Kyron Richard Horman was born on September 9, 2002 at St Vincent’s Hospital in Portland, Oregon. His parents were Desiree Young and Kaine Horman. Kaine was working as an engineer for Intel at the time. Desiree had been married before and I have read that she had a child during her first marriage.
Desiree and Kaine had split up for good when she was 8 months pregnant. Desiree said the split was due to irreconcilable differences.
After Kyron was born, the two parents had shared custody. That arrangement seemed to be working well until Desiree was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2004. Desiree often travelled to Canada to get treatment for her illness. Due to her health, Kaine took over full custody of Kyron. Desiree was always involved in Kyron’s life, even when she didn’t have custody.
Kaine remarried a woman named Terri Moulton in 2007 – Kyron would have been around 5 at this time. Terri was a substitute teacher from Roseburg, Oregon. Kaine and Terri had known each other for years – they first got together when Kaine was still with Desiree in 2001. I have read that they were in the process of divorcing when Kaine and Terri first hooked up.
I have also read in other articles that Terri and Desiree were friends for years and Terri originally moved in with Kaine to take on the role as caregiver for Kyron.
As a bit of background into Terri, she was born March 14, 1970 and grew up in Roseburg, the daughter of two teachers, Carol and Larry Moulton. She graduated from Roseburg High School in 1988 and went to Umpqua Community College, where she met her first husband, Ron Tarver. They married in 1991 in Roseburg.
Terri and Ron had a son – James Logan. He was born Jan. 26, 1994.
The couple divorced in 1995. In 1999, they appeared in court over a child support dispute.
Court documents indicate that Ron did not pay child support between 1996 and 1998.
Terri had remarried by that time – she married a man named Richard Ecker in 1996. He legally adopted James in 1998. The couple split up and Richard paid over $500 a month in child support for years.
Anyway, back to Kaine and Terri. Their wedding was held in Kauai, Hawaii in April 2007. Kaine bought Terri a brand new mustang as a Mother’s Day gift that same year. “Something shiny for the driveway,” she wrote under the picture on her Facebook page. “Yes, Kaine is all that and a bag of chips!”
The license plate for the Mustang read RDSQRL, which is short for Red Squirrel. Red Squirell is apparently Terri’s nickname due to her red hair.
They had a daughter together in 2008, Kiara.
The Horman family was very into K names – Kaine and Terri chose Kiara as it represented the family tradition. Some other family members are Kurtis Mengel, Kaine’s father, Kari Mengel Hoagland, Kaine’s aunt. Kurtis married a woman named Kristie and they had Kaine and his brother Kristian.
Terri was a competitive body builder and there is lots of info online about that ‘career’. She had also been in a bit of trouble in the past – in 2005, she was arrested for drunk driving along Interstate 5. James was 11 years old and was in the car at the time. She had a blood alcohol level of 0.15 percent and she was charged with DUII and reckless child endangerment. Terri pleaded guilty and took a diversion course.
The Horman family were said to be close knit – they apparently enjoyed playing board games, going bowling and travelling. In 2009, they visited Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida together.
“They’re very nice people,” said Adam Farber, who runs a swimming school and taught Kyron to swim and worked on strokes with James, Terri’s son.. “They all fit in really well.”
Terri stopped teaching when Kyron was young, so she could focus on motherhood – “She stopped teaching and subbing so she could be with Kyron during his preschool and toddler years,” said Jaymie Finster, a friend from junior high school who worked with Terri in the school district.
When Kyron started school, it was at Skyline Elementary School near Forest Park in Oregon. Skyline is a K-8 school that has over 300 students enrolled.
Kyron seemed to be a great student – he had been put into advanced-placement math. He was also learning sign language, which seemed to come naturally to him.
Things seemed to be going pretty smoothly for the Horman clan. They were all getting along in their co-parenting situation and the kids all seemed well adjusted.
Kyron was 7 years old on June 4, 2010. He usually rode the bus to school every day. However, Terri had planned to drive Kyron to school on June 4. He had prepared a project (including a large tri-fold project board) about red-eyed tree frogs and was excited to show off his project to his stepmom that morning. Kyron and Terri had to arrive at the school early, so that she could see his project.
I have also read some articles that say Terri purposely drove Kyron so that she could bring his big project home in the truck. She apparently didn’t realize that the science fair was going on all day, so she couldn’t take it home.
Kiara was also with Terri and Kyron on this day.
The trio arrived at the school at around 8am.
