Living With Evil

Cut off from his parents, shawn became completely dependent on a 6-foot-4, 300-pound strange man for food, sleep, warmth, attention and affection. According to the Associated Press, Shawn said that at times Devlin awakened him every 45 minutes. (Sleep deprivation is often used as torture by intelligence services.) Yet, at the same time, Devlin showered Shawn with goodies. The 11-year-old boy no longer had to go to school. He could watch TV and play videogames all day. He was given an iPod, a computer, an Xbox 360 and a bike. And he was almost surely threatened with gruesome consequences if he said a word about his abduction to anyone else. Child kidnappers "know how to create a paralyzing sense of fear so even when the captor is not present, the child feels he is omnipresent," says Dr. Terri Weaver, psychology professor at Saint Louis University. "Their mental package is very coercive, very convincing, very mean. They don't just say, 'I'll kill your family.' They tell how they'll do it in graphic detail and manner--how they'll kill the child's family and even pets."

Harry Reichard lived upstairs from Devlin at the Kirkwood apartments. He says he often heard "weird sounds," like whimpering, screaming and pleading. Once, says Reichard, "it was like Shawn was trying to get [Devlin] to stop doing something." At another time, Reichard says, he heard Devlin yell, "What the f--- did you do that for, you f---ing idiot?" The shouting was followed by what sounded like a blow. There was often loud banging and blaring music, including "horrorcore" bands like Insane Clown Posse and Twiztid. "It was like a maniacal workshop," says Reichard, who thought Devlin and Shawn were having father-and-son disagreements.

There had been hints about Devlin's private life. Some time before Shawn arrived to live with him, Laura Aguilar, another neighbor, happened to look through Devlin's street-level bathroom window. She was disconcerted to see a variety of what appeared to be sexual toys. Other neighbors noticed Devlin had a temper. He was obsessive about his parking space, and once called the police in the middle of the night to report that someone had parked in his spot.

But Devlin was otherwise unremarkable. Adopted as a child, he was apparently a quiet, withdrawn, unathletic kid who grew up to be an edgy loner. He got a job at Imo's Pizza during high school and never left. "Devo," as he was called, was "never late, never sick, never missed work," says the pizza parlor's owner, Mike Prosperi. "That's why I made him manager." Aguilar remembers his moving into the Kirkwood apartments in 2001 or early 2002, arriving alone, accompanied by a black cat. In the fall of 2002, Aguilar noticed the arrival of a young boy, but assumed he was Devlin's son. The two seemed normal enough. Another neighbor, Krista Jones, observed Devlin teaching the boy to drive his pickup truck, while others saw the two pitching a tent outside the apartment.

As shawn grew older, he dyed his hair, painted his fingernails black, pierced his ear, eyebrow and lip, and otherwise behaved like an early adolescent. "He was real nice, real polite, a very sweet boy," says Rita Lederle, Tony Douglas's mother. Tony and Shawn became best friends.

Tony began spending nights over at Shawn's, a messy one-bedroom apartment where Shawn slept on a futon in the living room. Dirty dishes were often piled high in the sink, and trash lay around on the floor. Devlin seemed quiet, almost monosyllabic to Tony. He liked Final Fantasy, a role-playing videogame. Devlin was never affectionate with Shawn, Tony later recalled to NEWSWEEK, though he remembered they would sometimes play-fight, punching each other jokingly. From time to time, Devlin blew up at Shawn, one time for somehow messing up his Final Fantasy game.