On June 4, 2010, 7-year-old Kyron Horman disappeared without a trace. Although he had been at school that morning for the science fair, he never showed up to his class. It wasn’t until he didn’t return home on the school bus, that his family realized he was missing.
Kyron Richard Horman was born on September 9, 2002, in Portland Oregon. His parents, Desiree Young and Kaine Horman divorced while she was eight months pregnant, but shared custody of the young boy. In 2004, tragedy struck when Desiree was diagnosed with kidney failure that required extensive medical attention. She was forced to move back in with her parents and gave full custody of Kyron to Kaine while she recovered.
Although she didn’t have custody, Desiree remained active in his life.
During the time of their divorce, Kaine started seeing Terri Moulton, a substitute teacher, and the pair married in 2007. They had a daughter, Kiara in December 2008.
Kyron typically took the school bus. On June 4, 2010, Terri drove Kyron to Skyline Elementary School and stayed with him while he attended the science fair. She helped him set up and even took some photos of him wearing his C.S.I t-shirt, reflecting his interest in forensic science. At around 8:45 that morning, she said her goodbyes and watched him walk down the hall, toward his class. A fellow student would later report having seen him at about 9am, near the school’s south entrance.
Terri left and ran a couple of errands. She stopped at two different Fred Meyer grocery stores, trips that took until about 10:10am. Then she drove aimlessly around town until about 11:39am, using the motion of the vehicle to soothe baby Kiara’s ear ache. Following that, Terri went to 24-Hour Fitness where she worked out until around 12:40pm. She finally returned home around 1:21pm where she posted the photos she had taken of Kyron at the science fair on Facebook.
At 3:30pm, Kaine and Terri walked with baby Kiara to the bus stop to meet Kyron. But he never got off the bus. When questioned, the bus driver informed them that Kyron had never gotten on the bus, and they needed to contact the school. When Terri called, she was informed by the school secretary that Kyron had never been to class and had been marked absent.
Sensing the urgency of the situation, the secretary immediately called 911 to report him missing.
The search began almost immediately, starting with a focused 2-mile radius around Skyline Elementary and on Sauvie Island including the Sauvie Island Bridge – approximately 6 miles away. Law enforcement officials never disclosed their reasons for searching the specified area.
It wasn’t until five days later that the family chose to release a statement to the media:
Kyron’s family would like to thank people for support and interest in finding their son. The outpouring of support and continued effort strengthens their hope. We need for folks to continue to assist us in our goal. Please search your properties — cars, out buildings, sheds, etc. Also check with neighbors and friends who may be on vacation or may need in assistance in searching. There are a lot of resources here to help you search, so please don’t stop. It is obviously a difficult time and they want to speak to the public so you can hear it from Kyron’s family as they come together to share their message. Their objective is to keep the focus on Kyron and not about anything else.
Still no sign of him, the search continued, and on June 12, approximately 300 trained rescuers searched the wooded area near the school. The search went on for ten days and was the largest in Oregon history. The search included more than 1,300 searchers from Oregon, Washington, and California.
Terri was subjected to two polygraph tests, both of which she failed.
Police showed Desiree emails that Terri had sent to friends, emails that clearly illustrated a troubled marriage. “She blames a lot of the marital problems between Kaine and herself on Kyron. It was a huge point of contention in their marriage and she had expressed in great detail her hatred for Kyron, “Desiree said. “I now believe without a shadow of a doubt that not only is she capable of hurting Kyron, that it’s clear that she would have hurt him in the worst possible way.”
Later that month, Rodolfo Sanchez, a local landscaper, went to the police and informed them that Terri had offered him “a lot of money” to kill her husband. Sanchez even testified in a deposition that she had approached him to help kill her husband in January of that year, just five months before the disappearance of Kyron.
Investigators convinced Sanchez to confront Terri while wearing an audio surveillance device, unfortunately they were unable to obtain any evidence. Further, Terri denied all allegations
When Kaine learned about Terri’s intention to have him killed, he left the house and took their daughter with him. On June 28, he filed for divorce and obtained a restraining order against Terri. The divorce was granted, and due to circumstances Kaine retained custody of their daughter, with Terri only being granted supervised visitation.
A reward for information leading to the discovery of Kyron started at $25,000 and was expanded in late July to $50,000.
Several of Terri’s friends were subpoenaed by a Multnomah County grand jury including DeDe Spicher, whom Desiree and Kaine both described as having “been in close communication with Terri” and “providing Terri with support and advice that is not in the best interests of our son.” Spicher was “extremely cooperative” and allowed investigators to search both her property and her car. She also underwent three hours of questioning.
According to Spicher, on the day of Kyron’s disappearance, she abruptly left her work gardening for a homeowner on Germantown Road in Northwest Portland around 11:30am and returned about 90 minutes later. She also claimed to have purchased Terri an untraceable cell phone, a “burner” phone. She later told journalists, “There’s this horror that my friend is going through. If I thought for a second that she was capable of [foul play], I would not have been there. She would not have been my friend in the first place.”
A possible break came in August when it was announced that law enforcement were searching for an individual allegedly seen by two witnesses sitting inside Terri’s truck, outside of Skyline Elementary school on the day of Kyron’s disappearance. Bruce McCain, a former sheriff for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, told CBS News: “The identity of that second person, if he or she existed, could be critical in determining what happened to Kyron after 9 a.m. on June 4.”
In early August, both Desiree and Kaine, as well as the principal ofSkyline Elementary School, were subpoenaed to testify during the grand jury hearing.
By December, The Oregonian reported that the grand jury had yet to provide compelling evidence yielding a potential indictment. As of May 2017, according to Portland station KGW, a secret grand jury panel continued to hear evidence in Kyron’s disappearance. The case is still “active and ongoing.”
In July 2017, further searches were conducted, this time along Skyline Boulevard, but nothing was found. Nearly a year later, in June 2018, Desire posted on the official “Find Kyron Horman” Facebook page, “Stay tuned, something big is coming, I promise you.”
During the entire investigation, eyes never left Terri Horman. On June 1, 2012, Desiree Young filed a civil lawsuit against her, claiming that she was “responsible for the disappearance of Kyron.” The lawsuit attempted to prove that Terri had kidnapped him on the day of his disappearance. She sought $10 million in damages.
Terri filed a motion to delay the lawsuit, but on August 15, a federal court denied it. When questioned during a deposition, DeDe Spicher refused to answer any of the 142 questions posed to her regarding her whereabouts on the day Kyron disappeared as well as her contact with Terri that day. She also declined to identify a photo of Kyron and refused to answer whether she had ever met him or knew his father.
Young ultimately dropped the lawsuit, announcing on July 30, 2013, that she did not want it to interfere with the ongoing police investigation.
“They found no clues, they found nothing,” Kaine’s father told KPIC news in 2015. “All the searches to date that I know of, both private and by the sheriff’s office or the search and rescue teams … There’s been no piece of evidence forensically linked to our case. So they found nothing. So he’s not around here … so the question is where is he?”
Today, the case remains open with the Multnomah sheriff’s office reportedly receiving anywhere from 1-20 leads every month. Two detectives and an FBI agent remain assigned to the case and follow up on all tips.
The $50,000 reward is still available for information leading to resolution of the case. All tips should be reported to the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office at 503-988-0560 or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) at 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678).
Did you know that each year an approximate 800,000 children are reported missing? Read about The Missing Children of America to learn more.
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