Around 8 a.m. on Friday, 4th June 2010, seven-year-old Kyron Horman was dropped off at his school in Oregon, by his stepmother, Terri Moulton. He did not show up to any of his classes that day and did not get on the bus to return home that afternoon. He hasn’t been seen since.
Kyron was born in 2002 to parents Diseree Young and Kaine Horman, and although they divorced eight months into the pregnancy, they maintained shared custody for two years after Kyron was born. It was in 2004 when Kyron’s mother Desiree was diagnosed with kidney failure, and so Kaine took full custody of Kyron. His mother still kept an active role in Kyron’s life despite this.
In 2007, Kyron’s father married Terri Moulton and they had a daughter together, Kiara.
On the morning of June 4th, 2010, Terri drove Kyron to school so he could go to the school science fair. Kyron usually took the bus, but that morning Terri drove him to help set up his project about frogs. Students and staff recall seeing the two of them at about 8:15 a.m. and Terri also had her daughter Kiara with her.
At 8:45 a.m., Terri and Kiara left the school, with Terri claiming she saw Kyron walking down the school corridor towards his classroom. However, Kryon never made it to his first lesson. His maths teacher Kristina Porter, marked him absent that morning.
At 3:30 p.m. Terri, Kiara and Kaine walked to the bus stop to Kyron, but he wasn’t on the bus, the driver saying that he never boarded. Kaine called the school secretary to ask where he was, and it was discovered that he had been marked absent all day. She then called 911 to report him missing.
The police arrived at the school at 4 p.m. and began searching for him right away. Unfortunately, the school didn’t have CCTV and it had been open to the public because of the science fair, so there was no way for sure to know who had gone in and out that morning.
One student, a friend of Kyrons, thought they saw him at 9 a.m. that morning, but this couldn’t be confirmed.
Kyron had not shown up to any of his classes that day and was marked as absent by all of his teachers. This didn’t raise alarm bells, however, believed to be because of a miscommunication between Terri and the school. Terri had told Kyron’s teachers that morning that he had a doctor’s appointment, so when he wasn’t at class they assumed that’s where he was. It turns out that Terri had booked an appointment for Kyron, but it wasn’t until the following Friday.
At 5:30 p.m., a text message was sent out to all the parents in the area encouraging anyone with information to come forward. Because it was so late in the day it was difficult for police to arrange interviews with staff, parents and students because of the weekend.
The search and rescue was mobilised on the evening of June 4th and carried on through to Saturday evening but to no avail. They focused their search on a 2-mile radius around the elementary school and nearby Sauvie Island, by the Sauvie Island bridge, which was around 6 miles from the school, although never publicly said why they were focusing on that area.
On Sunday 6th June, the families of more than 200 students showed up at the school to give voluntary statements.
On 11th June, a week after Kyron went missing, his family (father Kaine, mother Desiree and stepmother Terri) gave a press conference, breaking their silence over what had happened.
Then, on 13 June 2010, investigators with the Multnomah County Sheriff’s office announced they were officially ending their search efforts and instead, it became a full-scale criminal investigation. There was a $50,000 reward for information leading to Kyron’s whereabouts, but no one seemed to know what happened to him.
Investigators did have a suspect in mind, the last person to see Kyron, his stepmother Terri. Her timeline for the day was pretty solid except for a 90-minute gap between 10:10 a.m. – and 11:40 a.m.
On June 4th, Terri Horman ran errands around the area. She went to a grocery store, Fred Meyer, in Hillsboro, to pick up a prescription for Kiara who had an ear infection at the time. The Fred Meyer she went to turned out to be the wrong store, so she headed to a different one in Beaverton, where she did manage to pick up the prescription. After this, she headed to the dry cleaners and then a craft store. CCTV confirmed all of this and her movements were accounted for until 10:10 a.m. It wasn’t until 11:39 a.m. that Terri was seen again, this time at the gym where she would regularly work out with friends. She left the gym around 12:40 p.m. and drove home, arriving just before 1 p.m.
Then at 1:20 pm, Terri started uploading photos to Facebook, including one of Kyron at the science fair that morning. She then stayed home with Kaine who had just returned from work.
Police were unable to verify where Terri was for the 90 minutes between 10:10 a.m. – 11:40 a.m. She claimed she was driving around with Kiara to help soothe her ear infection but there were no witnesses to this.
Authorities conducted interviews with all of Kyron’s family members and gave them all lie detector tests. Everyone managed to pass, apart from Terri who failed her first one and walked out of her second one.
