The grandfather, Tony Bellavance, sensed immediately that they’d encountered the North Pond hermit. He knew the legend; he realized that cabins had been robbed. But in the presence of the hermit himself, Bellavance, who was convinced that the hermit was a military veteran, was struck with a very strong idea of what needed to be done.
“He said we had to leave him alone,” recalled the father. “He said that he’s not hurting anyone. He’s up here for a reason, he said, and he doesn’t want to deal with people. My father’s a little Frenchman with a big heart, and he just thought this guy needed to be on his own, unbothered.” The son and father did not want to go against the grandfather’s wishes, so they did what he asked.
The three men all promised out loud that they would let the hermit be. “We made an oath,” said the grandfather. “We swore we would never say anything.”
The hermit nodded. Then, his arms still held out, palms open, as if ready to catch a beach ball, he leaned forward at the waist and bowed before the three men. “I don’t know why I bowed,” said Knight. “To convey the idea of thanks, I think.” The entire encounter lasted no more than a couple of minutes.
The ice fishermen kept their promise, though Roger, the father, did tell his wife, who was unsure whether he was speaking the truth. No one took a photo or video. Roger said that later he had to fight the urge, several times, to return to the woods and try to talk to the hermit. But he respected Knight’s privacy. The men said nothing until after Knight was arrested; then Roger, thinking he might be able to help law enforcement find the campsite, told Trooper Vance the story. She didn’t believe it.
Knight said that he hadn’t mentioned this incident with the ice fishermen to anyone because he felt that their pact remained in place. The agreement, the way he understood it, was that no one would ever say anything. But I’d just informed Knight, during a visit in the county jail, our seventh one in eight weeks, that the Bellavances had, in fact, spoken to others about it. Knight now felt that the pact was broken.
“What about other pacts?” I asked. “Did more people find you?”
“No, there were no other encounters,” Knight swore. People had been looking for him for years. If there’d been any hint that anyone had found his site, word would have spread in a flash.
“Will you make a pact with me that you’re not covering up any others?”
“Yes.”
The ice-fishermen encounter seemed like just the sort of event for which Knight had established his emergency cache. He could have abandoned his camp well before the men saw him and moved somewhere else. Or he could have decamped immediately after.
He said he seriously thought about evacuating, but there was a lot of snow. “To move, I’d have to leave footprints. I had little food. I took a chance they were good people.” Also, Knight admitted, the notion of starting over seemed exhausting. Had he been younger, he almost certainly would’ve moved. This was when he understood, he said, that “the circle was closing in.”
Just two months after seeing the ice fishermen, as the snow was receding and the chickadees had started to sing, with his food supplies nearing zero, Knight departed on a midnight thieving raid. He pried open a rear door of the Pine Tree dining hall. He filled his backpack and stepped out, and was suddenly blinded by a light while someone yelled at him to get on the ground.
24
The ice fishermen did not believe that Knight deserved to be jailed. “If I had a million dollars,” said the grandfather, Tony Bellavance, “I’d buy a hundred acres, two hundred acres, and I’d put him right in the middle, and put posted signs around, and let him live like he wants.” Bellavance, who is in his seventies, owns a home in the area, but he was never a victim of Knight’s crimes.
Harvey Chesley, the facilities director of the Pine Tree Camp, which suffered by far the most losses, had similar feelings. “I always thought that if I caught him in the act, I might let him go,” said Chesley. “It was frozen lasagna and a can of beans—not earth-shattering. He was a thief of necessity. He has my respect.”
Lisa Fitzgerald, the owner of the property where Knight camped, said the discovery that a stranger had lived on her land for decades was “nothing to be upset about.” If she’d found him, she said, she might not have called the police, or even evicted him.
Locals who recognized Knight’s story as truth tended to have gentle reactions. They said that Knight’s feat stirred the imagination. At the end of a serene weekend on North Pond, you can’t help but envision quitting your job and remaining there for life. Everyone dreams of dropping out of the world once in a while. Then you get in the car and drive back home.
