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- [00:03]
Kayla Moore
Hey Cluminati, Kaylin and Morgan here. We're so excited to tell you about our fellow Crime House original show, Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes. Every Wednesday you'll get to explore the true stories behind the world's most shocking crimes, deadly ideologies and secret plots.
- [00:17]
Morgan Absher
So if you love mystery, madness, and diving deep into the world's most unbelievable true stories, you won't want to miss this. Follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you listen. And for ad free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. She's like, I'm trying to clear my name and it's not working.
- [00:43]
Kayla Moore
And so then it just kind of.
- [00:44]
Morgan Absher
Spirals out of control and so what do you believe? You kind of do need to look at the last person he was with who has a lot of holes in their alibi. Foreign welcome back to Clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases.
- [01:11]
Kayla Moore
I'm Kayla Moore and I'll be the one digging deeper into the timelines, the backstories, and the court files related to this case.
- [01:17]
Morgan Absher
And I'm your Internet sleuth, Morgan Absher. I'm diving into everything I can find on the Internet, from Reddit posts to news articles and pulling out the strings that add up or don't.
- [01:29]
Kayla Moore
And at Crime House, we really value your support, so please share your thoughts on social media. Morgan and I are always reading those and remember to rate, review and follow clues to help others discover the show. For bonus episodes, early access and ad free listening, join our Crime House community on Apple Podcasts. Okay, today we are unraveling the chilling mystery of Kyron Horman, a shy, sweet seven year old boy with glasses and a really big toothy grin who dreamed of one day becoming a detective. But on a seemingly ordinary morning in 2010, Kyron's family suffered every parent's worst nightmare. When he vanished from his own school.
- [02:05]
Morgan Absher
There were no solid witnesses, no concrete evidence, just silence. Even from the person who saw him last. Which is why Kyron's disappearance sparked the largest manhunt in Oregon history and a criminal investigation that pointed to disturbingly close to home. More on the case and the clues that defined it after this quick break.
- [02:29]
Kayla Moore
If you're an experienced pet owner, you.
- [02:31]
Morgan Absher
Already know that having a pet is.
- [02:32]
Kayla Moore
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- [02:48]
Morgan Absher
Bank account get nervous.
- [02:49]
Kayla Moore
Claims are filed super easily through the Lemonade app and half get settled instantly. Get a'@lemonade.com pet and they'll help cover the vet bill for whatever your pet swallowed after you yelled drop it.
- [03:02]
Morgan Absher
This is going to be a bit of a heavy one today.
- [03:04]
Kayla Moore
Yes, it is a very heavy one.
- [03:06]
Morgan Absher
It's a heavy one. We obviously have a missing child involved in this case and that is hard. That's just devastating for so many. So I have a little bit of an ask for you guys out there listening. It's easy for us to lose hope that like these kids are not gonna come home. But I want to highlight some cases where they have come home, they have been found. There's one as recent as September of last year where a boy abducted from California in 1951 at age 6 was found alive on the East coast more than 70 years later.
- [03:40]
Kayla Moore
You're kidding. That's gotta be in like the hall of fame for most amount of time that a kid's been found.
- [03:46]
Morgan Absher
So that's how I found it. I was trying to do some research to like, let's just give the family a little bit of hope. Like these people do come home. So, yeah, it was Luis Albino, six years old, when he was abducted while playing in Oakland, California.
- [04:00]
Kayla Moore
Who had abducted him? Do they know?
- [04:02]
Morgan Absher
So it was actually a woman who abducted him, promised him candy, and then flew him to the east coast and raised him as her own son. Whoa. Yeah. So he was found with DNA technology.
- [04:14]
Kayla Moore
He had no idea.
- [04:15]
Morgan Absher
Old photos? No.
- [04:17]
Kayla Moore
Oh my gosh.
- [04:17]
Morgan Absher
So there's quite a few cases, you know, I know we have J.C. dugard who was found after 18 years. So there's so many of these cases where they come home. So if you know a case like that, please put it in the comments. I would, you know, I'd like to research some of these cases and it's good to see because nothing's impossible.
- [04:39]
Kayla Moore
I agree. And today we are talking about a case where a little boy did not come home. And so for everyone watching, it's very sensitive in that way. There's a lot of theories, there's a lot of people coming forward with their own theories who are involved in this case. And so I wanted to mention before we dive in that one of the biggest sources you're gonna find on the case of Kyron Horman is a book called Boy the Search for Kyron Horman. And that was written by Rebecca Morris in 2020 is when it came out. Now Rebecca's main source in this book and we're going to talk about it a lot in the script that was like a huge resource that we used while writing this script and doing the research. Her main source that she used was Kyron's biological mother. And so reading about this case and one thing people say, when police are not coming forward with a narrative, someone else will fill the space of that narrative. And it seems like in this case Kyron's biological mother has really filled that space. We're going to talk about it. Some conflicting things that come up about that book and our research, but I think for now let's just dive into it, let's get straight to it. So we're going to head 16 miles northwest of Portland, Oregon in 2010 near the towns of Falkenburg and Burlington. It's driving distance to Portland, but it's still a very rural area. You've got mountains on one side, farms, marshlands, thousands of acres of forest on the other side. It sounds like this very beautiful, peaceful place. But in 2010 that peace was shattered pretty much for good when a seven year old boy named Kyron Horman went missing. So seven year old Kyron Horman woke up on the morning of June 4, 2010 excited about his second grade science fair project which was all about the life cycle of red eyed tree frogs. It was very adorable. That day was also Parents day where everyone was invited to school to see these kids projects. So Kyron's father Cain has to miss it because he has work that day. But before he left that morning around 7:45, he told Kyron how proud he was of him and that his wife, which is Kyron's stepmom, named Terry, was going to be there instead. So around 8am Terry strapped their 19 month old daughter Kiara into her car seat and Kyron hops in the backseat with her. Terry then drove Kane's white Ford Fox 250 pickup truck instead of her usual red Mustang because she said that she thought it was going to be easier to transport Kyron's project in that car. And they arrived at skyline K through 8 school before 8:15am and the place was in complete chaos. As you can maybe imagine, it was packed with over 400 visitors. You have all the kids, you have all their parents, grandparents, siblings. They're all there to see these kids projects.
- [07:19]
Morgan Absher
Catch.
- [07:19]
Kayla Moore
Kyron dropped off his backpack and he hung up his jacket in his classroom before he went and showed his project to everyone. Then Terry, Kiara and Kyron wandered through various classrooms checking on the other kids projects that brought them in. And they arrived at Kyron's class where Terry snaps this photo of Kyron standing proudly next to his diorama. He has this huge gap tooth grin, he has his little glasses on and he's wearing his crime scene investigation shirt because he was obsessed with CSI and being a detective. And around 8:45 in the morning, Terri says goodbye to Kyron. She says that the two of them went up different stairwells and she watched as Kyron walked down the hallway towards his classroom. The fair was still going on that day, but she had all of these errands to run and he had a full day of school left. So after she sees him walk down the hallway towards the class, she heads for her truck. Then Terri spends some of her morning running errands with her baby kiara. At 1:21pm she posts a photo of Kyron with a science fair project on Facebook, the one that we just talked about, him standing next to the diorama. And then at 3:30pm, Kyron's father, Kane and Terry go to the school bus. They're going to meet Kyron as he comes off of his bus. This is what they normally do in the afternoon. And the bus pulls up, the kids all pile out and there's no Kyron. So his parents are obviously very confused and they go and they ask the bus driver about it. And the bus driver says that Kyron never got on the bus. But he sees how concerned they are about this. And the bus driver radioed what at the time was called the school secretary today. They say administrator, but he radios her for more information. And that's when Kane and Terry learned something absolutely bewildering. They learned that at 10am when the regular classes began at school, Kyron's teacher, Christina Porter had marked him absent. However, and get this, no one called home to see where he was. And when the staff went to check, they found his jacket and backpack were still in the classroom, right where he left them in the class before the science fair. So now Kane and Terry really start panicking. They rush to the school, they want to go check this out for themselves. And around 3:56pm, a 911 call finally goes out that 7 year old Kyron Horman is missing. And by this point it's been over seven hours since Terri said she last saw him. So let's rewind just tiny bit. About who Kyron actually was. He was born September 9, 2002. He was described as being really smart, really curious, a little bit shy. He wore glasses. He had this adorable gap tooth smile we talked about and a V shaped birthmark on his head. And like lots of kids, he loved riding his bike. He loved eating dessert was one of the things that they always said about him. He loved playing with cars and Legos and he knew exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up. A detective, just like his stepdad Tony. That's why he was wearing that crime scene investigator shirt, because he was obsessed with his stepdad Tony. But here's the thing that really gets me about Kyron. One thing that came up when we were doing the research is that Kyron had this huge fear of getting lost. And he was described as being really shy. So he wasn't one to necessarily talk to strangers. But he was pretty nearsighted. And without his glasses, he couldn't see that far in front of him. And the idea of being somewhere unfamiliar and not being able to find his way home absolutely terrified him.
- [10:46]
Morgan Absher
Yeah. So it's not, it's not seeming like he would just wander off on his own.
- [10:50]
Kayla Moore
Right. That's one thing that they say a lot when they first hear that he. He didn't come home. And I definitely identify with that. I always am nervous that, like, I'm gonna be somewhere and accidentally, like, have to take my contacts out and then I can't see. Like, I definitely identify with that fear.
