The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

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The cabin owners of North Pond, a majority of them, arrived at a very different diagnosis. Knight was
not just a thief, they said, but also a fraud.
“No way he’s telling the truth,” declared Fred King, who once had a sugar bowl stolen from his place,
after which, for years, his friends called him Sugar Bowl. “Can I use a swear word?” asked King, gruff and
polite at once, a very Maine trait. “There is no fucking way this guy was a hermit. I’m an outdoorsman, and
I’m just telling you, flat out, no way. I’m a thousand percent sure. In winter, it’s subzero all the time. I think
a family member helped him, or another person took him in. Or he broke into a vacant place and stayed all
winter.”
Some people refused to accept that Knight had never once required medical care. Food stored in the
woods, others noted, inevitably attracts raccoons and coyotes, which will tear your camp apart. And how
was it possible, a couple of locals asked, that Knight could speak so well, that his vocal cords still functioned
and he’d retained such an extensive vocabulary, if he really hadn’t used his voice for so long? One resident
pointed out that there was a road called Knight Court not far from his site, and a Knight family, likely
relatives of Chris’s, had lived there forever. They must have provided assistance. Also, if Knight had really
been out there, the Great Ice Storm of 1998 would surely have frozen him.
“Everything that came from his camp stunk,” said Steve Treadwell, the Pine Tree employee who’d
observed the police interrogation of Knight and the dismantling of his site. “But he was clean-smelling. He
didn’t live in the woods. His story doesn’t pass the smell test. Literally.”
Dozens of North Pond summer residents offered their opinions about Knight, and about eighty percent of
them insisted that he was lying, such an overwhelming preponderance that the only proper thing to do was
ask Knight directly. Did he truly spend twenty-seven years alone in the woods? Or did he have assistance, or
pass the winter in a cabin, or at least use someone’s bathroom?
When questioned, Knight was adamant and a little angry. Other than the one time he stayed in a home,
during the first few weeks of his escape, he never again slept inside. “I had no help from anybody, ever.” He
was not in touch with his family, he did not take a shower, nap in a bed, or lounge on someone’s sofa even
for a minute. The first time he used an actual toilet in a quarter century was in the Kennebec County jail.
When he was driven to the jail in the back of a squad car, it was the first time he’d ridden in an automobile
since abandoning the Brat. “I’m a thief. I induced fear. People have a right to be angry. But I have not lied.”
Knight seemed entirely honest, practically incapable of lying, a notion that several other people
supported. Diane Vance said that much of her job as state trooper consisted of sorting through lies people