RSSChild Porn Found on Computer of Kidnap Suspect Michael Devlin? … Surprise, Surprise (Ben Ownby & Shawn Hornbeck)
According to Fox News, child pornography was found on the home computer of Michael Devlin, man accused of kidnapping both William Ownby and Shawn Hornbeck. Why would these findings come as a surprise to anyone that would kidnap and hold 11 year old boys against their will?
Child pornography was found on the home computer of Missouri man accused of kidnapping two Missouri teenagers, the New York Post reported Monday.
Citing unnamed law-enforcement officials, the paper reported that the find could lead to federal child-pornography charges for Michael Devlin, the 41-year-old, 300-pound pizza-parlor manager arrested in connection with the kidnappings of Shawn Hornbeck, 15, and William Ownby, 13. Devlin is being held in lieu of $1 million bond.
This statement was released by the family of Michael J. Devlin
Before people start playing amature psychologists and questioning the boy for not trying to get away over the mental abuse that his capture most likely endured on him, let’s take a breathe. Kidnapper told boy his parents did not want him. Those who kidnap 11 year olds and can manage to keep them sight unseen are master manipulators. There is most likely much more that will come out of this case in the days, weeks and months to come.
Kidnap victim Shawn Hornbeck was “brainwashed” into staying with his abductor after being told his parents no longer wanted him.
His kidnapper also threatened to shoot the 15-year-old after snatching him off the street.
Friends of the teenager have revealed Michael Devlin, 41, had at least three guns in the apartment where Shawn was held captive. (This is London)
Sean Hornbeck’s MindViz web site
The site includes a photo of the boy, prompting the Post to report a message left on the site suggested Devlin may have allegedly used the profile to lure young boys.
There are Internet signs though, that hint Hornbeck or Devlin might have tried to contact the boy’s parents via a Web site set up to look for the missing child.
On ShawnHornbeck.com, a “Shawn Devlin” from Kirkwood signed the guestbook on Dec. 1, 2005, with two messages. The first asked “how long are you planing [sic] to look for your son?” and the second wondered if he could write a poem in Shawn Hornbeck’s honor.
CHILD PORN AT MISSOURI KIDNAP LAIR
Posted January 15, 2007 by Scared Monkeys Child Welfare, Crime, Missing Persons, Sex Offender | 9 comments |
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9 Responses to “Child Porn Found on Computer of Kidnap Suspect Michael Devlin? … Surprise, Surprise (Ben Ownby & Shawn Hornbeck)”
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Straight from Holland!
Creep, get the process of justice done fast. We should know when, and who the judge will be on this case and remind him to uphold the laws.
Doesn’t surprise me about the porn, almost every case, it always comes out that they have porn on their pc or dvds of porn etc. It’s a multi billion dollar industry and I do believe it just heightens their sickness by spending hours looking at it and wanting to live it out.
Here’s a recent story showing that apparently one of the kids, if not both, had computer access for some time.
This is weird beyond my ability to comprehend. But one wonders how long it took the kid who was first seized to ‘accept’ his new life, if that is the right term.
And if that ever happened.
But it seems that another kid fraternized with one of them freely. As I said, it’s mind-boggling.
Mo. boy apparently had computer access
Associated Press
4 minutes ago
KIRKWOOD, Mo. – While his alleged kidnapper was at work, teenager Shawn Hornbeck apparently had access to a computer, and he – or someone pretending to be him – may have put photos of Shawn online and posted a chilling message on a site created by his desperate parents: “How long are you planning to look for your son?”
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A series of Web postings under the name “Shawn Devlin” – Devlin is the last name of the man suspected of kidnapping Shawn and posing as his father – came to light after Shawn’s rescue from an apartment in Kirkwood last week.
Investigators would not comment on the postings, and it was not immediately known if they were, in fact, created by Shawn or by someone trying to taunt his parents. Either way, they add to the long list of clues that no one seemed to pick up on during the 4 1/2 years that the boy was missing.
They also deepen the mystery of why Shawn apparently made no attempt to escape or notify authorities.
