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- [00:02]
Narrator/Host
Before we begin, just a quick note to say thank you to Apple Podcasts for selecting Wild Boys as part of its series Essentials this month, which recognizes podcast series that will captivate you from start to finish. To celebrate all October long, you can listen to the entire series completely ad free. And if you want to dive into even more can't put down true crime stories like Wild Boys. Check out the Binge channel. Every month subscribers will get a binge drop of a brand new true crime series that's all episodes all at once ad free. Search for the Binge channel on Apple Podcasts to learn more. Thanks for listening.
- [00:43]
Rowan Horn
What is what do you want me to say?
- [00:46]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
You have found Chameleon Season three Wild Boys, a production of Campside Media oh.
- [00:56]
Rowan Horn
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.
- [01:05]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Care Before Rowan got on the plane to leave Canada, back in the Vernon Hospital as he came to realize what was waiting for him in the US.
- [01:15]
Diana Horn (Mother)
How they were going to take him to America and do these things to him, he put on a black outfit and said, mom, should I escape? Should I run out of here and jump my pants? And I'm like, no, let's just go with this and hope it doesn't turn out too bad.
- [01:32]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
So with his fingers crossed, Rowan is taken by jet from the Okanagan to his native California, where a police escort ushers him through the doors of the hospital. And he's checked in.
- [01:43]
Rowan Horn
And it turns out when I get there, yeah, they're much worse than the Canadian people.
- [01:49]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Despite having been properly diagnosed in Canada and thus properly treated, and despite the remarkable turnaround he'd made with his weight and health in the past month back in the US it seemed like the memo about all of this was lost in the handoff. The American doctors did what they'd done before he ran and treated him as an anorexic, not orthorexic.
- [02:11]
Rowan Horn
They're bringing me plate after plate of very unhealthy food, greasy, disgusting food that I don't want to eat.
- [02:18]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Roan would ask, like, do you guys have any Whole Foods? An avocado, a health bar? And they'd say no. But what we can offer you is the standard issue hospital cuisine.
- [02:29]
Rowan Horn
Expecting me to eat it. And I'm like, what? I'm not gonna eat this. They were basically stopping me from gaining weight.
- [02:35]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
And Rowan is almost completely alone in this fight. After weeks of having his brother swing by with health food and then having his mom by his Side day and night in the Canadian hospital. The hospital won't let Diana visit for the first 48 hours. And then when she finally is allowed.
- [02:52]
Diana Horn (Mother)
In, you're like, okay, we have this lunch. Visiting hours. You know, you've got from 12 to one to be with him, and that's it. You leave.
- [02:59]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
She had one hour a day with Rowan to try and help him by bringing him healthy food he wanted. But there was a caveat.
- [03:06]
Rowan Horn
But I could only eat it for the time they were there, and I had to eat it right in front of them.
- [03:10]
Diana Horn (Mother)
He'd have an hour to try to cram as much of this in as he could.
- [03:13]
Rowan Horn
So I just stuffed my face for an hour.
- [03:15]
Diana Horn (Mother)
And then they're like, time's up. You gotta go. Take the food with you.
- [03:18]
Rowan Horn
They forced me to eat it all in an hour period. It's like, so stupid.
- [03:22]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
It was confusing and maddening. Roan was like, look, we've already found a method that works. I'm a Canadian success story.
- [03:30]
Rowan Horn
You know, it's like, that doesn't make sense. Let me be a person and then choose my diet again. As long as it's a weight gaining type of diet. Like, I was actually gaining weight. In the Canadian hospital, I gained 30 pounds.
- [03:42]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
But the staff wouldn't budge. So Diana had to try other means to try and get some calories into Rowan.
- [03:49]
Diana Horn (Mother)
I would try to, like, hide an energy bar under his mattress or something so he could have a chance to get these calories. And they'd go check the room. After we left, I found this energy bar. You were hiding in it. Take it with you.
- [04:02]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
While the food and visitation rules were infuriating, there was one silver lining in this hospital. People that Roan connected with.
- [04:11]
Rowan Horn
It was cool, like getting to talk to the anorexics in there and the cutters and the. All the mental disorders.
- [04:19]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
What was cool about it?
- [04:21]
Rowan Horn
I just like talking to people with mental disorders. I relate. I'm like, yeah, and relate on some level.
- [04:29]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
While Rowan was doing his best on the inside, Roger and Diana were in their own fight with the system on the outside.
