PORTLAND — Terri Horman, whose stepson Kyron Horman went missing in June 2010, appeared on “Dr. Phil” on Wednesday for an interview where she rebutted claims made by her ex-husband and told the titular Dr. Phil McGraw that she loved the boy as if he were her own.
“I want people to know I did not harm my son,” Terri Horman said in a prerecorded video that played before the interview. “I want to set the record straight.
Accusations, she said, include a murder-for-hire plot and her portrayal as a “falling down drunk.”
Three years ago, Kyron’s biological parents — Desiree Young and Kaine Horman — were on the same page. Both claimed Terri Horman is responsible for the disappearance.
“Tell me why it’s taken this long for you to want to speak out and set the record straight and clear your name about this,” McGraw said to start the interview.
“I didn’t want to wait this long,” Terri Horman said, before claiming that she wanted to speak out but was told not to.
“People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing,” McGraw then told her, before saying about her silence of six years, “That is bizarre to me.”
Terri told him there was evidence that exonerates her before she and McGraw went over a timeline of the day Kyron disappeared: June 4, 2010.
The demonstration echoed testimony Terri Horman has given in court and other claims she’s made it.
She said she dropped Kyron off for a science fair. McGraw pulled up a photo of the 7-year-old in front of an exhibit he’d prepared on red-eyed tree frogs.
“Some people said you PhotoShopped this picture,” McGraw said.
The two went over Terri’s routine for the day, from her picking up a prescription to her tending to her daughter, who had an earache. Between running some of her errands, McGraw said, Terri’s cellphone has been shown to ping off a cell tower on Sauvie Island.
McGraw then asked Terri about the phone call she made at 3:30 p.m. to Skyline Elementary School.
“When did you realize something’s bad wrong here?” he said.
“When we got to the school,” Terri replied, claiming she believed Kyron may have been hiding or playing a game. “My first thought was: Why didn’t we get a phone call?”
McGraw then asked Terri why she hadn’t spoken with DeDe Spicher — a close friend of hers who had consoled Terri in the days following Kyron’s disappearance — since 2010.
“We were advised by our attorneys not to see each other,” Terri said. “You have two people together who look like there’s something hinky going on. ”
“If there are two friends who do nothing wrong and there’s one who did nothing wrong and the other is supporting her, that’s just bizarre,” he said.
“You can’t make this stuff up,” Terri then said, to which McGraw responded: “Oh, yes you can.”
The conversation then moved to her relationship with the husband, Kaine, in the days leading up to and following Kyron’s disappearance.
“Was the marriage in trouble?” McGraw said.
“I was unhappy, yeah,” she said.
But that’s not what she was telling reporters at the time, McGraw said. He then accused her of lying.
“In that case, yes, because I was told to,” Terri said.
“Some cop tells you to lie about the status (of the marriage) and you say, okay,” McGraw said. “I don’t understand it. Transparency would be number one in finding your child. But instead, you don’t speak out. And when you’re asked questions about the status you lie.”
He then asked Terri why she was speaking out now.
“Because he needs to be found,” she said.
“He needed to be found then,” McGraw said.
The show closed with a tease for today’s episode, in which she will rebut claims made by Kaine Horman and Desiree Young, Kyron’s biological mother.
