Investigators Focus on Kyron Horman's Stepmom

The search for a missing Oregon boy has now entered its third week, and investigators are focusing on the movements of 7-year-old Kyron Horman's stepmother.

CBS News National Correspondent Hattie Kauffman reported on "The Early Show" Monday and has the latest details in the case.

As authorities continue an exhaustive search around Portland, they are also looking for clues close to home, asking whether anyone saw Kyron's stepmother Terri Horman at Skyline Elementary the day he vanished.

Multnomah County Sheriff Capt. Jason Gates told reporters Terri Horman is the last known person to have seen Kyron before he disappeared.

Terri says she snapped a picture of Kyron on June 4 at the school science fair, and left him before his first class. New fliers ask parents and students whether they spotted her Ford F250 truck that day.

Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor, told CBS News, "We don't really have any hard evidence yet that she is responsible for the boy going missing, but all of the investigation seems to be keying in on her."

Investigators have reportedly reviewed Terri Horman's cell phone records and given her a second polygraph exam.

Levenson said, "This investigation has gone beyond a missing boy investigation to a real criminal investigation. It seems to suggest that they know nothing good has happened to this young man and they're keying in on who they believe is responsible."

But at this point, Kauffman said, police are not naming Kyron's stepmother a suspect.

[sharviel]

I don't get why there isn't an Amber Alert for him. Sure they think the stepmom "did it" but what if she didn't?? What if a psycho walked in off the streets and convinced the child to go outside to look at "something really cool" in his car? Peds are crafty and very good hunters for the most part. An experienced one would know that an event such as this one would be a perfect opportunity as the school is expecting numerous adults to be on the grounds and no one would give it a second thought. What if Terri dropped him off and went to meet a boyfriend or something leaving the child alone at the fair? A ped comes up and convinces the child to leave the fair with him and voila! missing child. If that is the case, then the police have wasted invaluable time that they can never get back. By now, the ped could be 3 states over. Why do they do this?? Why do the police focus on ONLY one person at the risk of letting all other potential suspects get away? The police need to recognize that even they can be wrong sometimes. In my book it's far better to have too many suspects than not enough. If the stepmom didn't do this - now they'll never know who did.

[waggie123]

Your are stupid

[621kcm]

HAS ANYONE CHECKED THE SCHOOL????? THERE AREA TONS OF PLACES FOR A LITTLE BOY TO HIDE OR GET STUCK OR BE SHOVED IF BEEN KILLED. THEY TALK ABOUT SEARCHING THE WOODS. WHAT HAPPENS IF HE NEVER LEFT THE BUILDING. HE COULD BE TRAPPED. WE HAD A MISSING CHILD CASE LOCALLY AND THEY SEARCHED EVERYWHERE FOR 2 BOYS AND HERE THEY WERE STUCK AND DIED IN A CAR TRUNK RIGHT IN THEIR OWN BACK YARD. PEOPLE WERE SEARCHING RIGHT THERE. NOBODY THOUGHT THEY COULD GET IN AND NO ONE LOOKED. IT ISNT A TIP TO CALL THE TIP LINE BUT I SURE WOULD LIKE TO KNOW IF THEY SCOURED EVERY INCH OF THE BUILDING. BOILER ROOM, LOCKERS AND ALL!

[stanislowa]

One of the first things the Police did was check the school building...nooks and crannies.

[sharviel]

I don't know where you are from but back home we had the same thing happen. 2 kids crawled inside the trunk of a car sitting in their yard while playing a game with other kids and by the time they were found, they were dead. Kids (especially boys) are like rats in that they will crawl into any space in which they can fit their shoulders. Having said that, from all accounts this kid was afraid of his own shadow so I think it unlikely that he would have gone exploring or wandered off by himself. Someone he knew and trusted took him away. SO very sad.

