The Oregonian has a very informative article written about Terri Horman in which her ex-husband Richard Ecker, her son James Tarver, and Kaine Horman are interviewed as well as many other people who knew and interacted with Terri in some form or fashion in her adult life. The article is very good and I encourage everyone to take time to read it. Here are the important things I pulled from it:
- Terri has shown a tendency to be a control freak in several areas of her life. Particularly in the brief times she has spent substitute teaching, being regarded as very strict and extremely organized (by the way, I don’t see either of those as negative in a teacher, but point to them as an example of controlling tendencies that if applied in inappropriate circumstances, or with self-centered motives become negative).
- This tendency has been exhibited at inappropriate times or in inappropriate ways as well. As an example, in one particular substitute teaching position when she was filling in for a teacher on maternity leave, she rearranged the classroom and threw away some of the full-time teacher’s teaching materials. As another example, she and James were moving into a female friend’s house because Terri and James needed a place to live as her marriage was following apart. As she moved into the woman’s house she rearranged furniture and even moved a bookshelf, books still in the shelves, out to the backyard because “she needed more space”. Rain ruined the books and still Terri didn’t see anything wrong with what she had done. As a last example, while she was married to Richard Ecker, she walked in one day to find Richard sitting with his parents looking at boats online. She asked what they were doing. When told that Chuck Ecker, Richard’s father, was wanting to buy a boat, she responded with “Oh, so you’re spending James’ inheritance.” And as Mavis Ecker, Richard’s mother puts it, Terri was serious.
- But of more importance is that this tendency was being exhibited in the last school year before Kyron went missing. With Kyron only in second grade, Kaine described Terri’s demand to know his behavior rating in class on a daily basis as “obsessive”. The 2nd grade teacher had a rating system where colored cards marked the child’s behavior for the day, with green being no discernable problems. If Kyron came home with anything other than green (which Terri demanded his “color” be reported each day), Terri would become upset and request that Kaine punish Kyron by grounding him to his room.
- Terri has exhibited being a “charmer” at times in her life. For instance she wooed Richard Ecker’s parents with a great deal of attention and with gifts. Richard states he didn’t trust Terri in this regard, suspecting she had ulterior motives. He said “she did things to impress people”.
- Terri seems to have exhibited a tendency to obsess on something for short periods of time, but clearly shows a lack of commitment in the longer run. This can be seen in her education, the hobbies she would take to with 100% commitment and then abandon after she had completed some short-term goal (i.e. the bodybuilding), and her work experience. In short, Terri doesn’t appear to have ever held a permanent, full-time job at one specific location for more than a few months at a time.
- On the flip side, there is no one who spoke about Terri who did not bring up her love for children. Not just her own children, James and Kiara, but Kyron and other children such as those she taught in substitute positions. She has worked with special needs children and shown tremendous joy in breaking through with them. She was the first to notice Kyron’s eyesight problems and that he needed glasses. And she even taught Kyron sign-language when he was little. (By the way, this is very odd to me. Nothing has ever been said that Kyron couldn’t hear so I’m very unclear why she would have spent the time teaching him sign-language, which requires reliance on sight rather than hearing, in “order to communicate with him” as the article reads. Makes no sense at all to me.)
- Everyone who knows her spoke of how much she has always adored James, and people who have known her over the past 7 years spoke of how she seemed to love Kyron as her own. James even speaks of how there was no difference in the way Terri treated him versus Kyron “except for our age”.
- Something started going south about the end of 2009/beginning of 2010. This is around the same time the alleged “murder for hire plot” would have taken place. Terri began writing long emails to Desiree complaining about Kaine, about Kyron’s behavior issues at school (if there really were any), and just bitching about life in general. In February, while Kaine was on a business trip, TERRI made the decision to send James to her parents’ home in Roseburg. She actually informed Kaine of the decision over the phone. This clears up the issue of WHEN James left, and WHO was involved in that decision. Please keep in mind that after she unilaterally made this decision, which Kaine states he did not agree with, she then preceded to start going to the gym, according to prior reports, and bitching to anyone who would listen that Kaine forced James out of the house. It should be noted that there is also a similar discrepancy between what Terri was telling people concerning her weight gain after Kiara’s birth and what Kaine states. Terri started telling people Kaine was verbally denigrating her about her weight gain. Kaine states Terri is the one that kept bringing it up and that he kept telling her it didn’t really matter to him. I suspect that most likely she brought it up one too many times and Kaine responded with something to the effect of “so if you’re that unhappy about it, do something about it”…which Terri then, most likely, misrepresented to others.
- James clarifies that he was on a camping trip with his father when Kyron went missing. So that one is cleared up as well. He said when he arrived in Portland after Kyron’s disappearance it was the first time he had ever seen Kaine cry, and that his mother was “hysterical”.
- The last curious thing I’d like to point out comes near the end of the article where they are discussing talking with James. James states that he and his mother have only seen each other “a few times” since Terri moved to her parents home in Roseburg, the same town James lives in with his biological father and stepmother, but that they talk regularly on the phone. I simply can’t understand this one at all. She is the focus of an investigation, her stepson is missing, her parental visitation with her daughter has been taken away, and yet she does not spend more time with her oldest son who lives nearby? Blows my mind.
- Oh…and James says Terri has a treadmill at her parents’ home, but no cell phone or computer…and she isn’t supposed to leave the house. Are these restrictions placed on her by her attorney?
Valhall.
Related posts:
- Kyron Horman case: Parents give informative interview
- Kyron Horman case: Terri Horman reported to have solicited murder-for-hire
- Kyron Horman case: Terri Horman from southern Oregon
- Kyron Horman case: Terri neglected the Kyron factor
- Kyron Horman case: The two faces of Terri
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