- [04:36]
Diana Horn (Mother)
Meanwhile, through all of this, there were court visits where the child protective service was trying to see if they would succeed at getting custody or not.
- [04:46]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
They finally had their son back, and they were afraid they were going to lose him all over again.
- [04:51]
Diana Horn (Mother)
I think I noticed for the first time in my life what it's like to experience stress at a physical level.
- [04:58]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
One day in the middle of all this, Diana started feeling a strange sensation.
- [05:03]
Diana Horn (Mother)
I felt my body on fire. And red needles pricking me all over.
- [05:07]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
She started having a panic attack. Not knowing what else to do, she dialed 911.
- [05:12]
Diana Horn (Mother)
They said, 91 1, what's your emergency? And I'm like, well, they're going to harm my child. They're going to put him in a mental hospital and feed him.
- [05:24]
Rowan Horn
Wait, wait, wait.
- [05:25]
Diana Horn (Mother)
Who do you want me to direct this emergency to? The doctors, the police, or the fire department? And I'm like, I don't know. The doctors are doing this.
- [05:34]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
It was all the worst kind of vindication. Everything that Rowan feared about this hospital to the point that he fled the country. It all felt like it was turning out exactly how he thought it would. Instead of trying to help him. To Rowan, it seemed like they were trying to break him. When Roger and Diana get their moment before a judge, they tell him how the Canadian hospital had worked with Rowan and he'd gained a bunch of weight, but this hospital was. Wouldn't work with them. They weren't taking into consideration his true diagnosis, so they were giving him the wrong treatment, restricting what he could eat and how long he could eat it for.
- [06:13]
Diana Horn (Mother)
And the judge is hearing about some of this stuff, and he's like, okay.
- [06:19]
Rowan Horn
My parents got a court order to have me removed from that hospital.
- [06:22]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Wow.
- [06:23]
Rowan Horn
Because the hospital is actually interfering with my weight gain.
- [06:26]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
So finally, the better part of a year after he slipped out the kitchen sliding door. Right. Rowan returned home, thus ending this bizarre chapter of their lives with one postscript. The one unresolved thing for the town of Vernon was the boy's utter lack of remorse. To this day, that's the main thing that people in Vernon remember about the bush boys, that they never said sorry and they never said thank you. But after Rowan got home back to his normal life, one day, he wrote Tammy a letter.
- [07:01]
Rowan Horn
He wrote me an email thanking me. And this was, oh, man, I'm gonna get emotional because you just feel so duped the whole time, right? So you feel so duped in all that energy and just kind of a waste for everyone in the community. And he actually wrote me an email or something, and he nicely and just told me, like, something about me saving his life and how I was their kind of like their surrogate mother for I was just such an instrumental person in his life. And he really did kind of acknowledge that. So just that was really impactful to me because it was like, you know what? Of course I'm going to forgive you.
- [07:45]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
With Vernon in the rearview, the boys now had the rest of their lives ahead of them. Which takes us to one of the biggest questions I and anyone who's ever heard this story has. Whatever became of those bush boys and what they've done with their lives might surprise you. Or maybe if you've come this far on the journey, it might not surprise you at all. I'm Sam Mullins, and from Campside Media, this is Chameleon Wild Boys. Our final episode, Part nine, Eternal Life.
- [08:32]
Narrator/Host
You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.
- [08:43]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
When Rowan returned home, it was, in some sense, to a very different home than the one he left. It was, for the first time in his life, a home without Kyle in it. A decision that was sort of decreed to Kyle.
- [08:55]
Rowan Horn
The general feeling was that, okay, let's just. Let's have you not be around Rowan because, you know, people. Some people don't think that's a good idea right now. So I'm like, okay, fine. You know, I don't wanna. What am I like? You know, like, this is fine. Yeah, okay, I'll take some time away. And I went away somewhere.
- [09:14]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
And where was that somewhere that Kyle went? I'll give you a guess. Wait, you won't get it. He came back to Canada and got in first try.
- [09:22]
Rowan Horn
I remember hitchhiking from the east coast of Canada to the West coast in 2004.
- [09:31]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Wait a second. That's like the same year that this happened? Yeah, I think.
- [09:36]
Rowan Horn
I think I hitchhiked in the fall.
- [09:38]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Of 2004, which begs the question, what does one have to do to not be allowed into Canada? I was even told by someone in Vernon that he came back through town on his hitchhiking tour. While Kyle was finally on the Canadian adventure he'd always talked about. Back at home, Rowan was learning to manage his orthorexia. His weight and health had stabilized, and he was back in high school doing independent study. And he was inches away from graduating when he got a much more appealing offer. Another land of fruit and plenty beckoned.
