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'North Pond Hermit,' suspect in more than 1,000 Maine burglaries, captured (onlinesentinel.com)
lengthy article at the link above; well worth readingROME Christopher Knight went into the central Maine wilderness 27 years ago.
He built a hut on a slope in the woods, where he spent his days reading books and meditating.
There he lived: re-entering civilization only to steal supplies from camps under the cover of darkness. During those nearly three decades, he spoke just once to another person until he was arrested during a burglary last week.
In between, Knight told police, he committed more than 1,000 burglaries, always taking only what he needed to survive. He became so familiar for his thievery and elusiveness that he spawned the local legend of the North Pond Hermit, who for years confounded both locals and police investigating the break-ins.
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"It's been a myth, or legend, that a hermit was responsible," Maine State Trooper Diane Perkins-Vance told the Kennebec Journal on Tuesday. "That happens to be the case."
The 47-year-old hermit now awaits his future at the Kennebec County jail, where he is being held in lieu of $5,000 cash bail on charges of burglary and theft.
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"He said he just came into the woods one day in 1986," Perkins-Vance said. "He claims he hadn't had a conversation with another human being since the mid-1990s, when he encountered someone on a trail. I was the first person he talked to since the 1990s. People are like, 'No way!' But yeah, it's true."
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Knight has always been interested in hermits, according to Perkins-Vance, and loved the book "Robinson Crusoe," the story of a man stranded on an island for decades.
Beyond that, Perkins-Vance said, Knight had no deeper explanation for heading into the woods.
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