Remains found in Iraq are KC man kidnapped in 2006

Kansas City Star

March 24, 2008

For roughly 490 days, John Roy Young's family held out hope, even when the news was bad or there was no news at all.

This weekend, though, the FBI informed the Kansas City family that Young was one of two kidnapped contractors whose remains had been recovered in Iraq.

Young, 45, had been missing but presumed alive since November 2006, when he and four other security contractors were kidnapped in an ambush on a convoy in predominantly Shiite southern Iraq.

Authorities notified the families of Young and Ronald Withrow, of Roaring Springs, Texas, of the discovery this weekend and released the news publicly on Monday. Withrow, a computer specialist for JPI Worldwide, was kidnapped at a phony checkpoint near Basra on Jan. 5, 2007.

This month, U.S. officials confirmed that five severed fingers delivered to authorities in Baghdad belonged to Withrow, three other American hostages and an Austrian. Of the six hostages, Young was the only one whose finger hadn't been sent.

Grieving families of the hostages said they feared the worst after receiving news of the mutilations.

'When they said, 'Five fingers,' I said, 'Five bodies,' ' said Young's mother, Sharon DeBrabander of Kansas City. 'It's heartbreaking for them to keep the boys this long and then do this. We don't know about the others, but we know John and Ron are dead.'

There was no official word about the fate of the four other hostages thought to be held by the same militant group.

Some of the friends and relatives of four other men kidnapped with Young said they had been told that other remains were recovered but had not been positively identified.

'We're not commenting on the others,' an FBI spokesman said Monday.

FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said he had no information about where the remains of Young and Withrow were recovered or under what circumstances.

Young was a Kansas City area native and longtime member of the military. Many of his relatives live in the Kansas City area.

He grew up in Lee's Summit and attended Lee's Summit High School, said his cousin Melanie Gustin.

'He just had the greatest laugh,' Gustin said in an interview Monday. 'It was just big and boisterous with a streak of ornery underneath.'

And his 'piercing blue eyes,' Gustin said, were unforgettable. In the months since his disappearance, she said the family had received e-mails from people who knew Young as a child who saw his photo on the news and knew it was him just from his bright blue eyes.

Young joined the Army straight out of high school, Gustin said, and served in the elite 82nd Airborne Division. He saw action in the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989.

He later served in the Army Reserves.

Young has two children, a 20-year-old son and a 15-year-old daughter.

He had worked in Iraq as a private security contractor on and off for about two years, family members have said.

In an interview last year, his son, John Robert Young, said that despite the distance and the danger, his father had called every couple of days to check in and let his family know he was all right.

In late 2006 he was working for Crescent Security Group, a security firm based in Kuwait at the time. On Nov. 16, Young and the four other contractors were escorting a convoy of trucks from Kuwait into Iraq when they were ambushed and kidnapped.

No financial demand has been made public, and it's unclear what group is behind the hostage-taking. All of the contractors were seized near Basra, an area swarming with powerful Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

DeBrabander said Monday the FBI told her that the bodies of her son and Withrow had arrived in the United States and would undergo examination before being released.

Relatives of the hostages who are still missing extended sympathy to the families of Young and Withrow. They also awaited news of their own missing sons, brothers and husbands, fearing the same gruesome culmination.

'We're all in the same boat,' said Patrick Reuben, a Minneapolis police officer and the twin brother of hostage Paul Reuben. 'We're just waiting.'

The other men kidnapped with Young, in addition to Reuben, were Jonathon Cote of Florida, Joshua Munns of California and Bert Nussbaumer of Austria.

Francis Cote, the father of Jonathon Cote, wrote on his blog Monday that the FBI had first alerted his family about the discovery of two bodies on Friday. He said the remains had been found in the Basra area and were unidentified at that time. They were flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for autopsies.

The FBI contacted the family again on Sunday and identified the dead men as Young and Withrow, Francis Cote wrote.

Mark Munns, the father

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