Against Their Will

by Nigel Cawthorne

  Had police not arrived, Jamelske claimed, Meikka would have stayed with him until the date they agreed on for her freedom—May 12, her birthday.

  “There’s no question in my mind,” he said.

  After that, there would have been no more Viagra and no more captives, he claimed.

  Chapter 12

  Shawn Hornbeck—Hidden in Plain Sight

  ON SUNDAY OCTOBER 6, 2002, eleven-year-old Shawn Hornbeck went out to ride his bike. When dusk fell at 5 p.m. and Shawn had not returned home, his mother Pam began to worry. Shawn was afraid of the dark.

  Plenty of people in their town of Richwoods, Missouri, had seen him out that afternoon. He was hard to miss with his lime-green bike and the bright orange T-shirt he wore with the name of his little league team, the DeSoto Astros, on it. He was last seen at 4:30 p.m. near his elementary school, heading for home.

  At 6 p.m., Pam called Shawn’s best friend Patrick Reeves. Patrick said he had not seen Shawn all afternoon. At 8 p.m., she called the police. Shawn had vanished.

  That day, thirty-seven-year-old Michael John Devlin had driven from his home in suburban St. Louis toward a parcel of vacant land in a development called Woodland Lake Estates in Washington County, just twenty-five miles from Shawn’s home. Devlin often went camping there and kept a twelve-foot fishing boat, which he used on the area’s thirteen lakes.

  Devlin was a big man, six-foot-four, and he weighed three hundred pounds. But he liked little boys and he was carrying a gun. His route took him through Richwoods, where he spotted Shawn riding along a dirt track beside the church. The boy was just four-foot-eight and weighed ninety pounds—easy prey.

  When Shawn turned onto the road, Devlin rode up behind him and nudged his bike lightly with his truck. Then he stopped and got out of the passenger door, pretending that he was concerned for the safety of the child. He grabbed the boy and flung him into the truck. Threatening him with a gun, he taped the boy’s hands together, then set off back toward St. Louis, fondling the boy’s crotch as he drove.

  Back at his apartment, he sexually assaulted the boy repeatedly. Then he wanted to go to sleep, so he wrapped a rope around the boy’s waist and tied it around his own wrist. For Shawn, there was no escape.

  The following morning, Devlin went to work as usual at a nearby pizza parlor where he was manager. He left Shawn tied up on a futon with duct tape over his mouth. Every work day for the first five months, Shawn was left like this. During his lunch break, Devlin would return to feed Shawn and take him to the bathroom. He told his coworkers that he had to go home to look after a sick cat.

  In Richwoods, there was not a single clue to Shawn’s whereabouts. No one had noticed Devlin’s truck. He had not left a tire track. Devlin had even taken and disposed of Shawn’s lime-green bicycle. All the police made a fruitless search of the surrounding woodlands. Volunteers joined in. Fliers were distributed. Appeals were made. Shawn’s picture appeared on America’s Most Wanted. Searchers swore they would never give up.

  A month after Shawn had disappeared, a woman came forward and said that a motorist had hit Shawn on Highway H, not far from where he had last been seen. Then he had tried to hide the boy’s body in a grassy area near the road. Ten volunteers performed a fingertip search of the area. They found some blood and intestines. However, it was soon established that these came from a pig that a local home owner had slaughtered. Lakes were drained; abandoned mine shafts were examined. Nothing was found. But no one was searching the Kirkwood district of St. Louis.

  Devlin lived in Unit D of a rundown apartment block at 491 South Holmes Avenue in Kirkwood. He had worked at Imo’s Pizza since high school, graduating from delivery boy to manager. His friends had gotten married, developed highflying careers, and moved on. By his own admission, Devlin was lazy. Short on ambition and personal hygiene, he stayed put. However, he had no criminal record, apart from a few traffic tickets. His only vice appeared to be smoking menthol cigarettes. He did not even drink beer when his boss bought a round after the night shift. To make a little extra money, he did a couple of shifts answering the phone at Bopps Chapel Funeral Directors. There, too, he was said to be a good worker—polite, efficient, and punctual.

