Part 6: Roen

Summary

Wild Boys — Part 6: Roen

Podcast: Wild Boys (Chameleon Season 3)
Host: Sam Mullins
Production: Campside Media / Sony Music Entertainment
Date: September 11, 2025

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Episode Overview

In Part 6: Roen, host Sam Mullins dives deep into the upbringing and psyche of Rowan Horn, one of the two infamous “bush boys” who, in 2003, emerged in Vernon, British Columbia, claiming to have survived in the wild. This episode shifts the narrative from the community’s sense of betrayal to Rowan’s own experience growing up—his family, personal struggles, and increasing obsession with health, control, and conspiracy. The episode paints a nuanced portrait of a boy whose life unraveled into zealotry, paranoia, and ultimately flight from authorities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Vernon Version of the Story and Its Aftermath

• The initial narrative: two "wild" brothers, seemingly straight from the bush, are embraced by the community—until their story unravels as a fabrication.
• Community members recall feeling taken advantage of and humiliated.
  • “They made it all up.” – Sam Mullins (02:03)
  • “Like, he was never, never sorry for anything that happened. I don't think he's wrong.” – Rowan Horn (02:25)
  • “He walked up the gangway into the plane, never even looked back, and it was gone. Good riddance.” – Rowan Horn (02:36)

2. Rowan Horn's Childhood & Family Background

• Rowan grew up in a loving, open-minded, and deeply curious family obsessed with both health and alternative spiritualities.
  • “I had, like, the best childhood. I feel almost guilty for having such a good childhood compared to other people's.” – Rowan Horn (05:33)
  • The Horn family, led by parents Diana and Roger, constantly explored new diets and spiritual paths, eventually fostering a powerful skepticism toward mainstream authority.

Timestamps

• 06:22 — Rowan’s transformation during adolescence; shifts from a ‘normal’ child to an outlier.
• 07:03 — Rowan’s struggle with acne and declining self-esteem.
• 08:38 — Diana’s journey from Mormonism to anti-Mormon missionary Christianity.
• 10:14 — Shifting parenting philosophy: from strict with older kids to much more relaxed with Rowan; embracing children’s choices and perspectives.

3. A Family Prone to Belief in Conspiracy

• The family’s interests range from fun conspiracy (UFOs, Bigfoot, chemtrails) to darker suspicions (anti-vaccine, moon landing denial, 9/11 trutherism).
  • “Oh, yeah, we were a big conspiracy family.” – Rowan Horn (12:12)
  • “My parents are convinced of the flat Earth. I'm not.” – Rowan Horn (12:55)
  • “Their beliefs cover the whole spectrum … Y2K conventions … also believe darker things, like thinking incorrectly that 9/11 was an inside job.” – Sam Mullins (13:16)

4. A Health Obsession is Born

• At age 9, Rowan’s spleen is removed after a bike accident, and he’s told about his “compromised immune system.”
• Instead of following doctors’ advice, he becomes obsessed with diet and alternative health measures, mistrusting medical professionals.
  • “We're very skeptical of the doctors and any conventional treatments because the conspiracy movement, it does have a good mix with the health movement.” – Rowan Horn (16:57)
  • “I was just gonna just eat really healthy, just be the healthiest person ever, and I'll figure, maybe my body will figure it out if I'm healthy enough.” – Rowan Horn (17:35)

Timestamps

• 15:23 — The accident and surgery.
• 16:33 — The trauma and new sense of vulnerability.
• 18:13 — Control over diet as an attempt to master anxiety over mortality.
  • “Me having control over my diet and fixing it was probably me trying to, like, comfort myself. And, like, I do have control. I'm not gonna die. If I'm healthy enough, I can control whether I get sick or not.” – Rowan Horn (18:13)

5. Dietary Zealotry and Social Withdrawal

• Rowan’s dietary obsessions morph from healthy eating into fanatic restrictions—eventually adopting a fruitarian diet.
  • “Be sure you cook healthy dinners. No, I won't eat that jarred spaghetti sauce … Did you put salt in it? I can't eat that.” – Diana Horn (18:46)
• His mother indulges his quirks, but his refusal to eat most foods raises concern.

Timestamps

• 19:58 — Acne and dietary self-experimentation.
• 21:19 — Online forums and the lure of fruitarianism.
  • “Fruitarianism. Be a fruitarian, your acne will go away. You'll be the healthiest person ever.” – Rowan Horn (21:52)
• 23:06 — The moral logic: don’t kill plants for food, don’t eat roots.
  • “Why are you gonna kill the carrot? What if it's alive? Why are you gonna kill the onion? The life of the onion matters.” – Rowan Horn (23:17)

6. Health Anxiety Becomes Mental Health Crisis

• Rowan’s dietary restrictions and growing hypochondria lead to school avoidance.
• His mother’s concern brings them into contact with the medical system, where a misdiagnosis—anorexia, rather than orthorexia—is made.
  • “So Rowan goes into this program that's not at all designed to solve his actual problem.” – Sam Mullins (26:50)
  • “They had this idea that I had anorexia when really I had orthorexia...” – Rowan Horn (26:56)
  • “...the desire to control and the uncontrollable, that if you just eat perfectly enough, you can avoid and defeat the scariest things in life. Sickness, death.” – Sam Mullins (27:59)

Timestamps

• 24:55 — Concerns about extreme thinness.
• 25:08 — Referral to a psychologist.
• 25:59 — The psychologist’s alarm: “He’s killing himself.”
• 26:34 — Family feels misunderstood; Rowan’s eating is motivated by fear of impurity and control, not fear of food per se.

