
back in hiking back And then I'll get to some
of his other techniques, so he gets the basics, then
he moves on to close another sub. He stole a
ton of sleeping bags, all right. You know, I try
to understand why his family may just let him go.
It's like he's always been a bit strange. Well, he
(21:10):
needed all the sleeping bags for the winter and the
cold bite. Yeah, yeah, and he only went out at night,
so it and in the dead of winter when it
would get super super cold, he'd get up and he'd
pace around his campsite to keep warm, like he'd turn
on the propane stove and melt some snow for water
to get all tis because he have like a pet
timberwolf at this point, no traveling everywhere with canon. I mean,
(21:31):
that's what I would be like, Yeah, I know your story.
I'd have like all the woodland creatures exactly. You'd have
a he never got frostbite, if you can believe it,
And he never got sick because he wasn't around people
to catch a cold. Sure, I get the sect the
frost bite. He didn't have stomach issues. He fell once
or twice, but he didn't break any bones. Okay, he's lucky.
(21:51):
He's not really putting himself out, and he didn't have
any dental emergencies. No, no, it was in good shape.
He stole books and so many magazines and books like tons.
He managed to swipe a giant collection of National Geographic magazines,
which he repurposed into the floor of his campsite. Oh wow,
so he leveled off the ground. But he wanted insulation
and water absorption, so he stacked the magazines into blocks
(22:15):
and basically tiled his hideaway with them. Oh okay, super
super smart. He didn't read them, though, because he thought
National Geographic was garbage, and he was a little disappointed
with the literary taste of the cabin dwellers. Like he
would take just about anything they had to read, but
he felt that they had met too many paperback pot
(22:35):
boilers and not enough of an intellectual challenge. Too much
main Native Stephen King and not enough main Native Edna
Saint Vincent Malay. Okay, so he did have strong literary opinions.
He thought he thought James Joyce was a total joke
and only loved by fake intellectuals. When he ran out
of stolen toilet paper, he wiped with pages from John
(22:55):
Grisham novels. He couldn't stand Jack Aroak, but actually he
just couldn't stand people who liked Jack Kerouacay. He was
totally over Robert Frost. Yeah, and he really really hated
Henry David throw with him. Do you know my take?
If your mother and your sister are doing your laundry
(23:17):
and bringing you food every week, that is not you
living alone in a cabin. I don't I heard that,
And I was like, I'm gonna go back. Are you
kidding me? Are you? Christopher Knight, Because that's like exactly
what he said. He goes on this rant and he's like,
you know, if my mom did my laundry when I
was out in the woods, he had dinner parties the
(23:37):
row did. So He's like, whatever I am, Christopher Knight, brother,
I'm right there. We went into the woods and got free,
well free stuff. So meanwhile, the folks at row Rome
is like a large unincorporated area along North Pond, Okay.
The people there, they felt like they were kind of
losing it. The area had been so safe, no crime,
(23:58):
but now people were finding stuff missing from their houses
and their vacation cabins. They started to talk to each
other and they found they weren't alone, so they wanted
to keep an eye open. But no one ever saw anything.
Stuff just kept disappearing. So a legend was born. The
North Pond Hermit was to blame, gave the name. They
weren't wrong. Chris was a hermit in all but the
(24:19):
religious sense. Hermits go away from society as a means
to get clarity, to get closer to their higher power
or powers. They renounced worldly concerns and pleasures. This is
very us for some people, and we hear about hermits
and stories fictions. Watch Northern Exposure. Yea, they have a
great one, Adam, who goes off and does exactly this.
He's the hermit who's stealing stuff, but he's a Gormet chef,
(24:42):
so he steals like Gormetradians. Go on. There was that
super filthy seduction of a young woman by a hermit,
and Pacaccio is the t Cameroon. Oh wow, did you
know that that section of the book was a northern
exposurecaccio is the camera on the book was so filthy
that it wasn't translated in English until the twentieth century,
(25:02):
and it was written in thirteen fifty. Oh wow, I
got a copy of If you want to break into
we'll do a reading later. So then there's Nietzsche's Thus
spoke Zarathustra. Zarathustra is a hermit who calls time out
on his isolation, pops out of his cave. Society declares
that God is dead. Yeah, Chris Knight though he was
in the woods with no interaction or connection with human beings,
(25:24):
but he had no desire to go out and share
with society the things that he'd learned. What did he learn? Yeah? Please,
what did he learn? Elizabeth? In an interview with writer
Michael Finkel, he wrote, Michael Finkel wrote a really great
book about Chris Knight called The Stranger in the Woods.