- [10:13]
Rowan Horn
I was about 10 credits away from finishing when some of my friends were going to fly to Hawaii. So I decided to go with them.
- [10:22]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
There was some sort of plan about starting a small raw foodist catering business, but that was quickly scrapped upon arrival, and Rowan's two friends bailed on Hawaii altogether. But Rowan stayed for a familiar reason.
- [10:36]
Rowan Horn
And then I went to the Big island and lived there for nine months on a fruit farm. And I was so free, you know, I was free to, like, go all around the island and hitchhike and, you know, hanging out with people because there's constantly people coming through, so you're talking to new people all the time.
- [10:54]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
The vibes he describes in Hawaii sound very similar to the Canadian hostel. But this time Rowan could actually be himself. It felt like he was making up for lost time. He hadn't been very social as a teenager, and then there was the whole Canadian thing. So he was experiencing the adolescent elation of first time away from home, first job, first party all rolled into one.
- [11:19]
Rowan Horn
And there's like drum circles at night and, like, crazy parties, you know? Right. I missed the whole party life because I never, like, went to parties in high school or anything. So, like, you know, that nine months in Hawaii, it was weird. It was wild.
- [11:40]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Weird and wild. And as he soon discovered, often nude.
- [11:44]
Rowan Horn
There was a nudist element there that was. That was weird. That was a shock.
- [11:50]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
There were so many things that made Hawaii feel like the perfect place for Rowan. But this thing really tripped him up. It was a few steps outside his comfort zone, and he had a very Rowan internal wrestle about it.
- [12:04]
Rowan Horn
You start to feel weird if you don't accept them. And, you know, you feel weird if, like, oh, you're covering yourself, like, by you not being open to it. It's almost like, in a sense, judging them, like you're better than them or somehow you're more moral or somehow you're more pure.
- [12:20]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
But Rowan decides, well, when in a Hawaiian nudist fruit farm, I end up.
- [12:25]
Rowan Horn
Just adopting their little nudist thing because in a way to make them feel more comfortable. You know what I mean?
- [12:32]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Rowan could have stayed in Hawaii fore. But even as he dropped trou partied it up, let loose. What Rowan couldn't let loose was his own mind. The mind that reveled not in partying, but in pondering asking the big questions. With Kyle, that mind is still going. Like when he opts in to the nudity, he doesn't just opt in and be like, I guess I'm a naked person now. He opts in and he thinks, what does it mean that I opted in?
- [13:04]
Rowan Horn
Wouldn't have been my first choice, but you go into a culture, but we decide ahead of time, we get to decide what culture this is about, separating people based upon their preferences. And it just all leads to cool philosophical questions. But I don't know.
- [13:18]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
There, under the only in Hawaii canopy of stars at night, surf in his ears, Rowan couldn't stop wondering if this really was the life that he wanted.
- [13:29]
Rowan Horn
Though it was very fun, you know, doing all this Stuff and living life with the hippies, you know, the hippie life in Hawaii. It felt like a self indulgent life. Like, this is fun. I could live like this. But then I started to feel guilty. It just started to feel like, what am I accomplishing here for the world?
- [13:49]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
So Rowan put on a pair of bottoms and flew home, where he and Kyle were reunited. And they jumped right back into their trademark philosophical, deep dive conversations. There they sat at the beginning of their adult lives, puzzling over what matters to us. Like, what is the ultimate cause? What should we devote our lives to?
- [14:16]
Rowan Horn
Like, really deep, like, myopically focused on something. You know, just like, let's really figure this out. Let's, like, obsess about this.
- [14:25]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
And they do. Once again, the Horne brothers hole up until finally they realize we got it. We figured out the one thing most worthy of committing our lives to.
- [14:37]
Rowan Horn
And so we decided that that's eternal life.
- [14:41]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Eternal life. Like living forever. Not in the afterlife, in heaven or hell, but here on this planet, in these bodies.
- [14:51]
Rowan Horn
How are we going to live forever? Let's approach that question very carefully and stack all the odds in our favor.
- [14:58]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Rowan sounds like he's giving a halftime speech.
- [15:01]
Rowan Horn
Even if it's a long shot, like, even if it's hard, even if it's considered crazy. Like, even if it's considered. That's like. That's like ridiculous. Like, if it's that important, you just go for it. You just put everything there.
