The Crazy Kyron Horman Case - David Loftus

On June 11 I wrote and uploaded a commentary on “American Currents” about a local -- that is to say, Portland, Oregon -- concern that was just starting to break as a national story Soon, it would be covered on the “Today Show,” “Good Morning, America,” in People magazine, “America’s Most Wanted,” and “Dateline NBC.”

At the time of my comments, Kyron Horman’s disappearance was still just a mysterious and upsetting story; it had not yet turned into a weird, soap-opera farce with the upsetting mystery nearly smothered underneath.

All I aimed for in June was a plea to bystanders not to speculate too freely -- not to treat the story as if it were just another piece of entertainment, an hour-long mystery on “CSI” or “Without a Trace.” The people involved were (and are) real human beings, not characters in a fictional plot, and for strangers to bandy about theories on who was guilty or what they had done was a tasteless and disrespectful form of public gossip and, in some cases, even bullying.

I stand by everything I wrote in that piece, although the story has taken many strange turns since then, some of them accurately predicted by those strangers I advised not to speculate. Here is a summary:

·      June 13 (day 10) -- Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton announces the missing and endangered child case has become a criminal investigation, with a $25,000 reward for tips leading to the 7-year-old’s recovery

·      June 14 -- a dive team searches the Willamette River near Sauvie Island, not far from  the school but down a steep hill from it; Multnomah County Sheriff’s Capt. Jason Gates thanks the 42 law enforcement agencies from Oregon, Washington, and California that have been involved, and 213 detectives and 1,300 volunteer searchers

·      June 15 -- about 400 attend a candlelight vigil at Sunset Presbyterian Church Sanctuary, organized by Rachel Hansen and Michael Cook, a friend of the boy’s father, Kaine Horman

·      June 17 -- Kyron’s story appears as an inset on the cover of People

·      June 19 -- stepmother Terri Moulton Horman takes a second lie-detector test; a feature story in the Oregonian daily newspaper quotes friends of the boy’s “blended family” of parents and step-parents who characterize them as “a close, supportive group”

·      Starting in late June, the family “coalition” starts to unravel: Kaine Horman, ex-wife Desiree Young (the boy’s birth mother, who lives with her police detective husband downstate in Medford, Oregon), and various friends of the family repeatedly ask Terri Horman publicly to “cooperate with the investigation,” at times on national television, while the sheriff’s office responds several times that she has been cooperative

·      June 28 -- Kaine files for divorce from Terri and obtains a restraining order against her

·      June 30 -- Terri hires criminal defense attorney Stephen Houze

·      July 4 -- first report that Terri Horman tried to hire a man, a landscaper, to kill her husband about six or seven months previously; police shared the information with Kaine Horman on June 26, which is apparently what prompted him to move out and file for divorce and a restraining order

·      July 8 -- Kaine’s restraining order is revealed to include the statement “I believe the respondent [stepmother Terri Horman] is involved in the disappearance of my son Kyron….”; in a news conference with Kaine, his ex-wife Desiree Young says: “I’m so angry I don’t even have words. I just really want her to do the right thing and I can’t say it enough that Kyron is still out there and he needs to be home…. It’s extremely frustrating that she’s not cooperating…. I’ve known her a long time. I know she’s lying.”

·      July 9 -- another candlelight vigil is held for Kyron, 200 at Skyline School, with Kaine Horman and Desiree Young participating

·      July 12 -- Kaine Horman files a motion alleging that Terri violated a restraining order by carrying on a sexual relationship with one of his childhood friends (the aforementioned Michael Cook; she was sexting him as recently as June 30), sharing sealed information, and attempting to kidnap their daughter Kiara from the day care at Kaine’s gym on June 28

In an interview with law enforcement, Cook told authorities that Terri Horman let him photograph the sealed restraining order, as well as Kaine Horman’s new undisclosed address, and he shared the information with at least two people. Kaine Horman and Michael Cook both attended Shoreline High School north of Seattle. Cook was one of a few of Kaine’s friends from high school who ended up moving to Portland. Kaine had tried to reconnect with him once Cook moved to Portland, but that did not happen until Cook showed up at their home after Kyron’s disappearance. Along with two others, Cook, who is divorced with a son, helped organize the first vigil for Kyron. He was later seen at Kaine and Terri’s home after Kaine moved out, picking up the mail and bringing in food and drink to Terri, her friends and relatives. He told The Oregonian he was just trying to be supportive in a time of need.