- [11:04]
Morgan Absher
Yeah, I do too. I cannot see my phone in front of my face without my contact. So it is scary.
- [11:10]
Kayla Moore
Yeah. Yeah. And then I wanted to talk a little bit more about Kyron's family because that, this is where it starts getting a little bit complicated.
- [11:18]
Morgan Absher
It's very complex family dynamics.
- [11:20]
Kayla Moore
In 2010, Kyron lived with his dad, Kane, and his stepmom, Terry Moulton Horman. Also his 19 month old half sister, Kiara Kane. His dad is a software engineer at Intel. He's described as having a good poker face. He's the kind of guy who keeps his emotions really close to the vest. It's very hard to tell what he's thinking. As we'll talk about in some of the press conferences, you just cannot read his face. Cain separated from Kyron's biological mother, Desiree Young, before Kyron was even born. I read somewhere that she was eight months pregnant. They separated, and the reason they separated was because Cain was having an affair with Terry. And Terry was actually in the hospital the day that Kyron was Born visiting the baby that she knew was going to be his daughter.
- [12:07]
Morgan Absher
This sounds like one of my Reddit stories that I read on two outtakes. Like, kind of a mess.
- [12:12]
Kayla Moore
Yeah, yeah. Really messy emotional situation.
- [12:15]
Morgan Absher
Yeah. I can't imagine.
- [12:17]
Kayla Moore
Initially, Desiree took custody of Kyron, but when Kyron was about 2 years old, Desiree was visiting friends in Canada when she developed a serious kidney infection. It was a little hard to find information about how this happened. I read that Desiree had suffered from kidney issues in the past, but she felt like her doctors in Oregon hadn't really gotten to the root cause. I'd also read somewhere that she said it was from taking some sort of supplement. She hasn't come forward and said what supplement it was or how much she took of it, but there was maybe something she was ingesting that was contributing to the kidney issues she was having. Regardless, not super important, but one of the Canadian doctors that she met with promised that they could help. So she extended her stay in Canada for much longer than she was supposed to be there for. And because she did this, she gave temporary custody of Kyron back over to Cain. And that kind of shot herself in the foot. Because when you give temporary custody of a child over to someone else, it is hard oftentimes to get custody back. And I think there were specific laws in Oregon at the time that made it even more difficult. But Desiree expected that she was going to get Kyron back, basically right when she returned back to the states just a few months later. But Cain decided that he wanted full custody, and so that's just kind of how it ended up. Desiree ended up taking Cain to court. There was a whole two year battle that went down, and the judge ruled in Cain's favor. Kyron was going to be in Kane and Terry's custody from now on. And ever since then, Kyron had been living primarily with Cain and his stepmom, Terry. And this really hurt Desiree.
- [13:57]
Morgan Absher
I mean, yeah, understandable.
- [13:59]
Kayla Moore
I get it. Giving birth and your husband's affair partner is in the room, and then you give up custody because you have to deal with your own health issues, and all of a sudden custody goes back to them, and now this woman's gonna raise your kid as her own. Heartbreaking. I understand why she was so incredibly hurt by this.
- [14:18]
Morgan Absher
Yeah, it's. It's. Honestly, it's insane. And I would be crashing out. If it were me personally, I would be crashing out.
- [14:24]
Kayla Moore
It was.
- [14:25]
Morgan Absher
It would feel terrible. So. And she's understandable.
- [14:28]
Kayla Moore
She really still wants to Be part of Kyron's life in any way she can. So she comes back to Oregon, but she moves a couple of hours away in Medford, Oregon. She wants to be closer to her parents, but also close enough that she can visit Kyron when she could. And afterwards she gets this job working in fraud detection at a bank. And that's where she meets her future husband, Tony Young, the one that Kyron was absolutely obsessed with. He's a detective with the Medford Police Department and he investigates financial crimes, which I thought was really interesting. And I mentioned Terry already, Kyron's stepmom. But here's a few more details we have about her because she obviously is going to come up a lot in this story. But Terri was a teacher. She'd been married twice before. She had a nine year old son named James from a previous marriage. She also, like we mentioned, knew Kane while he was married to Desiree. In 2007, when he was 34 and she was 37, they tied the knot at a wedding ceremony in Hawaii. They got officially married, and soon they had their own little girl, Kiara. Terry quit her job. She focused most of her energy on being a mom. She would also later say too, that that was kind of at the behest of Kane. He really wanted her to, like, spend more time at home and not work. And she would still kind of substitute occasionally. She knew that she wanted to return to teaching full time eventually. But for right now, in this moment, especially when Kyron goes missing, the kids were her full time job. People who knew her said that she was very involved with Kyron's life and especially his school activities. She always volunteered at everything. She helped out with a ton of school events. She got him ready for school every morning. She was always there at the bus to pick him up. And as far as anyone could tell, at least from the outside, the hormones seemed to be this picture of kind of suburban bliss. At least until the morning of June 4, 2010. So let's go back to where we are in the story. A 911 call goes out and that sets off a really massive response from multiple agencies.
- [16:28]
Morgan Absher
Yeah, I actually saw too, from one source that they sent out like a text, a message, automated, to all the parents. Right. It was supposed to go to all the parents of just Kyron's school Skyline. However, it went out to all parents of all of, like, Portland, basically.
- [16:47]
Kayla Moore
Yeah.
- [16:47]
Morgan Absher
And so not only did you have parents from Kyron School, you had anyone with a child K through 12 getting notifications and being on the lookout for A little missing boy. So this spread like wildfire pretty quickly.
- [17:02]
Kayla Moore
Everyone immediately knows that a seven year old boy has gone missing from one of the schools. Yeah, I was kind of keeping an eye out. So initially the Portland Police Bureau officers and Multnomah County Sheriff's Department arrived at the school and at the Harmon home by about 4:30 that day. The problem with this though was the school at the time didn't have an official sign in system. Especially on really high traffic days where everyone's parents and guardians and siblings were going to be coming and going. They also didn't have security cameras. Now I know we have parents that listen to the show and I texted every parent I knew to be like, how could this happen? Don't we have checks in place so that kids, if they don't show up to school, like aren't they supposed to contact the parents?
- [17:48]
Morgan Absher
Yeah, especially 2010.
- [17:50]
Kayla Moore
And now they do. Now there's automated systems that do that. But at most schools it was sign in systems or kids are coming and going. It's hard to keep track. And so they just didn't have anything in place that day to be like, hey, this kid is missing. We have an official record of it. The parents called with an excuse, like a, a good excuse as to why they're not here. So nothing. He just didn't show up to class and it never got reported. There was really no way to track who was coming and going in the school and that was going to make the investigation a lot harder. By 8:30pm that night, professional search and rescue teams started scouring the area for Kyron. They have dogs, they have horses, they have helicopters, they check every barn in the area. They're looking in trucks, they're just trying door handles on cars, they're looking into buildings, just making sure that he didn't accidentally hide somewhere and they just have to grab him. They're looking everywhere but there is no sign of him. Not a backpack, not a piece of clothing, not something that fell out of his pockets, nothing. Teams continue searching for the next eight days. Hours are ticking by, there's no results. And the police realized it was starting to look less and less like Kyron just had wandered off. And so now they're starting to think that maybe this was a kidnapping situation, which I'm sorry, but eight days into an investigation feels like a long time to start thinking about kidnapping. Yeah. On June 7th, Multnomah County Sheriff's Captain Jason Gates hit that botchboard, makes a tearful response during a press conference where he Says, quote, we're going to bring you home, buddy. And it's really chilling hearing him say that. Now, in hindsight, it's hard to watch. And on June 13, Sheriff Dan Statin from the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office announced that the case had been reclassified as a criminal investigation. And he offers a $25,000 reward for anyone who can help locate Kyron.
- [19:44]
Morgan Absher
So, as you mentioned, eight days later, this is getting reclassified, which, and some of you might be like, Morgan, they had search parties out there. They were looking everywhere. Why? Did you add something on the botched board? I'm going to share some stats that just demonstrate how important it is to act so early on these missing children cases. And that's why I got a tally on the botchboard. So, According to the FBI's National center for Crime Information, there are over 300,000 reports of missing children every year in the U.S. but of that number, only a small percentage are actually kidnappings. A lot of them are runaways or kids who have even been, like, abandoned by their parents. But as for the abductions, only about 1% are abductions by non family members. The majority of these abductions are committed by family members. So according to an article In Reuters, about 94% of missing children are actually found in the first three days. So to wait until day eight to start looking at kidnapping, like, there's a lot of missed opportunities on, you know, things like Amber Alerts and searching trucks and cars that are leaving the state. So that's an important thing to consider here in this one. And then there's also a stat from Reuters that by a week, the number goes up to 98%.
- [20:59]
Kayla Moore
And even with, I will say, 1% of kids being abducted by non family members, that's still, what, 3,000 kids a year that are being abducted by strangers?
- [21:11]
Morgan Absher
It happens.
- [21:12]
Kayla Moore
Or teachers or whatever, but that's still terrifying.
- [21:15]
Morgan Absher
It absolutely happens.
- [21:17]
Kayla Moore
And it's incredibly rare. But it's. That's still 3, 000 kids.