- [15:16]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
But what could they bring to the extreme longevity movement? They weren't scientists or politicians, so what could they do for the cause?
- [15:26]
Rowan Horn
I think what I brought to it was a kind of obsession, you know, because it's like, it seemed like the most important thing, and it always felt like not enough people focus on that as their life focus. You know, they have different. Different focuses or careers or this or that. I just didn't feel like enough people were focusing on what I thought was the most important goal, which was to live forever, you know?
- [15:56]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
And Roan in particular gets this idea. Why not marry? My two passions, eternal life and online content. Rowan logs on and sets up his own YouTube channel.
- [16:09]
Rowan Horn
It's your friendly neighborhood eternal life fan, Rowan Horn. I want you to watch my videos and realize how horrible death is. We're told that death is inevitable. We're gonna get old, and we're gonna die. That's the natural course of life. And you cannot escape that fate.
- [16:26]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Not if Roan can help it. Deathtodying. Roan preaches that if you want it enough, eternal life is coming. You just need to stay alive long enough for the scientists to cure and reverse aging.
- [16:39]
Rowan Horn
We have to cure aging. I think aging is the biggest barricade that's going to prevent us from living forever.
- [16:46]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Rowan makes dozens of videos and posts, and then hundreds. And they're about a lot more than just eternal life. His content's point of view swings wildly from atheistic to devoutly Christian. It's both pro Donald Trump and pro Black Lives Matter. I've seen him post anti Muslim sentiments. He's also very concerned about climate change. And he has an obsession with Alanis Morissette and the messages of Alanis Morissette's music. Honestly, it can be a little dizzying, upsetting even to scroll through his stuff. Rowan's content is all over the map, but it does always come back to the central message of eternal life.
- [17:33]
Rowan Horn
I want to live forever. You don't you want to live forever? Let's. Let's all live forever.
- [17:45]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Rowan there with his mom on backup.
- [17:47]
Rowan Horn
Don't want to die. Don't want to die. Don't want to die.
- [17:52]
Diana Horn (Mother)
Sing along with us.
- [17:53]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Yes. His videos started racking up hundreds and then thousands of views and subscribers. Which leads improbably to Rowan joining the staff of a presidential campaign. Rowan on the campaign trail. Coming up.
- [18:20]
Narrator/Host
You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.
- [18:32]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Rowan was brought on as a volunteer to become the official videographer of the 2016 Transhumanist Party candidate. Then there's the third party presidential candidate running on a platform to help people live forever. This is not a joke, and it's unlikely you'll ever meet a presidential candidate as strange as Zoltan Istvan. Zoltan istvan for President 2016. A single issue candidate meets the single issue Horn brothers. Roan boards the campaign vehicle, which I cannot stress Enough is a 40 year old motorhome modified to look like a coffin and is dubbed the Immortality Bus.
- [19:10]
Rowan Horn
I'm about to board the immortality bus. This is it. This is the moment that I've been waiting for.
- [19:18]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
At a certain point, Kyle joins the bus too. And for months, they drive all across America with a talking robot riding shotguns, spreading the good word at each stop. But before he and his volunteers, Kyle and Rowan Horn, get to the nation's capital, they toured Alcor this afternoon. Each person Rowan meets along the way, Roan asks them his standard icebreaker. Do you want to live forever? In the corners of the frame of a documentary about the campaign. There's Rowan standing with his video camera atop a tripod, watching curiously as he sees Zoltan get a computer chip implanted in his hand in some guy's garage at a biohacking gathering. Or we see Kyle watching curiously as a CEO gives a tour of the stainless steel casks where he hopes to one day be cryogenically frozen. By the end of the campaign, Roan seems more enthusiastic for the cause than the man running for president. You can see the wind come out of Zoltan's sails, but Rowan's spirit seems unflappable, unchanged.
- [20:23]
Rowan Horn
I'm talking about living a hundred years. I'm not talking about living 200 years, 300 years. That's for amateurs. I'm talking about immortality. Living forever.
- [20:34]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
But there's a fine line between joyful zeal and anxious zeal, especially when the thing fueling the enthusiasm is fear. For Rowan, the fear that drives him is the fear that has tormented him since elementary school, since he lost his spleen.
- [20:50]
Rowan Horn
I would fear so much the idea that I could die at any moment. I would have that in the background of my mind too often like that. It would cause me too much stress, like physical stress in my body. Like I wasn't channeling the fear, right? And so I just. Just living with that and feeling like I could do nothing about that vulnerability. That's the bad type of fear. The bad type of fear is where you feel like you can't do anything about it. You can't work towards something, you know?