7. Conflict With 'The System'

• Doctors escalate the response: outpatient program, then threats of mental hospital, and finally possible removal from parental custody.
  • “...the system wrestled control away from her. According to Diana, they said, put him in the mental hospital or we’re going to take him away.” – Sam Mullins (30:01)
  • “Ever since Rowan heard the words mental hospital, he couldn’t shake this growing sense of dread.” – Sam Mullins (30:43)
• Rowan’s entire upbringing (conspiracy, anti-authoritarianism, fear of the system) primes him to see authorities as threats.
  • “If you grow up believing that your own government was responsible for 911 and lied to you about the moon landing… why would you turn yourself over to those authorities?” – Sam Mullins (31:07)
  • “I'm just a fearful person. I'm afraid of the government. I'm afraid of cops. I'm afraid of anything. Anyone who has power makes me afraid.” – Rowan Horn (30:30)

Timestamps

• 31:53 — Rowan is “ready at the drop of a hat” to run if authorities come.
• 32:09 — The authorities do come: a knock at the door.
• 33:14 — Rowan bolts out a sliding back door, hides in bushes.
  • “I just Bolt.” – Rowan Horn (33:14)
  • “He is running for his life.” – Sam Mullins (34:03)

8. Cliffhanger: The Great Escape

• Rowan, convinced “his life is in danger,” hides out, poised to make contact with the only person he trusts.
  • “He’s not sure if they saw him and there’s bushes. I gotta hide around here for a while in case they start driving their cop car around. I’m now on the alert wondering what they saw … For all I know, they were following me.” – Rowan Horn (33:46)

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Notable Quotes

• “Me having control over my diet and fixing it was probably me trying to, like, comfort myself. If I'm healthy enough, I can control whether I get sick or not.”
  — Rowan Horn (18:13)
• “Four people in the family were into the conspiracies. Roger, Diana, Rowan and Kyle. And the four of them are into conspiracies the same way other families might be into frisbee golf or musical theater.”
  — Sam Mullins (12:15)
• “I'm just afraid of authority in general. I'm just a fearful person. I'm afraid of the government. I'm afraid of cops. I'm afraid of anything. Anyone who has power makes me afraid.”
  — Rowan Horn (30:30)

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Memorable Moments & Turning Points

• Rowan’s pivotal hospital stay and the loss of his spleen (15:23–16:43)
  This trauma triggers a lifelong belief in his vulnerability.
• The escalation from healthy obsession to social withdrawal and a misfit relationship with food (18:13–26:34)
• The confrontation with authority: Rowan running from the child protective service and police (32:09–34:03)
• Rowan hiding in the bushes, genuinely believing he’s running for his life (34:03–34:48)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:58–02:36: Vernon's reaction to the boys' story falling apart
• 05:33–06:40: Rowan’s adolescence and onset of anxiety
• 15:23–16:43: The splenectomy and impact on worldview
• 18:13–19:36: The development of dietary obsession
• 24:55–26:34: Misdiagnosis and failed interventions
• 30:01–31:53: System wrests control from family; Rowan prepares to flee
• 32:09–33:14: The actual escape
• 34:03–34:48: Rowan hides and plots his next move

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Summary Tone & Style

The episode maintains Sam Mullins’s thoughtful and probing narrative style, using empathy to break down what appears at first to be simply “weird” or “ungrateful” behavior, instead illuminating the links between family culture, conspiracy thinking, adolescent vulnerability, and the road to extreme health fanaticism. Rowan, once only an enigma or “wild boy,” emerges as a complicated, wounded, and, in the end, deeply human young man—pushed to the edge not only by his own mind, but by the very systems meant to help.

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This summary captures the detailed trajectory of the episode, breaking down personal and familial history, the homegrown roots of unconventional and destructive beliefs, and the fateful clash with outside authority that propelled Rowan into flight—and into infamy.

Transcript

[Sam Mullins]

Hi, binge crew. When you're finished listening to this true crime story, go see Hunting Matthew Nichols in theaters. This film has all the elements of the true crime stories we love. A sprawling mystery, intrepid investigators, powerful people who know more than they let on. Two decades after her brother mysteriously disappeared on Vancouver Island, a documentary filmmaker sets out to solve his missing persons case. But. But when a disturbing piece of evidence is revealed, she comes to believe her brother might still be alive. The film is in select theaters now, but you can immerse yourself in the story by going to huntingmatthewnickolls.com right now. That's huntingmatthewnichols.com and welcome to the hunt.