- [21:21]
Morgan Absher
I mean, the case I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, that was, I mean, he was found 70 years later, picked up from a stranger in.
- [21:27]
Kayla Moore
A park, just a random woman.
- [21:29]
Morgan Absher
It happens. So it's crucial to just reclassify and make sure you're addressing it as soon as you can.
- [21:38]
Kayla Moore
Absolutely. And so by day eight, the cops pretty much know that they're in trouble, that eight days have gone by without any sign of Kyron. The chances that something horrible has happened are really high at this point. And it seems like they really turn their investigation immediately to the family. Remember, there's not cameras in the classes. There's not cameras at the school. So they don't know if, like, a random person came in and left with Kyron. But the first thing they do is look at Kyron's family. Desiree, they said, had the clearest motive. You know, she tried to get custody of Kyron, and that failed. So they interview Cain, and they're able to confirm his alibi that he was at work at the time that Kyron disappeared from school. So the cops really want to use him to gather more information on Desiree. So they ask Cain to wear a wire to see if Desiree would say anything incriminating in his presence. And Cain agrees to this. But he does wear this wire, and Desiree doesn't reveal anything of importance. And Desiree ultimately goes on, to be clear, she also has an alibi. The concerned mom even goes on Good Morning America and says, quote, honestly, it's a parent's worst nightmare. We've racked our brains trying to think of reasons why we cannot come up with anything. It's like a portal opened up in the school and Kyron just vanished into it. It's a mystery. But something else during this part of the investigation sets off some alarm bells for police. And that is a statement that ends up getting given to the police from Cain's current wife, Terri. Because the more they start looking into the events of the morning of June 4, the more Terry's alibi starts to crumble a little bit.
- [23:20]
Morgan Absher
Which brings us to our first clue. Terry's timeline. So let's walk through a little bit about what Terry says she did after leaving Kyron at school that morning. She first tells police that she left skyline elementary around 8:45am with baby Kiara, who had an earache at the time. From there, she drove to a Fred Meyer grocery store in Hillsborough, about five miles south of the school, to pick up medicine for Kiara. She got a coffee at this time, and then when she couldn't find the medication, she went to a second Fred Meyer in Beaverton, a few miles southeast of there. Now, police can verify all of these Fred Meyer visits because there's actually surveillance footage and receipts. So at 9:12am cameras catch Terry leaving the first store. At 9:40am she's seen leaving the second one. The footage shows Kiara in her car seat, but it's impossible to say if anyone else is in the truck. And a part of the problem with, you know, seeing if anyone's in the truck and using the security footage, Terry parked seemingly as far away from both of the store entrances as she could. And there was plenty of parking near the front of the store. So it's looking a little odd. When cops ask her about this, she says it's because Kane always parks far away too, probably so the truck doesn't get scratched or hit by other cars trying to park. So that's plausible to investigators. But what's not making sense is that police can't find the medication that she bought at the second store. You know, this earache medication for the baby. It's.
- [24:53]
Kayla Moore
Yeah, I believe it was child's Motrin that she said she bought, but that's.
- [24:57]
Morgan Absher
Not really what's raising their eyebrows as high as they are. It's actually what Terry did after these store visits. And it's the fact that we really can't account for her. No one can actually account for Terry's whereabouts. She for the next two hours and 40 minutes after that, the next time she pops up on anyone's radar is at a 24 Hour Fitness gym in Beaverton. Terry's initial statement was that she arrived there at 11:39am however, when investigators start reviewing this footage, she actually shows up at 12.20pm so about a 40 minute difference. She brought baby Kiara inside, but she didn't work out. Instead, she spent about 20 minutes just chatting with casual acquaintances and then left.
- [25:44]
Kayla Moore
I think in that time too, the people that were there said that she spent a lot of time talking about Kyron and his project.
- [25:48]
Morgan Absher
It's looking a little odd. She then says she gets home around 1pm where she then posts that photo of Kyron on her Facebook page and then spends a couple of hours emailing, then goes to pick Kyron up at the bus stop with Kane. When detectives ask her about the missing time, she tells them that she was driving around on rural roads trying to soothe Kiara with the lull of the car. Since she was totally alone, there's no way to really verify this story. There's no camera footage, no GPS that can show where she traveled. The only confirmed sighting during this window of missing time was from a witness who said they saw her truck actually pulled over near this fire trail near Newbury Road, which is less than two miles from Kyron's school. When police confront her about this and ask her about it, she says she was changing a diaper. And when they ask her where she disposed of the diaper, Terry says she doesn't know which. I'm curious if there's parents out there that can comment on that. Like, I wouldn't pull over on a random road. I'd wait till I got to the store that maybe had a family bathroom with a changing table.
- [26:55]
Kayla Moore
This is something I consulted a lot of parents about. Did you like texting parents? I know obsessively being like, what's the deal with this? But so what they said is oftentimes like, you'd only pull over to the side if it was really bad.
- [27:10]
Morgan Absher
Which like, I guess maybe you know about a blown out diaper smell.
- [27:13]
Kayla Moore
But like producer Kristen has a, a daughter.
- [27:16]
Morgan Absher
When she screams. When she screams, they scream sometimes. Oh, they scream.
- [27:20]
Kayla Moore
Sometimes they'll scream when they want their diaper changed.
- [27:24]
Morgan Absher
Okay.
- [27:25]
Kayla Moore
But in that situation, would there be lots of wipes everywhere? And maybe I would bring dog poo bags.
- [27:32]
Morgan Absher
Dog poo bags. Parent hack.
- [27:34]
Kayla Moore
And then you just toss it wherever you can, obviously, because you're just going to throw it in a random garbage can. Okay. Because you want it out of the car.
- [27:41]
Morgan Absher
Yeah. So parents, please chime in. That's just like one thing in this story where I'm like, if someone were.
- [27:47]
Kayla Moore
To ask you where you threw a diaper out on a random day, would you be able to remember? Because that is what I'm very curious about. I see producer Kristen already shaking her head on that. But just interesting that she is supposedly changing this diaper.
- [27:59]
Morgan Absher
But all of this diaper issues aside, here's where the story starts to seem like really just problematic and confusing. So Kyron's teacher at school remembers Terry saying that Kyron had a doctor's appointment that day. And so when police ask her about it, Terry insists that the appointment was scheduled for, for the following Friday. And she made this crystal clear to the, to the teacher.
- [28:23]
Kayla Moore
But this is. Now we're guessing why the teacher didn't say anything when Kyron wasn't in his classroom. Because in her mind, she's like, oh, he has a doctor's appointment today.
- [28:31]
Morgan Absher
So of course she says exactly that. She's like, I wasn't concerned because Terri had told me he wasn't going to be there. Doctor's appointment. What's even more concerning is that Terri changed her story multiple times over the first couple of days after the disappearance, namely about all these stops she made. At first, Terry claimed she spent 90 minutes driving Kiara around, but then she started to remember all of these other stops she had actually made. She said she dropped off some dry cleaning and visited the craft store Michael's at around 10:10am but didn't buy anything at that time. And no One remembers seeing her at that store. No security footage. And on June 4, it was a very slow business day. So you would think if she was there with a baby who has an earache and maybe crying, someone would have spotted her. And so all of this is really starting to make Terry look really suspicious to police. And it kind of only gets worse from there.
- [29:34]
Kayla Moore
Thanks for selling your car to Carvana. Here's your check. Whoa.
- [29:37]
Morgan Absher
When did I get here?
- [29:38]
Kayla Moore
What do you mean?
- [29:39]
Morgan Absher
I swear it was just moments ago that I accepted a great offer from Carvana online.
- [29:43]
Kayla Moore
I must have time traveled to the future. It was just moments ago. We do same day pickup. Here's your check for that great offer. It is the future.
- [29:51]
Morgan Absher
It's.
- [29:51]
Kayla Moore
It's the present. And just the convenience of Carvana. Sorry to blow your mind.
- [29:55]
Morgan Absher
It's all good. Happens all the time.
- [29:58]
Kayla Moore
Sell your car the convenient way to Carvana.
- [30:02]
Morgan Absher
Pick up. Times may vary and fees may apply. It's Wednesday. Adams, I see you're trying to distract yourself from your own banal thoughts. Let me help. Here's a recording thing made of my latest root canal Wednesday. Season two is now playing only on Netflix. So it's now June 7th, and Kyron has been missing for three days. And police keep poking at Terri, kind of poking out all these holes in her story. And Terri just keeps insisting that she left Kyron's school that day with Kiara and no one else. Which brings us to clue number two. We have some eyewitness testimony. So one of the first Eyewitnesses was an 8 year old kid named Tanner. Tanner was one of Kyron's friends at school, and he happened to be in the hallway that morning after the science fair had ended. According to Tanner, he was walking through the school when he passed Kyron on the stairs. The two boys waved at each other, and Tanner watched as Kyron headed towards his classroom. Here's a crucial part, though. Tanner also told investigators that he saw Terry leave the school that morning and Kyron wasn't with her. But other witnesses come forward and have a completely different story. Another one of Kyron's second grade friends named Carson said he saw Kyron leaving the school with Terri. Now, Carson said that Terri and Kyron weren't holding hands or anything obvious like that, but they were definitely walking out together. And Carson wasn't the only one to say that at the time he was with his sister and grandmother. So there was another adult there. And they all backed up this claim that Terry and Kyron walked out of the front door of the school together. A bus driver and one source I saw said this was actually Kyron's bus driver said the same thing and even happened to add another detail. I saw Terry and Kyron walk out together. And Terry hadn't parked in the main lot where most parents were dropping off their kids. Instead, she had parked on a gravel road nearby, partly out of sight from the main entrance, which could be seen as odd given there were plenty of free spaces. But again, she did park far away when she went to the stores that morning. So maybe she just didn't want to scratch her husband's truck. But again, you have eyewitness testimony that they saw Kyron walk out with her and the truck is then far away. It's just all looking really weird.
