Here’s the postscript to the Michael Devlin story:

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A former pizzeria manager accused of kidnapping two Missouri boys, one of whom was missing for more than four years, will plead guilty next week to kidnapping, attempted murder and sexual assault, a prosecutor said Friday.

Washington County prosecutor John Rupp said Michael Devlin will plead guilty to all charges there in the 2002 kidnapping of Shawn Hornbeck and will be sentenced Tuesday.

Devlin was arrested in January after police found Shawn and Ben Ownby at Devlin’s apartment in the St. Louis County town of Kirkwood.

Loyd Bailie, Ben’s uncle, told The Associated Press on Friday that the family had been briefed by prosecutors that Devlin will plead guilty next week in all four jurisdictions where he is charged: three Missouri counties and federal court. He said he did not know whether Devlin would plead guilty to all of the more than 80 felony charges against him, several of which carry life sentences.

“This is a great day,” Bailie said. “Just knowing that Ben is not going to have to relive all this through the court system — this is cloud nine.”

Rupp said he could not comment beyond his own county, but St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch made a surprise announcement Friday of a series of hearings early next week to end the cases in all four jurisdictions. He did not specify the purpose for the hearings, and his office did not return several phone calls seeking comment.

Ethan Corlija, Devlin’s attorney, said, “I can tell you, disposition usually means, among lawyers, that things will be concluded in some manner.” He declined to elaborate.

U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway declined to comment. Franklin County prosecutor Robert Parks did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Shawn was 11 when he went missing while riding his bike near his Washington County home in 2002. Ben, 13, had been missing four days after being abducted after getting off a school bus in Franklin County.

A tip from a classmate describing a white pickup truck speeding from the scene led police to Devlin. Investigators were stunned when they found Ben inside the apartment with Shawn, who by then was a 15-year-old with shaggy hair and a lip ring.

Shawn had lived with Devlin for years, telling neighbors he was the man’s son. He made friends, surfed the Internet and roamed Kirkwood, without revealing who he was.

Devlin, 41, was arrested Jan. 12. He is jailed in Franklin County and has pleaded not guilty.

Shawn and Ben were returned to their parents after they were freed. Shawn has been home-schooled since his return to the Washington County community of Richwoods. He turned 16 this summer. Ben returned to school soon after he was freed.

Crime Rant hopes this is the last we hear of him.

No surprise. Michael Devlin pleaded not guilty today in a Washington County (Missouri) courtroom. The plea was in answer to a seven-count indictment accusing the creep of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and trying to murder Shawn Hornbeck.

Even though he was cleaned up, clean shaven, and looking far better than he did when he thrust his disgusting self on the world, Devlin appeared via video.

So much for the coming out party the media was dying to throw.

Here’s a snip from the AP:

The charges here are among the many he faces in the alleged kidnapping and sexual assault of two boys. Shawn was 11 when he disappeared while riding his bicycle near his home in Richwoods on Oct. 6, 2002.

The second abducted boy is William “Ben” Ownby, 13, who disappeared from a school bus stop near his home in Beaufort, Mo., on Jan. 8. Police had gone to Devlin’s apartment expecting they would find Ben and were amazed to find Shawn as well.

Devlin was arraigned today on an indictment returned April 17 by a Washington County grand jury. The charges allege that he kidnapped Shawn while armed with a pistol, committed forcible sodomy and attempted forcible sodomy and tried to suffocate him in Washington County, all within the first month after his disappearance.

For the 15-minute hearing before Circuit Judge Kenneth W. Pratte, Devlin stood in the booking room of the Washington County Jail just across West High Street from the county courthouse. Pratte sat in the courtroom, facing a TV screen mounted to the wall across the room.

The judge began the hearing by asking Devlin whether he could see and hear the judge, and Devlin said he could.

Pratte set a deadline of July 16 for pre-trial motions. Devlin’s lawyers, Michael Kielty and Ethan Corlija, said they plan to file motions for a new judge and a change of venue.

“This is a close-knit community, and the charges are so sensational we could not get a fair trial here,” Kielty said.

Cut the violins and stop weeping for Devlin. Of course he can get a fair trial there. As fair as he can get ANYWHERE.