[staycalm]

At my son's science fair, we bring the exhibit the day before the fair. During the fair you run into everyone...all your child's classmates and their parents as well as kids and parents from other grades. You chat with them before, during and after the fair. Usually there are light refreshments and you chat while drinking lemonade. Kyron's exhibit was outstanding compared to the others and for someone his age. That in itself would have drawn much attention to him. Other kids and parents would have spent time looking at it and mentioning to Terri and Kyron how good it was. If none of this happened...they weren't there. I also notice how empty the classroom looks in the picture. I have a feeling it was taken the day or night before the actual fair when Kyron set it up. I also think he looks photo-shopped because, even though there is a shadow, it doesn't look quite like a natural shadow. Terri seemed almost obsessed with her daughter and I wonder if Kyron did something to hurt her and Terri lost control or perhaps she grew jealous of Kaine's love for his first-born son and wanted her daughter to get all of Kaine's love and money. Funny, if you spell Kaine wth a "C" you get Cain as in Cain and Abel...a similar story of siblings vying for a father's love and one getting killed.

[sharviel]

You know the room does look empty doesn't it? There's good news and bad news about having all these folks around. Good news is: there should be a plethora of witnesses to determine if he was there. Bad news is: because there were so many people and they were all busy and focused on other things, there is a chance either no one will actually remember if they saw him and Terri or not OR they will assume they saw them because they know he should have been there.

[crackills]

Ok so if in the beginning the police ruled this an "isolated incident" they seem to have had an idea then that there was foul play chances well over the idea of abduction. yet to maintain the integrity of their case, they petty much let people run with the idea that it could have been abduction as well. they didnt count it out is what i am saying and judging from what it seems, they probably had figured out through interviews with the family and school people. then why did they let all the money and time be spent on the fliers,and shirts,billboards ect. i understand the need for the searches and could tell by what i personally saw of the searchers methods they were searching for a body not a kid scared and hiding in a tree or something. i think they (the police) played their cards all wrong with total disregard to civilian search efforts. which most likely will end up as the boy who cried wolf next time someone comes up missing and the great super detectives withhold info to build their case. (this seems to me will be a slam dunk on the sm anyway). seems to me the mult sheriff are the ones watching to much csi these days. lol

[maryig]

The picture from the science fair probably still has tags that show when the photo was taken, if it has been edited, etc. I doubt if she would know how to remove those. The camera probably still contains the SD card, Memory Stick, etc. Even if they have been erased, the files can be recovered.

[sharviel]

I have 2 digital cameras. Neither of them has the corrected date/time stamp on them. I use them for pleasure so I've never bothered to figure out how to change them. If Terri doesn't know how to delete the time/date stamps then chances are, she didn't know how to set them when she first got the camera? As for recovered files from the memory card, if the space has been rewritten (as in new photo's added) it cannot be recovered. TV & Movies give a false impression when it comes to recovering deleted stuff from a computer or memory card.

[LJParis]

It looks like LE can't verify that the stepmom was at the school and are looking to find someone that actually saw her. That means her story has not panned out. From what I read she (the stepmom) told her mother (the grand mom) that she saw teachers and other parents at the school when she dropped Kyron off. If LE spoke to those people and they verified that they did indeed see the stepmom with Kyron then why would they have to put out flyers to ask if anyone saw her at the school?
She provided witnesses already.
Are her witnesses saying that they did NOT see her that morning with Kyron?

Also, apparently she lied about where she went after she supposedly left the school. Her cell phone pings don't match her story.

Still...if she never went to the school that morning she could be covering for something the Dad did the night before...which is why he is standing by her.

If she's telling the truth and has nothing to do with this...then it has to be someone at the school.
An employee.
A teacher...
or another student/students.

This is a mystery but IMO there are good reasons that LE is focusing in on the stepmom's story.
Whatever happened to poor little Kyron...what a cutie...so sad.

[cate444]

It doesn't seem to make any sense. I would never leave my 7 year old in a hallway with many other people in it without reminding someone to keep an eye on him 1 hour and 15 minutes before class was due to start (10 am that day)..

The photo in front of his science project is altered -- no left arm.. if you zoom in it's obviously a photo-shopped image. That alone should get the investigators talking to the SM from the start..