It's a great book. Here's what Chris had to say.
I did examine myself, he said, solitude did increase my perception.
(25:47):
But here's the tricky thing. When I applied my increased
perception to myself, I lost my identity with no audience,
no one to perform for. I was just there. There
was no need to define myself. I became irrelevant. The
moon was the minute hand, the season's the hour hand.
I didn't even have a name. I never felt lonely,
(26:07):
to put it romantically, I was completely free. Wow. It's heavy,
and it's like I'm you. I've read about, you know,
obviously your diaries from cowboys who experience a lot of
time alone and life alone and out on their own,
and they say things very similarly, not quite so poetically
or with so much thoughtful and meaningful examination of the self,
(26:31):
but they get to the same levels of like, you know,
the moon is your our hand, and the idea of
like you know, you don't need a name, and your
identity merges with the oneness of everything. And it's interesting
how the freedom is the loss of the self. Yeah, yeah,
somehow the self is the prison. Well, to be irrelevant
is to be free. Yeah. Well. They also goes with
(26:51):
the Buddhists with like, you know, once you have a self,
you're suffering. Like as soon as you have one, that
that's it. Brother, you are your own prison. This is
wild ugly. So there's Chris. Yeah, living in the woods,
stealing to survive. He stole himself a nice Columbia jacket. Uh,
he had a little radio, and he stole a lot
of junk food. Was he talking to himself? Because his
(27:12):
language skills are pretty good for someone who wasn't speaking
for not so much. He actually was hard for him
to start talking again. Yeah, could you hear that? So he,
like I said, radio, he did listen to Rush Limbaugh.
His like entertainment. Okay, um, well know in music, you
know who he really really loved Leonard skinnerd He was like,
(27:33):
in a thousand years, people are going to be listening
to Leonard Skinner. That's what he said. Dead serious. I
mean I would have gone with if you had to
pick the genre. Yeah. Anyhow, so all this junk food, right,
he would really like he got so he really is
the free bird. Yeah. Sorry, he got crazy into the
(27:54):
junk food. Flashlights, batteries, rope, chocolate bars, frozen Burritos's this
thing turn on and turn offs, deodorant, boots, duct tape, spices. Okay,
thermometers or as they say, thermometers, hand sanitizer, clothes soap,
(28:15):
which is what I call laundry detergent I do, and
it annoys everybody whatever watches pillows, mouse traps, and these
are just things. We all both know what they are.
This is what he's stealing. I got this shampoop. He
would quote unquote borrow a canoe to steal big stuff.
So he would like take a canoe out, steal the stuff,
(28:38):
bring it back, and then he'd sprinkled pine needles all
over it so it looked like it hadn't been moved.
But anyway, he used the canoe to steal a mattress
in a box spring what and a bed frame. Yeah,
so he had that all. He had a bed frame,
mattress and then his tent and tarps. Wow, no wonder,
he's judgment and no wonder. The locals are like goodness,
(28:58):
like my bed's gone. Yeah. So yeah. He kept a
bugout bag with backup supplies away from the campsite and
never in like if he ever got made and he
had to get out of there as winter would approach,
he'd ramp up his supply heist. It wasn't just the
cold weather that kept him from journeying out in the winter.
