Living With Evil

Shawn told Tony stories to conceal his true identity. He said his mother had been killed in a drunken-driving accident, claimed he was attending a private school to explain his absence from public school, and later said he was being home-schooled. He began spending holidays with Tony's family, saying his father was away seeing relatives, whom, Shawn said, he did not care for. It was all a little peculiar, but "we learned early on that he was not comfortable talking about his family," says Tony's sister-in-law Kelly.

What was really going on in the boy's mind? Shawn may have been suffering from some version of Stockholm syndrome, named after a 1970s bank heist in Sweden in which robbers seized numerous hostages--who ended up bonding with them. (The most notorious example, perhaps until now, is Patty Hearst, the heiress kidnapped by '70s radicals who locked her in a closet and played with her mind until she was willing to join them in a bank robbery.)

On "Oprah," the host asked Shawn, "How often did you think about your family?" Holding his stepfather's hand, the boy replied, "Every day." "Every day," Winfrey repeated. "I prayed to God that one day I would be back with my family every night, and I crossed myself every night." Winfrey: "You crossed yourself every night." "Very Christian family," said Shawn, smiling sweetly at his step-father. "Very Christian family," repeated Winfrey. "Did you ever try to write or call them?" Shawn's answer: "No."

But he did reach out, ever so tentatively. His real family had created a foundation for missing children in Shawn Hornbeck's name. At least twice, Shawn went to the Web site while he was surfing the Net. Once he posted a comment: "How long are you planing [ sic ] to look for your son?" Hours later, he wrote again, asking if he could write a poem for his family. On "Oprah," Shawn explained, "I was hoping it would give some kind of hint." His parents missed it. "You get so many weird, out-there messages," said his stepfather, Craig Akers, his face twisting in regret.

There were a number of missed chances over the four years of Shawn's captivity. Late one night he was stopped by police as he rode his bike home. Officers asked his name and he offered, "Shawn Devlin." On three occasions, he was stopped with Tony Douglas. Each time, Shawn identified Devlin as his father. At least once, the cops gave the boys a ride home in the cruiser.

Devlin's neighbor Monserrat Urias, 14, still wonders if she might have saved Shawn late last year. Sifting through the mail, she saw a flier showing a missing kid. "I know him, I've seen him," she told her mother. Urias's mother thought her daughter was being flippant about child snatching and scolded her, "This is serious." Urias replied: "Never mind."