THEY warned that her 11-year-old son was almost certainly dead. Yet for four anguished years Pam Akers dreamt that she would one day see her missing child again.

On Friday, after an extraordinary breakthrough that has transfixed America, her faith was rewarded. She was reunited with her son Shawn after police discovered him in the home of Michael Devlin, a 41-year-old Missouri pizzeria manager who was being questioned about the disappearance of a different boy last week.

When police arrived at Devlin’s apartment at the St Louis suburb of Kirkwood, just 30 minutes from his home, they found both Shawn, now 15, and the second boy, William “Ben” Ownby, 13, who had been snatched from the street last Monday after getting off a school bus.

“Shawn is a miracle here,” Akers said yesterday as she hugged her son, visibly struggling to contain her emotions. “I feel like I’m in a dream,” she added, “only this time it’s a good dream, not the nightmare I’ve had for 4Å years.”

Shawn, who looked pale, said nothing but smiled back at her as she draped an arm around him in a room decorated with balloons and posters that read: “Miracles do happen.”

It was a joyous ending to a case that had become a cause célèbre in Missouri — thanks mainly to the efforts of Akers and her second husband Craig, who set up a foundation in her son’s name and became passionate campaigners on behalf of missing children. Whenever another missing child was recovered, Akers would kneel to pray and promise her absent son: “We will find you one day.”

Yet the rescue also raised questions about how a boy whose face had appeared on millions of leaflets distributed around the region had been able to live unnoticed in a suburban community without being recognised or attempting to escape.

Several of Devlin’s neighbours said they had often seen Shawn riding his bicycle around the area. “We just thought it was his son, or something,” said Shavonne Butler, who lived next door.

Psychologists speculated that like Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian girl held in a cellar for eight years until she escaped last August, he may have formed a bond with his abductor.

The first Akers knew of the rescue was in a phone call from the county prosecutor to her husband, a software designer, as they drove home from work.

“It took a minute to find a suitable place to pull over,” he said. “The words — ‘We think we found Shawn, we’re 95% sure that we found Shawn and that he’s alive’ — were the sweetest words I ever heard in my life.”

The couple raced to the Franklin County sheriff’s department, where they were swiftly reunited with the boy last seen as he rode away from their home in Richwoods on his bicycle to visit a friend on October 6, 2002.

When they saw him there were no words. “Just a split second of shock,” Craig Akers said. “The last time we saw him he was 11 years old. It kind of throws you for a second. But once we saw the face we said, ‘Oh my God, that’s my son.’ That was pretty much where we were the first five minutes. Not a lot of words spoken, except a lot of ‘I love yous’, kisses and ‘We’re so glad that you’re home’.”

It was not immediately clear how Devlin had managed to keep Shawn confined to his small apartment, or why the boy had not tried to contact his parents when he apparently had access to a telephone.

Or perhaps he did. Just over a year ago a mysterious message appeared on the website set up by his parents to publicise the search. “How long are you planing (sic) to look for your son?” — asked the blogger, who identified himself as “Shawn Devlin of Kirkwood”. A second message arrived shortly afterwards, apologising for the first and asking if it would be all right if he dedicated a poem to Shawn.

One worker at Imo’s pizzeria told the St Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper that Shawn had telephoned on Friday afternoon and asked for Devlin. The boy had identified himself as “Shawn Wilcox” and said that his father was a friend of Devlin.

Police declined to say whether Shawn had been restrained or imprisoned in any way, as Kampusch was. Devlin, who also worked part time answering phones at a funeral parlour and was reported to be a registered sex offender, was charged with kidnapping last night.

For Pam and Craig Akers, the rescue proved a triumphant vindication of their dedication to a case that most law enforcement officials had given up on long ago. FBI agents had told the family that Shawn might have been knocked over by a motorist who panicked and buried the body.

In the end it was another teenager who provided the crucial clue. Mitchell Hults, 15, had got off the school bus with Ben in Beaufort, 40 miles from Richwoods, and later recalled seeing a battered white Nissan pick-up on the road nearby. The van had a caravan-style attachment bolted onto its back.

On Thursday evening, police arrived at the Kirkwood apartment block to serve an unrelated warrant on another tenant. They noticed a van outside matching the description given by Mitchell and swiftly traced it to Devlin, who was interviewed at the pizzeria on Friday morning. A warrant was immediately obtained to search his home.

When agents entered the apartment, Ben said: “Are you going to take us home?” Asked to identify himself, the elder boy said simply: “Yes, I’m Shawn Hornbeck (the name of his father, Pam Akers’s first husband).”

“This is one of those rare things,” Craig Akers said. “To have one missing child found is just extraordinary. To have two found at the same time — you don’t even read about things like that.”

Shawn’s mother was in no hurry to find out what had happened to him during his long years away. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do — he’s grown up on me, that’s for sure,” she said. “All the questions will come later. We’re just trying to absorb the fact that he’s home.”

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