Two arrests recently have featured lone, crazy hermits stealing from trusting folk who leave stuff out and unguarded because that is usually OK in the countryside.Its important we stand up and disassociate ourselves from this sort of behavior. This web site recently featured a warning from a lady who had invited someone to share her off-grid land, and he has ended up wrecking it. We will be featuring this story in more depth once we have investigated the background more thoroughly
Many locals in his part of Maine said they were relieved by Christopher Knight’s arrest after enduring years of break-ins. Frank Ten Broeck, a retired New Jersey police official who has a cottage nearby, marvelled at Knight’s fortitude. “To me this is mind-boggling. I just can’t believe this guy was here 27 years,” Ten Broeck said. “This is some of the most severe weather you can go through.”
A corrections officer at Kennebec county jail in Augusta said Knight was refusing requests for interviews. He had applied for a court-appointed lawyer and had not entered a plea to the burglary and theft charges stemming from the break-in at Pine Tree Camp, a facility for special needs people.
Stealing from handicapped so you don’t have to go to work is pretty low, and perhaps all it shows is that off-grid folk can be bad apples, just like in the wider community.
By the time he was about 19 Knight had disappeared into the woods. Authorities say he does not show signs of mental illness and they have uncovered no other motive for his seclusion except that he wanted to be alone.
Knight’s arrest came a little more than a week after the capture of a self-styled mountain man in Utah who shared some of the same traits. For six years Troy James Knapp ransacked cabins on national forest land for guns, food and high-end camping gear, authorities said.
Knapp, a 45-year-old California parolee who went on the run in 2004, faces 29 burglary-related felony and misdemeanour charges in Utah that could keep him in prison for life.
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I am disabled. The same thing happened to me. I let this fellow who was out of work (fired by his stepdad-duh) and his teenage son live in a trailer on my 40 acres. What happens? The tweeker steals me blind while I am my cancer doctor for a checkup and what he can’t cart off they destroy. Too bad for him that he chose the wrong guy to poop on. He is sitting in a cell in Susanville California for next 5 years (probably 2 1/2) The son has a face book page where he displays a picture of himself sitting in my leather recliner that they are carting away from my house, it is strapped to the top of his stolen vehicle. I am pretty sure there are lots of pics on my FB page showing the level of destruction. Thanks for the great website and all the very useful info!