Invisible Chains: Shawn Hornbeck And The Kidnapping Case That Shook The Nation

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Rowman & Littlefield, Apr 15, 2008 - True Crime - 336 pages

In January 2007, two boys were found in the home of Michael J. Devlin, a “nice enough guy” who managed a pizza parlor in Kirkwood, Missouri. One boy had been kidnapped four days earlier. The other, Shawn Hornbeck, had been missing for four years. How and why did this fifteen-year old, whose face appeared on thousands of milk cartons and “Have You Seen Me?” posters, stay with his abductor in plain view for four years, only an hour from his family home?

From award-winning journalist Kristina Sauerwein comes this riveting story of the American kidnapping that startled the nation and catapulted the chilling reality of Stockholm Syndrome into the spotlight. Shawn had many opportunities to ask for help: he was left alone in his kidnapper's apartment many times, and had phone and Internet access. But he never tried to escape. This is the first time the full story has been told, complete with interviews with law enforcement, and top psychological experts; and a real-life happy ending.

 

Contents

Chapter 1 Shrouded in Secrecy
1
Chapter 2 A Mothers Intuition
3
Chapter 3 The Monster Man Strikes
13
Chapter 4 Searching for Shawn
21
Chapter 5 The Search Continues
41
Chapter 6 A Perfect Suburb
57
Chapter 7 Nice Enough Sometimes Odd and Kind of a Loner
61
Chapter 8 The Mean Guy in Unit D
81
Chapter 17 A Predator Hunts His Prey
199
Chapter 18 Really Sick
203
Chapter 19 The Monster Man Strikes Again
205
Chapter 20 A Funny Feeling
225
Chapter 21 Missing Ben
231
Chapter 22 Closing In
241
Chapter 23 The Missouri Miracle
249
Chapter 24 Home Safe and Sound
267

Chapter 9 A Miracle by Most Accounts
97
Chapter 10 A Criminal Curiosity
101
Chapter 11 Clinging to Hope
129
Chapter 12 Becoming Shawn Devlin
139
Chapter 13 Invisible Chains
157
Chapter 14 Life without Shawn
179
Chapter 15 Beaufort
187
Chapter 16 A Mothers Prayer
195
Chapter 25 Feeling Guilty
279
Chapter 26 In the Spotlight
291
Chapter 27 The Monster Man Caged
309
Chapter 28 Hope
317
Acknowledgments
319
Index
322
Copyright

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About the author (2008)

Kristina Sauerwein is a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and for the Los Angeles Times, where she shared a 2004 Pulitzer prize for her reporting on California wildfires. She is now a freelance journalist who lives in Kirkwood, Missouri, the same town as the kidnap victims.

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