What is. What do you want me to say? You have found Chameleon Season three Wild

Boys, a production of Campside Media.

Oh, a heads up. This show contains discussions of an eating disorder. If you or someone you know is struggling with eating disorders, please listen with care. The story of the bush boys who weren't lives in the collective Vernon memory in a very specific way. Two boys showed up in Vernon who no one had ever seen before. These two wild children appear in our community so thin and ghostly, gaunt. They had rags on their back and

[Diana Horn]

they don't have a home.

[Sam Mullins]

They told us a fantastical story.

[Diana Horn]

They were born and raised in the

[Sam Mullins]

bush, had apparently never seen a telephone. They'd never been to school.

[Rowan Horn]

They'd never been to dentists. Nothing.

[Sam Mullins]

You know, it was like finding the lost tribe in New Guinea. The good people of Vernon rallied around the boys. They kind of made it a mission to see if I can help them to. I'll try and lend a hand. We gave them food, clothing, and shelter because of the story they told us. And then we found out on national television the story was a lie. I found out while I was on camera.

They made it all up.

[Gabriel Horn]

None of it is true.

[Sam Mullins]

Oh, my God.

[Rowan Horn]

I can't believe this.

[Sam Mullins]

It's me.

[Diana Horn]

You can't.

[Sam Mullins]

You can't not let me in.

[Rowan Horn]

Where are they?

[Sam Mullins]

We felt taken advantage of and humiliated. All these funds and time and effort had been expended on them from people in the community. It just was, like, devastating. But they felt no apparent remorse, no apologies.

[Rowan Horn]

Like, he was never, never sorry for anything that happened. I don't think he's wrong.

[Sam Mullins]

He just struck me as so ungrateful. And finally they left town.

[Rowan Horn]

He walked up the gangway into the

[Sam Mullins]

plane, never even looked back, and it was gone. Good riddance. That's the Vernon version of the story, the one that Was seared into my teenage brain 18 years ago. But last fall, I started wondering, what is the boys version of that? Is there something they could tell me that would make this whole bizarre series of events make sense? And I was curious to find out, given who the boys were and what they did nearly 20 years later, who have they become? So last fall, I did something I swore I would never do again. I went on Facebook, and I searched for Rowan horn. He came up immediately. So I opened a message, and I started typing. Hi, Rowan. My name is Sam Mullins. We've never met, but 17 years ago, in 2003, we were in the same place at the same time. I told him that I hadn't been able to stop thinking about the story and wondered, would he be willing to talk with me? I hit send, and I waited. Like Tammy when she left those quarters at cal store with a note asking the boys to call her. I expected nothing. I set it aside. But a week later in my inbox. Hello, Sam. What a great idea. Let's do it. Rowan Horn. And just a few days after that. Here. I'm just trying to hit record here, if that's cool.

[Rowan Horn]

Sure. Yeah.

[Sam Mullins]

Do you want to. Do you want to just jump in?

[Rowan Horn]

I'd love to know more about you, too. Anything you want to share about yourself?

[Sam Mullins]

Oh, yeah.

[Diana Horn]

So.

[Sam Mullins]

So I'm just, like, a Vernon kid was, like, a hockey player, and when I was, like, around the time that you were there, I was kind of, like, getting tired with the whole athletic thing, so. From campside media, this is chameleon Wild boys, part six. Rowan, there's just so many interesting twists and turns all over this story, and that's why I'm so excited to talk to you.

[Rowan Horn]

It really is. This is a crazy story.

[Sam Mullins]

You're listening to chameleon from campside media. You're listening to chameleon from campside media.

As I interviewed the horns, I was looking for clues. What turned two boys from the California suburbs into the infamous bush boys of British Columbia. At first, I just kind of tiptoed in, like, so what was your childhood like, Rowan?

[Rowan Horn]

I had, like, the best childhood. I. So I can't even tell people. I feel almost guilty for having such a good childhood compared to other people's.

[Sam Mullins]

I talked to their older brother, too. We're gonna call him Gabriel. Were either of them getting into trouble at all as, like, as kids?

[Gabriel Horn]

No, quite the opposite. Never got in trouble. Not a rebellious streak in any of us.

[Diana Horn]

All my kids have been really good kids.

[Sam Mullins]

The boy's mom Diana, I haven't had

[Diana Horn]

trouble with, you know, oh, no, we got the drugs going on or the sassing back and cussing at mom going on. All my kids were really good.

[Sam Mullins]

But as Rowan grew up, there was a moment when it seemed like he started to change. How would you describe Rowan as, like

[Gabriel Horn]

as a kid, normal 5 year old? Normal 10 year old? Not normal. 15 year old. Rowan after, when he, somewhere in high school, just seemed a little less, you know, more off the beaten path than most. I don't know what changed.

[Sam Mullins]

What changed, it appears by Rowan's account, and by his mom's too, was the change that happens to all of us around that age, the capital C change, puberty.

