Stepmom Breaks Silence on Missing 7-Year-Old: ‘I Never Harmed’ My Stepson
In an emotional interview, missing Kyron Horman’s stepmother Terri Horman is speaking out for the first time since the then-second-grade student disappeared from his school nearly five years ago because she said, “Nobody is looking for my son anymore.”
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Kyron was 7 in June 2010 when he went missing after attending a morning science fair at his Skyline Elementary school in Portland, Oregon. “I saw him walking down to his [class]room,” Terri, who’d toured the fair with him and took photos, told People on Wednesday. “My vision of him is the back of his head almost at the door. That’s what I see when I sit here and think about him — that’s my last thought.“
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Kyron Horman at his school’s science fair the day that he vanished (Photo: FBI)
Terri, 45, said that afternoon she waited for Kyron at his school bus stop only to discover that he hadn’t gotten on the bus heading home. "That’s when the panic set in,” she recalled. “That’s when I learned he had not been at school that day and had been unaccounted for, for six hours, and nobody had called me."
Since that day, Terri said she’s been haunted by “what-ifs,” including, “What if I had gotten ready faster? What if we had done something sooner? What if I had stayed for the whole fair and not left early?” Her wish, she added is that “I could go back to that day and do something different.“
Police promptly kicked off an investigation that afternoon, which is ongoing to this day. And although Terri has never been named a person of interest, she’s been the subject of intense suspicion from the public and from Kyron’s dad, Kaine Horman — with whom she has a daughter Kiara, a toddler when Kyron disappeared (Terri also has an older son James, from her first marriage). On Wednesday, Kaine commented on Terri’s interview, announcing to People, in part, that he hopes the mom “will now cooperate with law enforcement to provide additional information that might lead to the discovery of Kyron.”
Kaine filed for divorce 24 days after Kyron was last seen and has said that he suspects his ex is involved Kyron’s disappearance. “I think a lot of people feel the same way through the evidence. Not through a gut feel, but what we know about polygraph failures,” the father, who has custody of Kiara, has said. “She has told us, straight out, she’s failed those tests. No, they’re not admissible in court, but in the general discussion of things, they’re perfectly admissible. I know there’s involvement, we’re not going to get help down that path. I’ve just kind of left that behind a long time ago.”
When Terri failed her first polygraph test regarding Kyron, the mother told People, “My first reaction was ‘How is that possible? I told the truth. How is that possible?’” Asked what she thinks happened to Kyron, she replied, “The answer is what I’ve said a hundred times – I don’t know."
(Photo: FBI)
“At what point are they going to realize I don’t have the answers and they need to change this around and they need to focus on finding him?” Terri continued. “I never harmed my son…There is just so much information that is not being told to the public.”
She moved from Oregon to California in recent years to escape scrutiny, but Terri said thoughts of Kyron are always close by. “I have been his life since he was 3-days old,” she declared. “He is every bit my son. I spent my days with him. I was there for his illnesses, his good days, his bad days, everything. I was part of his life all the time.”
Nearly five years since Kyron vanished, Terri insisted she wanted to break her silence to the world “because nobody is looking for my son anymore. I want Kyron home. I love my son. There is no past tense. I want him home and I can’t fix this. I don’t know how to fix this.”
(Top photo: People.com)
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