  At Imo’s, Devlin was nicknamed Devo because of his occasional bad temper. No one knew much about his personal life. He did not talk about dating, though he sometimes cracked derogatory jokes about homosexuals. It was assumed he was shy, or asexual. His only known passions were playing computer games and 1970s rock bands. He was opinionated when it came to politics, and among the things he hated were child molesters. They were the scum of the earth.

  While Devlin was a nice enough guy at work, the other residents at 491 South Holmes Avenue avoided him. He was known as a misanthropic curmudgeon. Consequently, he had no visitors.

  When a brown-eyed boy turned up at Devlin’s apartment, neighbors assumed he was Devlin’s son. With a temper like Devlin’s, it was not difficult to see why he might have broken up from his partner. Nor was it difficult to see why no one asked.

  The sexual abuse of Shawn continued from the first day of his captivity. But Devlin could not keep missing work on account of a sick cat. A month after he had kidnapped Shawn, Devlin took him out to a remote area of Washington County to kill him. He later told the FBI that he did not shoot the boy because it would have made a mess and left too much evidence. Instead, he tried to choke him to death.

  The boy had his arms bound and duct tape over his mouth. He cried, and Devlin found could not go through with it. He explained to the boy that he had to kill him, because he could not keep leaving work at lunchtime to feed him. Shawn then begged for his life. If Devlin let him live, he would feed himself at lunchtime. He would not try to escape, and Devlin could do anything he liked with him. It was a deal.

  Despite the appalling abuse Shawn suffered, he lived up to his part of the bargain. He did not even try to escape when Devlin, who suffered from Type II diabetes, had to have two of his toes amputated and went to recuperate at his parents’ home in nearby Webster Groves. Devlin called the apartment regularly to check that Shawn was all right. He had left the boy money to buy food and dropped by occasionally in case he had run out of cash.

  When Devlin returned, life went back to normal. For Shawn, that meant a hell of physical and sexual abuse. Neighbors heard obscenities issuing from his apartment, along with the sound of thrashing. They heard whimpering, screaming, pleading. But they put it down to a father-son disagreement. Besides, when the young boy was seen out, he seemed normal enough. He told people his name was Shawn Devlin. Michael Devlin was his father, or sometimes he said he was his godfather. He said his mother had died in a car crash.

  Shawn told a girl a similar story in a chat room on the Internet. Shawn’s access to the Internet gave him another escape route that he did not take. His parents had set up the Shawn Hornbeck Foundation online. On December 1, 2005, a Shawn Devlin from Kirkwood posted the message on the Website: “How long are you planing [sic] to look for your son?”

  He told some people that he went to private school, others that he was home-schooled. Though he lived in a squalid apartment, he was the envy of other kids because he had all the latest electronic toys: Xbox, iPod, cell phone, and a computer. And he could be seen out on his BMX and skateboard.

  Shawn went to the library and the pool, and hung out with friends. And he slept over at friends’ houses and went on outings with friends’ families. Nobody thought that he was anything but a normal kid. There was only one thing strange about him. He did not like talking about his background.

  One friend named Tony Douglas even stayed over at Devlin’s one-bedroom apartment, sleeping with Shawn on a futon in the front room. It was far from pleasant. The place was a mess. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink. Devlin played computer games and rarely said anything. Occasionally, he exploded at Shawn, accusing him of messing up his game.

  When Shawn’s picture appeared on the TV, friends said that he looked like the missing bo
y. Shawn would tell them to shut up, or shrug and say: “Whatever.”

  Shawn even had contact with the police. When his BMX was reported stolen on August 15, 2003—ten months after he disappeared—an officer came to Devlin’s apartment and spoke to Shawn and his “father.” The officer suspected nothing and did not recognize Shawn, though no effort was made to disguise him.

  On another occasion, a police officer who knew Devlin from the pizza parlor saw him in the street with Shawn and smiled and waved. And Shawn’s friend Tony Douglas said that on at least three occasions, he had been out with Shawn when they had been stopped and given a ride home by the police. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported two other occasions when Shawn had been stopped by the police and had given his name as Shawn Devlin with a date of birth within a few days of his real one.

