PORTLAND — The stepmother of a missing Oregon boy has broken her silence, telling People magazine she never harmed him.
Police have said Terri Horman took then 7-year-old Kyron Horman to his Portland school in 2010 and was the last person known to have seen him. He never showed up for class and a massive search effort came up empty.
The boy’s biological parents have repeatedly said they believe she knows what happened. However, Terri Horman hasn’t been charged or called a suspect by authorities.
“At what point are they going to realize I don’t have the answers,” Horman said. “They need to change this around, and they need to focus on finding him.”
Terri Horman’s phone was busy and no message could be left when The Associated Press tried to reach her Wednesday.
The eight-minute video clip released by People on Wednesday marked the first time Horman has been heard speaking about the case.
In the clip, Horman addressed claims that she failed two lie-detector tests and that she approached a landscaper about killing her husband months before Kyron disappeared.
Horman blamed a hearing problem for her poor polygraph performance. She said her responses were delayed because she’s deaf in her left ear, and it took time to process the questions from an interviewer who sat behind her.
“When that first polygraph was done, the polygrapher tells me that I failed. And my first response was ‘how is that possible? I told the truth. How is that possible,'” Horman said. “He gave some kind of song and dance and I became a little livid at that point. Because I knew I was telling the truth.”
She said the claim involving the murder-for-hire plot was a bogus story made up by a man who had an ax to grind because she had rejected his advances.
The boy’s father, Kaine Horman, filed for divorce on June 28, 2010, two days after investigators informed him of the alleged plot. Terri Horman has never been charged in connection with that claim. A judge finalized the divorce in late 2013.
Terri Horman said she recently relocated to California. The magazine said she had to “flee” because of intense suspicion in Oregon.