- [21:24]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Somewhere along the line, his fear of dying morphed into a belief that maybe he didn't have to. And he started making every decision on the basis of, does this bring me closer to or further from death? And when you base your life on that, the walls close in on what you allow yourself to do.
- [21:44]
Rowan Horn
Safety first should be the thing, because everything is. Everything boils down to safety. Everything boils down to survival.
- [21:52]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Rowan doesn't get on planes anymore. Too dangerous.
- [21:55]
Rowan Horn
If you fly in a plane and that plane goes down, could be the end of your entire existence.
- [22:01]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Rowan abstains from sex.
- [22:03]
Rowan Horn
If you get an STD and die from that, then you've lost everything.
- [22:08]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
No gluten, no alcohol. Avoid making enemies. With every decision he makes, with every salad, every smoothie, every time he declines a plane flight, he's laughing in the face of death. He's turned his whole life into one long marshmallow test. No, I don't want a marshmallow now. I want an infinite amount of marshmallows in Eternity. Not to sound like Werner Herzog, but Rowan is fighting a fight that he will lose. But he thinks if he just does enough, if he plays the perfect game, he can do what no living thing has ever done. And trying to hold all that gets heavy sometimes.
- [22:52]
Rowan Horn
It's gonna happen. I'm gonna will myself to do it. I'm gonna put all my focus on that. It's gonna happen, you know, like you can have power to will something into.
- [23:03]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Existence. Rowan stops talking and he starts to cry. Are you all right?
- [23:11]
Rowan Horn
Yeah.
- [23:13]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
What. What are you thinking? What are you feeling?
- [23:18]
Rowan Horn
Um, just various, I guess. Disappoint. Disappointments. Yeah.
- [23:34]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
What were you disappointed about?
- [23:40]
Rowan Horn
Just. Just trying to help the world. I try to be perfect, you know, when you try to be perfect, you put a lot of your life becomes.
- [23:59]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Very serious, you know, Being witness to Rowan seems to provoke this sort of dueling reaction in people because you know how this ends for Rowan. You're positive that you do. Death will come for him, as it does all of us, but he's so certain that it won't. That a small part of you that doesn't make sense kind of hopes that he pulls it off. The best description of this feeling Rowan inspires in People was in a New York Times magazine article about the presidential campaign that Rowan volunteered on. The journalist who wrote the piece, Mark o' Connell set out to profile the candidate. But in the article, you feel his attention being pulled in Rowan's direction. He becomes very taken with this unconventional 20 something volunteer after his time on the bus with Rowan. O' Connell's piece bids farewell to him with this passage. I felt a strange tenderness for him swelling in my chest, an almost fraternal instinct of protection very much at odds with any properly journalistic imperatives. I agreed with practically nothing that came out of his mouth. The entire time we spent together, he was as strange a person as I'd ever met. I found myself hoping that he would not be disillusioned, that he would maintain, as long as he lived, the sense of his own exemption from death. Zoltan's presidential campaign ended in Washington with a whimper. The plan all along was to symbolically post the transhumanist Bill of Rights to the Capitol with Rowan filming. But the plan was quelled by a single security guard who just wasn't having it. He said, you can't post that here. So everyone kind of shrugged. And just like that, the campaign was over. Ron and Kyle returned home from the campaign trail, but continued their own eternal life campaign online and eventually moved back in together in a warehouse in Nevada. Rowan wasn't really working, and Kyle would work various jobs remotely on his computer to make ends meet. Rowan did have one steady job for a bit. He got engaged to a Serbian woman who he met through his YouTube channel. And it felt like, I gotta get a job now. So he got one making salads in a restaurant. But when they broke up, he quit. Roan and Kyle tried starting a business at one point, too. After helping their friend Rebecca start her health food business, the boys tried their hand at getting their own health food brand off the ground.
- [26:44]
Rowan Horn
Hey, everyone. Today I'm going to be telling you guys about the benefits of Chocolat Factor, my new supplement.
- [26:51]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
But entrepreneurship was an awkward fit for.
- [26:54]
Rowan Horn
The Horn brothers, but it wasn't a great success. I never felt comfortable pushing the supplements, like, as a salesman, because I felt like maybe people might think that I'm doing this for, like, money. And I never felt fully comfortable in the role of, like, trying to make money from anything I do. Yeah. So I pretty much. I don't even know if I'm sold any. I'd have pretty much stopped trying to sell anything.