  Devlin also traveled around with Shawn. They drove to Chicago. Then in June 2004, Devlin drove the 1,400 miles to Prescott, Arizona, to attend Devlin’s brother’s wedding. Shawn was with him in the pickup. They stayed at motels on the way together. The boy did not appear at the wedding, as it might have aroused suspicion. However, it was noted that Devlin was the only guest from the St. Louis area who had chosen to drive to Arizona rather than fly.

  When he was fifteen, after nearly four years with Devlin, Shawn found himself a girlfriend. She took him to her school dance. Shawn remained a little reticent about discussing his background, and no one seemed to notice that Shawn did not go to school at all.

  Now that Shawn was an adolescent and showing an interest in girls, Devlin was losing interest in Shawn. On January 8, 2007, Devlin went on the prowl again. In Beaufort, Missouri, he snatched thirteen-year-old Ben Ownby as he got off the school bus. He had already told Shawn of his plans to abduct another child. Shawn had become defiant in recent months, and Devlin thought that making him an accomplice in a major crime might make him more compliant. Shawn was in the pickup when Ownby was snatched. Devlin said, “Okay buddy, now that you are in the truck with me, you’re in as much trouble as I am.”

  He told Shawn that his job was to keep Ben quiet, but Ben went quietly after Devlin showed him his gun. Shawn then distracted Ben with talk about food and TV, so it was not necessary to bind the young boy with duct tape. Back at the apartment, Shawn acted as a guard when Devlin was out. He and Ben played computer games. Ben even saw his parents on the TV, making an appeal for his return.

  This time, though, Devlin had not snatched a child off an empty street. Ben’s friend Mitchell Hults had been on the school bus with him and glimpsed Devlin’s white Nissan pickup as it reversed into a ditch before speeding away.

  The authorities immediately sent out an EPA—an Endangered Person Advisory. This alert system had been set up after one woman had cut a child out of another woman’s belly to kidnap the premature infant in Skidmore, Missouri, in 2004. By that time, the America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response system had also been set up, following the abduction and murder of nine-year-old Amber Hagerman in Dallas in 1996. The next morning an AMBER alert was also sent out.

  But this time the police had something to go on: Mitchell Hults’s description of Devlin’s white Nissan pickup. They even polygraphed the teenager in case he was involved in the kidnapping.

  Devlin’s boss at Imo’s Pizza, Mike Prosperi, saw the story about the abduction of Ben Ownby on TV. He knew that Devlin had a white Nissan pickup. And Devlin had called in sick that day. When Devlin came in, Prosperi noticed that his pickup was caked with red clay; it was the color of clay that you found in the Missouri backwoods, not in the St. Louis area. Although Devlin had been a trusted employee and a friend for twenty years, Prosperi went to the police. He said that he was 99.9 percent sure that he was wrong. But nevertheless, he was there.

  When questioned, Devlin’s mother noted that her son had a white pickup like the one the police were looking for. Neighbors noticed the Nissan parked outside Devlin’s apartment. They also noticed that Devlin had a new “son.”

  Although the white Nissan pickup was an important clue, the police were not looking for it when they visited 491 South Holmes Avenue. They were actually there to arrest one of Devlin’s neighbors, but he was not in. Then they noticed the white Nissan in the resident’s parking bay. It matched the description of the one they had been told to look for.

  The officers asked around to find out who owned the truck. Michael Devlin then came out of his apartment to throw out the garbage. One of the officers recognized him from the pizza parlors and they got to chatting. Devlin was his usual friendly self. He admitted that the white Nissan was his. But when the missing child was mentioned, his attitude changed. He became defensive—“squirrelly” was the word the cop used at the time.

  The police called the FBI; when they turned up, they asked to see inside Devlin’s apartment. He refused to let them enter. However, through a curtain-less back window, they could see a child playing a video game. Devlin refused to tell them the child’s name, though he said that the boy was his godson. Again, he refused to let them enter the apartment or talk to the child.

  Eventually they persuaded Devlin to let them talk to Shawn in the doorway. He said his name was Shawn Wilcox. His mother was dead and Devlin was looking after him while his father was away in New York on a business trip. While the conversation was going on, Ben was hiding behind the door as he had been told.

  The FBI were not looking for Shawn. Missing for four years, he had been all but forgotten. They were looking for Ben, and Shawn did not match his description. So they went away. However, the Kirkwood police continued their surveillance of Devlin’s apartment.