[Rowan Horn]

Where it all started for me was like my acne. I got really bad acne as a teenager. It was just like destroying my confidence. When you trying to have a social conversation with someone and there's just pimples

[Sam Mullins]

all over your face and you really feel when their eyes shift, suddenly you're like, oh, they just look bad.

[Rowan Horn]

Exactly. So it hurt my self esteem, my confidence.

[Gabriel Horn]

Hmm.

[Rowan Horn]

And I was wanting to find some way to like cure my acne.

[Sam Mullins]

And when I heard this, I thought, wait, aren't there prescription drugs for teenagers who really don't want acne?

[Rowan Horn]

Yeah, Accutane and everything like that. I never wanted to take anything like that.

[Sam Mullins]

And this is where the story turns. Teenage boys famously don't care what they put in their bodies. But for this teenage boy, putting prescribed drugs into his body wasn't even a consideration. To understand why that was, you need to know about his parents and the house he grew up in. The Horns are a family with strong beliefs. Which isn't to say that their beliefs were set in stone. They explored a lot of ideas, but once they locked into one, they locked in hard. And two things they seemed to have the strongest beliefs about were health and spirituality. They were all runners, led by Roger, who'd bring his kids along to run 5Ks with him. And Diana would always be searching her magazines for the perfect diet, a pastime that would be absorbed by some of her children. Roan and Kyle's sister went on to become a dietitian. And it was spirituality that got their parents together in the first place. Diana and Roger. Diana had grown up a devout Mormon, the fourth of seven kids.

[Diana Horn]

And then each and every one of us, all seven children, converted from Mormonism to Christianity because we became convinced we were in a cult.

[Sam Mullins]

And Diana didn't just convert to Christianity and leave it at that. She moved to Utah to The very heart of the Mormon church, to become a missionary against the missionariest church in the world, to try to talk Mormons out of being Mormon. Which is where she met another non Mormon missionary, Roger.

[Diana Horn]

I respected his spiritual grounding. He was very much that way and very humble and a good sense of humor and let me win ping pong. And very athletic.

[Sam Mullins]

Diana was way into Roger right away. She told herself after meeting him the

[Diana Horn]

first time, I want to marry somebody just like him.

[Sam Mullins]

In my interview with Diana, as she talks about Roger, he smirks, half listening, doing a sudoku beside her on the couch. A year after they met, they got married. Roger worked at an insurance company. Diana stayed home. She'd always wanted to be a mom, and a few years later, she was. They had their first three kids, boy, boy, girl, within a few years of each other. Then there was a five year gap. And then Rowan came along. Rowan was very much the baby of the family.

[Diana Horn]

You had the three older ones and Rowan was younger. And they all adored having this, you know, new young addition to our family. Little cute sweetie pie.

[Sam Mullins]

As the kids grew up, Diana and Roger had started out parenting with a clear list of rules and consequences to save themselves from improvisational moments of discipline. Something like, you talk back, you get six minutes timeout. You pinch your brother, that's two and a half spankings.

[Diana Horn]

And by the time Rowan rolled along, I just, it became a little bit more relaxed.

[Gabriel Horn]

Oh, yeah. Rowan experienced completely different parents than I did.

[Sam Mullins]

Gabriel again, the oldest of the horn kids. Or more directive or less directive.

[Gabriel Horn]

Less directive, less directive, more lackadaisical. Hey, let the kids, you know, make their own choices, right? Do whatever they want to do, right? Come to their own conclusions about literally everything in the world.

[Sam Mullins]

Diana and Roger cared deeply about Jesus and the Bible. Diana remembers all four of her children were baptized in a swimming pool in the same afternoon. But when it came to which church they belonged to, to borrow a sports term, they were unrestricted free agents.

[Diana Horn]

When I first became a Christian, it was just a regular conservative Christian church. Then we ended up at a charismatic church. We tried Baptist chur. Oh, I think I dabbled with the Seventh Day Adventist. We've even spent a little time with Jehovah Witnesses.

[Sam Mullins]

They had less allegiance to one specific way and more to the idea of questioning, doubting, seeking our whole family.

[Rowan Horn]

I like that we would talk about things like philosophy. We wouldn't shy away from the big questions of life. We'd always be talking about some spiritual thing. And I like that.

[Sam Mullins]

And when Rowan says the big Questions of life. He's not just talking about, where did we come from? Why are we here? Is there a God? He's also talking about everything from Reptilians to.

[Rowan Horn]

I mean, just every chemtrails. Every conspiracy theory there is. Aliens. Bigfoot.

[Sam Mullins]

Conspiracy theories were a thing they talked about at the kitchen table and around the house.

[Rowan Horn]

Oh, yeah, we were a big conspiracy family.

[Sam Mullins]

Or rather mostly. Four people in the family were into the conspiracies. Roger, Diana, Rowan and Kyle. And the four of them are into conspiracies the same way other families might be into frisbee golf or musical theater.

[Diana Horn]

Oh, yeah, the whole NASA thing, you know, like, have we really been to the moon? You know, that's another thing that interests us. And definitely UFOs.

[Sam Mullins]

They asked me if I've gotten the COVID vaccine. I have the sick.

