KIDNAPPED teenager Shawn Hornbeck, missing for five years, may have posted messages on an internet site created by his desperate parents, while his alleged captor was out at work.
A series of web postings under the name "Shawn Devlin" - Devlin is the last name of the man suspected of kidnapping Shawn and posing as his father - came to light after the boy's rescue from an apartment in Kirkwood, Missouri, last week.
On 1 December, 2005, someone using the name "Shawn Devlin" asked in a forum on the Shawn Hornbeck Foundation website: "How long are you planing (sic) to look for your son?"
Later that day Shawn Devlin wrote to ask if he could compose a poem for the family.
Several web profiles also appeared to be of Shawn. A web page created on Yahoo in 2004 carried a photo of a youngster who resembled Shawn, though with shorter hair.
Shawn, now 15, was 11 when he was kidnapped in 2002 while riding his bike near his rural home. Astonished police found him on Friday in a suburban St Louis apartment where they also discovered 13-year-old Ben Ownby, who had been missing for four days.
Their alleged abductor, Michael Devlin, a 41-year-old pizza shop employee who also held a job answering telephones at night at a funeral home, is in custody.
So far, he is charged only with kidnapping Ben, but authorities also plan to charge him with abducting Shawn.
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