Police officer Gary Wagster spent all night on Thursday watching Michael Devlin's apartment. He suspected Devlin might be holding 13-year-old Ben Ownby captive inside, and Wagster was worried what the 135kg man might do to the boy.
Wagster's suspicions ultimately ended one of the US' strangest kidnapping cases and improbably brought Ownby and Shawn Hornbeck -- another eastern Missouri child missing since 2002 -- back to their families.
Suspicion had started earlier on Thursday when Wagster and his partner saw that Devlin's truck matched the description of one seen speeding from the site of Ownby's disappearance last Monday.
A neighbor said the truck belonged to Devlin and the officers saw him leave his apartment to empty his trash into a trash bin. They questioned Devlin in the parking lot and he was friendly and cooperative.
Devlin's demeanor quickly changed when the officers started asking him specific questions, Wagster said. He became agitated and defensive.
"It was a total 180 degrees from where he was," Wagster said.
With red flags raised, Wagster reported the find to FBI agents and Franklin County sheriff's deputies who were leading the hunt for Ownby.
When agents arrived on Thursday evening, Devlin would not let them into his apartment, said a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation, who refused to be identified.
By the time Devlin, a pizza parlor manager, left for work on Friday morning, local police had staked out his apartment and the FBI agents were investigating him.
FBI agents walked into Imo's Pizza in Kirkwood on Friday morning to interview Devlin.
A probable cause statement said Devlin admitted to kidnapping Ownby, who vanished days earlier after getting off the school bus near his home in Beaufort, Missouri.
When agents entered Devlin's apartment, they found Ownby inside. They also found Hornbeck. Authorities at first did not recognize Hornbeck, who disappeared at age 11 while on a bike ride but was now a gangly 15-year-old with floppy hair and a pierced lip. He told them his identity when agents entered the apartment.
Devlin was jailed on US$1 million bond and was awaiting arraignment on one charge of kidnapping. More charges were likely, authorities said.
But the arrest raised more questions than it answered.
Authorities did not say how Devlin kept the boys confined in his home. Hornbeck seemed to have had every chance to escape during his captivity.
He was left alone for hours to ride his bike, play videogames and walk past missing-child posters showing his own age-progressed image.
But mental health experts said this troubling case was hardly so simple and that Hornbeck was likely kept mentally shackled by terror and domination from the man accused of kidnapping him.
"I think it's a real mistake to judge this child. Whatever he did to this point to stay alive is to his credit," said Terri Weaver, an associate psychology professor at Saint Louis University.
Weaver, a specialist on post traumatic stress disorder, said children in such situations kick into survival mode, "doing what needs to be done to keep yourself going day-to-day."
Internet profiles posted as far back as two years ago that were created using pictures of Hornbeck emerged over the weekend when a blog mentioned them. A Kirkwood detective said Sunday that he had heard about the profiles but did not know what role they might be playing in the investigation.
Neighbors described Devlin as a loner with a quick temper and said they often heard banging, shouting and arguing coming from his apartment.
It was unclear on Sunday whether Devlin had a lawyer. Jail officials would not comment and the county public defender's office was closed.
The families of both boys have refused to comment beyond a pair of news conferences they held on Saturday, during which the boys were told not to talk to reporters.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.