Shawn, now 15, was 11 when he was kidnapped in 2002 while riding his bike near his rural home. Astonished police found him Friday in a suburban St. Louis apartment where they also discovered 13-year-old Ben Ownby, who had been missing for four days.
Their alleged abductor, Michael Devlin, a 41-year-old pizza shop employee who also held a job answering telephones at night at a funeral home, was jailed on $1 million bail. So far, he is charged only in the kidnapping of Ben, but authorities also plan to charge him with abducting Shawn.
Neither boy has spoken publicly about what happened, but in an interview with the Ownby family to be broadcast Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show, Ben thanked a classmate who gave police the tip they needed to find him, the description of a white pickup truck, saying, “Thank you for being such a great big help in this entire thing.”
Investigators have given no motive for the crime and no details on what the boys went through. Officials said Devlin did not appear to have a criminal record.
Devlin’s attorney, Michael Kielty, said he has not seen any evidence and will enter a not guilty plea at his arraignment later this week.
During his captivity, Shawn may have offered clues on the Web that went overlooked.
At 1:59 a.m. on Dec. 1, 2005, someone using the name “Shawn Devlin” asked in a forum on the Shawn Hornbeck Foundation Web site: “How long are you planing (sic) to look for your son?” Shawn’s parents, Craig and Pam Akers, started the foundation to help find their son and other missing youngsters.
Later that same day, at 2:56 p.m., Shawn Devlin wrote to ask if he could compose a poem for the family. The poem never appeared in future postings.
Several Web profiles also appeared to be of Shawn. One, on mindviz.com, described a Shawn from St. Louis as a white atheist with a pet cat. A Web page created on Yahoo in 2004 carried a photo of a youngster who resembled Shawn, though with shorter hair. The youngster had an eyebrow piercing. The day after Shawn was found, he appeared in public with a lip ring and three ear piercings.
A separate Yahoo profile was taken out under the name Shawn Devlin in November 2005. It, too, contains a picture resembling Shawn; the page said the user lived in Kirkwood.
Shawn’s stepfather, Craig Akers, has said that during Shawn’s captivity, he did not attend school. Some neighbors also noticed that they never saw Shawn with books or a backpack.
Krista Jones, a stay-at-home mom who lives in the same apartment complex, noticed Shawn wearing black clothes and piercings in his ear and lip. “I figured maybe he’s just a dropout,” or thought he attended an alternative school, she said.
She said that a few months ago, she saw Devlin showing Shawn how to drive Devlin’s pickup. A short time later, she saw Shawn driving the truck with another boy, Tony Douglas, beside him. Missouri law allows 15-year-olds to drive, but only if an adult is with them.
Tony’s brother, Larry, said Tony often went skateboarding and biking with Shawn and had no idea of Shawn’s real identity. Larry Douglas said his brother was not being allowed to speak to the media.
Larry Douglas said his brother used to live in the same apartment complex as Devlin and Shawn before recently moving.
“They were best friends,” Douglas said. “They went everywhere together.”
Tony Douglas previously told Fox News that on three occasions, police stopped Tony and Shawn for being out beyond curfew. Officers gave the boys a lift home, unaware of Shawn’s real identity, Tony said.
Tony sometimes spent the night at Shawn’s apartment, but rarely spoke with Devlin. Larry Douglas said his brother saw no indication of abuse, or clues that Shawn was a captive.
“He just hopes to see his friend again,” Douglas said. “He’s happy for Shawn.”
Kevin Schroeder, sheriff in Washington County, said that Devlin owned a piece of vacant property in Washington County, about 20 minutes from where Shawn was seized in the rural community of Richwoods.
“It’s a connection – I would definitely say so,” Schroeder said.
Ben was also abducted from a small town, Beaufort, in neighboring Franklin County. Both Beaufort and Richwoods are about an hour from Kirkwood.
Ben’s abduction on Jan. 8 immediately caught the sheriff’s attention because of similarities to Shawn’s case.