  The following morning, Devlin went to work as usual. About midday, the police and the FBI turned up to interview him again. During their interrogation of Devlin, an FBI agent mentioned that a tire track had been found at the site of Ben Ownby’s abduction. They were now going to check whether it matched the tires on Devlin’s pickup.

  Devlin was shaken. He knew the game was over. He blurted out that Shawn was not his godson. In fact, he was the missing boy Shawn Hornbeck. Then Devlin was asked whether Ben Ownby was at the apartment. He admitted he was. Both were alive.

  “I’m a bad person,” said Devlin.

  They took Devlin back to his apartment. The two boys were there. Ben asked if they had come to take him home. He had been missing for four days.

  The officers then asked Shawn who he was, this time out of Devlin’s earshot. He said he was Shawn Hornbeck. He was finally returned to his mother after 1,558 days of captivity.

  On Devlin’s computer, the FBI found sexually explicit videos and photographs showing Devlin and Shawn. One shows Devlin torturing Shawn while the boy screams for him to stop. Devlin was charged with eighty-four offenses, including kidnap, forcible sodomy, producing child pornography, attempted murder, the use of a deadly weapon in the commission of a crime, and transporting a minor across a state line for the purposes of sex.

  Prosecutors had evidence showing that Devlin tortured Shawn from his first days in captivity and made the boy promise not to flee in order to stay alive. It was a “devil’s bargain” that kept Shawn under Devlin’s control for more than four years, even as the boy had phone and Internet access, said Shawn’s stepfather Craig Akers.

  Devlin pleaded guilty. His attorneys said that he accepted his punishment because he knew what he did was wrong. This was dismissed by prosecutors and the boys’ families.

  “He pleaded guilty because he does not want the world to know the full extent of what he did,” said St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch.

  Devlin was sentenced to five life terms, plus a further 170 years.

  Chapter 13

  Zalina Israilova—The Praetorian Plaything

  STORIES OF ABDUCTION FOR SEXUAL slavery in war zones abound. Often these involve young girls in Africa whose male counterparts are fed drugs and forced to become child soldiers. On August 14, 2011, London’s Sunday Times reported a chilling case from Chechnya, a country that has
been in turmoil since it tried to secede from the Russian Federation in the 1990s.

  Human rights activists eventually reported the plight of Zalina Israilova. Born in the village of Mesker-Yurt in central Chechnya, she lost her mother when she was ten. She was then raised by her grandmother but, when her grandmother died, she was sent to live with her father and her two brothers. Chechnya is a sternly patriarchal society, and Zalina was unhappy. After a few years, she ran away—a shameful act in a conservative Muslim country. She was jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

  Zalina was a pretty woman, slim with large dark eyes. In 2006, she fell in love with a senior member of the Kadyrovtsy. This is the militia loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov, son of President Akhmad Kadyov, who had been assassinated in 2004. In 2007, at the behest of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ramzan Kadyrov took over as president of Chechnya. He had just turned thirty, the minimum age for the job. Ramzan is an advocate of polygamy. He has two wives—which is outlawed in Russia—and maintains that wives are the property of their husbands. The Kadyrovtsy has been accused of abducting, torturing, and executing suspected Islamic militants—allegations the Chechen president vehemently denies.

  It seems that Zalina ignored the warning signs. Three months after she gave birth to her daughter, Elina, the militiaman dumped her. Then he married another woman and took Elina away from her mother. Zalina was distraught. She turned to relatives for support, putting them in a dangerous position. They did what they could, but she was considered a pariah. Being associated with her brought shame on their family.

  Men from the Kadyrovtsy, colleagues of her former lover, came and took her away in cars with tinted windows. They used her as a sexual plaything, threatening to kill her if she resisted. There was nothing her family could do about it.

  Then in late 2008, Zalina vanished altogether. She was taken to a militia base where ten girls were kept naked in one big room. Men would come and rape them at will. They would even rape them with bottles. Some girls simply disappeared. Young women were found dead in the fields outside Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. They each had a bullet in the head and one in the heart. The victims were condemned as prostitutes, and their executions described as “honor killings.”