- [32:45]
Kayla Moore
I'm going to interject here too because I want to make a note. I think it's important for everyone to understand where this information is coming from about these other witnesses.
- [32:52]
Morgan Absher
Yes.
- [32:53]
Kayla Moore
Now the police are incredibly tight lipped on this case. Most of what we are saying is not coming directly from the police. So when we say that Carson saw Kyron leaving the school with Terry, that's actually coming from the book that I mentioned before where the source is Kyron's biological mom, Desiree. So you have Desiree coming forward and saying in interviews on TV that all these people saw Kyron leaving with Terry. Now we know that the police haven't really investigated those tips. So we are kind of led to believe that they ended up not being very reliable witnesses or that there was some sort of miscommunication and those people actually didn't say that they saw Terri leave with Kyron. But I think that is just really important to note here.
- [33:40]
Morgan Absher
I watched an interview with his mom from about a month ago and that is still very much her point of view in the story. Yeah, that these witnesses do exist. Unfortunately this is one of those situations where like not having camera footage at the school really, really hurts the investigation. I mean if we had that we would know, hey, he walked away by himself or he went this direction like it is. It's so unfortunate but at this point in the investigation, investigators didn't think Terry's alibi was very solid, but they still needed more then a few timeline gaps and conflicting eyewitness statements to be sure of anything. So they decided to try a new tactic. Which brings us to clue number three. A polygraph.
- [34:28]
Kayla Moore
Which you know how I feel about polygraphs.
- [34:30]
Morgan Absher
I know we need to get you like a polygraph are our bad button.
- [34:33]
Kayla Moore
I know just a button I can Slam every time someone has to take a polygraph.
- [34:37]
Morgan Absher
Polygraphs are bad.
- [34:38]
Kayla Moore
Polygraphs are bad.
- [34:40]
Morgan Absher
Well, they still do it. They give it a go. And investigators didn't just screen Terry with these polygraphs.
- [34:45]
Kayla Moore
They.
- [34:45]
Morgan Absher
They do give them to the entire family. So Kyron's biological mother, Desiree, she passed. His stepdad, Tony, passed. His biological father, Kane, passed. And they all had alibis for the time that Kyron went missing. But Terry, she was polygraphed in the summer of 2010, and she didn't pass. We don't have the actual results, but Terry herself does admit that she failed one particular question, and it was, was Kyron in the car with you?
- [35:16]
Kayla Moore
Now, Cain has also come forward and said that Terri failed the polygraph test. And I believe Desiree also says that she didn't fail. She just didn't pass. There's different levels of results on polygraphs, and hers was inconclusive. So it's not necessarily accurate for even Terri herself to say that she failed. And also, the question of was Kyron in the car with you? Is very vague and confusing.
- [35:40]
Morgan Absher
She was in the car to school.
- [35:42]
Kayla Moore
Right. So she, I believe, answered that, no, he wasn't in the car with her, but she didn't really understand what they were asking, and so that question was inconclusive.
- [35:51]
Morgan Absher
Yeah, that's a really good point to make. And Desiree does remember Terry coming back to the house after doing her polygraph and kind of going on a rant about it, which, given all this context like it does, you know, make a little sense. And she said Terry was even super angry, blamed that failed question on a hearing problem. So she told investigators that she couldn't hear well in her left ear, and so that's why she misunderstood some of the questions. Later, she would also say that she was stressed out, and that interfered with the results. But something to note here is that Desiree points out that before she took her polygraph, the detectives asked if she could hear the questions clearly. But, like, no experience could be the same. Like, that's a very thing where they ask you that and don't ask Terry necessarily.
- [36:38]
Kayla Moore
So we don't know if they asked Terry, but it sounds from Desiree's perspective, they were asking everyone.
- [36:42]
Morgan Absher
Exactly. But even, like, a little more sus is Terry does go back to take the polygraph again, but she walks out in the middle of it this time. And when they schedule a third polygraph, she fails again and again, fails. Inconclusive.
- [37:00]
Kayla Moore
Yeah, she's not passing any of these polygraphs, which really, I mean, she's the only one that has an alibi that can't be checked. She's the only one that's not passing these polygraphs. Of course the police are really gonna start looking into her.
- [37:13]
Morgan Absher
And it makes sense. Like, where else do you look at this point? And from her eyes, she feels that this is really unfair. They've only really focused this investigation on her. And these polygraphs were optional. So why is it then adding to kind of the intrigue surrounding her is how she's seemingly feeling.
- [37:33]
Kayla Moore
And she keeps coming back like the polygraphs are optional and she does keep going back for them. Yeah, she goes a second time, sure. She walks out, but then she goes back a third time. And I believe after that is when she decides she's gonna stop going. Yeah. Which because it's not going very well.
- [37:47]
Morgan Absher
It's not going well. It's making her look more suspicious from maybe her perspective. She's like, I'm trying to clear my name and it's not working, so why keep putting myself out there?
- [37:59]
Kayla Moore
But on the other hand, it's like, which we talk about a lot in these cases. It's the person being like, I need to prove to them how innocent I am, knowing that they're not innocent. And so then it just kind of spirals out of control.
- [38:10]
Morgan Absher
And so what do you believe?
- [38:11]
Kayla Moore
Right.
- [38:11]
Morgan Absher
Like, where do you go? And you don't have any idea where Kyron is. So you kind of do need to look at the last person he was with, who has a lot of holes in their alibi, of course.
- [38:23]
Kayla Moore
And like you were saying too, she's the last one that was seen. She's going into this polygraph knowing that she was the last one to see him and that things are already not going well for her. And so I can only imagine that that stress may have also affected her results.
- [38:36]
Morgan Absher
Yeah. And how can you not be stressed? There's a seven year old little boy missing. So police continue to kind of focus in on Terry. And this brings us to clue number four. They start going through Terry's cell phone records. Terry has her story about, you know, going to the stores and buying the cold medicine and driving around and doing all these errands. And that was supposedly around 10am so even though these last two stops weren't able to be confirmed, you know, the stop at the craft store, there was surveillance footage showing her at the two Fred Meyers locations. But when investigators got access to her cell phone data, they discovered her story, again, just didn't seem to add up because at One point during the gap of missing time, Terri's phone was far away from all of these locations. According to her cell phone records, Terri made a phone call at 11am which pinged off of a cell phone tower and near Savi island, which this is about 12 miles from Kyron's home and his school.
- [39:36]
Kayla Moore
And I made a note here because I remember reading about this during the Lori Valow Chad Daybell trial that just happened. But an expert during that trial said that they could accurately pinpoint someone's location within 55 centimeters. That's insane to me via cell phone pings, but they needed two pings to do it. And if they only had one ping, they really couldn't nail down where the person was at all. It was like within 12 miles or something, or it was within miles that they could have been. But if they had two pings, 55 centimeters. However, in this, we just have the.
- [40:09]
Morgan Absher
One ping, only one ping. And this area is huge. Like, Sauvie island is this super undeveloped island area. It's about 18 miles northwest of Portland. And if you look on a map and, like, kind of go into it more, it's about the size of Manhattan. So it's not a small area. But this is looking really important to investigators because it's not close to either of the Fred Meyers stores that Terry had gone into or her Beaverton gym. In fact, it's nowhere near where Terry said she went that day during this initial interview. So supposedly, the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office was able to narrow this ping to within a mile of a cell phone tower there. Again, I'm not sure what the technology is, but this is what they're saying. And again, when police asked Terri about it, she changes her story. She said she was there because that was the road she took out to try and calm her baby down. And my parents did this. Like, my dad used to put me in the car at 3, 4am and go find a train in the middle of the night, so I'd stop crying. So, you know, desperate times with little ones could call for desperate measures. So when investigators learn about this cell phone ping, they immediately shift their investigation and they start looking at Sauvie Island. Around June 11, they brought in search teams on foot, on horseback, in boats. They had divers searching the waters all around the island. They combed through marshes, farmland, wooded areas, basically everywhere that you would maybe be able to hide a body. And they found no trace of Kyron.
- [41:43]
Kayla Moore
But you've already mentioned that this is the size of Manhattan.
- [41:45]
Morgan Absher
It's huge.
- [41:46]
Kayla Moore
So if you're bringing in a search of. Even if it's a thousand people, can you imagine that many people searching Manhattan for a seven year old's body? Like, the fact that they don't find any trace is not surprising to me because I just don't know how you even find anything.
- [42:00]
Morgan Absher
I mean, he left all of his things at school.
- [42:02]
Kayla Moore
It's all marshland too. Like, even if he was there, I just don't think that they would be able to find him.