Knight stayed. Yes, he repeatedly broke the law to sustain his escape, but he was never violent. He did not carry a weapon. He didn’t even want to see anybody. He was a compulsive introvert, not a hardened criminal. He followed a very strange calling and held true to himself more fully than most of us will ever dare to. He clearly had no desire to be a part of our world.
A couple of residents pledged to provide Knight with land to live on. Let’s hold a fund-raiser, others suggested, and give him enough cash to purchase several years’ worth of groceries, so he won’t need to steal. He should immediately be released from jail and allowed back into the woods. He never harmed anyone.
Physically, that is. Other locals were enraged by Knight’s actions. The actual items he stole might be minor, but he also took people’s peace of mind. Their sense of security. Some said they were afraid to sleep in their own cabins, afraid for decades.
“I felt violated, over and over and over again,” said Debbie Baker, who has owned a place on North Pond with her husband for more than twenty years. “I lost count how many times he broke in.” Her two sons, when they were young, were terrified of the hermit. They had nightmares about him. The family installed security lights and dead bolts and even had a police officer spend much of the night, but nothing worked. “I hate what this man did to us,” Baker said.
Martha Patterson, whose cabin was a frequent target, said that Knight stole some of the silverware she’d inherited from her mother, and a couple of cherished hand-sewn quilts, but the real damage went deeper. All Patterson wanted from her cabin was a place to escape the pressures of daily life, and Knight denied her that. “I couldn’t leave my windows open, I couldn’t even go and sit by the beach without worrying,” she said. “He stole every bit of my piece of heaven.”
“If someone needed food,” said Mary Hinkley, a victim of dozens of break-ins, “I would give them food. Just ask. But we were invaded, completely invaded. I always feared he’d come in the night, when my grandchildren were there. I despise this person. I’m ashamed I feel this way, but I do. I can’t think of anything in my life I’ve been so bitter about.”
If Knight really wanted to live in the woods, many said, he should’ve done so on public lands, hunting and fishing for food. And how was anyone supposed to know he wasn’t armed and dangerous? Even a single break-in can be punishable by a ten-year prison sentence. Knight was nothing but a lazy man and a thief times a thousand. He should be locked up in the state penitentiary, perhaps for life.
The person who was going to decide what punishment, if any, to seek against Knight was Maeghan Maloney, the district attorney. Maloney grew up in Maine, in a blue-collar family, living in subsidized housing. She was the valedictorian of her high school class and won a scholarship to Harvard Law. She’d heard public opinion on Knight—free him now, incarcerate him forever—and she, too, was conflicted. “In a lot of ways,” said Maloney, “the law is not set up for an outlier case like this.”
Knight himself was not seeking leniency. “There’s no justification for my stealing,” he said. “And I don’t want people trying to justify my bad behavior in an attempt not to sully what they admire in me. Take the whole package, good and bad. Judge me on that. Don’t cherry-pick. Don’t make excuses for me.”
“Everyone makes excuses,” said Terry Hughes, who witnessed Knight’s
confession in the Pine Tree dining room. “Criminals will deny, deny, deny. That’s what you deal with when you deal with criminals. That’s the world we live in. I’m used to that world.”
Hughes said that he had never encountered a person as guilelessly straightforward about his crimes as Knight. He just owned up to everything, Hughes pointed out. Knight had no problem admitting to a thousand burglaries. He understood that it was wrong, he was embarrassed and remorseful, but there was total acknowledgment. “Everything in my gut wanted to hate this guy,” said Hughes. “I’m a typical stubborn jarhead. He stole food from a camp for disabled people. But I can’t hate him. You could work in law enforcement a hundred years and never come across anyone like this.”
“It’s a very strange case, for sure,” said Knight’s pro bono defender, Walter McKee, who is renowned in Maine for his work ethic and his expertise. McKee arrives at his office each day at three-fifteen a.m. He is also a classical violinist, a mountaineer, a private airplane pilot, a father, and a husband. “Mr. McKee does not sleep,” reports his firm’s website. He consented to waive Knight’s right to a speedy trial in order to determine how best to proceed.
