11-Year-Old Boy Vanishes Without A Trace. Four Years Later, Cops Find With The Last Person They Expected

Back in October 2002, little Shawn Hornbeck was just eleven-years-old. As a small child living in Missouri, Shawn loved to ride his bike and be outside in nature. It can be a beautiful state, and on this particular October day, Shawn decided to ride his bicycle to his friend’s house across town. Little did anyone know but Shawn for disappearing from the face of the earth without a trace.

Although Shawn had ridden his bike to his friend’s house before – and taken the same route many times – this time was different. He did not make it to his friend’s house. He did not return home. He simply vanished from the world as if he’d traveled into a parallel dimension or something. But in reality, it seemed that some creep had abducted him and was torturing him or doing other unknowable things to the eleven-year-old boy.

Shawn’s parents, Pam and Craig, did not delay in notifying the police. They gave every ounce of effort they could into searching for Shawn. They recruited everyone who knew him, his friends, his teachers, and asked them to spend some time looking for their lost boy. The parents even used their entire retirement savings to pay for teams of investigators who promised they’d find Shawn at the end of their searches. But Shawn never appeared.

After four years, there was no sign of Shawn. No evidence. No clues. Pam and Craig started to lose hope. They started to believe that maybe Shawn had died after all.

Then on January 8, 2007, another local boy went missing. This was 13-year-old Ben Ownby. But this time there had been a witness. A neighbor saw Ben jump onto a strange truck as it sped away from the bust stop. Without a moment’s hesitation, the neighbor called the police. They provided a description of the suspicious truck. With this evidence, cops managed to track down its owner. Then they learned something that they never had in their wildest dreams hoped to discover.

Ben Ownby was not the only lost boy at the compound. Cops made the chilling discovery that they’d also c four years after his disappearance.

When it finally came time for Shawn to share his story, he said that the day he was abducted was like any other day. Except for that time Mike Devlin bumped into Shawn with his truck. Pretending to be concerned about the boy’s wellbeing, Devlin invited Shawn to hitch a ride in the back of his truck. It was a split-second decision that ruined the boy’s life.

During his time in Devlin’s possession, Devlin physically and sexually abused Shawn. Devlin used guns and threats of murder if Shawn would not do everything he asked. But when Shawn grew too old for Devlin’s twisted taste in little boys, he kidnapped another child. This time it was Ben Ownby.

After the FBI caught Devlin and arrested him, Shawn and Ben tried to go back to leading normal lives. But the abuses they suffered were horrendous, and it has not been easy to recover.