They went to Kyron’s classroom and dropped off his coat and his backpack. They all then went to the gymnasium where the science fair was being held.
Kyron excitedly showed off his project about frogs to his stepmom and friends and even snapped a picture in front of his project – I feel like everyone who has followed this case would know the photo.
Kyron was definitely at school this day. Terri and Kyron were seen by multiple witnesses during this time: by students and staff members, who would later recall seeing the two at around 8:15 that morning.
The science fair began to wrap up for parents at around 8.45am. Terri has said that she saw Kyron walking to his first class as she left with Kiara.
“He told her, ‘I’m going back to the classroom, Mom,’ and she waves to him and left,” Carol Moulton, Terri’s mother has said. “She thought he was safely at school just like he is everyday.”
All the children were meant to goto their classroom and divide up into small groups. Each group was supposed to tour the science fair with a chaperone. Afterward, when they returned to their classes for roll call, Kyron wasn’t there. He was marked absent for the day.
After Terri left the school, she started to run some errands. Her daughter Kiara had been suffering from an ear infection, and had a prescription sent to a Fred Meyer Pharmacy. Terri went to the Fred Meyer in Hillsboro first. When she got there, she realized this was the wrong store. She still purchased some items there, and her receipt is timed at 9.12am.
Terri then drove to the Fred Meyer in Beaverton, along SW Walker Road, which is where the prescription for Kiara had actually been sent.
After completing her Fred Meyer stops, she then went to Magic Dry Cleaners in Beaverton where she dropped off some of Kaine’s clothes to be cleaned. The owner of the dry cleaner has said that Terri came in and said she left Kiara in the car while she dropped the items off.
While in Beaverton, she also went to Michael’s Craft Store. She is known to have left there around 10am.
Terri’s movements are basically accounted for from the time she left the school at 8.45am, until she finished up in Beaverton just after 10am.
After this time, things are less clear. Terri has said that Kiara was distressed with her ear infection and that the movement of the car seemed to help settle her. They apparently drove around random roads in the area for around 90 minutes, while Terri waited for the medicine to take effect.
Some reports do say Terri made a phone call at around 10.39am that day, but this has never been confirmed as far as I know. I can’t find any other details on this alleged call.
The next confirmed movement of Terri comes at 11.39am. She went to her gym – 24 Hour Fitness in Beaverton. She left Kiara to the gym’s daycare while she worked out for the better part of the next hour, eventually picking up Kiara a little after noon and chatting with her friends for 15 – 20 minutes.
Terri left the gym at around 12.40 and drove the 11 miles back to her house. She arrived home just before 1pm.
She got onto Facebook at 1.21pm and she began uploading photos onto Facebook, into a folder titled “JUNE 2010,” which included photos of Kiara and Kyron. This is when the photo of Kyron at the science fair that morning was uploaded online.
Around this time, she also emailed Kyron’s teacher, asking when she could come and pick up his project to bring home.
Kaine returned home from the office at around this time. It has been reported that he intended to work at home for the rest of the day.
At 3.30pm, Kaine, Terri and Kiara all left the house to walk to the bus stop to meet Kyron. When the bus arrived, Kyron did not get off.
Kaine and Terri spoke with the bus driver and discovered that Kyron had never boarded after school. They quickly called the school to let them know the situation
Terri called 911 while she and Kaine were driving to Kyron’s school, trying to figure out what was going on.
At 3.46pm Skyline Elementary secretary Susan Hall also called 911 to report Kyron as being missing.
The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office arrived at Skyline Elementary at about 4:00 that afternoon. I think the adults in this case figured out quickly that they had lost a lot of time in this case – Kyron was last seen at around 8.45am and it was after 3pm before anyone realized that he was gone. The sheriff’s spokeswoman, Lt. Mary Lindstrand, told the press:
“We definitely got a late start here. The family didn’t know that he wasn’t at school, his teacher didn’t see him so we are feeling like we are behind the eight-ball here.”
Kyron’s school, Skyline Elementary, was located right next to a large forested area and surrounded by tall grass and hills. This made it hard to search as there was no clear line of sight. The school did not have CCTV at this time, so the police had to rely on witness statements when beginning their search.
Due to the science fair, the campus had essentially been ‘open to the public’ that day. There had been a large number of people coming and going and as a one-off, nobody had been required to check in at the school office. This made it very hard for police to know where to begin when questioning people who had been on the school grounds.
Police determined that Kyron was last confirmed to be seen at around 8.45am that morning. There was one report that said he had been seen at 9am, but this claim was later retracted.