The modern hermit community—it exists—also debated Knight’s merits. On the Hermitary website is an area called Hermit’s Slate, which is described as “a forum for hermits, solitaries, anchorites, recluses, introverts.” Before you’re allowed to post there, the administrator of the Hermitary site, who uses the pen name Meng-hu, must decide whether you are a legitimate hermit. There are currently more than a thousand members; perhaps not surprisingly, there are seldom more than two or three online at once.
The general consensus among Hermitary denizens seems to be that Knight should not be considered a hermit. He was more of an insult to hermits. Meng-hu wrote a blog post about hermits like Knight. “The idea of a hermit who steals for a living confirms the worst stereotype of the ‘eremite as parasite,’ ” noted Meng-hu. “No historical hermit, especially those motivated by a spiritual sense but also wilderness hermits, has ever had the slightest motive to encroach upon anybody’s belongings—be that body, mind, time, space, or goods.” Stealing, added Meng-hu, is universally condemned by other hermits because it shows that one is undisciplined, lacking in empathy, and a menace to society, which are all contradictory to hermit ideals.
Knight, official hermit or not, was unable to afford bail, so he remained in the Kennebec County jail. Within days of being locked up, he caught a debilitating head cold, but after that his immune system kicked in, and he managed to avoid further illness. He received a new pair of glasses, his first in thirty years, with oval lenses and silver wire frames.
He lost weight, and became as gaunt as after a grim winter in the woods. Now that food was freely given to him, he joked, he couldn’t eat; but the truth was that jail made him too nervous to have an appetite. He was a model inmate, says Chief Deputy Sheriff Ryan Reardon. His beard—his timepiece and his disguise—grew wildly, and ever more itchy, but he refused to shave.
Knight had figured that both his parents had died while he was in the woods, but soon after his capture, Diane Vance, who’d run a background check, told him that his mother, Joyce Knight, was still alive. She was in her eighties. Chris begged Vance not to contact her, or anyone else in his family, and she agreed. He wished to remain a secret, even in jail.
Six days after his arrest, Knight was informed by Vance that the story had leaked. His mother would soon learn about him through the media. Knight gave Vance permission to notify his mom that he’d been found.
She telephoned Mrs. Knight. “I didn’t beat around the bush,” said Vance. “I just broke the news to her. I think she was in shock, because it’s quite possible she thought he was dead. Then I think she ended up being mad because he was in jail, and had been committing crimes. I remember her saying, ‘At my age, it’s a lot to take in.’ ”
Knight accepted a single jail visit from his brothers Joel and Timothy. It was Joel who had co-signed the loan on the Brat that Chris had abandoned. According to Kerry Vigue, the family friend, Joel paid off the full amount owed and never pressed charges. “Joel thought that was not a brotherly thing to do,” Vigue noted.
Chris did not allow his mother to come. He said that a visit with his mother would cause her shame and grief. “Look at me: I’m in my prison clothes. I couldn’t let her see me like this. I’m a thief, I’m in jail, guilty of so many crimes. This is not something my mom raised me to be. This is no place for her.”
It was for the same reason, Knight said, that he never phoned home the whole time he was in the woods. “Because who I was”—a hermit, a thief—“would offend my family’s belief system. It would embarrass them. I couldn’t tell them.” Instead, he allowed his family to wonder endlessly, to ache; a confounding choice.
He decided that he would see his mother only once he was released from jail, so they could speak “properly, face-to-face.” But after six months of imprisonment, he had no idea when that might be. His skin had broken out in hives, and his hands sometimes trembled. Just finding out how many more seasons he’d be spending locked up might have reduced some of his stress, but he understood the delay. “I don’t fit into any categories,” he said. “Apparently, they don’t get a lot of hermits these days.” So he sank back into himself, clutching the threads of his sanity, waiting to learn of his fate.
