Monster Next Door?

Shawn Hornbeck's strange behavior might have continued for years had not Ben Ownby disappeared on January 8. Returning home from school, Ben got off a school bus and ran down the gravel road toward his house, about 500 feet away.

Investigators learned that Ben was a Boy Scout, a straight-A student and a member of his school's Science Olympiad. Though he played plenty of video games, he didn't seem to have been in contact with strangers on the Internet. Nor did he appear to be a runaway. Investigators quickly eliminated domestic tribulations as a potential avenue of inquiry, and as the first waves of conflicting leads poured in, authorities struggled to develop a coherent focus.

All that changed when fifteen-year-old Mitchell Hults stepped forward with a detailed description of a truck. Mitchell had stepped off the school bus soon after Ben. The high school freshman told investigators that as he got into the Chevy pickup he'd parked near the bus stop that morning, he spotted an aging white Nissan pickup with a camper shell in the middle of the road, as if it were turning around. But as Mitchell approached, the truck aborted the maneuver and headed down the street, he said. Mitchell told investigators that as he pulled into his family's driveway, he saw the truck reverse direction and speed away.

Even as volunteers continued to post fliers and set out on foot, ATV and horseback in search of Ben, Mitchell's tip became investigators' main focus.

Says Franklin County Sheriff Gary Toelke: "Basically, that's all we had."

During media interviews that week, Sheriff Toelke drove home the importance of the white pickup.

It paid off. On the evening of Friday, January 12, 60 miles away, Kirkwood police officers Gary Wagster and Chris Nelson arrived at Devlin's apartment complex on an unrelated matter. As the officers were leaving, they spotted a white pickup.

"Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Wagster would later say he asked Nelson.

There it was: A dirty white Nissan truck with a camper shell and plenty of rust.

A neighbor approached the two officers and said he'd been suspicious about the truck's owner, a burly man who lived in Apartment D. Minutes later the burnt-umber door to D opened, and Michael Devlin appeared.

The officers immediately recognized the bearded man with wire-rimmed glasses as the laid-back day manager at the Kirkwood Imo's Pizza, 500 feet south of the city's police headquarters. They intercepted him on his way to the Dumpster.

"They started a conversation with him. That's when they started seeing some red flags — his body language, his attitude shifted," says Kirkwood detective Mike Bales. "It was enough to make them think that something wasn't right."

More specifically, Wagster and Nelson say Devlin was friendly at first but became defensive, clenching his fists and averting his eyes, when they asked him about Ownby's disappearance.

"He got all squirrely on me," Wagster said during the Oprah broadcast. "I was like, something ain't right."

Added Nelson: "For a guy that's laid back, he got real defensive, started clenching his fists and darting his eyes — evasive. When I was asking him questions, it's like, I've never seen this guy before."

Devlin refused to admit the officers into his apartment that night. But through the window Wagster and Nelson spied a teenage boy at a table playing video games.

The boy had shock of dark hair and did not otherwise fit the description of thirteen-year-old Ben.

Stymied at Devlin's front door, the officers called in to Kirkwood police headquarters. Officials there contacted authorities in Franklin County.

"This all happened within 35 to 40 minutes," Detective Bales recounts. "A short time later, officers from the highway patrol and FBI arrived on the scene."

Bales says that when state and federal agents arrived that evening, Devlin denied them access to the apartment.

The authorities countered with an all-night stakeout.

As Devlin left for work the next morning, law enforcement agents followed him.

The authorities say Devlin was cooperative when they questioned him in the Imo's parking lot. In a statement of probable cause filed in Franklin County court, law enforcement officials say Devlin confessed to them that he had kidnapped Ben Ownby.

When investigators later searched Devlin's apartment, they found Ben — and, to their astonishment, Shawn Hornbeck.

Sheriff Toelke says Shawn immediately identified himself to officers as the boy who'd been missing for four-and-a-half years.

According to FBI agent Roland Corvington, Ben Ownby had one question for the law enforcement agents: "Are you going to take me home?"

Michael J. Devlin is being held in the Franklin County Jail in lieu of a $1 million cash bond. He was charged late last week with two separate counts of kidnapping, one in Franklin County, the other in Washington County. In the latter case, authorities allege that he used a gun to abduct Shawn and have also entered a charge of one count of armed criminal action. Washington County has set Devlin's bond at $3 million.