Living With Evil

The first few days in the squalid little apartment must have been horrendous. On "Oprah," Shawn gave a guarded version that contained an eerie echo of what Steven Stayner said about little Timmy White two decades earlier. "I'm thankful that he [Ben] held in there for those couple of days," said Shawn. "And I'm sorry for what he went through, 'cause I told myself, a long time ago, I never want any other kid to go through what I went through, 'cause I know what it's like."

Fortunately, rescue was not far away. A student had seen a white pickup with a camper shell leaving the area in Beaufort, Mo., where Ben Ownby disappeared after getting off the bus. An all-points police bulletin went out. The airwaves filled with bulletins about a suspicious white pickup. At Imo's Pizza, owner Prosperi began to wonder and connect the dots. Devlin's truck matched the one described on the news. Devlin, uncharacteristically, had missed work on Monday, Jan. 8, the day of the abduction and the day after. That Tuesday afternoon, Prosperi drove by Devlin's apartment to look at the truck. He thought that the Nissan lettering didn't quite match the coloring described on the news, but he did notice something strange: fresh road dust on the fender. The boy had been abducted on a dirt road. Two days later, Thursday, he went to the Kirkwood police. Independently, the police were already closing in. A pair of alert cops serving a warrant noticed a truck fitting the description at the Kirkwood apartments. They questioned the owner, who turned shifty. The FBI was called in, and by the next day it was over--both boys saved, Devlin under arrest.

Rupp, the prosecutor, got the Akerses by cell phone as they drove home from work that Friday evening. "Pull your car over now," he told Craig. He told the couple their son was alive. "I looked up straight to the sky," Pam recalls, "and said, 'Thank you, God'."

For both boys, it will take time and kindness to heal, as well as good counseling. Interviewed by NEWSWEEK, Steven Stayner's sister, Cory, recalled that her brother tried to use humor to deflect his hurt, but that he suffered, taunted by other schoolkids for being molested by a man. (Steven Stayner died in 1989 in a motorcycle accident.)

"It can't ever be the same after this," says Craig Akers. Still, he hopes to restore some "normalcy" to Shawn's life. But what, exactly, is normal? Last week Shawn's best friend, Tony Douglas, told NEWSWEEK, "I still think he's mine. I don't know what he thinks." Meanwhile, some 50 miles away, Shawn was out in the yard of his old/new home throwing a baseball around with his old--or is it new?--best friend from before 2002, Patrick. The Akerses sent two people out to watch their son. They, too, kept glancing out the window, as if they could not quite believe he was there, alive and safe.

With Ellen F. Harris, Sarah Hutchins and Richie Frohlichstein in Missouri, Andrew Murr in Los Angeles and Eve Conant and Steve Tuttle in Washington

© 2007