“The main thing was the physical description of Ben,” Schroeder said. “Their height, their weight, the age. They were both taken from rural communities. So many aspects of it were surprisingly similar.”
Two Kirkwood police officers were at the apartment complex Thursday on unrelated business when they spotted a white, rusted Nissan pickup truck that matched the description of the truck seen speeding away after Ben’s abduction.
That Shawn had so many ways, and chances, to contact police or others has confounded relatives and friends.
Rick Butler, who lives across the street from the apartment, said that last fall he found a cell phone outside Devlin’s apartment. Butler called a number on it and Shawn came to Butler’s apartment to retrieve it.
“Thanks a lot for the phone,” Butler recalled the boy saying.
A spokeswoman for Shawn’s family declined interview requests on Monday. Lloyd Bailie, Ben’s uncle, said on CBS that Ben was talking about the ordeal only with his FBI counselors.
“No one’s pushing him at this point to answer these questions,” Bailie said. “The biggest concern right now is all of the media coverage … that somebody’s going to ask the wrong question.”
Michael Popkin of Atlanta, author of the book “Active Parenting,” said how the boys recover depends in part on what they went through during their captivity. He said it was not surprising that Shawn had seemingly adapted to life with his kidnapper.
“What happens is that you’re dependent on your captor for your survival needs, for your safety,” Popkin said. “You can start identifying with them if they show kindness and win you over.”
Another story … TEN YEARS in captivity?
Tanya Kach Weighs In On Missouri Kidnapping Cases
(KDKA) McKEESPORT Last week two Missouri boys were found alive after being kidnapped by the same man and for one local woman relating to this story is very easy.
Ben Ownby, 13, was missing for four days while Shawn Hornbeck, had been gone for four years.
Charged in the boys kidnapping is 42-year-old Michael Devlin.
One local woman can connect with this story after she was allegedly held against her will for a decade.
Tanya Kach was just 14-years-old when she ran away with Thomas Hose, a security guard at her school who allegedly held her against her will in a bedroom of a McKeesport home.
“Both seem to have been held psychologically captive as opposed to more physically restrained,” Lawrence Fisher, Kach’s attorney says.
After returning to her family nearly a year ago Kach has been undergoing therapy.
Fisher says she has been paying close attention to the Missouri case.
“She said ‘My heart goes out to that boy I know exactly what he’s going through,’” he reports.
He says Kach doesn’t find it hard to believe that Hornbeck never tried to escape his captors since psychological control is factored into the case.
“She was psychologically tortured,” Fisher says. “She was told that if she left she’d be killed and she reasonably believed that Hose would do that to her.”
Fisher says that like Kach, the boys in Missouri will have major adjustment to make once the constant media coverage ends.
“Tanya has her GED, she has her driver’s license and tomorrow she begins college,” he adds. “That’s great, great strides, on the other hand she remains in therapy and remains with some difficulty adjusting to this life that she hasn’t known for 10 years.”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/tm_headline=captivated-%26method=full%26objectid=18479458%26siteid=94762-name_page.html
16 January 2007
CAPTIVATED
The victims who stay with kidnappers
By Nick Webster And Sara Wallis
IT is the greatest puzzle in a baffling case… why didn’t Shawn Hornbeck try to escape?
Snatched at the age of 11 and held captive for four years, the boy apparently had plenty of chances to get away from his kidnapper, Michael Devlin.
He was allowed sleepovers with friends, was given a mobile phone and was even spoken to by police who suspected him of skipping school.
Yet he stayed…
Last year Austrian schoolgirl Natascha Kampusch grieved for the man who had held her prisoner for eight years as it emerged that, like Shawn, she had rejected several opportunities to flee Wolfgang Priklopil.
Shawn and Natascha are two more victims of what is now recognised as the Stockholm Syndrome in which a kidnap victim or hostage forms a bond with their captor.
Forensic psychologist Dr Glenn Wilson says the unexpected reversal of loyalties occurs as a result of a survival mechanism during a period of extreme stress and danger.
“You’re totally dependent on your captor – whether you live or die, eat or starve – and everything is channelled through them,” he says.
