Twelve years after Kyron Hormon vanished from a Portland elementary school, the National Center for Missing and Endangered Children has released a new age-progressed photo showing what the 7-year-old might look like today.
A photo on the center’s website and video posted to its social media shows a young man of 19 or 20 with light brown hair and blue eyes covered by rectangle-shaped glasses.
“Police hope this brand new image can finally help bring him home,” the caption reads.
The boy’s disappearance without a trace from Skyline Elementary School on June 4, 2010, spurred the largest search effort in Oregon history and garnered national attention as the investigation turned a spotlight on his stepmother, Terri Moulton Horman. She was never charged in the disappearance.
Kyron’s mother, Desiree Young, said the trip from southern Oregon to Portland never gets any easier as she works to keep the disappearance in the public eye.
“Making the drive in for 12 years and pulling up to the school and knowing this was the last place Kyron was, I can’t even explain the anguish and the heartache,” Young said Saturday during a news conference with Portland TV stations.
The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office collected reference photos to produce the new image estimating what Horman may look like more than a decade later. Age-progressed photos of the second grader have been released every few years: first at age 10 or 11, then 14 or 15 and the latest.
The boy’s stepmother snapped the last known photo of Kyron on the morning he went missing as he posed in front of his science fair project about the red-eyed tree frog. He wore a black T-shirt with “CSI” in green letters and a hand-print graphic. Police say he was also wearing black cargo pants, white socks and black Skechers sneakers with orange trim. He had a distinct V-shaped strawberry birthmark on his forehead.
The criminal investigation remains “open and active,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
Spokesman Chris Liedle said the sheriff’s office receives from one to 20 leads monthly, depending on how much publicity the case gets. Two detectives and an FBI agent remain assigned to the case and follow up on the tips, he said.
Liedle released few other details. The sheriff’s office has repeatedly declined to release case records, including 911 calls, citing the open investigation.
Ongoing efforts include comparing DNA from Kyron’s toothbrush and other family members against the national DNA database, the sheriff’s office statement said. Kyron’s dental characteristics and X-rays also have been uploaded into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons system to compare with unidentified remains across the U.S.
A $50,000 reward is available for information leading to the resolution of the case. Report tips to the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office tip line at 503-988-0560 or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children tip line at 1-800-THE-LOST.
“The possibility of Kyron still being alive is not zero, and our greatest hope has always been that he would be returned to his parents unharmed,” Liedle said.
