They are America’s lost children. Their faces stare from milk cartons or heart-wrenching handwritten posters. They are on websites set up by parents appealing for sightings. Too often they remain missing — or they are found dead.
But on Saturday, something amazing happened. Two missing children in the United States reappeared safe and well, having been rescued by police about 24 hours earlier. Their story has gripped the nation, not least because one of the boys had last been seen on an autumn day more than four years ago.
Both the Missouri boys have been reunited with their families amid scenes of high emotion. The man alleged to have kept them in his home — a pizza-restaurant manager and part-time funeral-home worker named Michael Devlin — has been charged with kidnapping. He is in jail and is being held on bail of $1-million.
Battered by headlines about political wrangling at home and violence in Iraq, Americans have been rejoicing in a welcome dose of good news. A poster on the school stage where Hornbeck’s parents addressed the media seemed to sum up the entire country’s feelings: ”Miracles do happen,” it said. Another read: ”Welcome home, Shawn. We missed you.”
A miracle certainly seems to have happened for both of the boys’ families. Hornbeck, then 11 years old, was last seen riding his bike to a friend’s home in rural Missouri in the American Midwest on October 6 2002. He simply vanished and was feared kidnapped by a murderer or sexual predator.
After weeks, months and finally years passed, most people assumed he had joined the long list of lost children in the US. His family held a vigil every year on the anniversary of his disappearance in a bid to keep his case in the public mind. But even supporters would admit that it felt more like a memorial to a lost son.
Incredibly, neither of the missing boys turned up more than 96km from where they had disappeared. Ownby was apparently abducted after getting off a school bus on his way home last Monday afternoon. He was last spotted heading down a gravel road towards his home. He never arrived.
After the police were alerted by his frantic parents, they received a further report about a suspicious-looking, dilapidated white pick-up truck. The vehicle had been spotted by a friend of Ownby’s who had got off the school bus at the same time as him and then saw the truck racing off.
By Thursday night, police officers had traced a van that appeared to match the description to a suburban St Louis apartment belonging to Devlin. They raided the home on Friday morning and found the two boys.
According to police sources, when the officers entered the apartment, Ownby looked up and asked officers: ”Are you going to take me home?” When the police asked the other boy who he was, he said simply: ”I am Shawn Hornbeck.”
With the burly, bearded Devlin under arrest, police have refused to comment on any specifics of the case, saying they are determined to collect enough evidence to put him behind bars for the rest of his life.
Reunion
After being reunited with their parents, the boys were taken to a hospital for a check-up and both found to be healthy. ”They were smiling and appeared very pleased to be with their families,” said Bob Davidson, a spokesperson for Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital. ”Obviously the families were incredibly tickled to have the boys back. It’s a thrilling night.”
Ownby’s family members were also stunned and relieved at the happy ending to the case. Ben’s uncle, Loyd Bailie, described the boy’s delight when he saw his parents. ”His eyes lit up like silver dollars,” Bailie said. The family had broken down in tears as they were reunited.
But the real focus of the story has been the stunning rediscovery of Shawn. From being widely assumed to be dead, suddenly he was walking out in front of a phalanx of TV crews and reporters at his old home-town school.
Shawn walked on to the stage, which was festooned in posters and blue and yellow balloons, hand in hand with his mother, Pam Akers. He smiled nervously in front of the cameras. He said nothing to reporters, but chatted quietly with his mother and stepfather, Craig Akers.
Wearing a blue hooded top, he seemed healthy, although of course much older than the boy who featured on the missing posters after he first disappeared.
Craig Akers, his voice cracking with emotion, said the family had been driving home from work in a rainstorm on Friday afternoon when they had got the news that Shawn had been found alive and well.
The couple simply broke down in tears at the side of the road. ”It is the phone call I will remember most for the rest of my life,” he said. ”This is the best day of our lives. It is hard to even come up with words to express the feeling. It has been like a dream, and we are afraid that we are going to wake up.”
Amid the celebrations, there remains a huge mystery surrounding the case. No one knows for sure how Devlin abducted the two boys, and what he had been doing with them, especially during the four years he is believed to have kept Shawn — or why neither seems to have tried to escape.
Few details of their captivity have emerged. Craig Akers said he believed Shawn had been kept in the same area for the entire period and had apparently not been to school. ”This has been going on for four years and it’s been going on under our noses,” he said.
Neighbours at Devlin’s suburban apartment said they had never noticed anything amiss. Rick Butler, who lives next door, told reporters that he had assumed Devlin and Shawn were father and son and had not noticed the arrival of the younger child.
He said he had seen no evidence that Shawn had ever tried to run away. On one occasion he had even found a cellphone lost by Shawn and returned it to him. On another occasion, he had seen the pair pitch a tent in their yard. ”I didn’t see or hear anything odd or unusual from the apartment. I just figured them for father and son,” Butler said.
End of the nightmare
For the Akers family, however, unravelling the mystery can come later. For now, they are rejoicing in the end of a nightmare.
Craig Akers had left his job as a software designer to devote his time to a foundation bearing Shawn’s name. The family spent their savings, borrowed against their retirement and even talked to psychics in their quest to find their son. Volunteers and sniffer dogs had spent many hours searching for the missing boy.
But as the Akers adjusted to having Shawn home again, he said that throughout the long years of separation he had never given up dreaming of the day that the boy would be found. ”You can’t lose hope,” he said. ”Hope gets you through. Sometimes this is what happens when you have that hope.”
Slowly, details of the saga have started to emerge. Shawn Hornbeck (15) and Ben Ownby (13) were found, together, in a suburban St Louis apartment. Hornbeck had been missing since October 2002. Ownby disappeared at the beginning of last week. Both seemed well — in fact, early signs were that Hornbeck did not even seem to have been held against his will — as they joined a tiny number of astonishing happy endings to kidnap tragedies in the past few years.
In rural Belgium, two young girls who were kidnapped and brainwashed by the serial killer Marc Dutroux in 1996 managed to survive, and testified at his trial in 2004. In Austria last year, 18-year-old Natascha Kampusch made international headlines after escaping from a man who had kidnapped and held her captive in a basement for eight years.
When her abductor then threw himself in front of a train, Natascha appeared devastated by the news of his death, suggesting that she had developed so-called ”Stockholm syndrome”, or sympathy for her captor. ”To give you a metaphor, he carried me in his arms but also trampled me underfoot,” she said.
And in the American West, a young girl named Elizabeth Smart was discovered alive and well in 2003, nine months after being kidnapped from her bedroom in Utah. — Guardian Unlimited Â