[Rowan Horn]

You've been vaccinated.

[Sam Mullins]

Oh, the horns are team Anti vax.

[Diana Horn]

What else?

[Rowan Horn]

9, 11 oh.

[Diana Horn]

9 11. That was a really big one. Even more so than chemtrails. Bigfoot. What else?

[Rowan Horn]

My parents are convinced of the flat Earth. I'm not.

[Sam Mullins]

Rowan's dad clarifies. Not fully convinced.

[Rowan Horn]

Flat earth. I'm probably 80% there.

[Diana Horn]

Well, I don't want to dive into it right away just because. Cause they make some convincing arguments. I better withhold judgment. You know, make sure I've heard all the sides. But they do have some convincing arguments.

[Rowan Horn]

There's actually a flat Earth pizza place

[Sam Mullins]

here that's actually a really good idea for a pizza place. That part is true. Their beliefs cover the whole spectrum. Roger and Diana are interested in UFO and Bigfoot stuff. They attended a Y2K convention. But they also believe darker things, like thinking incorrectly that 9, 11 was an inside job and that the astronauts who died in the Challenger explosion are still alive.

[Diana Horn]

And so, yes, Rowan did grow up in a family that was looking for, you know, the more extreme truth that you're not going to hear from mainstream because mainstream might be hiding stuff from you.

[Rowan Horn]

I don't trust what's standard, the mainstream thing. And I'm always looking for the alternative because I don't trust the mainstream.

[Sam Mullins]

This all started to turn from philosophies Rowan believed to things he actually would carry out one Thanksgiving Day when he was 9. If the acne was Rowan's turning point, that Thanksgiving was the starting point.

[Rowan Horn]

That whole thing was trauma.

[Sam Mullins]

You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.

That Thanksgiving, Diana was cooking in the kitchen, and nine Year old Rowan was riding his bike in the parking lot of the apartment complex where they lived.

[Rowan Horn]

Yeah, I was riding over a speed bump too slowly and it kind of got wobbly and it fell over.

[Diana Horn]

And then candle bars into his gut.

[Rowan Horn]

And I hobbled back to my house

[Diana Horn]

and he comes in and I crash on my bike. I don't feel good.

[Rowan Horn]

And I just sprawled out on the sofa in pain. Like, crying is horrible. Like I felt like I was dying inside because I was. And then my aunt said, hey, we should take him to the hospital. We should call an ambulance. So my aunt finally called an ambulance.

[Sam Mullins]

When they finally got to the hospital, they found out that Rowan had ruptured his spleen. So he had an emergency splenectomy. It was right in the nick of

[Rowan Horn]

time when the doctor said, okay, yeah, if it had just been like an hour later, we couldn't have said, he would have died.

[Sam Mullins]

You can live a normal life without a spleen. The other organs in your body sort of pick up the slack to make up for the spleen not doing its thing. But a person without a spleen is more vulnerable to getting sick and can have a tougher time fighting off infections. During his time in the hospital, doctors would swing by to tell Rowan about how his life and body would be a little bit different post splenectomy.

[Rowan Horn]

And I was told that you're gonna have a compromised immune system. They're like, oh, if you get some pneumonia now, that could kill you, like other people it wouldn't kill. But now if you get ammonia, you could die.

[Sam Mullins]

This information sat extremely heavy in Rowan's nine year old mind. I just came within an hour of dying, he thought, and now I'm compromised. I fell weird on my bike, so now I'm more susceptible to illness or infection for the rest of my life.

[Rowan Horn]

So I had that in my mind. It was then became programmed into me to think, okay, I better be extra healthy. I have this compromised immune system now.

[Sam Mullins]

The doctors told him, don't worry too much. We can prescribe you stuff to help your immune system.

[Rowan Horn]

They were going to give me some pneumonia shots every so often.

[Sam Mullins]

But where most nine year olds had been raised to see doctors as experts

[Rowan Horn]

with answers, we're very skeptical of the doctors and any conventional treatments because the conspiracy movement, it does have a good mix with the health movement. And we were always listening to those conspiracy radio, and they'd always be saying, no, we should, there's better ways. So that's the great thing. You could be watching Alex Jones about some conspiracy, but Then now they're talking about some health topic.

[Sam Mullins]

When Rowan comes to a fork in the path, he tends not to think, should I go left or should I go right? He thinks, who made this fork? I don't trust forks.

[Rowan Horn]

And I decided instead of continue on the vaccines for the immune system, whatever, I decided I was just gonna just eat really healthy, just be the healthiest person ever, and I'll figure, maybe my body will figure it out if I'm healthy enough.

[Sam Mullins]

It can be devastating to have life tell you that your body's not invincible. But Rowan took this news in and said, nope, not if I can help it. He became obsessed with finding a way to tilt the odds back in his favor. And this is where the one thing that everyone in Vernon knew about Rowan, that he was obsessed with his diet, this is where that began.

