Kyron Horman Case: DeDe Spicher Speaks Out, Says Police Pressured Her to Target Terri Horman

Aug. 18, 2010 — -- DeDe Spicher, the close friend of missing 7-year-old Kyron Horman's stepmother, insisted that she had nothing to do with the boy's disappearance and said she had been pressured by police to point the finger at Terri Horman.

"They wanted me to tell them that Terri did it or that Terri knew something," she told People magazine in an exclusive interview. "I told them everything that I knew, over and over again. But I didn't tell them what they wanted to hear."

Spicher, speaking for the first time since she was named as a possible accomplice by Kyron's parents, also told the magazine that she does not believe Terri Horman, the boy's stepmother, had anything to do with the second-grader's June 4 disappearance.

"I just really don't. In my heart, I really don't," Spicher, who has not been named a suspect in the case, told People. "In all of these years [as her friend], I have not seen anything that would lead me to believe that she is capable or motivated in any way to do something like this."

Terri Horman had been questioned repeatedly by police and publicly accused by her estranged husband, Kyron's father, and the boy's biological mother. She had not been charged in the case or in an investigation into allegations that she attempted to hire a landscaper to kill her husband, Kaine Horman, before Kyron vanished.

Terri Horman's lawyer said little but has denied his client was invovled in Kyron's disapperance and called the public speculation a "witch hunt."

But police continue to increase pressure on both Terri Horman and Spicher. They released a flier last week asking residents if they had seen the two women together the day Kyron disappeared. Spicher has also been called to testify before a grand jury.

Spicher told People that she was at a large nursery preparing for a garden tour on June 4 and never left the property, a direct contradiction to witnesses who have told police that she left work that morning and was unaccounted for, for more than an hour and a half.

"The irony here of course is that no one is able to corroborate her story," Bruce McCain, a retired captain with the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, told "Good Morning America."

"She said she's fully cooperating, but there's mixed signals here," McCain said, noting that Spicher has retained a lawyer who has been negotiating with prosecutors ahead of her grand jury testimony.

"She the only witness that we know of that's lawyered up," he said. "For someone that's got nothing to hide and is fully cooperative, that's a strange way to show it."

After news of the disapperance broke and Kaine Horman left their home with the couple's young daughter, Spicher said she moved in with Terri Horman for 11 days.

"There's this horror that my friend is going through," she said. "If I thought for a second that she was capable of [foul play], I would not have been there. She would not have been my friend in the first place."

Court Documents Detail Affair, Alleged Abduction Attempt

People Executive Editor Betsy Gleick told "Good Morning America" that Spicher was "firm and she was frustrated" during the interview.

"She described a lot of very intense questioning by police and she said more than once, 'Terri is my friend,'" Gleick said.

Terri Horman was ostracized by her family and the public not long after Kyron disappeared. Kaine Horman filed for divorce after learning of the alleged murder-for-hire plot and was granted an emergency restraining order keeping his wife away from him and their daughter.

On Aug. 1, Kyron's photo was noticeably absent from Terri Horman's support page on Facebook, replaced with a picture of a smiling Terri Horman and the words, "There is not one piece of physical evidence that proves Terri is involved with Kyron's disappearance, only rumors, innuendo and speculation."

Online, Terri Horman recently wrote that "they are blaming me in the blogs. I just want to scream."

Court documents released in June added to the growing list of odd behavior coming from Terri Horman. Her husband claimed in a filing in which he attempted to have his wife held in contempt for violating the emergency restraining order granted June 28 that she tried to "abduct" her 20-month-old daughter from a gym day care after the emergency restraining order was granted.

And while the rest of the family was consumed by the search for Kyron, Terri Horman was allegedly carrying on an affair with 37-year-old Michael Cook, a former classmate of Kaine Horman's, according to the documents. The affair purportedly began four days after Kaine Horman moved out and investigators, according to the court papers, said they've "obtained hundreds of text messages, as well as several photographs of respondent [Terri] in various stages of undress and graphic sexual activity."

The court documents accused Terri Horman of sharing sensitive information with her new boyfriend about the police investigation into Kyron's disappearance.

The new allegations came hours after Terri Horman's attorney sent a letter to the judge stating that she would not contest the restraining order that would keep her away from her daughter, or her husband's request to move out of the family's Portland home.

Cook told a local television station that he was planning to hire an attorney, but while there was "inappropriate communication" with Terri Horman, he never had sex with her.