Many people have questioned why nobody at the school followed up on Kyron’s absence. I believe this was due to apparent miscommunication.
Terri apparently told teachers on June 4 that Kyron had a doctor’s appointment, and that is where the faculty assumed he was after the science fair. But the doctor’s appointment had actually been booked for the week after, June 11.
Kyron’s teachers assumed he would return to school after his appointment and nobody raised the alarm when he did not come back. They all assumed he was with Terri.
At around 5:30 PM, a text was sent to all parents who had kids in the Portland School District. Using the district’s rapid broadcast message system, the text message read “Kyron Horman did not arrive at home today.” Anyone with information was asked to contact the authorities.
As it was now essentially the weekend, police found it difficult to contact parents and students and arrange for them to be questioned.
Police did begin a physical search on Friday night.
This timeline of the initial search is from OregonLive.com
The first search teams arrived at Skyline School at 8:09 p.m. and shortly after, at 8:15 p.m., Lt. Mary Lindstrand also arrived at the school and met with those present. She then began e-mailing a photo of Kyron to local media.
Deputy Mark Herron, the search-and-rescue coordinator, arrived at 8:25 p.m.
At 9:48 p.m., Mountain Wave, an emergency communications and search and rescue group based in Gresham also arrived at the school.
At 10:40 p.m., officers reported that they had completed a search of Skyline School, including all crawl spaces, storage areas, classrooms and outbuildings. They had also searched the Horman house.
At 10:44 p.m., a tipster called 9-1-1 to make sure officers checked the train tunnel in the area near the school. The caller said, “sometimes kids play in there, wants to make sure someone has checked that.”
The search on the first night wrapped up at 3.23am on Saturday morning.
The search began again on the Saturday just hours later – at around 5am. Officials worked with volunteers and tracking dogs to try to find Kyron.
Most of the early search efforts were focused on the 2 mile area surrounding the school. Police also looked into nearby Sauvie Island which was around 6 miles away from the school.
They really seemed to focus on the area around the Sauvie Island Bridge, which crossed the Columbia River, but would never publicly state why they were so interested in this area following Kyron’s disappearance.
Terri posted on Facebook at 8:58 a.m on Sunday June 6., saying she had ordered missing-person fliers.
The search for Kyron proved fruitless. On June 9 (five days after he was last seen), Kyron’s family released this statement.
Kyron’s family would like to thank people for support and interest in finding their son. The outpouring of support and continued effort strengthens their hope. We need for folks to continue to assist us in our goal. Please search your properties — cars, out buildings, sheds, etc. Also check with neighbors and friends who may be on vacation or may need in assistance in searching. There are a lot of resources here to help you search, so please don’t stop. It is obviously a difficult time and they want to speak to the public so you can hear it from Kyron’s family as they come together to share their message. Their objective is to keep the focus on Kyron and not about anything else.
The physical search for Kyron was halted after ten days. It had been the largest search in Oregon history and had involved 1300 searchers from three states. The Sherrif’s Office announced after ten days that the investigation would now become a full-scale criminal investigation.
The FBI became involved in the search during the first week. They had not only dispatched their Behavioral Analysis Unit to help create a profile for Kyron but had also deployed their Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team.
The family held a press conference on June 11. Desiree was living in Medford, Oregon at the time Kyron vanished, but she had travelled to Portland to assist in the search. Both Desiree and Terri were seen crying at the press conference.
By the end of June, the reward in Kyron’s case had grown to $50,000.
Terri’s father spoke to People at this time. When People asked him whether he thought his daughter would be arrested, he replied with tears in his eyes: “It’s 50-50.”
The tide started to turn against Terri very quickly. She was the last person to see Kyron and people started delving into that.
In late June, Kaine was told by police that Terri had offered their landscaper, Rodolfo Sanchez, “a lot of money” to kill him. You may seen Rodolfo referred to as Rudy in media reports.
Rodolfo would later testify that Terri approached him in January 2010 and asked him to kill Kaine. He was told to make it look like Kaine was killed in a mugging. Terri denied this ever happened.
Police documents say that Terri told Rudy that Kaine often carried around an excess of cash, so any attack on him would look like a mugging. Terri then allegedly told Rudy that he could keep any money that Kaine would have on him, which was estimated to be around $10,000, as well as the laptop he constantly hauled around.
Rudy told police that Terri wanted him to kill Kaine because he had been abusive and was planning to divorce her and take custody of Kiara.
Investigators convinced Rudy to confront Terri while wearing an audio surveillance device, but they were unable to obtain any evidence and could not make an arrest.