[Rowan Horn]

It was me trying to, like, treat my anxiety around my own fear of death. Like, my fear of dying from some sickness. Me having control over my diet and fixing it was probably me trying to, like, comfort myself. And, like, I do have control. I'm not gonna die. If I'm healthy enough, I can control whether I get sick or not.

[Sam Mullins]

Rowan started taking a very strong interest in what he put in his body, and he started being a pest about the food that his mom was making. He'd roll up in the kitchen and

[Diana Horn]

be like, okay, mommy, I want to be really healthy. Be sure you cook healthy dinners. No, I won't eat that jarred spaghetti sauce. Look at it. It has that ingredients. Okay, I'll make homemade spaghetti sauce. Did you put salt in it? I can't eat that. You put salt in it. And I'm like, boy, is this kid a fanatic.

[Sam Mullins]

But Diana and Rowan were close, and Rowan was the baby. So she'd make the Rowan specific spaghetti sauce and whatever else he wanted. Rowan started bringing home things that he'd read about supplements and hyper specific health foods. His brother Gabriel would open the fridge for a snack, and there'd be strange jars and bottles and be like, must be for Rowan.

[Gabriel Horn]

Yeah. He would have ideas, and so certain products would show up. Some kind of special butter jars mailed to us of, like, grass powder from somewhere.

[Sam Mullins]

How things escalated from weird supplements and demanding, artisanally crafted spaghetti sauce to suddenly this kid who'd never been in trouble before, running away and cutting off all communication with the family he clearly loved. To understand how that happened, we have to go back to where we began. The acne.

[Rowan Horn]

I think the acne was around, like, 12, 13, 14, right? Yeah. I just started to really get bad acne. And I remember making me really made me really insecure and just thinking, yeah, just thinking, man, that's horrible. Looking in the mirror, ugh. I'm like, this is awful. I look horrible, right? Pimples everywhere.

[Diana Horn]

We would, like, try maybe rubbing alcohol and maybe a little hydrogen peroxide and a little of this and a little of that to see what we could do about him. Before you know it, his face was like red and raw and boy, it was terrible.

[Rowan Horn]

And nothing really helped that much.

[Sam Mullins]

So he starts thinking about the super healthy diet he'd been sticking to since losing his spleen. It seemed to have worked. So far, none of the doctor's predictions had come true. He thinks, well, I've managed to not get sick once in years. Surely I can cure teenage acne. So Rowan turns once again, not to doctors, but to the Internet. But it's not the Internet we know today. Like, if you think it's hard to find sound information online now, just try to remember the chaos of the Napster, ask Jeeves, GeoCities Internet of the early 2000s. You'd be better off looking for answers scrawled on a public toilet seat or spray painted on an overpass.

[Rowan Horn]

And then I started researching online how to cure acne myself. And then the people said, oh, it's all diet. It's all toxins in your diet. Oh, you're not clean enough inside. Oh, you need to have a cleaner diet. And all these people saying it's all diet related further made me obsessed about diet. Because then it wasn't just about my immune system. Now, I had two reasons. Now it was vanity and my insecurity was my acne. I wanted to fix that, but then it was also my immune system.

[Sam Mullins]

He's now doubling down the rabbit hole when he stumbles on a word that he'd never heard before.

[Rowan Horn]

And they were just saying, oh, fruitarianism. Be a fruitarian, your acne will go away. You'll be the healthiest person ever.

[Sam Mullins]

Fruitarianism is exactly what it sounds like. Fruit and nothing but the fruit, so help you God? Steve Jobs was a famous practitioner of fruitarianism. And one time when Ashton Kutcher was dabbling in method acting, he was cast as Jobs in a film. So he ate a mostly fruit based diet leading up to shooting, but he ended up in the hospital with a diet caused pancreatitis. It's not a balanced diet is the thing. But Rowan is fixated on this idea. And he was lured in part by the one thing both conspiracy and Mainstream minded teens can agree models.

[Rowan Horn]

There was a model who ran a popular forum and she said she had horrible acne. She said when she was a fruitarian, all her acne went away.

[Sam Mullins]

Rowan was in. Since losing his spleen, his family had gotten used to Rowan blossoming into a food zealot. But this started to feel less like a diet and more like a religion.

[Diana Horn]

Did he tell you why he went to fruitarian? It wasn't just healthy. It was to save the life of the plant.

[Sam Mullins]

Did you know that he didn't even allow himself to eat anything with a root?

[Rowan Horn]

The rule was a fruitarian shouldn't eat a root. Cause that's not a fruit. Because it's killing the plant. So it extends the morality of caring about animals. Extends it to plants. Well, let's care about plants, too. Why are you gonna kill the carrot? What if it's alive? Why are you gonna kill the onion? The life of the onion matters.

[Sam Mullins]

It was like going from casual Catholicism to Opus dei.

You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.

Rowan's health obsession started to veer into hypochondria. He stopped wanting to leave the house. Hung out with friends less. And it got to the point that. That he didn't even want to go to school anymore. Rowan wasn't the most social animal to begin with, so this alarmed his mom,

[Diana Horn]

so he was afraid to go to school. And I said, okay, this is ridiculous. So we went to the doctor, and I said, can you give him a clean bill of health or convince him that it's safe to go to school?

