Crime + investigation
When Kaine Horman went to pick up his son from the bus on the afternoon of June 4, 2010, he learned the boy hadn't been at school all day.
Alamy Stock PhotoWhen Kyron Horman’s parents divorced, it rocked his world. While he now had four parents, his mother said her son expressed interest in living with her rather than his dad and stepmom. His mom regretted not fighting harder for custody.
The 7-year-old went missing in 2010, and no convictions have been made in his disappearance. The boy’s parents believe his stepmom was involved, though the stepmom denies the allegations, and authorities do not have evidence to make an arrest.
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Kyron couldn’t wait to attend the science fair at Skyline Elementary School in Portland, Ore. His parents say the second grader worked very hard on his diorama of a red-eyed tree frog. On the morning of June 4, 2010, Kyron saw the other projects on display by his classmates. His stepmother, Terri Vasquez, snapped a photo of him proudly standing in front of his contribution. After enjoying the exhibits, Vasquez said she saw Kyron walking toward his classroom, and she left.
However, at 10 a.m., Kyron’s teacher marked him absent since he didn’t make it to class.
As was customary, Kyron’s dad, Kaine, stepped outside the house that afternoon to meet the school bus that usually dropped off his son. Except Kyron didn’t get off the bus.
The driver called the school and was told Kyron hadn’t been there all day. “That’s when the panic began to set in,” Kaine told Dateline.
With more than 300 additional people at the school for the science fair on the day of Kyron’s disappearance, Rebecca Morris, author of Boy Missing: The Search for Kyron Horman, wonders how someone could have missed him slip out. “There were siblings and grandparents and parents,” she tells A&E Crime + Investigation. However, “there was no check-in system. It was just wide open. It was a day when there would be confusion.”
That night, a 1,300-person search began, marking the largest search in Oregon history. It was called off nine days later, and a missing person case morphed into a criminal investigation.
Kyron’s biological mom, Desiree Young, believes Vasquez knows more than she lets on. “Pretty quickly the police began to focus on Terri,” Morris says.
Even before Kyron disappeared, Young claimed she noticed strange behavior from Vasquez. “For years I was aware that she had some issues with pathological lying, things of that nature, but just mostly from my interactions with her,” she told NBC News.
Young recalled on Dr. Phil one time when she went to pick up a crying Kyron from Vasquez's home. “There was something going on,” Young suspected. “He wanted to live with me. He didn't want to be there.”
As part of the investigation, all four parents took polygraph tests, which are typically inadmissible in court. Vasquez failed twice. She claimed that being deaf in one ear means she usually reads lips to fully grasp what people are saying. “The first polygraph was done with the man [questioning her] to my back,” Vasquez told People.
She added that the test shouldn’t be given if “they’ve not had any sleep or they're emotionally drained.” Vasquez refused to participate in a third test. Her account of her whereabouts the day Kyron disappeared doesn't match cell phone records. She also cannot account for a 90-minute window of time on the day of Kyron’s disappearance, having left work around 11:30 a.m., according to court documents.
Authorities showed Young emails Vasquez sent to her friends.
“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 between Kaine and herself on Kyron, that it was a huge point of contention in their marriage and she had expressed in great detail her hatred for Kyron,” Young said on the Today show in 2011. “I now believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that not only is she capable of hurting Kyron, that it's clear that she could've hurt him in the worst possible way.”
Police provided Kaine with probable cause that Vasquez was involved in Kyron’s disappearance, according to a restraining order he filed against her after his son’s disappearance. They also reportedly told him that Vasquez offered their landscaper $10,000 to kill Kaine. The landscaper refused. Vasquez was never considered a suspect or person of interest. She has denied the allegation or any involvement in Kyron’s disappearance.
The 23-year-old trekked from Texas to Florida in 2011.
The 23-year-old trekked from Texas to Florida in 2011.
With the investigation stalled, Young filed a $10 million lawsuit against Vasquez on June 1, 2012, alleging the stepmom is responsible for Kyron’s disappearance and should share his whereabouts. The intent was for the civil case to inform the criminal one. However, to proceed with her case, Young would need police files, which are not accessible.
She dropped the suit the following year. "I didn't want to do it, but I was told investigators would stop sharing information with families going forward if I continued, and I didn't want to be responsible for that," Young said at the time.
Prosecuting a case without remains also poses a challenge.
"A no-body or missing person case is a very unique animal,” Thomas DiBiase, a former federal prosecutor and author of No-Body Homicide Cases, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “Most police departments will never face a no-body murder case. Most police departments are fairly small and they’re going to struggle to have the resources.”
DiBiase learned that while working on no-body cases in Washington, D.C. He now volunteers his time investigating cases for law enforcement and has consulted on about 50 no-body cases. “I’ve never had a case where I said, ‘I don’t know what you can do. You’re stuck,’” he says. “There’s always something else you can do.”
As the 15th anniversary of Kyron’s disappearance approached, the Multnomah County district attorney Nathan Vasquez (no relation to Terri) said his office would conduct an exhaustive review of the case. Two days later, the county’s sheriff’s office announced it was reorganizing and digitizing its files, allowing for them to be shared with other law enforcement. There have been no other announced developments since then.
“I know they’ve continued to study Terri’s phone and computer to see if there’s anything that they hadn’t seen before,” Morris claims.
Young was ready to accept any outcome early on. Two days after Kyron disappeared, Young stepped outside her house. She told Morris that God spoke to her and Kyron was by her side, consoling her: “It’s okay, mommy. I’m with God. I’m okay.”
She knew then that her son was dead.
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Eric Mercado was a longtime editor at Los Angeles. He has contributed to The Hollywood Reporter, Capitol & Main, LA Weekly and numerous books. Mercado has written about crime, politics and history. He even travelled to Mexico to report on the Tijuana drug cartel and was a target of a hit on his life by a gang in L.A.
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