- [42:07]
Morgan Absher
No. And he sinks into marshes and bogs. Like it's. It's like a needle in a. Not even a haystack. Like a needle in a huge ass hay field. Like it's just.
- [42:17]
Kayla Moore
Exactly.
- [42:18]
Morgan Absher
It's a difficult search. And I will give investigators a lot of credit. Like they were really pooling resources and looking everywhere they could.
- [42:27]
Kayla Moore
Yeah, you definitely have the taxpayers that start complaining about it because they're spending a lot of money on these searches. Yeah, we'll get some to it. Yeah, right. But like they are pouring resources into this.
- [42:35]
Morgan Absher
Yeah, it was a lot of effort, but again, it doesn't turn up anything. But like they're going off the evidence and the data they have, like Terry's phone did still ping there and this is a huge red flag for them. But what if she was doing as she claimed? What if she was just running errands and driving around to comfort her, her baby? I mean, again, earache, you guys, I don't. Not a parent, but like earaches, babies, they're upset, they scream.
- [43:03]
Kayla Moore
But one thing people did bring up is like, if the baby is in so much pain and needs to be lulled to sleep for 90 minutes, why do you immediately go to the gym to hang out with your friends? And she's bringing the baby in and out of the Fred Meyers stores too. So it just like is a little inconsistent. And everyone is paying attention to that people because all eyes are on her.
- [43:19]
Morgan Absher
They're honed in.
- [43:20]
Kayla Moore
And there's a little bit more information that we have here on the cell phone ping because the accuracy of that has been like really debated. Apparently cell phone ping location can depend on the number and type of cell phone towers that are in the area. So in an area like Sauvie island, which is very rural, it has very few towers, it can sometimes really reduce the accuracy of that ping because it covers a large radius. We talked about this when we were doing Adeya Shabani because his cell phone was pinging all over the place. And ultimately it said that he was very far from where he actually was because of the cell phone data.
- [43:54]
Morgan Absher
We need to do like, literally a mini episode on cell phone data and the science behind it, because it. It's a lot. And again, we have the war of the experts that you can seemingly find someone to say two different things.
- [44:04]
Kayla Moore
This is when we need our phone. A scientist who is out there, who's.
- [44:08]
Morgan Absher
A cell phone ping expert. We know we have to have one of you.
- [44:11]
Kayla Moore
Exactly. I told there definitely someone out there.
- [44:14]
Morgan Absher
Yeah.
- [44:14]
Kayla Moore
So the search of Savvy island was still ongoing. And around that time, the search around Kyron's school comes to a close. On June 13, nine days after Kyron vanished, Sheriff Dan Statin announced that his department was releasing most of the search teams. Then he told the press that he was going to shift the operations focus to a criminal investigation. And on June 17, that's four days later, the press reported that Terry Molton Horman had become the center of that investigation. And one thing that I thought was really interesting, when you read through all the articles at the time, they do not call her a suspect. They say that she's the center of the investigation. She is never referred to as a person of interest or a key suspect. It is clear, though, that the police are not looking into anyone else at that point. And in the meantime, tensions really start climbing between Kyron's parents, Desiree and Cain. Desiree had decided right away that without a doubt, no questions asked, Terri was responsible. She immediately jumps on that train. I mean, she's still on it today. The book is evidence of that. But the only time the couple says that either of them saw Terri cry was at a press conference. And I've watched this press conference. I don't know if you saw it. There's a press conference at the families give almost immediately afterwards, where they're all standing there. They have their, like, Searching for Kyron T shirts on, and it's Desiree and her husband, Terry and Cain, and they're all really, really crying. If you were just to watch that clip out of context, I don't think you could point at any of them and think that they were guilty. It's not like Scott Peterson, where he's standing there so weird and looking like he's bored. Everyone looks very upset. But Desiree says that that was the only time that Terry actually cried about this. Of the four, though, I will say Kane is like, probably the hardest to read. Like we said, he has a good poker face. Desiree didn't think that he was personally Responsible. But she starts really blaming Cain for letting Terry get so close to Kyron. But Kane at this time really doesn't think that Terry had anything to do with it, at least not outright. He even goes on the Today show and he defends her, saying, quote, terry, like the rest of us, is extremely committed to finding Kyron, and she's working extremely hard with investigators to bring him home. And that is one thing I will say about her is she is very cooperative with police, even though it is looking bad for her. She keeps going in and giving interviews and she does all those polygraph tests. But in private, it seems like their relationship starts to really become more strained than it already was. Their relationship already was kind of on the rocks for a while, even before Kyron went missing. But for the sake of finding their son, Cain and Terry present this very unified front. However, in late June, whatever alliance they did have during this time seems to be completely broken for good. And that's because on June 27, 24 days after Kyron goes missing, detectives invited Cain, Desiree, and Tony to a Marriott hotel in downtown Portland. And once the three of them were seated, the cops shared some key updates that they had on this investigation. Because up until this point, they're looking at Terri, they're looking at the situation, but they don't have a motive. They're missing their why. Sure, Terry looks pretty suspicious, but what could possibly cause this woman to harm a seven year old boy? Or if she didn't harm him, what would cause her to lie so much to them and change her story so much throughout the entire investigation? Well, the detectives told Cain then that before Kyron went missing, Terry had actually contacted a divorce attorney. This does not come as a shock to Kane at all. Like we said, their relationship was already strained. They were not really getting along. He also was having an affair. But the cops said that there was more to it than just that. Terry's red Mustang was actually seen cruising on back roads in Northwest Portland in the days before Kyron's disappearance. That's not incriminating. It's a little suspicious, though, to them. They wondered if she was doing this because she was scouting places to dispose a body. And remember, at this point, Desiree and Tony are both singing from rooftops that Terry had something to do with this. And it seems like in this meeting, when the cops share the information that they have, it really starts to turn Cain against her as well.
- [48:45]
Morgan Absher
Things are seemingly falling apart. And there's one last tip they have up their sleeve that really is just like the Put a fork in it. I'm done for Cain, which is our clue number five, the hitman. And you guys are like a hitman. Yeah. Hitman. Detectives asked Cain about his landscaper, a guy named Rodolfo Sanchez. They wondered, how did Cain know him, had he ever had any problems with him? And Cain was, like, really confused. He's like, landscaper? What are you talk. I don't have a landscaper.
- [49:19]
Kayla Moore
He had no idea they had a landscaper.
- [49:21]
Morgan Absher
He had no idea. He's like, what do you mean, I have no idea? And he'd certainly never heard the name Rodolfo Sanchez, which made the next part sound extremely wild. They told Cain that Rodolfo, who actually went by Rudy, had come forward with a shocking story about Terry. According to rudy, back in January 2010, about five months before Kyron disappeared, Terry had approached him about doing some work around their property. But it wasn't the kind of work you'd expect a landscaper to do. Rudy claimed that Terry had offered him $10,000 to kill Kane. According to Rudy, Terry told him that Kane was abusive and she needed him gone. She told Rudy that when he killed Cain, he would have the money on him. So all Rudy would have to do is make it look like a robbery gone wrong. There's speculation here that it's even offered. She threw in sexual favors as a part of the payment, but Rudy refused to help. And when he heard about Kyron, he took this story to the police. And up until this point, one of the big questions on everyone's mind, is Terry capable of murder? And with this hitman being exposed, it's looking like the answer could be yes.
- [50:36]
Kayla Moore
Well, Terry goes on Dr. Phil years after this, and you best believe that Dr. Phil really does grill her about the hitman she hired. So there's a little bit more context as to why she hired a landscaper without her husband's knowledge. And what she says, at least to Dr. Phil, is that Cain was really. Remember, she has this other son, James, and Cain was really big on, James has to do all of the yard work. I don't want to take care of the yard. I want James to do it. And Terry started feeling bad that all this pressure was being put on James. It was way too much work for him. So under the table, she gets this landscaper. I think she used child support payments that were supposed to be going to James, but she uses those payments to hire a landscaper just to kind of help take some of the load off of James. And that's how Rodolfo starts working for the family. So it's not super weird, at least according to Terry. She's like, it's not so strange that we had this landscaper, which, honestly, I hear that.
- [51:31]
Morgan Absher
And it makes a lot of sense. Also kind of gives you, like, oh, the dynamic here. Like, the poor stepson is kind of getting alienated in some way, maybe, like, yes, it does give you more context where you're like, oh, okay.
- [51:45]
Kayla Moore
Also, something that gets forgotten here is Rodolfo hardly spoke any English, and Terry did not speak Spanish. So when they're looking into Rudy more, he has to have a translator there all the time. And this becomes, like, a huge point in contention because at certain points, they feel like the translator is not translating the words properly to him. So they're mad at the translator. He's getting very confused when the questions are being asked to him. So a lot of people speculate that the police really set Rudy up to admit because he didn't understand what was happening, did not speak the language.
- [52:17]
Morgan Absher
Clearly a language barrier that Terry asked.
- [52:19]
Kayla Moore
Him to kill her husband for him. And also he goes on to say that this meeting happened at, like, a Denny's. It was some sort of public diner where they met up. This is where she asked him. There was no translator present. And it really seems like they wouldn't have been able to have as in depth of a conversation without translators present. Also, the fact that they were having this conversation in front of everyone, like.
- [52:40]
Morgan Absher
There'S wait stops not looking plausible.