[Sam Mullins]

School was the one place where he would mingle with peers in real life. So the doctor examines Rowan and he says he seems to be in good health generally. But then Diana says something, just kind of in passing, an offhand remark that would have unintended consequences. She had to say something. Rowan had always been lean, but the combination of his new diet and a sudden growth spurt had made him concerningly thin.

[Diana Horn]

Where if you're too thin, your elbows look a little too pronounced when your knees look too pronounced. And I was noticing that on him.

[Sam Mullins]

But she couldn't convince Rowan of this, so she turned to the doctor for validation.

[Diana Horn]

And by the way, don't you think he's too thin?

[Sam Mullins]

The doctor does a quick body mass index evaluation, and they said, you know what?

[Diana Horn]

He is.

[Sam Mullins]

So Diana tells the doctor about what's been going on with her son's limited diet. How he flat out refuses to eat anything that he doesn't consider to be healthy.

[Diana Horn]

And the doctor said, really? Well, let's take him to a psychologist and get this figured out.

[Sam Mullins]

Without fully realizing it, Diana has just done the one thing that the horns fear most. She's gotten her son involved with the system. It starts with the psychologist their family doctor referred them to. When Rowan meets with the shrink, he, as always, is more than willing to divulge every detail about his dietary beliefs. After which the psychologist sits down with Diana and tells her he's extremely alarmed.

[Diana Horn]

He says, oh, yeah, he's killing himself. And he said, do you realize your son is mentally ill? I never agreed with the doctor that he was mentally ill. I just thought he was a fanatic.

[Sam Mullins]

Nonetheless, she was worried. So when the shrink says, your son needs to get treatment, and for anorexia, she sent him to an outpatient program. The problem was anorexia was not the right box to put Rowan in. He was never against eating food. Food was his favorite thing. Every time one of his siblings would come into the kitchen, there would be Rowan.

[Gabriel Horn]

Rowan was eating a lot, right? All the time. It was almost like he was always getting some salad together or always working on some food thing. And so it would have been nonsensical to tell him to eat because he was always in the process of doing something for food.

[Sam Mullins]

So Rowan goes into this program that's not at all designed to solve his actual problem.

[Rowan Horn]

They started to think, yeah, I have anorexia. They had this idea that I had anorexia when really I had orthorexia, which

[Diana Horn]

is the fear of unhealthy food. And they made the mistake of trying to get him into an anorexic program when he had a completely different condition.

[Sam Mullins]

An eating disorder specialist we spoke with Ariel Maharaj, said this misdiagnosis didn't surprise him, that orthorexia is much less common, so people often mistake it for anorexia. It's not even included in the dsm, the manual used to diagnose mental illnesses. Today, orthorexia sometimes presents like anorexia. Both restrict food in a way, but an orthorexic is less concerned with the amount of food and more concerned with the purity of the food. It's a very black and white belief that some food is good and makes you healthy, and some is bad and will literally kill you.

[Rowan Horn]

Oh, you're not clean enough inside. Oh, you need to have a cleaner diet.

[Sam Mullins]

This fed right into his orthorexia. The specialist told us that part of the drive toward orthorexia is the desire to control and the uncontrollable, that if you just eat perfectly enough, you can avoid and defeat the scariest things in life. Sickness, death. Which is also what often attracts people to conspiracy theories. Feeling like you have an explanation for the inexplicable can feel like a sort of control. When Rowan started attending the anorexia outpatient program, he refused to eat their food. Not because he didn't like food, but because he didn't like their food. To him, their impure, processed hospital food. But they missed that distinction, so the group kicked him out.

[Diana Horn]

And then I'm like, oh, great, now what will we do? Then the doctors are like, let's just try putting him in a mental hospital.

[Sam Mullins]

But the problem with a mental hospital would be the same for Rowan. Rowan would flat out refuse to eat hospital food.

[Diana Horn]

And they're like, you know, that's okay. If he doesn't eat our food, we'll just let him lose weight until he gets to the point where we can,

[Sam Mullins]

like, tube him, intubate him, force feed him.

[Diana Horn]

And I'm like, gee, this doesn't really sound like the best avenue for my son that I'm not even convinced is

[Sam Mullins]

mentally ill. Diana could start to feel the tendrils of the system take hold of Rowan. She wanted to just detangle it all, to just take her boy home, go back to the drawing board as a family. But it was too late.

[Diana Horn]

They're like, okay, if you don't agree to this, we are going to call the child protective service. And I said, well, okay, if that's what you're going to do. I'd rather discuss this with the child protective service because they're interested in the well being of the child. Maybe when we all talk about this, they'll also agree there must be a better approach to this in the mental hospital and the tubing.

[Sam Mullins]

Diana says she was fully complying with the authorities, checking in with doctors, bringing him to appointments. But the system wrestled control away from her. According to Diana, they said, put him in the mental hospital or we're going to take him away. All this time, Diana had been afraid for Rowan, and now he was, too. But Roan was afraid not for his health. He was afraid that he was about to lose his freedom.