25
A side door to the jail swings open and three sheriff’s deputies emerge, armed and wearing bulletproof vests, along with a prisoner, hands cuffed in front, his beard like Spanish moss. One deputy stations himself ahead of Knight, the other two grip each elbow, and they march him across Court Street toward the Kennebec County Courthouse, with its sentry of granite columns. Red and yellow leaves scatter in the fall breeze, and television cameras are shoved into Knight’s face, but he manages to remain impassive, his gaze directed at some unseen spot in front of him.
The upstairs courtroom is all dark wood and maroon carpeting, with a giant brick fireplace in one corner, the walls a haunted-house display of oil paintings of old judges staring sternly from gilded frames. A memorial service was held here to commemorate Abraham Lincoln after his assassination in 1865.
Wooden pews in the back creak with spectators, and the press photography and television section is full, everyone awaiting Knight’s arrival. Boxes of files are carried about. McKee, Knight’s attorney, wears a dark suit; Maloney, the DA, a fire-engine-red jacket. Knight’s brother Joel—same thin lips, same sharp nose—sits with his son and daughter, both of whom look to be in their twenties. This is the first time they will see their uncle. The son’s leg bounces, and I overhear Joel saying, “Nerves. Perfectly normal.”
Knight is brought in, stationed behind the defense table, and uncuffed. The room quiets. A court officer says, “All rise,” and Justice Nancy Mills appears like a magic trick through a red curtain hanging over a doorway. She smooths her black robe and sits down, then sets a pair of reading glasses low on her nose and begins. For those not charting moons or seasons or chin hair, it’s Monday, October 28, 2013, nearly seven months after Knight’s arrest.
A solution has been found. Knight will plead guilty to thirteen counts of burglary and theft—the vast majority of his raids could not be prosecuted because of a six-year statute of limitations and many were never reported at all—and instead of going to prison, he will be admitted into the Co-Occurring Disorders and Veterans Court.
This is a program that substitutes counseling and judicial monitoring for incarceration, designed for defendants facing criminal charges who are also affected by substance abuse and mental illness—the co-occurring disorders. In Knight’s case, his afflictions are alcoholism and either Asperger’s syndrome, depression, or schizoid personality disorder. These labels may not be precisely accurate, but even the DA agrees that a long prison sentence for Knight would be cruel, and admitting him to the program is a way to legally resolve the case.
Knight stands, clasps his hands behi
nd his back, and Maloney reads the charges. If it weren’t for the gravity of the proceedings, they might sound humorous.
“On or about July 14, 2008,” Maloney intones, “Mr. Edmund Ashley reported items stolen from his camp in Rome, Maine. The items stolen were batteries, food, and soda, with an approximate value of eighteen dollars.”
Justice Mills asks for Knight’s plea.
“Guilty,” he says, scarcely audible.
“A seasonal resident’s kitchen window had been forced open,” Maloney continues, “and food items, along with a pair of men’s size thirty-eight jeans and a leather belt, had been stolen, with a value of approximately forty dollars.”
“Guilty.”
On it goes, eleven more times. “Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty and for no other reason?” asks Justice Mills when it’s done.
“Yes.”
“Do you understand what we’re doing?”
“Yes.”
“I am satisfied that Mr. Knight’s pleas are voluntary,” says Mills. Then she reviews the conditions of his sentence. Knight will serve a total of seven months in jail—he has another week to go—and, once released, must seek psychological counseling. He needs to call his case manager every day. He has to appear in court every Monday at eleven a.m. so Mills can review his progress. These rules will be in effect for at least one year, and if he breaks any of them, he could be subject to as much as a seven-year term in the state prison.
He is also fined a total of about $2,000, to be distributed to his victims. He will live at home, with his mother, and must find a job or go to school, and he must perform community service. He may not contact any of his victims or leave the state of Maine, and he is prohibited from using or possessing alcohol. He will be subject to random drug and alcohol testing.
The Stranger in the Woods Page 13