He didn't want to leave tracks in the snow. Yeah,
(29:18):
that would lead right back to him. People meanwhile start
getting burglar alarms. Don't forget that Chris's one and only
job had been installing burglar alarms. So much for that,
so people bought dead bolt locks. They kept guns in
the house. There was this one guy, Neil Patterson. He
stayed up at night with a three fifty seven magnum
lying in wait for the hermit. He stayed up for
(29:40):
two weeks straight, every night shoot and then he gave
up because you know, it's like, he can only do
that for so long. The anger only so long. Chris,
he kept stealing and staying one step ahead. One jackpot
for him was the Pine Tree Camp. And here's how
the camp has described on its website, quote, Tucked along
(30:00):
the shore of beautiful North Pond in Rome, you will
find what, at first glance looks like a quintessential Maine
camp under a canopy of pine trees. Look a bit closer,
and you'll see why many refer to this place as
heaven on Earth. It's Pine Tree Camp. Pine Tree Camp
opened its gates in nineteen forty five as a summer
camp for children with physical disabilities. Over the years, it
(30:21):
has evolved into a place where children and adults with
disabilities are able to participate in all the recreational activities
for which Maine is known all year long. The barrier
free setting, along with an amazing staff, ensured that activities
like swimming, fishing, kayaking, hiking, boating, and even camping in
a tent under the stars are all completely accessible to all.
(30:41):
Participating in activities that take people beyond their disability has
a tremendous impact. It builds self esteem and self confidence.
That experience, coupled with meeting friends who understand and experiencing
the feeling of acceptance, is transformational. This blaze sounds amazing,
and I'm pretty annoyed that he stole from them. So
I have to admit that I made a donation to
(31:01):
them as I was researching this, because I felt guilty
about cutting up about it and then finding out that
he took from kids with disabilities. Are you kidding me? Yeah? Whatever? Surprised?
I mean, like, I'm not going to reck wag my
finger out him. I liked that he's an equal Opportunities Yes,
but I was just that's a line to fire. Look,
I'll steal from handicapped children, stand over your grandmother. I
(31:23):
don't care. I'll steal for anybody. He crossed the line
for me on that, So anybody my favorite Elizabeth. If
you want, you can donate to Pine Camp. Just google
it anyway. Pine Tree Camp was a prime target of his.
Though they okay, if it's repeated, I'm with you. Yeah,
it was repeated. It was a one time thing. I'm
not weird. They had lots of supplies. Obviously, I have
(31:45):
all these people. They were going to have tons of food.
They'd been hit by him before, they knew it was
only a matter of time before he came back. They
did not raise a child army to go after him.
He would hit properties multiple times, so average about forty
burglaries a year. That's a lot. That's like obviously, you know,
(32:06):
a little less than one a week or like three
a month. Basic. You know, he's pretty active. It's not
like he's doing big you know. Anyway, Yeah, I mean,
but that's like I'm just thinking about the travel. Like
if you like, got like a listen, does you have
a natural like on Wednesdays I like to shot. You know,
he didn't know what day was what He completely lost
track of time. He had no idea. Does he keep it?
Did he create his own count? No, he didn't keep
(32:26):
it journal, He didn't do any of that. He was
just he was just in the moment, right, yes, of course.
So this one local guy, he said he was hit
about twice a year. Quote, I'd leave him a note,
don't break in, just tell me what you need. I'll
put it by the side of the road. And he
never did. He never left him a note. And he's
just like, whatever, I'll tell me what to do. Free.
So there's this game. Warden Sergeant Terry Hughes determined to
(32:50):
put an end to the looting. Of course, he's yeah.
He sets up a high end motion detector alarm behind
the ice machine in the kitchen of Pine Tree Camp. Okay,
the alarm didn't ring at the camp. It rang at
Terry's house. So when we get back from this break,
I'll tell you if Terry's trap worked. Tonight. Hey is Aaron,
(33:29):
Welcome back? How are you doing? Lad? Sit down all right,
I'm sitting. Close your eyes. Oh, I want you to
picture it. It's the wee hours of April fourth, twenty thirteen.
The number one song in the country is Thrift Shop
by McLamore and Ryan Lewis featuring wands or wands or somebody.
(33:50):
None of this matters to you. You're a giant Costco
sized bag of large marshmallows, and you're on a shelf
in the pantry of the Pine Tree Camp in Rome, Maine.
