INTOUCHWEEKLY.COM 61
FROM TOP LEFT: PORTLAND PRESS HERLAD (2); R/R; N/C (2)
LONE IN WOODS
The mystery was solved in
- That ’s when Christopher
Knight — who disappeared into the
woods in 1986, when he was 20 —
was arrested while stealing food
from a summer camp near North
Pond. “This guy completely rejected
modern society,” Michael, who in-
terviewed Christopher, now 51, in
a Kennebec County jail during his
seven-month sentence for theft and
burglary, and then detailed his story
in The Stranger in the Woods, tells
In Touch. “He said he loved it out
there. He was so content. He was nev-
er bored or lonely. He may be the most
solitary human being ever.”
Severe isolation was his goal.
Though Christopher, who was raised
in central Maine, told Michael, “I
wasn’t thinking anything when I left,
I just did it,” the author believes “he
found interacting with people frus-
trating. He’d been a highly intelligent,
really socially awkward kid. All his life
he was most comfortable being alone.”
While in the woods, Christopher
devised ways to avoid detection.
He never lit a fi re, despite the subzero
temps, and slept in a tent in a small
forest clearing. Depending on the
season, he bathed in a pond or gave
himself sponge baths. He maintained
a stash of supplies by burglarizing un-
occupied summer cabins nearby. “He
was a master thief — he could pick
locks like Houdini,” says Michael.
“But he had a code: He never took any
real valuables or broke a window.”
According to his interview with a lo-
cal police offi cer, Michael says Chris-
topher’s family never fi led a missing
person report. “The cop said they
never made a big stink about it and
that’s the way people do things in cen-
tral Maine.” Michael says the family
“suff ered and eventually came to the
conclusion that he’d died.”
He still doesn’t want to be a
functioning member of society.
Though Christopher ( believed by
a forensic psychologist who inter-
viewed him after his arrest to pos-
sibly have Asperger’s syndrome) is
safely ensconced in his childhood
home, where he lives with his mother,
“He’snotashappy,”saysMichael.“I
keep thinking that one day I’ll hear
he’s escaped back into the woods. And
whenIdo,Iamgoingtosmile.”
—ReportingbyJaclynRoth
UDED IN MAINE
nownst to his family,
Christopher spent the better part
of three decades hiding out not too
far from his childhood home.
HIS STORY
Despite his extreme isolation,
“Christopher listened to a radio and
knew current events. He could talk
about Kim Kardashian,” says The
Stranger in the Woods author Michael.
