Welcome back to Crime Sunday where we talk true crime every single Sunday! Today’s case is an important case as we are going to be talking about a missing child. Kyron Horman was reported missing when he didn’t get off the bus from school on June 4th, 2010. His mother has been fighting for years to find out the truth and she and many others believe his step-mom, Terri, is responsible. I don’t want to give away too much in the beginning so let’s drive right in! (Scroll to the very bottom to listen to today’s case instead!)
**Disclaimer/Trigger Warning** Crime Sunday focuses on True Crime. Topics of murder, abuse, SA Crimes, crimes against children, and self-harm may be discussed in this post. Parts of this story may be hard to hear for some. I am not saying anyone in this story is guilty of any crimes. I am just talking about events surrounding this case. Everyone is innocent until proven otherwise.**
Kyron Horman was born on September 9th, 2002 to his Mom Desiree, and his Dad Kaine, in Portland, Oregon. Unfortunately, his parents had already spilt up just a month before he was born and their divorce documents state it was because of irreconcilable differences but the truth is, Kaine was not faithful during their marriage. They shared joint custody of Kyron for two years but when Desiree was diagnosed with liver failure in 2004, she had to travel to Canada for treatment and couldn’t care for Kyron as much as she had before. Kyron ended up living full-time with Kaine and his live-in girlfriend, Terri, who he had started seeing while he was married to Desiree. Terri was also a single mom who had an older son, James, from a previous marriage. She was also a teacher who seemed to have so much patience with children and when Kaine saw how great she was with Kyron, he really fell in love with her and saw a future with her as it was important that he found someone that was good with his son since he was a single first-time father. Many people say that Terri treated Kyron like he was her own son and never referred to him as her stepson, only her son. In 2007, Kaine and Terri got married and three months later on Mother’s Day, Kaine surprised Terri with a brand new Ford Mustang, and shortly after that, they found out they were going to have another baby. In 2008, their daughter, Kiara, was born. This blended family of five seemed to be doing very well and Terri flooded her Facebook page with pictures of their children. She seemed to be a devoted housewife and Mom.
When Desiree returned from Canada, she moved in with her parents to Medford, OR which is about five hours from Portland where Kyron lived with his father and now step-mom but she was still very active in his life and saw him at least every other weekend, if not every weekend. She too remarried to a man named Tony Young. Even though Kyron came from a broken family, he was still a very happy-go-lucky child and loved playing outside and getting dirty like most young boys his age. His Mom said he was a shy kid but he seemed to be doing very well living with his Dad so she never pursued full custody because she didn’t want to uproot his life and move him five hours away from everything he knew. That all changed when Kyron was around six years old when Desiree noticed a few changes in her son’s behavior. According to her, Kyron started wetting the bed again and would have meltdowns when he had to go back to his Dad’s house. When Desiree brought this up with Kaine, he said Kyron would behave the same way when he knew he was going to his Mom’s house so he dismissed his son’s behavior as normal and that he was just having trouble adjusting to change and being shoveled back and forth between two households.
Desiree still felt like something wasn’t right and Kaine and Terri weren’t exactly truthful with her about things that went on in their household. Shortly after the birth of their daughter, Kaine says that Terri began to lose her patience with Kyron and James. She became obsessed over knowing how Kyron was behaving in his classroom during the day and if he came home with anything other than a green card, green meant good behavior, she wanted Kaine to punish him by grounding him or sending him to his room for the evening. Kaine thought that was too harsh since he was only in second grade and the two often fought about how to discipline Kyron. Back in 2005, Terri was charged with a DUI and because she had her son James in the car with her, she was also charged with child endangerment. Kaine says that they got Terri’s drinking under control and they didn’t keep alcohol in the house. In February of 2010, Terri called Kaine while he was on a business trip in California and told him that she sent James to live with his grandparents because they had gotten into a fight and she couldn’t handle him anymore. Kaine says he didn’t want his stepson to move out but it wasn’t his decision. This paints a completely different picture than the one Terri tried to paint on social media. Desiree said that often times when Kaine would be gone on business trips, Terri would call her telling her that she needed to pick Kyron up, and during these calls, she said she could hear Kyron crying in the background. There were also a few times that Terri asked Desiree to take back full custody of Kyron and she was more than willing to but she says that Kaine refused to give up custody when she asked him. Terri says the only reason she brought the idea of Kyron moving back in with his Mom full-time is that Kyron told her that is what he wanted. It seems like nobody was on the same page and, unfortunately, Kyron was in the middle of all of this and things would soon take a horrible turn.