·      July 13 -- Terri seeks money from Kaine to help her move out of their family home

·      July 15 -- Kaine files to have her removed from the home immediately

·      July 17 -- Terri said to be relocated to her parents’ home in Roseburg, some 180 miles south of Portland

·      July 19 -- having spent an estimated $300,000 on the investigation, the Multnomah County Sheriff, along with the District Attorney’s office, requests $438,00 from the county to support the continued investigation (three days later, the sheriff tabled his $242,609 request, and the county approved a pared down $196,034 for the DA)

·      July 22 -- DeDe Spicher, a close friend of Terri’s, is alleged by Desiree Young, her husband Tony Young, and Kaine Horman to be in close contact with Terri and not cooperating with police

·      July 26 -- Kaine states in documents filed with the divorce court that he believed Terri had tendered $350,000 to retain Houze, and he wanted to know where she got the money; Desiree Young also reveals, in an interview on “Dateline NBC,” that Kaine had had an affair with Terri in 2002 when he was still married to Desiree and she was eight months pregnant with Kyron

·      July 28 -- Peter Bunch, divorce attorney for Terri, files a motion to delay the divorce proceeding because intense scrutiny of his client in the Kyron Horman disappearance was making it impossible to proceed with a normal divorce; he also said the $350,000 figure described as Houze’s retainer was “grossly misstated”

·      August 3-5 -- Various friends and neighbors of the family, and other potential witnesses testify before a Multnomah County grand jury about the boy’s disappearance

·      August 11 -- Authorities hold a press conference to ask the public for any information people might have about seeing Terri Horman (or possibly someone else) driving Kaine’s white Ford F250 pickup truck near the school between 8 and 8:30, near a Fred Meyer supermarket later that morning, and on various roads to the west of the school during the day of Kyron’s disappearance

Since the flurry of revelations in mid to late July, the pace of new stories has slowed, which is hard to avoid reading as a bad sign, if the safe return of Kyron Horman is still the concern. Almost every night, one of the three network stations, whose studios are located four blocks west of my apartment, brings a truck over to the next block, where a billboard of little Kyron Horman stands prominently displayed. (There are many others around the city, but this one’s the closest to the TV station and to me.)


Their live feed on the 11 o’clock news inevitably shows a reporter standing in the foreground with Kyron Horman’s face beaming over his or her shoulder.

Back in June, it seemed strange enough that this drama had begun at a school just a few miles over the hills to the west of me. What’s even stranger is that I know Michael Cook personally; he and his former wife were active in the outdoor Shakespeare theater company I first acted with in the summer of 2005. A year later, I sang a karaoke song at his birthday party. I haven't seen him since.

But you know what? None of this make me an expert -- on Cook or anyone else in this matter. Unlike so many other Internet bloggers and gossip-mongers, I have nothing conclusive to say. This story is far from over, and it's really none of our business until law enforcement turns up something more substantive and someone is actually charged.

Obviously, this is a family that has been in turmoil, and has kept secrets from one another, for some time before the ugly turn of events that brought them to wider attention on June 4 (that is, the disappearance of a little boy). That they’ve managed to take their spats and games into the public arena and hold their neighbors’ -- and indeed, much of the nation’s -- attention for more than two months is a sad commentary.

Apart from the criminal matter of the disappearance of a 7-year-old boy, it would have been better for all concerned if the sordid drama had not played out in public. And I reiterate that noninvolved bystanders -- people who have no direct relation to the case -- should have shown some dignity and restraint by choosing not to comment publicly on what they think about who did what and to whom.

It’s not so much that Kaine and Terri Horman, Desiree and Tony Young, DeDe Spicher, and the rest have a right to privacy that we have invaded; most of them have been courting media attention assiduously for various reasons, some of them possibly valid and some probably not so. The point is that it is a bad thing for us, ourselves, to indulge in this kind of loose talk.

I’m not a religious man, but there is value to the Biblical admonitions against gossip: “… I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken” (Matthew 12:36); “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths,” Paul wrote, “but only what it helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Ephesians 4:29). Or, as it advises in First Thessalonians, “… make it your aim to live quietly and to mind your own business” (4:11).

It used to be that news stories could print only what they could verify from documents or from spokespersons for the sources they were covering. And if they published a factual error, they printed a correction and apologized. Now that newspapers and television stations have gone online, most of them provide an outlet for instant, thoughtless, anonymous, and therefore often erroneous and abusive, comments by the public. This might not be illegal, but it certainly is unpleasant and disrespectful.

Here’s my hope that Kyron Horman is found, alive and soon, and that everybody else will finally shut up about all the other parties involved.