On June 26th 2010, Kaine Horman was asked to speak to officers at the sheriff’s office alone. While this was happening, an undercover sting was taking place at the Horman’s house. A man had come forward named Rodolfo Sanchez, claiming that in early 2010, Terri had offered him “a lot of money” to kill Kaine and make it look like a mugging. The sting didn’t go to plan, and although Sanchez was wearing a wire, investigators didn’t get the information they needed.
Although there was no proof that Terri had tried to hire someone to kill her husband, it led to Kaine leaving their home with Kiara and filing for divorce two days later. He also successfully got restraining orders for both himself and Kiara. In the initial divorce filing, Kain stated he believed Terri was “Involved in the disappearance of my son Kyron.”
A few days after Kaine left Terri, she started a new sexual relationship with one of Kaine’s former classmates, 37-year-old Micheal Cook.
In July 2010, a Multnomah County Grand Jury subpoenaed some of Terri’s friends. One friend in particular, DeDe Spicher, was of particular interest. She was described by Kaine and Desiree as “Providing Terri with support and advice that is not in the best interest of our son.” Although DeDe was apparently very cooperative with the police, on the day of Kyron’s disappearance she abruptly left her job at 11:30 am and returned 90 minutes later. What she did during this time is unclear. There were also allegations that DeDe helped Terri buy an untraceable mobile phone.
In August 2010, police said they were looking to identify a second person seen in Terri’s truck on the day of Kyron’s disappearance, but nothing ever came to light and no one was ever identified.
In emails that came out at the end of 2010 between Terri and friends, she seemed to blame her marriage troubles on Kyron. Kyron’s mother Desiree said;
“It’s very clear from Terri’s horrible words that she had a severe hatred for Kyron and that she blamed a lot of the marital problems on Kyron.”
Then, in June 2012, Desiree filed a civil suit against Terri, claiming she was “responsible for the disappearance of Kyron.” She was seeking $10 million in damages and wanted to prove that Terri had kidnapped Kyron. During the proceedings, Terri’s friend DeDe was asked 142 questions including ones about her movements on June 4th 2010, but refused to answer any of them. She also refused to identify a photo of Kyron. In July 2013, Desiree dropped the suit against Terri. She did this as she did not want it to interfere with the police investigation.
It was also in 2013 that Terri and Kaine’s divorce was finalised. Kaine was awarded full custody of their daughter Kiara. That same year Terri petitioned the court to change her name. She claimed she had been unable to find a job and was worried for her safety because of her links to the case but the judge denied her request due to the ongoing investigation.
In 2016, Terri went on the Dr. Phil Show. She spoke of always having wanted to speak out about the case but being advised not to. When asked what she thought happened, she said;
“ There was a man in a white pickup truck, Ford, parked on Highway 30 at the 7-Eleven near the school. He was acting very strangely and he was addressed by one of the employees because he had been pacing back and forth in front of the 7- 7-Eleven for about an hour.”
“The guy, I’m not sure what the entire conversation was about, but I do know from these witnesses that this man asked the employees where the nearest school was and that employee told him Skyline Elementary.”
The police never confirmed nor denied if this man had ever been reported to police by any witnesses, but people found it suspicious that the truck this man was driving was the same as the truck Terri was driving that day.
Terri was arrested in California in 2016 for driving a stolen vehicle, as well as facing charges of domestic abuse after threatening her boyfriend with a knife and stealing a gun from her roommate.
It’s now been 12 years since Kyron Horman’s disappearance, and even though numerous searches have been carried out over the years, there is still no sign of him. It seems that investigators are no closer to finding out what happened, although they are still actively investigating the case. The Grand Jury still meets periodically, but to date, no indictments have been handed down, and no one has been charged in relation to the case.
Unfortunately, we may never know what happened to Kyron, but with the investigation still open, there is hope.
At the time of his disappearance, Kyron was seven years old, 3ft 8” and weighed 50lb. He had brown hair and blue eyes and was wearing a black ‘CSI’ t-shirt, black cargo pants, white socks and black Sketchers trainers with an orange trim and metal-framed glasses. He would now be 21 years old.
Sources:
https://allthatsinteresting.com/kyron-horman
https://the-line-up.com/kyron-horman
https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-kyron-horman/
https://unresolved.me/kyron-horman
https://truecrimesocietyblog.com/2022/03/22/kyron-horman-missing-since-2010/
https://medium.com/@jennbaxter_69070/a-betrayal-of-trust-where-is-kyron-horman-de212f7f0545
https://www.grunge.com/719949/the-mysterious-disappearance-of-kyron-horman/