In Michael “Sasquatch” Devlin news, a federal grand jury is accusing Devlin of producing child pornography and taking Shawn Hornbeck across state lines for sex.  The federal prosecutor in the case, Catherine Hanaway, says the case is “sickening.” Six new charges have been filed against Devlin. Hanaway says Devlin took Shawn Hornbeck to Arizona and to Illinois in 2004, and that he made at least one Polaroid picture and two videocassettes showing explicit sexual conduct. 

Crime Rant has learned exclusively that Devlin has at least one relative in Arizona (possibly a brother and sister-in-law, 41-year-old Devon Devlin), who possibly saw Devlin with Hornbeck, yet obviously said nothing about him suddenly having a child. 

The AP reports: 

ST. LOUIS (AP) – A Missouri man accused of kidnapping and molesting two boys was indicted yesterday by a federal grand jury for allegedly taking pornographic pictures and videos of one of the boys and taking the child across state lines with the intent to engage in sexual assault. 

The indictment marks the first federal charges against suspect Michael Devlin, 41, a former pizzeria manager from the St. Louis County town Kirkwood. He faces kidnapping and other charges in three Missouri counties for the 2002 abduction of 11-year-old Shawn Hornbeck in Richwoods and the January abduction of 13-year-old Ben Ownby in Beaufort. 

Both boys were found in Devlin’s apartment Jan. 12, four days after Ben was kidnapped and 4½ years after Shawn, now 15, was taken. 

More coming soon.

[CR Note: As most regular readers know, I'm a member of Killer Year, a group of debut novelists. I've invited each member of my group to blog here. We've heard from Marcus Sakey and JT Ellison already. So today, please welcome Robert Gregory Browne the author of an amazing new thriller called KISS HER GOODBYE -- just out from St. Martins yesterday.--Gregg]

Crime Rant guest blog by Robert Gregory Brown

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare.

You’re wandering through a shopping mall and you let go of little Joey’s hand for a moment and when you turn around, he’s gone.  You do a quick scan of the crowd, keeping your gaze low, looking for a glimpse of that green t-shirt or those scuffed white sneakers, but they’re nowhere to be found.

Two hours later, you’re sitting in the security office and the police are there and talking to you but you don’t really hear what they’re saying. All you know is that Joey is gone and you want to cry — hell, you have been crying — and all the worst-case scenarios are running through your head, images of emergency vehicles and search teams and dogs sniffing bushes, and your stomach is knotted so tight you feel as if it’s squeezing your lungs, making it impossible to breathe.

According to the Justice Department, about 24% of all kidnapping cases in the U.S. are “stranger” abductions and of the 114,600 non-family abduction attempts each year, between three and five thousand of them are successful.  The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says that nearly half of the child victims of “stereotypical kidnappings” are sexually assaulted and 40% are killed.

These are appalling figures.  Enough to give any parent pause.

Both of my kids are grown now, but I spent many years worrying about them,keeping my eye on them as much as humanly possible when they were young and, as they got older, fretting about where they might be when they didn’t come straight home from school or they stayed at a friend’s house longer than expected.

After many years of writing screenplays, I realized that my fear of losing my children played a larger part in my work than I thought, that I had unconsciously included some type of child in jeopardy scenario in nearly all of my stories.  Even my first novel centers around the kidnapping and premature burial of an ATF agent’s fifteen-year-old daughter.

It’s fairly obvious that the stealing of our children has greatly affected me.  I look at the cases of Elizabeth Smart and more recently, Shawn Hornbeck, and while I celebrate their return to their families, I can’t help but feel heartbroken for the many families who never again see their missing loved ones.

It saddens and angers me that we’ve become a society that must live in such fear.  That we have somehow managed to raise damaged and abusive souls who prey on the young.

And I have to wonder, what has gone wrong?  What darkness has so overtaken us that we, as a modern society, have to live with this kind of threat, where we’re forced to put locks on our doors and our cars and, in some ways, our own children.

We shouldn’t have to worry like this.  When we let go of little Joey’s hand, we should know that no matter how far he might stray from view–

– he’ll always be safe and sound.