Kidnapped boy may have sent chilling message to parents

WHILE his alleged kidnapper was away at work, teenager Shawn Hornbeck apparently had access to a computer, and may have put photos of himself online and posted a chilling message on a site created by his own desperate parents: “How long are you planning to look for your son?”

A series of web postings under the name “Shawn Devlin” — Devlin is the last name of the man suspected of kidnapping Shawn and posing as his father — came to light after Shawn’s rescue from an apartment in Kirkwood, Missouri, last week.

Investigators would not comment on the postings, and it was not immediately known if they were, in fact, created by Shawn. But if so, they add to the long list of clues that no one seemed to pick up on during the four years after the boy vanished.

They also deepen the mystery of why Shawn apparently made no attempt to escape or contact police.

Shawn, now 15, was 11 when he was kidnapped in 2002 while riding his bike near his rural home. Astonished police found him on Friday in a suburban St Louis apartment where they also discovered 13-year-old Ben Ownby, who had been missing for four days.

Their alleged abductor, Michael Devlin, a 41-year-old pizza shop employee who also held a job answering telephones at night at a funeral home, is in custody.

So far, he is charged only in the kidnapping of Ben, but authorities also plan to charge him with abducting Shawn.

Neither boy has spoken publicly about what happened, but in an interview with the Ownby family, Ben thanked a classmate who gave police the tip they needed to find him, the description of a white pickup truck, saying, “Thank you for being such a great big help in this entire thing.”