Michael J. Devlin

On April 9, 2011, during breakfast at the dining hall of Crossroads Correctional Center, Devlin was stabbed several times with two "ice picks" by another inmate in protective custody, Troy L. Fenton, who is serving a life sentence for robbery and for shooting a police officer. Corrections officers spotted the assault and ordered Fenton to stop. He complied by dropping to the ground on his stomach. Devlin received several wounds and was briefly treated in a hospital and returned to the prison.

According to prison officials, Fenton had made the weapons from metal guide bars on his typewriter. He was cited for having a 15-inch sharpened steel rod, complete with a plastic handle, hidden under his pillow in his cell. Fenton said he was motivated to attack out of anger at Devlin's crimes. As of May 2011, investigation of the assault was ongoing and Fenton might face charges related to the attack. Devlin's security had been a concern for state prison officials since his arrest. Officials contemplated sending him out of state or providing him with a new identity. However, some victims' family members objected to the move, and the plan was dropped.

On December 21, Devlin was sentenced to an additional 170 years for making pornography of one of the boys while in captivity. Devlin was transferred to the Crossroads Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri, to begin serving the first of his life sentences on January 30, 2008.

On January 12, 2007, Devlin was taken into custody and charged with the abduction of 13-year-old Ben Ownby, who police found that day and Devlin had abducted four days earlier. At the time of his discovery, law enforcement officials found another missing boy, Shawn Hornbeck. He had disappeared on October 6, 2002, at age 11 while riding his bike to a friend's house in Richwoods, Missouri. No one had heard from him until he was discovered in Devlin's apartment.

Devlin, who had no criminal record at the time, was charged with one count of kidnapping in Franklin County, Missouri, as well as one count of kidnapping and armed criminal action in Washington County. On January 18, 2007, Devlin pleaded not guilty via closed circuit television on the charges of child kidnapping. Prosecutors in the case said Devlin had already confessed. He was held at the Franklin County Sheriff's Department on a $1 million cash-only bail. He also had a $3 million bond in Washington County. In a January 2007 interview with The New York Post, Devlin was quoted as saying "I don't know how I'm going to explain myself to my parents." During the same interview he claimed to have been happy while Hornbeck lived with him, and lonely prior to that, since most of his friends had married and disappeared.

On February 5, St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch added 71 new felony charges to the existing charges previously filed by Washington and Franklin County Prosecutors. The first 18 counts (one count of kidnapping and 17 counts of forcible sodomy) pertain to the 2007 abduction. The remaining 53 charges are kidnapping and forcible sodomy charges related to the 2002 abduction of Hornbeck. Each of these individual counts was a felony and carried the possibility of life in prison.

As a child, Devlin was adopted into a large family, where he had three brothers (also adopted) and two sisters. He grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri. His parents and siblings all live in Missouri. Before his arrest, Devlin worked as a manager for Imo's Pizza and as a part-time funeral home worker at Bopp Chapel in Kirkwood, Missouri. He was living in Kirkwood at the time of his arrest. According to a friend, Devlin had once been outgoing. He had changed "to a much quieter person" after he developed diabetes and had two toes amputated in 2002.

The two boys were discovered after police noticed Devlin's white pickup truck, which matched the description of a vehicle in the vicinity of the 2002 abduction, in the parking lot of his apartment complex. They happened to be there to serve an unrelated arrest warrant. Hornbeck lived with Devlin, who presented the boy as his son. He was separated from his family for a total of four years, three months and six days, during which time the Shawn Hornbeck Foundation and Search and Rescue Team were established. Both boys were reunited with their families after their discovery.

Michael J. Devlin (born November 19, 1965) is an American criminal convicted of kidnapping and child sexual abuse. He is currently serving 71 life sentences at Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri.

On the morning of October 9, Devlin pleaded guilty to charges against him in Washington County. During that court appearance, he was sentenced to three life sentences for kidnapping and other crimes against Shawn Hornbeck. The sentences were to begin after he had served the life sentence imposed on October 8 for kidnapping Ben Ownby. This brings Devlin's total sentence to incarceration for 1850 years.