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Wild Boys: Strangers in Town re-examines one of the strangest and most devastating identity mysteries in recent memory, showcasing two teenage boys who turned up in Vernon, British Columbia, saying they were raised wild in the wilderness after their parents died.
The boys named themselves Tom and Will Green and narrated a life in the woods, subsisting on nature with less social interaction. But within days of media attention rippling across North America, investigators unearthed a reality that was far more perplexing and far more alarming.
“Tom” and “Will Green” were not brothers raised in the wild. They are Kyle and Roen Horn, brothers from California, missing for months. The dissection of their fabricated identities is the emotional and investigative center of Wild Boys: Strangers in Town.
Who were actually Tom and Will Green, as shown in Wild Boys: Strangers in Town
Tom and Will Green's emergence in Vernon in 2003 happened when they were just out of their teens, malnourished and socially awkward, as shown in Wild Boys: Strangers in Town. They told residents that they had been living off the grid in the wilderness of British Columbia, following the death of their parents in a car accident.
By their account, they had no birth certificates, no records of schooling, and no official identities. The younger boy, who went by Will, was particularly frail and needed medical attention.
A local woman, Alena Ryder, took them under her wing and helped them with rudimentary tasks and getting medical attention. The community rallied around them for months. Ryder would later recall how entrenched the boys had grown in her life, according to a news report.
“They’ve been in my life for seven months now, I’ve seen them every day, trying to help those guys I thought were bush boys with no social skills. But now I know they’ve done a lot. More than me, actually.”
Two days after a San Francisco Chronicle article brought the case to light, authorities in Roseville, Calif., revealed the identity of “Will” as a missing teenager, Roen Horn, and “Tom” as his older brother, Kyle Horn. The identities they had used in Canada were false, but their dates of birth were real, which allowed the authorities to fetch their real identity.
Roen, whose adopter was identified as Horn, had apparently fled the previous June after local authorities visited the Horn home. His parents, Diana and Rodger Horn, had been looking for him for months. Diana said she had taken Roen to a medical facility where experts told her to put him in a mental institution after she was unable to fatten him up.
When child protective services and law enforcement arrived at their residence, Kyle ran. Their brother Chad said Kyle “slipped out the back door.” A month later, Kyle moved on to Canada as depicted in Wild Boys: Strangers in Town. Diana thought he knew where Roen was, but he said he did not.
“He would call us once a month, I mean every month, ‘I’m in Canada, I’m doing fine, I don’t know where Roen is, but don’t worry, I betcha he’s OK," she said.
A family friend identified the boys via a TV report, as shown in Wild Boys: Strangers in Town
The break came when Sacramento television station KOVR ran a report based on the Chronicle’s investigation, as shown in Wild Boys: Strangers in Town. A family friend identified the boys and called Diana and Rodger. Within hours, the parents were reunited with their sons.
They went to Canada, and Kyle met them at the airport. They went straight to the hospital, where Roen was being treated. Ryder remembered their emotional exchange:
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“They said, ‘Thank you for saving our sons’ lives. We don’t know what we would have done without your help."
In the end, Wild Boys: Strangers in Town is a tale not of survival in the wild, but of complicated family relationships, struggles with mental health, and two siblings trying to rewrite their stories. The docuseries poses uncomfortable questions: Were they fleeing danger, or intervention? Were they grifters, or scared adolescents figuring out a route to freedom?
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