The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

something. Chris was smart and friendly. I never noticed anything odd about him, but who knows what was
really going on? Us Mainers, we have our own way of doing things. We like to hold our peacoats and our
family really close.”
One day, Chris and Jeff Young decided to skip school and go fishing. “We planned it the day before,”
said Young, “and took our fishing rods to school. Just the two of us. I think he didn’t like being around too
many people, and I don’t blame him. We walked two or three miles, heading to the old metal bridge over
the Sebasticook River. We never made it.” Sheldon must have suspected something, for he drove by in his
red Dodge pickup. Chris had respect for his father, Young observed, and perhaps a little fear of him.
Without saying a word, Chris just got in the truck and left.
During his senior year, Knight, like most Maine public school students, attended a course called Hunter
Safety and Outdoor Skills. He learned things like how to read a compass and how to construct a makeshift
shelter. “This is something that keeps replaying in my mind,” said his teacher, Bruce Hillman. “I told every
kid that if you are in a survival situation, life or death, and you come upon a camp, it’s okay to break in.
This is accepted in Maine. I have a camp, too, and I always leave dry goods behind just in case others need
it. You never know what impact you’re going to have on some kid. I was thinking of a survival situation
lasting two or three days, not twenty years.”
The early 1980s brought the first generation of personal computers, and Knight was fascinated—one
might expect him to be a technophobe, but he was actually an early adopter. His future plan, according to
the yearbook, was to be a “computer technician.” (His nickname, unsatisfyingly, was “Knight.”) His favorite
subject was history.
“I hated gym,” he said. “I hated gym teachers. What’s that Woody Allen line? ‘Those who can’t do, teach.
And those who can’t teach, teach gym.’ I figured out a way of skipping gym class by going to study hall
instead, and I weaseled my way out of four years of high school gym. I’m in good shape, I’m above average
height. I just didn’t want to play on teams. Being in gym class made me feel like I was trapped in Lord of
the Flies. Can you really expect to see me playing volleyball?”
Upon graduation, Knight enrolled in a nine-month electronics course, whose curriculum included
computer repair, at Sylvania Technical School in Waltham, Massachusetts, outside Boston. Two of his
brothers had taken the same course. After he finished, he stayed in Waltham, where he found a job
installing home and vehicle alarm systems, useful knowledge to have for his later career as a burglar. He
rented a room in a house and purchased a new vehicle, a white 1985 Subaru Brat. His brother Joel cosigned
the loan. “He did such a nice thing for me, and I screwed him on that,” Knight said. “I still owe him.”
He worked for less than a year, and then suddenly, without giving notice to his boss, quit the alarminstallation
job. Knight never even returned his work tools, according to Kerry Vigue, the longtime family
friend. His employer, irate, contacted Chris’s family and demanded several hundred dollars in
reimbursement for the missing tools, threatening legal action if they refused. Chris’s parents, recalled Vigue,
ended up paying.
Chris, meanwhile, cashed his final paycheck and left town. He did not tell anyone where he was going. “I
had no one to tell,” he said. “I didn’t have any friends. I had no interest in my co-workers.” He drove the
Brat south. He was twenty years old. He ate fast food and stayed in cheap motels—“the cheapest I could
find”—and drove for days, alone, until he found himself deep into Florida. He did not mention stopping at
any tourist sites, or museums, or beaches. He stuck mostly to the interstate, and apparently didn’t do much
except sit in his car and watch the world, sealed off behind metal and glass. Eventually, he turned around