You hear a noise creaking floorboards. It's that guy. He
was here a couple of weeks ago and he stole
a key chain off a hook in the hall. You
(34:12):
could see him from your spot on the shelf. He's
whistling to himself as he walks to the shelves and
starts putting stuff in his backpack. Last time he took
your buddy the value pack of Hershey Bars. You and
the Graham Crackers stared helplessly as the chocolate was whisked
away into the night. Gone was the promise of the
(34:32):
Melty Union. The three of you were waiting for a
little melty thrubble. You watch as the man grabs bag
of Smarties candies. He giggles into light. You consider smart
he's a lesser candy. But you know what, who are
you to talk? You're a marshmallow. He takes his time,
He peruses the shelves. He grabs some cans of coffee
(34:54):
and bags of potato chips, and then he uses that
purloined key from the hook in the hall to get
access to the walking and freezer. He's in there a
while illegally shopping. He comes back out with his arms
full of hamburgers, sides of bacon hot dogs, and as
he passed the shelves, he reaches out and he grabs you. No,
(35:14):
his rough hands squeeze your bag and you gasp. You
didn't think it would end like this. You look over
and you see a pair of eyes peeking in the window.
You let out a little squeal. You recognize them. It's
the game Warden Terry Hughes. The door to the kitchen
flies open, and you and the hermit are blinded by
a flashlight. You, though, can make out a barrel of
(35:37):
a gun behind the light. Terry, you know the bags
of marshmallow have great vision, great night vision. Get on
the ground, yells Sergeant Hughes. The hermit complies, He drops you,
and you slide along the warm wood floor and come
to rest against an industrial oven. This is all too
much for a bag of marshmallows. Sergeant Hughes then calls
(35:57):
main state trooper, a woman named Ian Perkins Vance and
she's on the scene almost immediately. She's also been waiting
for this moment. She's just hepped up. The cops are
stunned that this is their hermit. Super clean cut, very
put together, you know, no facial hair thanks to all
the stolen razors. He had really nice clothes on, very
well taken care of. It took them a while to
(36:21):
get him to open up, but he finally told them
who he was. He said, I don't have an address,
I don't have a car, I don't have a job.
I got nothing. They asked him how long he'd been
in the woods. Here's how Michael Finkel put it in
his book. Quote. Night thought for a bit, then asked
when the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster occurred. He had long
(36:41):
ago lost the habit of making time in months or years.
This was just a news event, he happened to remember.
The nuclear meltdown took place in nineteen eighty six, the
same year Knight said he went to live in the woods.
He was twenty years old at the time, not long
out of high school. He was now forty seven, a
middle aged man, Oh my god, he spent the entire
(37:02):
twenty seven years. He was in the woods for twenty
seven years, years his formative years, not his reclining, retiring years.
He wasn't the old man in the woods. He's out there.
I just really like trees. You know, who needs to
date or crime. He committed well over a thousand break
(37:22):
ins in that time. Good on him, and they think
it's probably way more than that except for Pine Tree Camp, yes,
of course obviously. So he was having a tough time
with this sudden reimmersion into society. He didn't know how
to talk to people or how to act. Oh. Yeah,
it's like when I first started seeing people in person
after the COVID lockdown, Like I had zero small talk
(37:43):
skills were pretty feral. I would just sort of short circuit.
I was more awkward than normal, Like I don't know
what okay, I gotta go like, don't pet me. Why
I'm not a cat? So like quit. No, Chris Knight
hadn't spoken to anyone in nearly thirty years. He was
still wearing the thick gold rim glasses that he had
(38:04):
on as a young man when he walked into the wilderness.
This is a man who went out to them on
his own, who wears prescription. You know what, that's an inspiration,
totally brave Bold. While he was awaiting trial, two of
his brothers came to see him, and obviously none of
them recognized rised each other. Um, I mean the brothers
recognized themselves, but one of them like was like, Okay,
(38:27):
I gotta prepare for this. I gotta meet my brother.
And he goes into the washroom and splashes water on
his face and he was like, wait, who are you?
Who is anybody? He like he got that clarity from
his brother telepathically. It was so awesome and it was
a ghost. Um. We don't know about like the family's
(38:49):
relationships because obviously they're so terribly private. We do know
that his father passed away before his arrest, before he emerged,
and Chris was listed as a survivor in the bituary.