- [52:43]
Kayla Moore
The whole argument that she hired a hitman does start to fall apart, however, it is so shocking. When I first read that, I had chills. I was so shocked that maybe this is something that she was capable of doing. Now, after Cain hears this, there's no doubt in his mind that Terry is capable of doing this and that she is maybe responsible for his son's disappearance. And Rudy agrees to help the police with the next phase of the plan. And that's when they put a wire on Rudy. There's no translator present during any of this part of the investigation. I just want to say, they say that Rudy's gonna go to Terry's home. There's gonna be an undercover cop that drives him there. He is instructed to knock on the door. Terry answers the door, and what he does at the police request is he tells her, hey, I've thought about the time that you asked me to kill your husband, and I've decided that I would like to do that. And when Terry hears this, she immediately slams the door in his face. And she calls the police. Some people take that a certain way. Some people think that, oh, she was finally caught. So she freaked out and was like self reporting or she freaked out and was like, I'm gonna get ahead of this, like, I'm not gonna have this conversation with him. Other people say that she knew she was being set up and she knew that she didn't really try to hire a hitman. So when she heard that, she immediately was like, oh, the police are trying to set me up, so I'm just gonna call and report this guy because I'm not interested in this at all.
- [54:16]
Morgan Absher
Yeah, it was a catch 22, no matter how she kind of responded.
- [54:19]
Kayla Moore
So not only does this sting fail, doesn't get any information about Kyron, Terry has caught on to the fact that the police might be trying to entrap her. So after this whole thing goes down, Cain doesn't want to wait around to see what Terry's going to do next. And because of that, he also doesn't want to leave his 19 month old daughter in her care. So he takes the baby and he checks into a hotel. And pretty soon after that, he takes out a restraining order against Terry and he files for divorce. From that moment on, it is the family, the police, the world, everyone against Terry almost. Because she does have one ally in this story that we haven't talked about yet. And it's one that may have some information about what happened to Kyron.
- [55:06]
Morgan Absher
So by the end of June, police are convinced that Kyron's disappearance is a crime. And as you guys might be able to gather at this point, they are suspecting that Terry Horman may be the perpetrator, but they're not sure she acted alone. You see, a couple of witnesses supposedly saw another adult in Terry's truck on June 4. Details about what they saw were sketchy. Like we don't really know what the person looked like, what gender they may have been, but if there was someone else in the truck, maybe that person was the key to finding Kyron. Which brings us to clue number six. A woman named Dede Spicer. As soon as Kane moved out of their house after all the hitman stuff came out, Dee Dee moved right in. Dede was one of Terri's closest friends. They met at the gym. They took an instant liking to each other. Two self described fitness junkies who liked to wake up early and work out before the sun rose. And when detectives started digging into Dee Dee's activities on June 4, they found some pretty interesting stuff. Dee Dee worked at A lavender nursery, a small farm in a rural area where Kane and Terry lived. And according to Dee Dee's co workers, she always ate lunch with them. It was their daily routine. But on June 4, the day Kyron disappeared, Dee Dee suddenly went missing. During lunchtime, her co workers tried calling her cell phone. She didn't answer. They looked around the property for her, but they couldn't find her anywhere. And this was right around the same time that Terry was supposedly driving around rural roads trying to soothe baby Chiara's earache. And so when investigators finally tracked Dede down and questioned her about where she had been that day, her story was looking really strange to them. And it's because her story was really vague. She claimed that she was out in the fields prepping for an event. She claimed it was muddy work, so she left her phone in her car, and that's why she missed all of those calls from her co workers. But what really got the investigators attention is that a day or two after Kyron went missing, Dede bought a burner phone. She used a fake name to purchase it and then used that phone, pretty much from what I've seen, exclusively, to communicate with Terry. When cops asked her about it. Dede said she bought the burner because she didn't want press or law enforcement listening in on their conversations. She claimed she was just trying to protect her and Terry's privacy. But investigators looked at this as someone that was clearly trying to hide evidence, conspiring about something. And to be fair, Dede wasn't the only person in Terry's life who bought a burner. Apparently, several of her friends actually went out and did the same thing, because apparently Terri had asked them to. And when the cops searched Dede's home and workplace, they didn't find anything unusual. Dede insisted she didn't know anything about Kyron's disappearance and that she was at work the whole time and that Terry was innocent.
- [58:07]
Kayla Moore
Well, on July 22nd, Desiree, Tony, and Kane put out a statement begging Dee Dee to cooperate with the investigation. And she replies through a lawyer. And while the lawyer wouldn't answer where Dee Dee was during that gap on June 4, he did say she already spent more than three hours talking to detectives. And I know later on she would say that she was prepping for an event. At some point between the end of June and late July, Dee apparently had a falling out with Terry. She stayed with Terry for 11 days just to support her after Kane took her daughter away. But after Dede moved back home, she and Terry did not speak. And it seems like they just hadn't spoken since that moment. Why, we're not entirely sure. But it does seem like at this time, Terry's friends start deserting her. Now the investigators feel like it's time to really turn up the heat. They have a little bit more leverage to get her on something. On July 26, Chief Deputy DA Norm Frink convened a grand jury to decide if there was enough evidence to bring the case to trial. Kyron at that point had been missing for 1553 days. That's a very, very long time for a child to be gone. As we know, every day that passes when a child is missing, they are less likely to be found alive if they are found at all. So by day 53, Frank was looking to prosecute a case against Terry Horman. But despite all of the very circumstantial, we'll add evidence that suggested Terry had done something to Kyron. They did not have a body, which meant proving foul play was going to be extremely difficult. However, there was one piece of evidence that does come up around this time that might make it possible to convict someone without a body. And it's emails establishing what no one had up until that point. A motive.
- [59:57]
Morgan Absher
So let's take a look at clue number seven. Terry's emails. When appearing on NBC's the Today show in the summer of 2011, Desiree said that the police had shown her explosive emails they found exchanged between Terry and some of her friends. Desiree says that in these emails, Terri seemed to express a, quote, severe hatred towards Kyron and blamed him for a lot of the issues in her marriage with Kane. It's not clear exactly what was in those emails. Desiree said she couldn't go into details because of the ongoing investigation, but Desiree took them as sure evidence that Terry could be capable of hurting Kyron and even hinted at harming him in those messages. Desiree said in the interview, quote, I now believe without a shadow of a doubt that not only is she capable of hurting Kyron, but that it's clear she could have hurt him in the worst possible way. End quote. Apparently, there was another email that Terri had sent to someone named Michael Cook, too. In that message, Terri talked about planning to leave Cain on June 4, the exact day that Kyron disappeared. And she spoke about taking Kiara with her. There's allegedly another email where she's talking about Kane being overbearing. Quote, I have to ask him before I go out to meet anyone. I have no money because I stayed home with Kyron. At birth, since his natural mom wouldn't spent all of my 30k to do so, end quote. So a lot of these. Obviously, it's kind of hearsay at this point. Investigators are not releasing any of these emails. But Cain's response was that Terry was a, quote, master of deception and misdirection. All the conversations she was having with people was the misdirection part. Cain then goes on to say, and this is something I saw in a recent interview with him, too, he says that they were getting into arguments kind of all the time, and it was a lot of times about her relationships with the children in general, and that he didn't really find it acceptable. But Kane also said he never felt like there was any reason to really worry about Terry or her behavior with the children. Like, he never feared for their safety up until that point. So it's. It's kind of. All of this is like a. Take it with a grain of salt. Like, we have to recognize who the sources are in this. And, you know, it's. It's something maybe, but, like, again, context of the sources here, and there really is no public record that we could find that showed Terry was explicitly threatening to harm Kyron. Instead, it seems like this is Desiree's own interpretation of them. If they did include some sort of direct threat, chances are that would have been enough for police to move forward and press charges. Certainly the grand jury would have been presented with this evidence, and they found they didn't have enough to move forward. But as far as investigators are concerned about these emails, at this point, they didn't serve as concrete evidence of any wrongdoing on Terry's part.
- [63:04]
Kayla Moore
Right. And even despite all of this, the investigation into Terry still moves forward. 40 different witnesses came to testify in front of this grand jury. Friends, family, experts, but none of them could convincingly show that Terry was guilty of anything.
- [63:20]
Morgan Absher
And if these emails were substantial, if they did show threats and motive, certainly they would have been presented to this grand jury.