“You develop an intense dependency on them which becomes a friendship or even love – albeit a perverted kind.”
The term Stockholm Syndrome was first coined by criminologist Nils Bejerot to explain events during a bank robbery that went wrong in the Swedish capital in 1973.
Raiders Jan Erik Olsson and Clark Olofsson held four hostages during a six day stand-off with police.
The first sign that loyalties were becoming unpredictable came when hostage Kristin Ehnemark told police negotiators they were ‘relaxed’ with the criminals – but concerned they could be hurt in any rescue attempt.
Even when the robbers attached snares around the necks of their prisoners to prevent rescue, they continued to side with the criminals.
When the siege ended peacefully, Olofsson and Ehnemark became lifelong family friends.
In an even more extreme example, American newspaper heiress Patty Hearst joined the terrorist Symbionese Liberation Army which had abducted her – and eventually went with them on subsequent bank raids.
Dr Wilson says the bonding between captor and captive can be intense.
“Natascha Kampusch apparently bonded with her captor to the point where she felt sad when he killed himself,” he says.
“It begins with people trying to befriend their captors so they will be treated better. And very often the captors operate a kind of propaganda. They’ll say things like, ‘Your parents don’t care for you,’ or ‘You’ve been abandoned by the rest of the world’.
“And if there’s sexual gratification there too, it would increase the bonding.”
Estate agent Stephanie Slater was kidnapped by murderer Michael Samms while showing him around a house in Birmingham in 1992
Now 40 and living on the Isle of Wight, she told the Mirror: “I was blindfolded, gagged, kept in a tiny coffin for eight days and on my first night he raped me.
“But I built up a rapport with him to save my life. I talked to him so he wouldn’t kill me. He started to enjoy talking to me which meant he didn’t put me in the box for as long.”
And she suspects Shawn may have been forced to use similar tactics. “He would have depended on his captor for food, drink, everything, even going to the toilet,” she says. “The kidnapper becomes the person you rely on, so a relationship develops.”
But it is often a relationship reinforced by violence.
“It can begin with periods of sadism, coercion and total domination and so when they progress to granting favours and kindness the victim is more receptive,” Dr Wilson says.
Patty Hearst’s recruitment into the SLA is a classic example
The violent anarchists held her captive for 18 months, during which time she was raped, tortured, and brainwashed about the evils of capitalism.
“I was blindfolded, gagged, and tied,” she said years later. “I was deprived of sight, light, sleep and food.”
And when the nightmare ended, Patty joined them. We have yet to learn what horrors Shawn may have suffered at the hands of his captor Michael Devlin.
Or how the quiet pizza bar manager persuaded him to stay…
One more snippet, which only makes the saga more incredible:
Before Tony Douglas’ family made him unavailable to the media, he told Fox News that on three occasions, police stopped the two for being out beyond curfew. Officers gave the boys a lift home, unaware of Shawn’s real identity, Tony said.
Bill O’Reilly did a segment regarding Shawn Hornbeck yesterday (1/15) and I was really disgusted by his comments. A transcript can be found at Steve Huff’s True Crime Blog, here: http://tinyurl.com/2fx5l5
BOR basically said he thought Shawn enjoyed being with Devlin, here is one quote:
“The situation here with this kid is looks to me to be a lot more fun then when he had under his own parents. He didn’t have to go to school, He could run around and do what he wanted.”
As if being kidnapped and kept from your family for 4 years is going to be fun! None of us really know what Shawn went through, but I think I’m pretty safe in saying it was not fun! It’s more likely than not that he was horribly abused, subjected to mental and physical torture, and for someone to make comments like that on national television is just cruel and inhuman. I saw red when I heard his comments, and sent off an email letting Fox know BOR has lost at least one viewer. The email address is OReilly@FoxNews.com for anyone who wants to do the same.
I can honestly say that I am DONE with Bill OReilly! I used to be a fan of his. NOT ANYMORE. How in the hell can he say that an 11 year old boy was having fun??? Someone ought to put him in a house with Devlin for 4 years and see how much fun it is!