Michelle McNamara Solved a Kidnapping Case Long Before 'I'll Be Gone in the Dark'
Michelle McNamara's I'll Be Gone in the Dark, published in 2018, serves as the inspiration for HBO's engrossing docuseries of the same name. The true crime writer spent years diving into the psyche, motive, and extensive victim list of the Golden State Killer, making headlines of her own with one of the most personal and detailed journalistic investigations of the murder, originally published in Los Angeles Magazine.
But McNamara, a pioneer in true crime internet sleuthing, didn't get her start with a sudden interest in the murders that plagued California through the '70s and '80s. Before she dove into the terrors of the Golden State Killer, she also beat the police to solving another cold case. In 2007, the then-blogger correctly connected two missing person cases together just one day before police arrested Michael Devlin for a recent kidnapping and another dated four years before. McNamara's work on the Golden State Killer is her most prolific, but the journalist proved her incredible talent with investigative journalism way before I'll Be Gone in the Dark.
What Happened?
On October 6, 2002, Shawn Hornbeck was abducted while riding his bike in Richwoods, Missouri. He was 11-years-old. Police went on a search for Hornbeck, but were unable to discover the boy's whereabouts. Soon after, Hornbeck's parents went on the The Montel Williams Show where a psychic told the family that their son was dead, and then described the abduction, failing to get any of the eventual details correctly. In his honor, his family started the Shawn Hornbeck Foundation and Search and Rescue Team.
Years later, in 2007, Ben Ownby went missing. Four days later, officers were able to locate Ownby within four days of going missing. But when Ownby was found, abducted by Michael Devlin, another boy was onsite. Shawn Hornbeck was alive and had been living with Devlin as a hostage for over four years.
How Did McNamara Identify the Case?
As I'll Be Gone in the Dark says, McNamara accurately noted a major tip that suggested that the cases of Ownby (which dominated the news cycle at the time) and Hornbeck (which had all but fallen off the radar) were likely connected. On her then-largely unknown blog, McNamara posted:
One intriguing lead investigators should examine is a similar disappearance four years ago and thirty-eight miles from Beaufort.
On October 6, 2002, Shawn Hornbeck left home on his bicycle in the rural area of Richwoods, Missouri. . . . Though Ben was two years older than Shawn, he looked young for his age, and both boys have strikingly similar stats — Shawn was 4-foot-8 and 90 pounds, two inches shorter and 10 pounds lighter than Ben.
Continuing on her sleuthing mission, she also included a map of the area, which detailed the boys' abduction sites. McNamara's observations were always notable because of her intense attention to detail, and even though her post landed on True Crime Daily a day before the arrest, officer and media attention largely failed to recognize McNamara's accomplishments. However, fans and true crime aficionados took notice.
What Happened After?
Even after the arrest, McNamara continued to take note of further details that pointed to additional layers in the abduction. In a write up for Notre Dame Magazine, Jamie Reidy outlines the small details McNamara picked up from the case. Listening to an interview, she heard a victim's brother talk about family vacations on Lake Michigan. "McNamara did an online property search and learned that a man with the same name as Devlin’s father owns a home in western Michigan, right near the lake," Reidy writes. "She next searched 'Missing boys SW Michigan,' and found a case in Benton Harbor in which the victim closely resembled Ben Ownby and Shawn Hornbeck."
The search has ultimately gone unsolved, but as of 2019, Devlin continues to be a suspect in the case of five other missing boys.
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