- [63:28]
Kayla Moore
And eventually, you know, Kane is asked by reporters about these emails, and that's when he says to them that they never existed at all. So take that for what you will. And eventually, because of all this, Deputy DA Norm Frank decides that he simply does not have enough evidence to bring the case to trial. He could have defied the grand jury's recommendation, and he could have charged Terry with a crime. But if he failed to get a conviction, he knew that she would walk free forever. So he didn't want to risk it. He decides to put the case on ice. And he wants to wait until there's more evidence that surfaces. But unfortunately, nothing ever does. In September of 2010, Sheriff Staten, the lead investigator, holds this really gloomy press conference. He called the search for Kyron the largest, most expensive search in Oregon history. The police had conducted more than 600 searches using 1300 workers and covered 155 square miles of rugged terrain. The cost in total was 1.4 million. And even after all that, they still had no idea where Kyron was. The lead detectives would go on to investigate in a special task force and they could call up new resources if they needed. But all other law enforcement officers who were working the case went back to their regular jobs. Meanwhile, Desiree starts organizing her own searches. She pays for these with donations and fundraising events that she sets up. And since the DA refused to charge Terry with Kyron's death, she decides to try to take things into her own hands. She goes to civil court. And on June 2, 2012, Desiree files a 10 million dollar lawsuit against Terry, accusing her of kidnapping Kyron. And part of the reason she does this, I read, is because she wants the police report files to be released. It is very hard to get your hands on these files. Actually, it's impossible. If you're not a police officer, you're not reading the files on this case even today. Yeah, they have not shown these files to anyone. So Desiree is kind of thinking, well, if I sue her, maybe they'll have to release these records and I can read through them or I can hire a private investigator to read through them and maybe we'll catch something that no one else could. But her case hits this snag, and that is that the sheriff's office refuses to hand over any of these case files. They're not going to do it because their investigation was still officially ongoing. So they claimed that making their evidence public could jeopardize their work. And then in July of 2013, Desiree calls off this lawsuit. And that was 12 years ago. And that's really the last update, at least in those 12 years that's happened. Kyron's case is still active, still one of the largest in Oregon history. And as of a news special that aired around a month ago, its cost Oregon $1.9 million. And while they continue to keep an eye on Terry Horman as a central figure of the investigation, she's never really been considered a suspect. She remains a free woman to this day. She lives in California. At one point, she did try to change her name, and a bunch of angry people showed up to the courthouse to demand that she didn't do it. And the judge granted that she could not change her name legally. And investigators and the family are just kind of praying for a breakthrough.
- [66:46]
Morgan Absher
Yeah, there are a lot of loose ends and just kind of weird things like, still surrounding this. I think one thing that's kind of interesting is Terry's son has actually requested to see the case files. But again, like, those case files are not getting turned over to anyone. In the news special I watched from about a month ago, it was one of the reporters who, like, first started reporting on this case because his wife had actually gotten a notification from the school system saying, missing kid. And he was driving back from another case and was like, I need to get into this now. And so he did a special for the 15 year anniversary of his disappearance and interviewed the family and tried to pull a lot of these records himself. And they are still like, they are on lock.
- [67:34]
Kayla Moore
Yeah, you cannot access these records.
- [67:37]
Morgan Absher
And the Internet, Internet has a lot to say. I mean, you could go down the Reddit rabbit hole on this case for quite some time.
- [67:46]
Kayla Moore
I was really surprised because I put on my Morgan thinking and I was like, what does the Internet say about this? Because after reading through everything, something didn't feel right to me. Reading through all the research, reading the book, everything, something just felt incomplete. And I think it's that everything we're getting is from Desiree and that the picture that Desiree really paints of Terry is a little confusing to me in that at times, Terry is this ultimate mastermind. She's going to the Fred Meyer store so that she has this perfect alibi. Walking around looking for medicine that she can't produce because maybe she didn't buy the medicine, Maybe it was just for an alibi. And then she goes to the gym so that she has another perfect alibi. She's showing everyone pictures of Kyron and his presentation and putting it on Facebook just so she can present herself as this perfect mother. And then at other times, Desiree paints her to be like, the. The idea that she's this criminal mastermind just completely fades away. And she's making these really dumb mistakes that should have been easily caught. And the picture she paints of Terry just feels a little inconsistent to me.
- [68:56]
Morgan Absher
Which is it?
- [68:57]
Kayla Moore
She actually might have just been a good mom and cared about Kyron and was telling people about his presentation. She was, like, very involved in his life. She was there when he was born. There was nothing really indicating that she hated him other than these emails that no one can produce. So I like, I don't want to come across like I've taken any stance on it, but I was interested when I went on the Internet, how many people were like, terry didn't do it.
- [69:21]
Morgan Absher
That is, I literally just got chills, as you said that. That is the common consensus. I'm curious to see where our audience falls, especially after presenting all this information. Yeah, I feel like with a lot of these cases, we try to just like, here it is, guys, like, this is what we have. And I honestly, I sit here and after all my research, after, you know, doing this today, I don't know where I stand. I really don't. The Internet is my side of the world. Reddit is fully convinced he walked out.
- [69:50]
Kayla Moore
Just into the woods.
- [69:51]
Morgan Absher
Just walked out into the woods. He did this project on frogs and maybe after seeing, you know, his diorama, wanted to go out and find a real frog himself. I mean, when you see pictures and aerial shots of this school, it's literally a school plopped down in this picturesque nature hill, tree environment, right? I mean, no one's, you know, no one's stopping him. He's gonna go outside and take a peek. Kind of weird he wouldn't ask a little buddy to go with him, given how scared he was of getting lost and, you know, the things with his eyesight. But Internet is convinced he walked off. But there is one thing I came across and in one of the subs I found, and this is titled what is your chiron Horman theory? And it's from R Unresolved Mysteries. A lot of people have been commenting saying that they actually attended the school and it would have been very difficult to get out. It was very fenced. It'd be hard to just get into the woods and start wandering. But hard, not necessarily impossible, right? There's one other comment that I have not fact checked. I tried to go into it a little bit and I can't really corroborate anything with it, but there's one comment that I think should be pointed out. So this comment is from Model of Decorum. It's on that same post they go, first of all, I don't think Terry did it. She had no time to do so. If she left the school at 8:45, more likely 8:50, since she went up the stairs when the bell rang, said goodbye to Kyron and walked out of the school, went to her truck, her next hour would be like this. And they kind of recant her timeline and it's just like, where would they have time. In that timeline of her going to the store at 9:12, and Kyron got reported missing from the classroom at 10 when attendance was taken. They're like, where in that timeline would Terri have had the time? Maybe he was with her still in the truck, I guess, scared from the camera.
- [71:46]
Kayla Moore
The theory would have been that Terry brought him to her first few errands when she was going to the Fred Meyer store, had him stay in the car parked very far away so that no one could see him on the cameras, which doesn't make any sense to me. Brought the baby in, got the medicine, goes back in the truck, and then in the time that she's looping around with the baby, trying to lull the baby to sleep, that's actually when her car was seen pulled over on the side of the road. She was really in the woods, I guess, disposing of a body, like killing Kyron and disposing of a body for her to then show up to the gym 90 minutes later in the same clothes. She was seen at Fred Meyer. She doesn't have dirt all over her. She was just burying a body in. No, like she did. It was reported that she had a gash on her knee. She says that she got that from a weightlifting accident, which, like, also, by the way, we didn't really talk about it. Like, she's a bodybuilder. Terry was a competitive bodybuilder for a while. She still worked out a ton. It's not weird that she went to the gym and was talking to friends, necessarily.
- [72:46]
Morgan Absher
Yeah. Catch up.
- [72:47]
Kayla Moore
They had a little area where kids could hang out, too, so she could put the baby in there, talk to her friends, grab the baby and go. I don't believe that she was just doing that for an alibi. But no one knows how she got that gash. She says she got it from weightlifting, but no one could confirm that that's where she got that gash. But again, she's not really. Besides that gash on her knee, I just don't know that anything about her presents. I just killed someone and disposed of a body. That's the thing that I keep snagging.
- [73:17]
Morgan Absher
Yeah.
- [73:17]
Kayla Moore
You know.
- [73:18]
Morgan Absher
So this comment goes on to say, because they're on that page with you. They are. They're not convinced it was her. And they go on to say, here's what I think actually happened. At 8:45, the students were supposed to gather in groups of five or six to tour the exhibits. And it seems to have been a fairly chaotic affair, as we noted. No sign in sheet. Hundreds of family and friends and whoever else wants to come see these projects.
- [73:42]
Kayla Moore
Yeah.
- [73:42]
Morgan Absher
All buzzing about the school. A classmate saw Kyron in the upstairs hallway shortly after Terry left. And Kyron said he was going to see an electrical exhibit which a parent said was in another upstairs classroom. In a blog comment, again, we might have to fact check this one, guys. A friend of Kyron's brother then saw Kyron in the gym with some of his friends looking at other exhibits, and finally he arrived at downstairs classroom 109. There is a blog that published witness statements from some of the children that they saw Kyron leave that room and go outside with a man who asked for help to bring something from his truck. Right outside 109 was the access road that led to the Skyline Boulevard and where someone saw Kyron with an unknown person by a white truck. The truck was commonly called Terry's truck in the media. But at that point, witnesses had been primed to see any white truck they remembered as Terry's. So a man, probably not a local, walked into the open public school, roamed the halls, acting like he belonged there. There were children who commented on Facebook that there had been a creeper there. So not everyone was fooled. And until he found a child that seemed pliable and meek, he lured him out of the school via the access road, took him to his truck parked at the access road where a chain blocked him from going further, got Kyron in the car, drove away further. Like, this is someone's comment. This is their theory. Yeah, but like, we haven't even heard about this other truck. We heard Terry's white truck. So it's like, right. Is this actually out there? And like, because the investigation was so honed in on Terry, maybe there should be more marks here. I agree.
