The Search for Kyron Hormon

“We know where he’s not”
by Robert A. Waters

Ten days into the mysterious vanishing of seven-year-old Kyron Hormon of Multnomah County, Orgegon, investigators are not only fighting the not-knowing, they’re also addressing the rampant rumor-mill on the Internet. Here’s a sampling of what people are writing on blogs and message boards:

“look at the dads expression he has none...He must know something...”

“Something is wrong it dont add up some teacher said they thought he left with the step mom.”

“i happen to watch a lot of 48 hours myself. i hate to point fingers when i am not ‘on the case,’ however, something smells fishy and i agree that it's most likely the step-mom.”

“WHAT IF Kyron Hormon's stepmom did something BEFORE--not after Friday morning's science fair--and those who happened to see her SO EARLY just assumed Kyron was with her and running around? Then the pic she took at the Science Fair early in the a.m. was doctored to add Kyron in?”

And those are the nice comments.

For those who don’t know, Kyron disappeared from Skyline Elementary School on Friday, June 4. His mother, Terri Moulton Hormon arrived with Kyron shortly after 8:00 a.m. to look at his science fair project. While there, she took a picture of her step-son in front of his Red-eyed Tree Frog booth. In the photo, the boy is beaming with pride. Terri and Kyron then walked through the school looking at other projects.

Shortly before 9:00 a.m., Terri left Kyron a few feet from his classroom. At about 1:15 p.m., she posted the photo she’d taken of Kyron on Facebook. (Another sign of guilt according to some postings--she was trying to cover up the fact that she’d already murdered him.)

At about 3:30 p.m., when Kyron didn’t arrive home on his school bus, Terri called the school and learned that he’d never made it to class that morning and hadn’t been seen all day. The school secretary immediately called 911.

Full-scale searches so far have turned up nothing. Because so many parents have harmed their own children and gone on television to try to sell the public on a kidnapping, people have become skeptical.

In fact, the rumor-machine has gotten so bad that investigators addressed it at a recent press conference. Captain Mike Shults of the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office stated that investigators had requested that the family not take part in searches. "We need them to be close and that was conveyed to them from the beginning," he said. "We need them to be right there so that if (investigators) have questions or they find evidence or if they're going in a direction that's totally wrong ...Their information is critical.”

Shults also told reporters that detectives informed the family that they should continue their various daily activities for their own mental health’s sake. "Once we determined that this search could take some time,” he said, “it was discussed what that really meant to them and how long this could be, knowing that the stress was going to be overwhelming and it could be important to keep their minds and bodies healthy. We need them to help us bring Kyron home."

It was an extraordinary press conference. I can’t ever remember cops addressing online rumors.

The ten-day search weeded out a lot of areas, particularly the rugged terrain surrounding the school. As the sheriff said, “We know where he’s not.”

I’ll admit that I don’t know what happened to Kyron. Whatever it is, it doesn’t look good.

But for those who doubt that a child can be abducted from a public school, just check out the Tori Stafford case. Tori is the Canadian girl who was abducted about a year ago from Oliver Stephens Public School in Guelph, Ontario. CBC Online reported that “security camera images from April 8 show the Grade 3 student walking away from the school with an unknown woman, who had long black hair and was wearing a white jacket.” A few months later, Terri-Lynne McClintic, 18, and Michael Thomas C.S. Rafferty, 29, were arrested for kidnapping and murdering Tori.

I have little trust in newspapers or any segment of the media, so it’s hard for me to try to determine what’s true and what’s not. Not only that, investigators are certainly holding back information. Even so, this has that eerie “feel” of a kidnapping.

Kyron Hormon is seven-years old, stands 3’8”, and weighs about 50 pounds. He has brown hair and blue eyes. The boy was last seen wearing a black tee-shirt with a CSI logo in green letters. He also wore black cargo pants, white socks and black Sketchers sneakers with orange trim.

If you have information about this case, please call the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678 (1-800-THE-LOST) or the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office (Oregon) 1-503-823-3333 or 1-503-261-2847.