182: Kidnappings!

Let's Go To Court!

When he was working as a manager at Imo’s Pizza, Michael Devlin put up a pretty good front. He was personable. Well read. Friendly. But back at his apartment, Michael was a different man. He was rude and quiet. His son, Shawn, appeared to have adopted Michael’s habits. Neighbors said they never saw Shawn smile. But what they didn’t know was that Shawn wasn’t really Michael’s son. His name wasn’t even Shawn Devlin. It was Shawn Hornbeck. But the truth wouldn’t come out until much later, when another boy, Ben Ownby, went missing.

Then Brandi tells us about a kidnapping that shook Long Island, New York. It was July 4, 1956. Betty Weinberger’s one-month-old infant, Peter, fell asleep in his carriage on the patio. As the little boy slept, Betty went inside the house. When she came back out a few minutes later, her baby boy was gone. Betty’s husband later found a ransom note at the scene. In it, the kidnapper demanded $2,000 in exchange for the baby. The kidnapper warned the Weinbergers not to involve the police, but the couple felt they had no choice.

And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases.

In this episode, Kristin pulled from:

“Monster next door?” by Malcolm Gay for the Riverfront Times

“One search, two boys found: The Missouri miracle 14 years ago,” by Tim O’Neil for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Michael Devlin stabbed in prison with ‘ice pick,’” by Todd Frankel for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“I am still too scared to tell my mom and dad, ‘kidnap’ creep admits,” by Susannah Cahalan for the New York Post

“Shawn Hornbeck,” Crime Museum

“MIchael J. Devlin,” entry on Wikipedia

In this episode, Brandi pulled from:

“Held for Ransom” by Michael Dorman

“Mark of a Murderer” by Mike McAlary, Esquire

“JUSTICE STORY: Tragic kidnapping of Long Island infant shattered two young families” by Robert Dominguez, New York Daily News

“Weinberger Kidnapping” FBI.gov

“Vincent LaMarca” wikipedia.org

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