[Rowan Horn]

I'm just afraid of authority in general. I'm just a fearful person. I'm afraid of the government. I'm afraid of cops. I'm afraid of anything. Anyone who has power makes me afraid.

[Sam Mullins]

Ever since Rowan heard the words mental hospital, he couldn't shake this growing sense of dread. It brought up a very specific image in his mind, like One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.

[Rowan Horn]

One of my favorite movies. And I've always not liked the psychiatric industry. Anything that, like, forces people to do things against their will. It's just. It's always been a nightmare to me.

[Sam Mullins]

Knowing now the conspiracy diet that he'd been absorbing his whole youth conspiracies whose staple was the system is out to get you. Guard your freedom at all costs. What happened next now feels to me almost inevitable. If you grow up believing that your own government was responsible for 911 and lied to you about the moon landing, vaccines, school shootings, why would you turn yourself over to those authorities? Rowan was now keeping one eye on the door, waiting for the knock that meant the authorities were coming for him. Determined that if they did, he wouldn't be there.

[Rowan Horn]

I was like, ready, like, let's drop the hat to go. I thought about it ahead of time, okay, if they're there at the door, I'm gonna do something. I gotta go somewhere.

[Diana Horn]

And then one day, to our great surprise and horror and amazement, a knock on the door.

[Rowan Horn]

It's the morning. I'm eating oranges, peeling some oranges, you know, in the, in the kitchen as usual, I hear a knock at the door.

[Diana Horn]

And here's the child protective service and a police officer.

[Rowan Horn]

Our kitchen's kind of hidden a little bit, so I. I'm out of sight,

[Diana Horn]

but I'm looking and say, this is our court order. We, we're allowed to do of like a 40. There's some kind of a 40, 48 hour seizure where they're allowed to take someone who may or may not be mentally ill in order to diagnose them for their own safety.

[Rowan Horn]

I might have even heard the name Rowan or whatever. And then I really freak out.

[Diana Horn]

And we also have this thing where we're taking you to court for custody. And I'm like, really? This is just over the top because I was willing to cooperate. I just wanted to know if the child protective service thought this was the best thing for him. And here you've, like, come against me.

[Rowan Horn]

Oh, my gosh. I think, oh, gosh, I gotta go immediately. So just immediately I drop everything I'm doing.

[Diana Horn]

He's like, they're gonna put me in a mental hospital and they're gonna try to take custody away from my parents. So there's a sliding back door in the kitchen.

[Rowan Horn]

I try to open the sliding glass door as quietly as I can, and then I just Bolt.

[Diana Horn]

Eventually they would have gotten around to saying, well, I don't care what you say, ma', am, we're gonna go get him. But by then he was gone.

[Sam Mullins]

Rowan runs across the lawn and hurdles his frame over the fence.

[Rowan Horn]

I'm just running and I make a turn and I hop another fence.

[Sam Mullins]

He's not sure if they saw him and there's bushes.

[Rowan Horn]

And I'm just thinking I gotta hide around here for a while in case they start driving their cop car around. I'm now on the alert wondering what they saw because I didn't even bother looking behind me because I was too afraid. For all I know, they were following me.

[Sam Mullins]

In Rowan's 16 year old orthorexic mind, he genuinely thinks that his life is in danger. He thinks that if he's caught, they'll force him to eat poison and he'll die. He is running for his life. Rowan hunkers down in a bush. Once he was reasonably sure that no one saw him, he tried to get comfortable. He figured he'd have to stay here for a few hours, at least until it got dark. He knew what he'd do then. He'd go and tap on the window of the only person in the world he knew would understand the danger he was in. The one person he trusted with his life. Chameleon is a production of Campside Media with Sony Music. Wild Boys was reported and written by me, Sam Mullins. It's produced by Abukara Dahn and our editor is Karen Duffin. Our senior producer is Ashley Ann Krigbom. Sound design and mixing by Hannis Brown and Garrett Tiedemann. Original music by Hannis Brown, Garrett Tiedemann, Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Our fact checker is Alex Yavlon. Special thanks to our operations team, Doug Slaywin, Alia Papes and Allison Haney. The executive producers at Campside Media are Matt Sher, Vanessa Gregoriadis, Josh Dean and Adam Hoffman.

[Diana Horn]

Off.

[Sam Mullins]

If you or someone you know is struggling with your relationship with food, please know you're not alone. There are free confidential helplines with people just waiting to help in the us you can call or text the National Eating disorder association at 1-800-931-2237. That's 1-800-931-2237. In Canada, the National Eating Disorder Information center hotline is 1-866-633-4220. That's 1-866-633-4220. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. Don't wanna wait until next week for the next episode of Chameleon. You don't have to subscribe to Chameleon uninterrupted on Apple Podcasts to listen to the next episode. Right now, you'll get early access to new episodes every week completely ad free. Plus you'll unlock exclusive bonus series Art of the Con. Just visit the Chameleon show page on Apple Podcasts to start your free trial today.