On Friday, June 4th, 2010, Kyron was really excited to go to school because it was the day science fair and he had worked really hard on his red-eyed tree frog project. At 8:15 am, the PTA president for Skyline Elementary saw Terri and Kyron in front of his project in his second-grade classroom. Terri even snapped a picture of Kyron in front of his project on her phone and sent it to Kaine. Terri says she took Kyron around other classrooms to see more science fair projects and when they were done, she said she watched Kyron walk back to his classroom from the top of the stairs. She left the school by 8:45 am and went to two different Fred Myer’s stores to find the right medication for her daughter who was sick. She says she then drove around for two hours hoping that the car ride would soothe her daughter as she waited for the medicine to kick in. She posted the photo of Kyron with his project to her Facebook page at 1:21pm. At 3:30pm Kaine, Terri, and their daughter went to the bus stop to pick Kyron up from school but he didn’t get off the bus. They asked the bus driver where he was and he informed them that he never got on the bus that day and that they need to call the school. The school secretary informed them that Kyron had been marked absent from school all day. According to Kyron’s teacher, she didn’t reach out to his parents when she realized he wasn’t in class because Terri told his teacher, she was taking him to a doctor’s appointment but Terri says she told the teacher she was taking Kyron to look at the other classroom projects and he would be back. Terri appeared to be upset that the teacher misunderstood her.
Based on the conversation that the secretary had with Kyron’s parents, she called 911 to report Kyron missing and she also called Desiree who was five hours away. Desiree’s first thought was why didn’t Terri or Kaine call her? As she was driving to Portland, she reached Terri and she said she felt like Terri was reading a script as she gave her the details of the last time she saw Kyron. Law Enforcement arrived at the school and initially, the search involved 65 detectives, 60 trained searchers, and even more volunteers. They circled in on the school, his home, and the surrounding 2-mile radius around the school. When he wasn’t found that night, the search continued and would become the largest search for a person in the state’s history. The next day on Saturday, a press conference was held to inform the public that Kyron was still missing and this was not a criminal investigation. Over 1300 people joined the search party including the FBI and the Coast Guard. On Sunday the search continued early in the morning but by noon another press conference was held to announce the search for Kyron was now a criminal investigation. Over 300 students and parents were interviewed by police so that they could find out if anyone saw anything unusual that day. Some people reported that they saw another adult in Terri’s vehicle, several people say that witnessed Kyron leave the school with his step-mom, and one student said he saw Kyron at the south entrance of the school around 9:00 am. They searched an area called Sauvie Island because Terri’s cell phone pinged in that location the day Kyron went missing but Terri claims she was never in that area.
Kaine, Terri, Desiree, and Tony appeared to be a united family that was desperate for answers but behind the scene, Desiree started to suspect that Terri knew more than what she was telling her and the police. When the four of them appeared at a press conference, you can see Terri try to comfort Desiree but Desiree’s body language makes it clear that the hug made her uncomfortable and when a reporter asked her about that hug, she said in that moment she knew Terri was lying about where her son was and she was the last person she wanted a hug from. The first red flag for her was, Terri’s story of the events the day Kyron went missing seemed to change a few times and didn’t align with what witnesses from the school told police. She first told Desiree that she watched Kyron walk to his classroom from the top of the stairs but when Desiree pointed out that there was no way she could see his classroom while standing on the stairs, she changed her story and said she was actually in the hallway. Desiree said that Kyron was very cautious and wouldn’t even wander far in their front yard so she knows when he left school that day, he had to of been with someone that he knew.
Since this was now a criminal investigation, police wanted to rule out Kyron’s parents and stepparents for having any involvement in his disappearance by giving them all lie detector tests. They all were willing to take the tests so police could focus on other leads. All of them passed with flying colors except Terri who ended up failing two different times and walked out on the third test. Terri made up excuses for why she failed, one being that she is hard of hearing and she couldn’t hear the questions fully. Eventually, she stop cooperating with the police altogether because she felt that the police were corrupt and was frustrated that they only seemed to be focusing on her instead of finding Kyron.