On June 28, Kaine filed for divorce and he also obtained a restraining order against Terri. In the divorce filing, Kaine stated that he believed Terri was “… is involved in the disappearance of my son Kyron.”
The divorce was eventually granted and Terri was only allowed to see Kiara during supervised visits.
All of the Horman family took polygraph tests. Terri was the only one that seemed to have trouble passing them. She took two tests between June 4- June 25. She failed one and apparently walked out of the second after she became frustrated by the questioning.
Police began to focus on the 90 minute timeframe on the morning of June 4 that Terri said she drove around with Kiara, trying to ease her ear ache. There was no way they could verify exactly where she had been.
Flyers with details of Terri’s case were distributed, asking anyone who had seen it that morning to contact police.
Over the years, the possibility of Terri’s phone pinging off a tower near Sauvie Island has been discussed. If it did ping near there, this may explain why police focused their search efforts there early on. This has never been confirmed though.
It also emerged publicly at this time, that Terri’s son James had moved out of the home he shared with the Hormans. He had gone to live with his grandparents. He had moved out just months before Kyron vanished – this led to people questioning why? Did his leaving have something to do with Terri’s state of mind and behavior at the time?
After Terri and Kaine split up, Terri very quickly moved on with a man named Michael Cook. Michael had gone to school with Kaine and had participated in the search for Kyron. Terri also retained an attorney by the end of June, a man named Stephen Houze.
In July 2010, a Multnomah County grand jury subpoenaed several friends of Terri, including DeDe Spicher, whom Desiree and Kaine described as having “been in close communication with Terri” and “providing Terri with support and advice that is not in the best interests of our son.”
Police said that DeDe was “extremely cooperative” and allowed a search of her property and car. She was also questioned for hours by police.
Her movements are sketchy. On the day of Kyron’s disappearance, DeDe abruptly left her work gardening for a homeowner on Germantown Road in Northwest Portland around 11:30 a.m., and returned around ninety minutes later.
She also allegedly helped Terri purchase an untraceable cell phone.
DeDe spoke to the media and said “There’s this horror that my friend is going through. If I thought for a second that she was capable of [foul play], I would not have been there. She would not have been my friend in the first place.’
Kaine and Desiree were also subpoenaed by the grand jury in August 2010.
This is some info from oregonian.com about the grand jury –
A grand jury has heard from at least 40 witnesses and continues to meet intermittently. The district attorney’s office has an extra prosecutor assigned to the case through June. “Barring an unexpected evidentiary development,” said Norm Frink, Multnomah County chief deputy district attorney, “the investigation is going to continue for months.”
In August 2010, police announced they were looking to identify a second person who had allegedly been seen in Terri’s truck on the day Kyron disappeared.
Bruce McCain, a former sheriff for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, told CBS News: “The identity of that second person, if he or she existed, could be critical in determining what happened to Kyron after 9 a.m. on June 4.”
By November 2010, the search for Kyron had cost around $1.4m and police had investigated 4,257 tips.
I found an article from December 2010 that outlines the enormity of the case.
“Metal shelving holds 63 white binders, each 4 inches thick, filled with thousands of pages of police reports. Two laptops on a conference table contain the FBI software that sorts the 4,257 tips received. Stacks of maps in a room down the hall plot the 155 square miles that have been searched.”
Sheriff Dan Station said at the end of 2010 “The scope is narrowing. My belief is we should be relatively close to something by then; that’s why I set the time frame I did,” Staton said. “While we may not be at an arrest or an indictment phase, we’re going to have it narrowed down to a point where we may be calling out a suspect, identifying certain people or things.”
Emails that Terri had sent to friends came to light around the end of 2010.
Terri seemed to blame Kyron for her marriage troubles in these emails.
There is a great blog on this case from Unsolved.me. This info is from that blog:
In several emails, Terri also described her husband as being overbearing and described an overall toxic household that was quickly becoming unstable. It is unknown how much of this was true – or had been exaggerated by a woman going through some serious issues – but these emails seemed to contain some language that concerned those with access to them. Among those people was Desiree Young, Kyron’s birth mom, who later said about these emails:
“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.”
Things seemed to move very quickly in this case, until they didn’t. By the end of the year, things had started to quieten down in Kyron’s case.
In June 2012, Desiree filed a suit against Terri.
The civil suit claimed that Terri was “responsible for the disappearance of Kyron.” In addition to seeking approximately $10 million damages, the suit was aimed at proving – if not criminally, then through civil court – that Terri had kidnapped Kyron.
