UNION, Mo. — A former pizzeria manager who snatched a teen off a rural road — a crime that led to the discovery of another missing boy — was sentenced to life in prison Monday.
Michael Devlin, 41, said little at the brief hearing, the first of several this week in which he is expected to plead guilty to abducting and sexually abusing the boys, one of whom was held captive for four days, the other for four years.
Devlin pleaded guilty to one charge of child kidnapping and one charge of armed-criminal action in the January abduction of 13-year-old Ben Ownby as the boy walked home alone from his school bus stop.
Devlin did not apologize.
“We’ve been waiting for this moment,” Ben’s mother, Doris Ownby, told reporters after the sentencing hearing. “Now that it’s here, it’s such a relief.”
Devlin faces more than 80 counts in the abductions of Ben and of Shawn Hornbeck, now 16, who was snatched at age 11 in 2002 while riding his bike and held for more than four years.
Devlin plans to plead guilty to all charges against him to spare the emotional toll of trials on the boys’ families and his own relatives, attorneys said.
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