- [75:19]
Kayla Moore
I think that is a botched that they honed in on Terry so much that they maybe had tunnel vision and were missing some other things. Because there. There's another mention of a man from Terry where initially Terry says there was nothing weird about that day. I walked up the stairs with him. I watched him go to his classroom. She can't really remember if she watched him go in or if she watched him walk down the hallway. That story seems to change a little bit. Regardless, she says she. She watched him walk down the hallway. And then the police in a different interview are asking her questions. She's like, well, there was a man that Kyron was talking to, but I didn't think anything of it. And for the police, this is how they really Start building this narrative that Terry's just changing her story to whatever fits what's happening in the moment. She's just changing her story to make herself not look guilty at that time. So at first it was, well, I saw him go to his classroom. Well, I saw him walk towards the classroom. Well, there was another man there. So maybe look into that. That is sketchy. Like, that is weird, how much she changes her story and how many details show up at other times. Like, when she feels like that's what fits the narrative the best. But if there was a man there, if the children are talking about the man, it's something to look into. I just feel like that the police had tunnel vision in this one. As of right now, there is only one suspect in this, but I just don't think she's a very good suspect.
- [76:37]
Morgan Absher
Suspect. I don't either. And there is something I do just want to note because I did find it in my Internet sleuthing, and it's not something I've seen. Brought up a lot. And it could be a red herring, you guys. Like, this could be so irrelevant. And like, Morgan, why'd you even mention it? I'm not sure, but, like, I learned about it, so I want you guys to know about it. So Kiren's paternal uncle actually started a sentence for sex abuse shortly after he went missing.
- [77:04]
Kayla Moore
I did see that.
- [77:05]
Morgan Absher
And his lawyer came out and was like, he was not in the area. He wasn't in the state. Like, blah, blah, blah, blah. He was in Seattle. But, like, as someone that's driven from Seattle to Portland and Portland to Seattle, it's a quick drive. It's easy to do in a day. So I don't know if that's anything but, like, it's something to note in this that, like, you have this family member, seemingly very close, that also did this other thing. So just a note for us all out there.
- [77:33]
Kayla Moore
I know, Just something that gets forgotten.
- [77:35]
Morgan Absher
And is it a red herring? Is it so irrelevant?
- [77:38]
Kayla Moore
That's a weirdly timed coincidence that I know. It absolutely could be. But yeah, there's just a lot of little things around this case that I felt like the police didn't look into.
- [77:47]
Morgan Absher
There's a lot in this one. And I'm so curious to see your. Your comments, your theories on it, and, you know, get the word out here on this one. Like, again, people do come home, people have these memories resurface that, oh, my God, I do remember this other family. And they. They do get back to their families, so. Share this story you know, we'll have a lot of infographics on it on our Socials at Clues, podcast on Instagram, and let's, you know, get the word out. Maybe this family can get some closure, whatever that looks like.
- [78:19]
Kayla Moore
There is a little bit of an update that we just wanted to share too, before we wrap up the episode. So in 2025 this calendar year, after 15 years without any significant updates, the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office made a pretty big announcement over the previous year. They said that they had spent countless hours digitizing files from Kyron's case. They said you can still not look at these, but we did put them on our computer.
- [78:42]
Morgan Absher
We're doing something that was.
- [78:43]
Kayla Moore
So once all the files are digital, they're actually going to send these to the FBI's famed Behavioral Analysis unit and they're going to join them in the investigation for the first time to apply their skills to the new data. And you've definitely heard of bau. These are the real mindhunters. They're the Montgomery. Yeah. They're the profilers who helped investigate Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy.
- [79:04]
Morgan Absher
It's the real deal.
- [79:06]
Kayla Moore
Hopefully they're coming in with fresh eyes where they don't immediately cling to one suspect. They can look at everything and then decide who they need to look into more.
- [79:13]
Morgan Absher
And from a more unbiased point of view. Right. Not someone who's in the thick of this themselves and going through an immense amount of trauma like it. It's truly coming from just fresh eyes, unbiased point of view.
- [79:26]
Kayla Moore
Absolutely.
- [79:26]
Morgan Absher
Hopefully.
- [79:27]
Kayla Moore
Hopefully. Really that's like the only update that we have that this is something that's going to start being in the works. And until then, we can really just wait and hope that someday Kyron's going to be found. And if you ask Kyron's parents, they'll tell you that waiting is the hardest part. I actually, I did want to include this quote from Desiree cause I know that I have brought up multiple times how her she might not be the most reliable narrator. I do not think she's an evil person at all. I think she's a grieving mother who is desperate for answers.
- [79:58]
Morgan Absher
Yeah. Clearly going through it.
- [79:59]
Kayla Moore
And I don't blame her for wanting to get the story out there more and help write this book. I just think that she also might be a little tunnel visioned. But she does say, quote, no matter how long a child goes missing, all of us parents are hoping and we hold out. That's why we wear the buttons. That's why we do our candlelight vigils. That's why we talk about him and raise awareness and share the story so that we can keep that hope alive. And I absolutely think that's why she's done everything she's done for this investigation. If you have any information about Kyron Horman, maybe if you were a little kid at the time at the school and you remember something that the police didn't ask you about or you were too scared to come forward, there's like so many reasons to come forward still. But you can contact any of the following hotlines and tip lines. So there's the Multnomah County Sheriff's office at 503-988-0560 and there's also a tip line that you can email at tips CSO us. And with that we can talk about our Missing Person of the Week. Today we're going to be highlighting the case of Leanna Susan Marie Warner. She was born on January 21, 1998 and she was five years old when she went missing. She's described as approximately 3ft tall, only 48 pounds and her hair is brown, cut in a bob style with bangs and her eyes are brown. At the time of her disappearance she was wearing a sleeveless dark blue denim dress with an attached belt, orange Hanes brand underwear, flower shaped earrings with a red stone in one ear and she was described as not wearing shoes or socks. She was last seen on June 14, 2003. That was a Saturday in Chisholm, Minnesota. She was last seen walking on Southwest 2nd street between 5:00 clock and 5:15pm after visiting a friend's house which was approximately one and a half blocks from her home. I have a little bit of information here on the circumstances of her disappearance. So Leanna had permission to visit a friend's house and she was expected home by 5pm her friend was not home, so Leanna headed back towards her own house but never arrived. She wasn't reported missing until around 8:40 or 9pm after neighborhood searches failed.
- [82:11]
Morgan Absher
Extensive searches did happen after this. There's been more than 1700 leads, however, very little evidence to go off of and police have never had a concrete suspect. She appears to have simply vanished from a two block radius around her home.
- [82:26]
Kayla Moore
There are a couple possible witness suspects that I read about. There's one who is a man in his mid-30s, around 5 foot 10, 155 pounds with a dark colored tattoo. It's maybe a sun or a star on its right arm. There's also a man with a bald slash shaved head who drove a two door maroon and blue Cadillac and then a white male with curly hair driving a rusty brown older pickup truck.
- [82:52]
Morgan Absher
This is still a very active investigation. Liana's mother passed away in 2022 from lung cancer and it was her dying wish for her daughter to be found. So her sisters are still actively searching and they're hoping that a new photo will yield some answers. You'll see on all of our socials and if you're watching on YouTube. But there is now an age progressed picture of what they think Liana would look like. We want to make sure we get the word out and get this shared and hope to turn up some new leads. Maybe someone remembers something and hopefully we can bring Leanna home.
- [83:26]
Kayla Moore
And if anyone does, you can contact the Chisholm Police Department at 218-254-7915 or the national center for Missing and Exploited Children. They have a 24 hour hotline at 1-800-THE LOST that's 1-800-84-3-56.
- [83:44]
Morgan Absher
And I just want to say thank you all so much for commenting and bringing light to other missing people, missing children cases. This has been highlighted thanks to a comment from one of you that wanted to see it as a full case presented. So if you do want to see that, maybe we'll get into it. Maybe it's a bonus episode. I don't know. But we wanted, but we wanted to get this out there. And again, we just really appreciate you all commenting. So if there is someone that's been missing from your area or recently gone missing and we got to get the word out, put it in our comments. We want to see it. This one especially hits close to home for me. I'm an hour away. My home is an hour away from where she went missing. So I was in, I was in third grade at this time, you know, same, same age basically. So it hits close to home.
- [84:30]
Kayla Moore
And I did want to add too because we are getting a lot of these from listeners. If you were the one who suggested Sabrina Harouni, please send us a message. You can message me on Instagram or the Clues account. We wanted to look into that one a little bit more. That is all we have for this episode of clues. Thank you guys so much for joining us again to unravel all of the clues that are involved in this case. This one is definitely gonna haunt me for a while. Really. It's so hard to make sense of this one. It's so confusing, really confusing. And I just feel like we don't have any good leads right now. We do want to hear from you guys now please let us know your thoughts, your theories, your feedback. All of that makes this community so special. And you guys put stuff together in ways that I don't and we don't even talk about on the show. But I'm always curious what everyone else's theories.
- [85:21]
Morgan Absher
I know our Cluminati is out there sleuthing with us. I know you're bringing a lot of new information, new evidence. I see it in the comments. It's so appreciated at Crime House. We really do value your support. So again, share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review and follow to help others discover our show. It really helps boost it out there so other people see it and follow and hopefully make this community even bigger. And get the word out on all of these cases. And if you're hungry for even more content, we've got you covered there too. For more exclusive content, monthly bonus episodes, early access and ad free listening, join our Crime House plus community on Apple Podcasts.
- [85:57]
Kayla Moore
We will be back next week with another case to unravel and until then, keep searching and we will see you next time on Clues. Bye guys.
- [86:04]
Morgan Absher
Bye.