So they kind of just imagine somewhere this. Did you
ever have friends? Like? I don't know, maybe it's just
I've never had friends. If you have some friends, you
will usually have a dude. Usually it's a guys and
(39:11):
I just not take anybody, but you know offensive guy
who's just you can tell like I'm just gonna go
off to Alaska types I'm gonna go off to you know,
Goose Lake. And in Canada, it's like you can just tell.
And then they go off and they do it and
you never see them again, and everything's cool, and the
family's like, well, we always knew he was gonna do it.
This was like, yeah, I've I've known a few guys
(39:32):
and the families are you done to people? But it's
like they were just not meant to be a human,
Like they got the wrong body. You know, It's like
they was meant to be like a stork or or something.
So bag of marshmallows or in my case, a bag
of marshmallows. So in October twenty thirteen, Chris pleaded guilty
to thirteen counts of burglary and theft in the Kennebec
(39:54):
County Superior Court. He got seven months in jail, and
he'd already served most most of it, so he only
had a week left on his sentence and he had
to he still though, he had to go meet up
with a judge once a week when he was out,
and he was told either get a job or go
to school. How wow would it be? That we go
to prison after living in the main woods for twenty
(40:15):
seven years. Right, Well, that was hard for him. I
think that is the worst punishing thing you could probably be. Yeah.
He talked about how it was like all this noise
totally that was just like so foreign to head. Yeah,
I couldn't sleep by that. Yeah. Oh yeah, and like
eating and everything. Now back at the camp site, they
had to spend a ton of money cleaning it out
because he had like this I'd say, I don't know,
(40:37):
half acre or so of his garbage dump that he
made his own nidden, yeah, basically, And so they had
to go and like clear all that out and kind
of move it. But it's so rugged to get in there.
It was hard. From what I read in the book
and then a bunch I read all these newspaper and
magazine articles, it didn't seem like he had a substance
abuse problem. It did not know, but he was. He
(41:00):
had to agree not to drink again, and I didn't
quite understand. He drank a lot to prep for the
winter and get fattened up. And he actually worried because
he was eating so much sugar and drinking to fatten
up that he worried he was going to get diabetes,
and then he did kind of tip some back, But
it wasn't like he was an alcoholic in terms of
everything I read, so I thought it was a weird
detail that he had to kind of report in. It's
(41:21):
so interesting. He chooses the life of a bear pretty much.
He now lives a very quiet, private, light life in Maine,
inside indoors. I thought that this passage from Michael Finkel's
book was fascinating. Quote. At a homeowner's meeting in two
thousand and two, the hundred people present were asked who
had suffered break ins. Seventy five raised their hands. Camp
(41:43):
Fire hermit stories were swapped. One kid recalled that when
he was ten years old, all his Halloween candy was stolen.
That kid is now thirty four, So Zarin, what's her
ridiculous takeaway? I bet they miss having the hermit, right.
You know, they hated it when it was happening. One
dude want to get us three fifty seven and spend
(42:05):
two nights up. But I bet now that he's gone
and done and over with, they miss him. Yeah, yeah, well,
I think that's the thing. Like it was so much
intrigue and it's exciting and it's story, and it's like something.
The bonds them all, they all have their stories. He
becomes the legend of the area. Yeah. One guy, he
was Chris Knight, was wearing like some of the clothes
that this one guy had had stolen from him and
he just didn't He's like, all right, well whatever, those
(42:26):
are his clothes now? Yeah, exactly. So that's it. That's
my story. That's great. You can find us online at
Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. Email us at
ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, download the iHeart app
and leave us a talkback. It's a thirty second voicemail,
totally anonymous, totally legal tool. Do it next time. Ridiculous
(42:54):
Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaron Burnett, produced
and edited by Dave Cooston. The Chattahoochee River Reeper researches
by four service three star General Marissa Brown, an outraged
cabin owner, Andrea Song sharpen Tier. The theme song is
by Thomas Grab Me the Chips, Ahoy Lee and Travis
Hey give me some of Them. Ding Dong's Dotton executive
(43:14):
producers are subru Brats, Then Bolan and Bill Brownrida QUI
see it one more time? We dequeus. Ridiculous Crime is
a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts to my heart Radio,
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