The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

to the nature of the electromagnetic bonds in water molecules—chemists refer to such molecules as
“sticky”—water can store about four times more thermal energy than soil. During the day, the water buried
in the Knight family greenhouse absorbed heat; after sunset, it slowly released energy. Using this system,
they grew food all winter and didn’t need to pay a dime to the power company to heat the greenhouse. “In
my family,” said Chris, “self-education, self-improvement was preferred.”
Money was tight. Whenever Sheldon came home with coins in his pocket, he dropped them in a coffee
can, and Joyce distributed them in the morning before school, for milk money. They never got rid of scrap
metal or spare parts.
Chris described his family as “obsessed with privacy.” He begged that they not be contacted or disturbed,
at least while he was still in jail. The Knights socialized with a small group of friends and relatives, and
virtually no one else. One’s desire to be alone, biologists have found, is partially genetic and to some degree
measurable. If you have low levels of the pituitary peptide oxytocin—sometimes called the master chemical
of sociability—and high quantities of the hormone vasopressin, which may suppress your need for affection,
you tend to require fewer interpersonal relationships.
“Each of us inherits from our parents a certain level of need for social inclusion,” wrote John Cacioppo
in his book Loneliness. Cacioppo, the director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the
University of Chicago, said that everyone naturally possesses a “genetic thermostat for connection.” Chris
Knight’s must be set near absolute zero.
Sheldon, Chris’s father, died in 2001—Chris didn’t know that until his arrest, more than a dozen years
later—but Joyce, in her eighties, still lives in the same house, along with her daughter, for whom she
remains the caretaker. The oldest son, Daniel, ten years older than Chris, resides in a double-wide mobile
home on an adjoining lot. Their closest neighbor, John Boivin, said he’s lived next door to the Knights for
fourteen years and still hasn’t said hello to anyone in the family. Sometimes Boivin spots Joyce collecting the
newspaper. Chris’s sister, Susanna, has hardly been seen in public for decades.
“I know everyone in Albion,” said Amanda Dow, who has worked in the local town office for close to
two decades, “but I can’t put a face to them.” People who knew Sheldon invariably described him as
introverted. Bob Milliken, an Albion dairy farmer and distant cousin of Sheldon’s, said the Knight family
was “smart, honest, hardworking, self-sufficient, well respected, and quiet.” Milliken added that on the rare
occasions when he did speak with anyone in the family, he “more or less just stuck to talking about the
weather.”
Chris insisted that he’d had a fine youth. “No complaints. I had good parents.” No one else in his family
has had any trouble with the law. Two of Knight’s brothers, Joel and Timothy, visited him in jail, the only
members of the family to do so. Chris didn’t recognize them, he admitted; only Joel’s laugh sounded
familiar. The brothers said they’d often wondered what had happened to Chris. They had supposed he was
dead but had never expressed this thought to their mother. They’d always wanted to give her hope that he
was still alive. It seemed to comfort her. Maybe he’s in Texas, they’d say. Or he’s in the Rocky Mountains.
Or even New York City.
His family apparently never contacted the police about Chris’s disappearance. They did not file a missing
person report. “They assumed I was off doing something on my own,” said Chris. “Having an adventure.
We Yankees, we see the world differently.” Sergeant Hughes said he wasn’t particularly surprised to learn
that the Knights had not involved the authorities. “They’re a rural Maine family,” he said. “Keep-tothemselves
people.”