Did Kidnapped Missouri Boy Post Bizarre Messages On His Own Website?
Posted January 16, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Did a boy who was held captive for four long years create an online presence at a website hinting about his fate?
It’s the latest clue in the strange saga of Shawn Hornbeck, one of two kidnapped boys discovered in a St. Louis-area apartment last week.
Hornbeck was only 11 years old when he disappeared in 2002. He wasn’t found until last Friday, when a sharp-eyed police officer noticed a truck matching the description of a vehicle used in the separate abduction of another boy four days earlier.
When cops raided the Kirkwood, Missouri home of 41-year-old Michael Devlin, they discovered the missing captive and were stunned to find the long absent Hornbeck inside as well.
Now there are questions about a mysterious webpage registered to a “Shawn Devlin” that’s turned up on a service called mindviz.com.
It purports to be from a 15-year-old Kirkwood resident and had not been updated since September 2006.
But that may not be the only place Hornbeck – or someone claiming to be him – was lurking.
While his alleged captor was working one of his two jobs, a poster now suspected to be the teen put up photos of the lost child and a bizarre message on his parents’ own site asking, “How long are you planning to look for your son?”
The note was signed “Shawn Devlin”.
The date was December 1, 2005. Later that day, the same person wrote in asking if he could compose a poem for the boy’s family.
“Hey sorry about that last thing i put on there,” it reads. “i write poems and i was wounding (sic) if it would be ok to write a poem for the hornbeck fam. and they son “shawn Hornbeck”. it would be cool if i could but if you dont want me to i can understan why i guess. but i was wounding if i could write a poem in his horner (sorry i dont know how to spell that last word).”
But no such poem was ever put online.
The apparent web access has renewed questions about Hornbeck’s state of mind and why he didn’t use the Internet or the phones in the apartment to get help and secure his own freedom.
Psychologists have suggested his alleged kidnapper used years of fear and intimidation to convince the impressionable youth that staying was his only safe option.
And in a Stockholm Syndrome-like relationship, an unusual bond often appears between the captive and the person holding him.
“It developed when someone feels that their life is being threatened, but they aren’t killed,” explains clinical psychologist Dr. Juliet Francis, a consultant for the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children.
The mindviz page is curious. It shows a picture of a boy who’s likely not Hornbeck but whose description matches him in most details.
It’s clear web users believe it’s the handiwork of the long missing child.
Since his return, more than 40,000 people have visited the site and left comments welcoming him back and advising him not to be ashamed of being sexually abused.
There are no allegations yet that Devlin did that to the youngster and so far, he’s not been charged in connection with Hornbeck’s original disappearance.
But he is being held on $1 million bail for the abduction of Ben Ownby. It was the 13-year-old’s kidnapping and recovery that led to the discovery of Hornbeck in the first place.
There’s no guarantee that this web page was put up by Shawn, nor is there any promise that it will remain online. But if you’d like to see what thousands of others believe is the actual site of the former kidnap victim, click here.
- ShawnHornbeck.com
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