An Interview With Shawn Hornbeck

Yesterday I watched an interview with Shawn Hornbeck and his parents on tv.
Shawn Hornbeck was an articulate and intelligent kid. He said that he spent most of the days in captivity sleeping, and playing computer games. He said that he survived by praying and by crossing himself every day. He said that his was a very religious family. He said he was very glad to be back with his parents. Throughout the interview, Shawn was holding his father's hand with his right hand, and holding his mother's hand with his left hand.
Shawn said that his abductor allowed him to play with friends in his apartment complex. He was allowed to ride his bicycle. If anyone asked about why he didn't go to school, he told them he was home schooled. When asked why he did not call for help, he said he did not want to talk about it.
Shawn said that he had access to a computer, and he did go onto the web site his parents had put up which was dedicated to locating himself. Using the name "Shawn Devlin", which was the last name of his abductor, he asked his own parents, "How long will you keep looking for your son."
His father admitted that he remembered reading that posting, several years ago, but said he thought it was just some wacko using his son's first name to "jerk his chain."
The father said they got screwball postings every day, and to his sorrow he paid no attention to this one.
In photos of Shawn Hornbeck, taken the day of his release, he had one ring in his lower lip, and two rings in his left ear.
In this interview, the rings are gone, and he has gotten a haircut.
With Shawn out of the room, the parents said that counselors have told them not to ask the boy about his experience, but that he will talk about it when he feels ready. They said that the captor used "terror" to keep the boy from calling for help, but they would not go into details. They said that they did believe that their son was sexually molested.
An FBI profiler was interviewed. He said that a kidnapper like Devlin will usually make threats against a kid in order to control them. He said Devlin might have threatened to kill Shawn's sister and parents if he made any problems. An eleven year old child would not be able to comprehend that the minute he made that phone call, his abductor would get locked up, and stay locked up, and could not harm his family. The FBI profiler said that Devlin had used a pistol to abduct Shawn Hornbeck.
The two cops who made the bust were also interviewed. They said that they were in that apartment complex to arrest a man in an unrelated case. The suspect was not at home. While walking down the stairs, one cop noticed a white Nissan pickup which looked like the vehicle on the apb. This kidnapping was very big news for the Missouri populace and law enforcement. They ran the tag on the truck, turned out it was registered to Devlin's brother, who did not live at that complex. The cops asked a neighbor whose truck it was, and they were told that it belonged to Devlin. At that point, Devlin walked outside, he was emptying the trash. The cops knew him because they ate at the pizza joint where Devlin was manager. They said Devlin was as cool as could be, at first.
When they said they wanted to look around Devlin's apartment for a kidnapped boy, he got very defensive, began to clench his fists, would not look at the cops etc. Devlin refused them permission to search his apartment.
The cops stayed there in the parking lot, staking out the apartment. They radioed for the FBI. They could see into the apartment, through a hole in the damaged blinds on the kitchen window, and they could see Shawn Hornbeck playing a computer game. This did not raise an alarm for the cops, as they were looking for Ben Ownby, who had been kidnapped three days earlier. Shawn Hornbeck had been kidnapped four years earlier and did not look the same as when he had been abducted.
The cops staked out the apartment even after their shift was over, until the feds arrived with a search warrant.