Terri attempted to delay the suit and she was denied by a Federal Court Judge on August 15, 2012.
During legal proceedings, DeDe Spicher refused to answer any of the 142 questions that were asked of her. Some of these questions were about her movements on June 4, 2010 as well as her contact with Terri on that day. She also refused to identify a photo of Kyron, and declined to say whether she knew Kaine.
In 2012, Kaine also said in a hearing that police told him they ‘have more probable cause to think Terri Horman was involved in Kyron’s disappearance than they did two years ago.’
Despite all this, Desiree dropped the suit against Terri in July 2013. She did so as to not interfere with the police investigation.
Terri and Kaine’s divorce was fully finalised in 2013. Kaine was awarded full custody of Kiara.
In 2013 and 2014, Terri petitioned to the court to be able to change her name. She tried first to change her name to Claire Stella Sullivan. The judge denied the request, due to the ongoing investigation into Kyron’s disappearance.
She tried again four months later, and requested that her name be changed to Claire Kisiel. She told the court that she needed a new name “to start over a new life without having the stigma of Horman attached to it.” She said she hadn’t been able to find a job in the past four years. She also said her life had been threatened, and she was worried about her safety.
In December 2014, Terri withdrew her name change request.
The years went on. In 2016, Terri appeared on the Dr Phil show.
When asked about why she had waited so long to speak out, Terri told Dr. Phil that:
“I was advised from the beginning by law enforcement, by my husband at the time, by attorneys in the beginning, not to say anything. I’ve always wanted to. I’ve asked multiple times to speak out and have not been allowed.”
When asked about what she thought had happened to Kyron, she seemed to offer up a mysterious alternate suspect:
“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-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).”
2016 was not a great year for Terri. She was arrested in California for driving a stolen car and had been booked in the Marin County Jail, later being released on bail. She also faced charges for domestic abuse, having threatened her then-live-in-boyfriend with a knife. He ended up filing for a restraining order against TerrI. She was also charged after allegedly stealing a gun from her roommate.
Desiree spoke to the media after all these events:
“Everything that’s been happening is just what we already know about her true nature. And that she’s a criminal. And I think that when she goes out there and grants interviews with Dr. Phil and continues to lie and not give us anything of value it is somewhat frustrating because we’re still here dealing with the aftermath. Everyday living without answers and living without Kyron.”
In 2018, Terri remarried in Nevada.
She married a man named Jose De Jesus Vazquez Martinez on March 17 in Clark County, Nevada.
June 4, 2020 marked ten years since Kyron disappeared. He was due to turn 18 in September 2020 and should have been graduating.
“All of the markers are really hard,” Desiree told The Oregonian/OregonLive at that time.. “The fact that I don’t get to be a part of that, it makes me angry. Someone took that away from us and it’s not right.”
“Ten years is hard,” Desiree said. “I hope we aren’t here in a year.”
“I want Terri to do the right thing and I want her to end this torture,” she added. “We just want to bring Kyron home.”
Desiree has been the most vocal person in Kyron’s family and she pushes his case to this day. The most recent updates are from just a few weeks ago – mid February 2022. Desiree organized a rally alongside supporters outside the Multnomah County DA’s office. She said she tried to set up a face-to-face meeting with DA Mike Schmidt since last year, but it hasn’t happened.
“I want the DA to know who I am and to know who Kyron is,” said Desiree. “I want him to make Kyron a priority again.”
“My heart goes out to Kyron’s family and the dedicated and compassionate community they have built around his disappearance,” wrote Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt in a statement sent to KGW. “To date, this case is open and we remain committed to investigating new facts and evidence should either surface.”
At the time he disappeared, Kyron was 3’8 and he weighed 50 lbs. He had brown hair and blue eyes. He was last seen wearing wearing a black T-shirt with the letters “CSI” in green and a handprint graphic on it, black cargo pants, white socks, and black Skechers sneakers with orange trim. He wears metal framed glasses.
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact the local tip line at (503) 261-2847, or your local FBI office.
SOURCE LIST:
https://www.andthentheyweregone.com/blog/kyron-horman
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2010/06/kyron_hormans_blended_family_f.html
https://unresolved.me/kyron-horman
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/06/kyron-horman-missing-10-years-a-timeline.html
https://youtu.be/2wCy7W386m0
https://youtu.be/nruf7G13phY
https://youtu.be/lhQxe-ZLFG8
https://youtu.be/Org6mKoJdQQ