Missing Ore. boy’s mother makes fresh appeal to stepmother, asks her to help investigators

Missing boy’s mom makes new appeal to stepmother

MEDFORD, Ore. — The biological mother of a 7-year-old Oregon boy missing for more than a month issued a fresh appeal Tuesday to the boy’s stepmother, again asking her to cooperate with police.

Desiree Young said the boy’s 18-month-old half sister needs to see that Terri Horman did the right thing in bringing her brother home. She said the girl loves and misses Kyron Horman.

“He is somewhere and we don’t know where,” Young said at a news conference Tuesday at police headquarters in Medford in southern Oregon, where she lives.

Terri Horman is the last person known to have seen Kyron at his Portland school before he vanished on June 4. Investigators have not named her as a suspect or a person of interest.

Her attorney, Portland defense lawyer Stephen Houze, did not immediately return calls seeking comment on Tuesday.

Multnomah County authorities have said that Horman has been cooperating with the investigation. But Young, the boy’s father and his stepfather said in an e-mail to news organizations late Monday that they don’t believe that Horman has given authorities her full cooperation.

Young spoke Tuesday alongside her husband, Medford police Detective Tony Young, who said Terri Horman hasn’t contacted authorities since their first appeal on Thursday.

Lt. Mary Lindstrand at the sheriff’s office said Tuesday that the department would not discuss details of the case.

Horman has told authorities she dropped Kyron off at a science fair before school. He did not come home on the school bus.

Young and her husband said they wanted people in southern Oregon to know about his ties to the region, and to keep up hopes that he will be found alive.

“We’re parents,” she said. “We still expect him to get out of bed everyday and come and see us. So of course we believe he’s alive.”

In a message to her son through TV cameras, she said, “We love you and we miss you. We remain here working hard every day to get you home. Please do not be afraid, because the police are going to find you.”

Young also revealed that the day her son disappeared, his stepmother was supposed to drive him to Eugene to turn him over to his mother and stepfather to spend the weekend in Medford.

Tony Young choked up when he described how he was going to take the boy on a long-delayed fishing trip.

“He had been asking me to take him fishing for awhile,” he said, wiping away tears. “The weather and the circumstances didn’t lend to it. I bought him a new fishing pole for Christmas and he had been practicing.”

Desiree Young said she goes to church frequently to cope with her son’s disappearance.

“I look at pictures of Kyron before I go to bed so I can sleep, or try to go to sleep,” she said. “I watch videos of him, because it comforts me to see him smile. Honestly, I just pretend like he’s here.”