22 years after attempted abduction, victim says he learned it was Michael Devlin

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    ST. LOUIS, MO (KMOV) — A Canadian man learned the man who tried to abduct him years ago, was Michael Devlin.

Devlin was sentenced to 74 life sentences and 170 years of federal time after the 2007 kidnapping of Ben Ownby and 2002 kidnapping of Shawn Hornbeck.

Kevin Palmer of North Bay, Ontario Canada is hoping the FBI office in St. Louis will launch a new investigation into Devlin that leads to charges for an attempted abduction in December 1998.

Palmer said he remembers the face of the man who tried to abduct him 22 years ago, but it wasn’t until recently he put the name of Michael Devlin, to that face.

“The guy tried to entice me to his vehicle. I never forgot his face,” he said.

Ownby was kidnapped in January of 2007 in Beaufort and it was during that investigation that Ownby and Hornbeck were found in Devlin’s Kirkwood apartment.

The discovery that Hornbeck was still alive after his abduction near Richwoods in 2003, was dubbed, “The Missouri Miracle”.

Palmer told News 4 that his father married a woman from Robinson, Illinois and in December 1998 he traveled there with his father and stepmother. He was 14 years old at the time.

According to Palmer, while walking back from a video rental store, a man in a pickup pulled up and tried to get Palmer to accept a ride.

“I just wanted to walk away and the guy got upset, I don’t know, irritated. And he said, “I’ll never forget this, he said, ‘Nah, boy just get in the truck.’ And that’s when I bolted and I ran,” said Palmer.

He said a police report was filed at the time, but years passed and it became a distant memory.

That is, until April 2020 after he started volunteering for a non-profit in Canada called, “Operation Underground Railroad”, that works to combat human trafficking.

Palmer said he was scrolling through stories on YouTube about children who’d been abducted and were able to escape later. That’s when he said he came across a story on Shawn Hornbeck and he says he saw a photo of Michael Devlin.

“I remember yelling out, I was scared of waking up my dad, ‘That’s, that’s him, That’s the same guy from Robinson.'”

Palmer was confident that he now had the identity of the man who tried to abduct him 22 years ago, so he contacted police in Robinson but they suggested he reach out to the FBI since Devlin would have crossed a state line to commit the crime.

News 4 contacted the FBI but a spokesperson said they could neither confirm nor deny a complaint had been filed and an investigation was underway.

Retired Franklin County Sheriff Gary Toelke was heavily involved in the search for Ownby and subsequent investigation of Devlin since Ownby was kidnapped in Beaufort.

“During the investigation we found out that he did go looking for other children and he had about a sixty-mile radius around the area where he lived going over into Illinois and into Missouri,” said Toelke.

Finding out, what Palmer is convinced is, the identity of the man who tried to abduct him, has taken an emotional toll.

“It’s finding out who that guy was and what he did to two other kids and that he would have done the same to me. That was more traumatizing than the original event itself,” he said.

Palmer has gone so far as to write out his story and sign a sworn affidavit that his claims are accurate. He said he plans to continue to seek justice and peace of mind.

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