Almost 10 years to the day after Portland 10-year-old Kyron Horman vanished into thin air, his mother, Desiree Young, is reflecting on the “red flags” she saw with his stepmother, Terri Moulton Horman, in the days leading up to his disappearance. Ahead of Investigation Discovery’s premiere of Little Boy Lost: An ID Mystery, airing Friday, May 29, Young spoke to PopCulture.com about her continued fight to bring her son home.
Kyron became the subject of Oregon’s largest ever search-and-rescue missions after vanishing on June 4, 2010. While stepmother Terri, married to Kyron’s dad Kaine Horman, claimed to have dropped him off at school that morning to take part in a science fair, he never arrived at class, and was reported missing when he failed to return home. Police have never made any arrests in the case, but maintain that it is still an open and active investigation.
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Speaking to PopCulture, Young reveals that she and Terri didn’t have a good start to their relationship, as she learned that her husband was seeing her while she was pregnant with Kyron and the two were still married. Divorcing not long after that revelation, Young says, “I basically made a point to be the bigger person and rise above it. We did what we had to do to get along with the kids, but it was awkward.”
Young admits she didn’t think Terri was “a very good person,” but said she had no initial concerns about her as a stepparent to Kyron. In the year leading up to his disappearance, however, Young says she started to notice odd behaviors in Kyron, like meltdowns in which he wanted to go back to her home and calls from Terri in the middle of the night. “I was starting to get concerned. I started to see red flags,” she explains, saying she was dismissed as “overly dramatic” when bringing these concerns to her ex-husband. “Needless to say I didn’t push the issue. Obviously, hindsight is 20/20. I wish I had pushed the issue.”
Learning that her son was missing was an “all-encompassing” emotional trauma, Young recalls, and one that she still gets emotional reliving. From the start, she had “that mom gut feeling” that something was up with Terri’s story about dropping Kyron off at school this morning — and the evidence that has come out since then, documented in Little Boy Lost and Rebecca Morris’ new book, Boy Missing: The Search for Kyron Horman, has only strengthened her feelings that Terri knows the truth behind what happened to Kyron. (Terri has denied involvement in the little boy’s disappearance.)
“We want to bring Kyron home, whatever that means. We want her to do the right thing,” Young tells PopCulture, adding that she won’t stop fighting until she has answers. “Every day I don’t have Kyron in my arms is another day where I say we’ve gotta keep going. I’m never gonna give up, I’m never gonna go away. Terri’s never going to take that from me. She’s already taken way too much. … I am more stubborn than she is and ever thought I could be.”
She encourages anyone with any piece of information to come forward to the police. “It’s super important because if we keep the pressure up, it just takes that one person to decide to talk,” Young says. “It just takes that one piece of information to come forward to where we can do something.”
For more information on Kyron’s disappearance, watch Little Boy Lost: An ID Mystery, airing Friday, May 29 at 9 p.m. ET only on Investigation Discovery, and visit the Missing Kyron Horman Facebook group for updates. This special is a part of ID Presents: Nine at 9, with new premieres running nightly at 9 p.m. ET on Investigation Discovery.