Just a few weeks after Kyron disappeared, police informed Kaine of some pretty unsettling things. First, they told him that his gardener had come forward and told them that Terri offered him. “a lot of money” to kill him. This was an absolute shock to Kaine as he thought he married a nice caring woman and not only that he didn’t even know that they had a gardener, he thought Terri was mowing the lawn all these years. Of course, Terri denied these allegations and said this gardener tried hitting on her but she rejected him so this was just his way of getting back at her. Kaine also found out that Terri had told a few of her friends that Kaine made rude comments about her weight gain after giving birth to their daughter and that she wasn’t happy in their marriage. Police also informed Kaine of sexual text messages she was exchanging with one of his former classmates just a couple of weeks after Kyron disappeared. Again, this was all news to Kaine and on June 26th, Kaine moved out of the family home and took his daughter Kiara with him. He filed for divorce from Terri and also got a restraining order against her just two after moving out. He was granted full custody of Kiara given the murder-for-hire scheme and Terri was only given supervised visitations with her daughter. Investigators also showed Desiree emails that Terri had sent to some of her friends where she expressed that she hated Kyron but Terri denied ever sending such statements to anyone and claims she has never been shown evidence of these emails that she allegedly sent.
Two years went by without Kaine and Desiree knowing what happened to their son or where he was. They presented a united front in the media and called Terri out. They begged her to come forward and cooperate with the police so they could bring Kyron home but their requests went unanswered. In 2012, Desiree filed a $10 million civil lawsuit against Terri alleging she kidnapped Kyron and she wanted the courts to force Terri to return Kyron or disclose the location of his body. During a deposition with DeDe Spicher, one of Terri’s close friends, she invoked her fifth amendment right 142 times. Some of the questions she was asked were, “Do you know where Kyron is? Do you know if he is alive? Did you see Terri Horman on June 4th, 2010? Have you ever been to Skyline Elementary School?” and she refused to answer any of these questions. DeDe is another reason why so many people suspect that Terri is responsible for Kyron’s disappearance. The day he went missing, DeDe was unaccounted for at her job from about 11 am to 1 pm but her car never left the farm she worked at. A co-worker even tried to call her around lunchtime but she didn’t answer. Dede and Terri used cash to purchase disposable phones to communicate with and also refused to talk to each other inside Terri’s house because they felt they were under surveillance by law enforcement. But if you have nothing to hide, why go to such great lengths to conceal your conversations? The civil suit against Terri was eventually dropped by Desiree who said they needed more evidence before pursuing a lawsuit but dropping the lawsuit didn’t mean that she was giving up.
Terri Horman filed a petition on June 30th, 2014 to change her name to Claire Stella Sullivan because she said she has received death threats, faced difficulty finding work, and wanted to “start over a new life without the stigma of her last name Horman,” but the judge turned down her request because of the ongoing investigation into Kyron’s disappearance. In 2016 she broke her silence by doing interviews with Dr. Phil and People magazine where she maintained her innocence and said she had nothing to do with the disappearance of Kyron. No physical evidence has been found against Terri and she has never been named as an official suspect in Kyron’s disappearance by police. The latest update I could find was she has been in trouble with the law a few times for things like stealing a gun from her roommate and driving a stolen vehicle. The stolen vehicle charge was dropped but I couldn’t find out the result of her other charges so if you guys know, let me know in the comments below. An incident between Terri and an ex-boyfriend of her’s that happened over thirty years ago came to light during the investigation. This ex-boyfriend says that he was having lunch with Terri in a park and a man came out of the bushes with a gun. He says Terri looked at him and said “He is after you.” Shortly after that, the two broke up because he had a feeling that Terri set the attack up.
Desiree remains hopeful that Kyron will come home one day and she says she will never give up fighting to find out what happened to her son. She remains fully confident that Terri Horman is responsible for her son’s disappearance. Sadly, there haven’t been many major updates in Kyron’s case. The latest update I found was from June 4th, 2022 when The Center for Missing and Exploited Children updated his age progression photo, he would be turning 21 years old this year. There is currently a $50,000 reward for any information leading to Kyron Horman. If you have any information concerning this case, please contact the local tip line at (503) 261-2847, or your local FBI office, or the nearest American Embassy or Consulate.
Thank you for reading today’s crime story, my heart goes out to Kyron’s family and I hope he is found safe and happy one day.