Kyron Horman Case Now Considered Criminal

It's been 10 days since 7-year-old Kyron Horman disappeared outside his Portland, Ore., school.

"Early Show" National Correspondent Hattie Kauffman reported authorities are now saying they're shifting from a full-scale search to a criminal investigation.

Investigators in Portland are now offering a $25,000 reward for information that leads them to second grader Kyron Horman. With Kyron's family standing by, Capt. Monte Reiser says officers will follow-up on any tip, but their investigation has now shifted.

Reiser said, "With the search and rescue mission completed at this time, we are moving operations toward the criminal investigative end of the spectrum."

The search for Kyron began 10 days ago with no sign of the 7-year-old since his stepmother dropped him off at school on June 4.

Sheriff Dan Staton said, "We will be continuing this investigation. It is not going to stop and I am not going to cease in dedicating resources to locating Kyron."

Kyron's family has been largely silent since the news broke of the boy's disappearance, addressing the press just once, last Friday.

Tony Young, Kyron's stepfather, said, "I would just like to say Kyron, we miss you, we love you, and we need you home right now."

Authorities are trying to stem the tide of online rumors surrounding the case, and his family's possible involvement. They say Kyron's parents are doing all they can to help, but it's time to refocus their efforts.

Reiser told reporters, "While we are still keeping all options open, it's a natural progression to move the overall focus to a criminal case."

But criminal profiler Pat Brown said on "The Early Show" said the case was probably seen as a criminal investigation since the beginning.

"One would hope (investigators) followed it as a criminal investigation from the very beginning," she said.

Brown continued, "I mean, there's always an off-chance he wandered off. He's just fine. He got lost, somebody picked him up, trying to help him out. That would be pretty hard to believe. Okay, he's only 7 years old so that's not so likely. As a teenager then you would say, 'Well, maybe he just ran away.' You know, but I think it really has been a criminal investigation, but they have come up with nothing at this point. It's possible also they have some interesting leads or they have theories. They're pretty much sure that something terrible has happened to Kyron. So either by a stranger or family, we just don't know all the situation. So, I'm assuming they have a lot of stuff they're looking at."

Brown said the case will now focus less on search-and-rescue.

She explained, "At a certain point you can't really look for a child or a body everywhere in the United States. It gets to a point of ridiculous as you can't go down every hill and crevice. Most of the time bodies are actually found by joggers and dog walkers, so usually the search doesn't even do anything, but we have to try."

"Early Show" co-anchor Erica Hill commented that Kyron's family has faced some criticism for their relative silence throughout the investigation.

Brown said some people are nervous about entering the public eye, but she said she does find it strange for the family to not speak out.

"It is kind of unusual," she said. "But, you know, there are some people who are just very, very meek. They're afraid of being in the public eye. They just think the police will do this. I mean, there are people like that. I can't say that absolutely says something strange. But that does, you know, make people raise their eyebrows a little bit. So what we don't know is exactly how much the police have investigated where Kyron's movements were or stepmother -- people looking at the stepmother. She left him at the school. What we don't know, could it be possible he left the school, ran back out to stepmom and said, 'I left something at home, can we go get it?' and something went wrong."