- [27:25]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Most recently, Kyle got a job at someone else's supplement business in a different state than Rowan, working for a guy who may or may not have lots of gerbils. All I know is that Rowan refers to it as the gerbil farm. Kyle invited Rowan to join him there.
- [27:43]
Rowan Horn
I might be living at a gerbil farm. Farm in, like, a month or so, working with some gerbils and helping them out. 80 gerbils, gerbil. It's not my first pick. Trust me. I didn't choose this life. This. This gerbil life chose me.
- [28:04]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Even in adulthood, they're recreating a dynamic that's been playing out since they were kids. They have an understanding. No matter what unconventional thing they might be up to, they look out for each other.
- [28:30]
Narrator/Host
You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.
- [28:41]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
The one question I got most when reporting this story that would come up when I'd be packing up my gear and heading out the door was, are the boys okay? I put that question to the woman who has spent the most time with them outside of their family, their best friend, Rebecca Wise. The boys met her, of course, at Whole Foods, where she was working at the time. They helped her start her health food business. And Rowan lived with her and her husband during the pandemic, which is to say, if anyone knows how they really are. It's.
- [29:13]
Rebecca Wise (Friend)
Rebecca, are they okay?
- [29:15]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
Yeah. Like, are they doing okay? I think so.
- [29:17]
Rebecca Wise (Friend)
I think they're doing great. And in a way, they're doing better than people who have, like, a huge house and a mortgage to pay for or like, an extremely stressful job. You know, people who have these huge weights on them, you know, it's like they're dead. The definition of great is not what you would think for a normal person. Like, oh, you got a job, you got a wife, you got kids, you know, you drive a good car. But, you know, in their level of, like, peace that they have, they have peace, they have confidence.
- [29:59]
Rowan Horn
They have.
- [29:59]
Rebecca Wise (Friend)
They have, like, they don't have a lot of stress. You know, they're able to focus attention and energy on the things that they want to focus on on a daily basis. You know, they really have so much wealth and abundance. And, like, when you think of wealth as a gauge of, like, health too, it's like they focus so much on their health, and it's like, in a way, they're like kings.
- [30:26]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
I asked all the Horns how much they think about that time in their if before this annoying Canadian guy started obsessively pestering them about it, if this story is something that they'd share a laugh about or bring up at all. And they each gave me some version of.
- [30:44]
Rowan Horn
It's in most ways now like, it's a distant memory. Thanks for bringing it back up. It just is what it is. I don't. We don't really reminisce about it. I'm sure it comes up in one form or another. We mention from time to time, you know, whenever we see Tom Green, we make the reference right there.
- [31:03]
Sam Mullins (Reporter/Narrator)
The Horns don't think about it much. I myself went a decade straight without having a single thought about this story. It makes me think what a privilege it is that we get to file the story away like this. Because what if Rowan died? My mom and all the adults in our town who saw the boys but didn't get involved would wear the weight of community wide failure forever. Kyle would probably be arrested. Corporal Proce would wonder for the rest of his life if he could have done more. Tammy may never have recovered, and the Horns would be without their son and brother. But that's not how this story went. Instead, a community rallied. A hockey mom was brave and kind. A cop did the right thing. A hospital treated a boy with compassion and understanding. Instead, we get to tell the story about how one time our town saved a boy. When you grow up In a place where not a lot of things happen, the few things that do feel really important. A story like this will hold a mirror up and show you who you really are, what this place really is. And if you're lucky, you'll see your community's reflection and think, oh, that's who we are. Good Chameleon is a production of Campside Media with Sony Music. Wild Boys was reported and written by me, Sam Mullins. It's produced produced by Abukara Dahn and our editor is Karen Duffin. Our senior producer is Ashley Ann Krigbaum. 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 Gregoriadas, Josh Dean and Adam Hoff. Special thanks to Rachel Heinrichs and Chris Berube. Wild Boys is dedicated to the memory of Scott Wallace. 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.
- [34:32]
Narrator/Host
That's all for Wild Boys. But if you're looking for another gripping true crime story to dive into, check out the brand new series on the Binge from the same team that brought you Wild Boys. Where is Daniel Morecombe? It's the haunting now infamous case of 13 year old Daniel Morecombe who vanished from a bus stop in Russia. The investigation that followed became one of the most extraordinary criminal cases the world has ever seen and you can hear it all ad free by subscribing to the binge Search for Where is Daniel Morecombe? On Apple Podcasts and start listening today. Feed your true crime obsession.