[Jodi51]

You are mistaken about the photo-shopping. The shadows are clearly consistent, in addition to the glint from his glasses as well as the laminated images on the presentation board. His arm is not "missing" but behind him, perhaps he was holding the edge of the table then turned towards the camera to say "cheese". His large t-shirt could certainly hide his arm.

[pak31]

I thought the students day started earlier, around 9 ish?? She left him to go to his class where they got into groups to go look at the exhibits, then classes officially started at 10 that day, which is when he was then marked absent.

[hometownmom]

This whole story is so sad and confusing. I can't get it off of my mind. So many things just don't seem to add up. Understandably, the focus on the investigation has shifted to the stepmother. She was the last person who saw Kyron, so this makes sense. Part of me thinks she clearly had nothing to do with it. By all accounts, she seemed like a good women who was raising someone else's child since he was a baby. Some people have pointed to the fact that she took pictures at the school of Kyron, with his school project, and have twisted this to somehow imply she may have been establishing a "cover". But I have four children, and have always taken pictures when they have worked on school projects. This could also be construed as a proud and good mom, obviously. The thing that gets me is that if she was planning this whole evil thing..her stepson's dissapearance, hypothetically, how could she have been so certain that no one would have seen her and Kyron leaving together?..after all, that would have foiled the whole plan. How was she so certain that the school didn't have cameras that she could have been unaware of? It just seems that if you were evil enough to try to pull something like this off, you wouldn't be so brazen as to attempt to pull it off using the school as a launching point.
But on the other hand, I watched the press release and was sort of awed by the reaction of both the biological dad and the stepmom. Now I do realize that I have not been in their shoes. I can't imagine the horror they have been living every second of every day. And I do pray for them. And perhaps as much as you love your child, and ache with every breathe to hold them again, maybe after a week of this, your body and mind are in such a psychological shock that they cannot function as others might perceive they would in the same situation. This having been said, if anyone of my children were missing, I think I would not be able to hold it together during one of my only televised opportunities to plea for my son's safe return. Yet the dad, kept his cool. He seemed too calm for my comfort, and maybe it was very wrong of me, but my first thought was that if relatives had anything to do with this, this man knows something. I hope I'm wrong. I probably am. And I hope for a good ending for Kyron. And if it's too late for that, I really pray that his family will know what happened to him in the end. BEcause as a parent, I cannot think of any worse fear.

[Natashamom]

I agree hometownmom. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt but it does seem strange. I thought something was off with the stepmom and dad during the press release. I also have to wonder why even if they don't want to be on TV, etc that they have not appointed someone in the family to play that role. Something just doesn't add up. I also don't understand how someone could do that. It is just crazy to think she pretended to drop him off at school, took the picture to help her alibi and then snuck him out and killed him. I am hoping they can get some more answers from this new round of questions from the school. I can tell you living in a small town with a 1st grader there are very little times I have dropped him off at school that someone did not see me and wave or say Hi in the parking lot ESPECIALLY when it was a school function day. I am praying they will find answers and praying for little Kyron.

[dmcsherlock]

Oh, be quiet. This is a comment page, we're commenting on the case. I'd say that's a pretty likely scenario. I'm sure if the SM did it the father knows about it and more likely he helped.

[icunow2]

My problem as it is with the authorities is why the stepmommy decided to "take a picture" of the boy on the day he dissapears with her cell phone equipped with time and date stamp? Evidence for an alibi maybe? It is obvious where this investigation is going and is sad. I have been an investigator for over two decades and this case is screaming someone close by.

[theefword]

Why can't anyone see that the picture of him in front of the science project was cropped. Anyone notice the boy has no left arm? He can't put his entire arm behind his back and yet the short sleeve is still in front and not twisted. It was photo shopped, why the investigators are allowing this photo with him wearing CSI t shirt as a picture of Kyron at school that day is beyond me. He must have worn that shirt alot because on youtube there are 50 different pics of him wearing it at the zoo, at home etc. He was probably never at school that day. We have yet to hear from anyone who actually saw him.

[stanislowa]

Good point!