Johnny Gosch, a paperboy in West Des Moines, Iowa, vanished on September 5, 1982, somewhere between six and seven in the morning. He was born on November 12, 1969, and his last known location was there. It is assumed that he was abducted. Since no arrests have been made since 2022, the case is currently regarded as cold but active.
In 1997, Johnny reportedly escaped from his captors and went to see his mother with an unnamed man, according to Noreen Gosch. She claimed that her son had revealed to her that he had been abandoned by a pedophile organization when he was too old, frightened for his life, and lived under an assumed name because he did not feel it was safe to come home.
John, the father of Gosch, who has been separated from Noreen since 1993, has made it known that he is unsure whether such a visit took place. Many have also conjectured that the visit had a place, but it was someone else posing as Johnny.
Authorities still need to verify Noreen Gosch’s story of Gosch’s whereabouts, and his fate is still the subject of conjecture, rumors, and disagreement.
When his mother claimed to have discovered images of Gosch in captivity on her porch, the matter gained new attention in 2006. One boy in the pictures was never recognized, while some of the pictures were alleged of kids from a Florida case. That boy, according to Noreen Gosch, is Johnny.
One of the first images from the campaign to find missing children to appear on milk cartons was Gosch’s.
The Disappearance of Johnny Gosch
In the West Des Moines suburb on Sunday, September 5, 1982, Johnny Gosch left his home early to start his paper route. Johnny usually woke his father to help with the route, but on this particular morning, he only brought Gretchen, the family’s small dachshund.
Later, several paper carriers for The Des Moines Register would recall seeing Gosch picking up his newspapers at the paper drop. It was Gosch’s final sighting, which several witnesses were able to confirm.
Near the paper drop, a second paperboy called Mike spotted Gosch talking to a stocky man in a blue two-toned automobile; another witness, John Rossi, saw the conversation and “felt something was wrong.”
Gosch requested assistance from Rossi and informed Rossi that the individual was seeking directions. Rossi examined the license plate but needed help remembering its number.
“I keep expecting that I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and see the number on the license plate as clearly as night and day, but that hasn’t occurred,” the man stated. Under hypnosis, Rossi revealed to authorities part of the numbers and that the license plate belonged to Warren County, Iowa.
A private investigator employed by the Gosches claimed that while Johnny proceeded north along his route’s beginning block, a paperboy spotted another man trailing Gosch.
When Johnny’s wagon was discovered, a neighbor nearby heard a door bang and saw a silver Ford Fairmont accelerate away in that direction.
1971 Ford Fairmont
Customers along Johnny Gosch’s route started calling his parents, John and Noreen Gosch, to complain about undeliverable papers.
Around six in the morning, John quickly swept the area. Two streets from their house, he immediately discovered Johnny’s wagon loaded with newspapers. The Gosches reported Johnny’s disappearance to the West Des Moines police department right away.
Noreen has criticized the authorities in her public remarks and in her book Why Johnny Can’t Come Home for what she believes to be a delayed response time and for the then-current rule that Gosch could not be declared missing until 72 hours had gone.
She estimated that it took the cops a full 45 minutes to show up there and collect her report.
The police initially thought Gosch was a runaway but revised their story to say that he was kidnapped; nevertheless, they could not find a good reason for it. They found little supporting information and made no suspects.
The parents of Johnny Gosch has advocated for faster police response
Noreen Gosch claims that her son was found in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a few months after his September 1982 disappearance, when a youngster called a woman for assistance before being carried off by two men.
The Gosches have received help from various private detectives over the years in their hunt for their son. They include retired detectives from the New York City Police Department, Jim Rothstein, and the FBI branch in Los Angeles, Ted Gunderson.
Both Gosch and Juanita Lee Estevez’s pictures appeared on milk cartons in 1984; they were the second and third abducted children to have their situation made public in this fashion. Etan Patz was the first.
Cases with Similarities
Another paperboy from the Des Moines region who vanished on August 12, 1984, was Eugene Martin. While delivering newspapers on Des Moines’ south side, he vanished.
On March 29, 1986, the day before Easter, Marc James Warren Allen, then 13 years old, informed his mother that he would walk to a friend’s home across the street. He failed to reach the neighbor’s home and has not been seen since.
Based on past media coverage, Allen was once thought to be the third Iowa paperboy to vanish in the 1980s. According to a thorough article about Iowa’s missing individuals that was published in the Des Moines Register on August 18, 2013, Allen was not a paperboy in Des Moines.
40 years later, still a mystery: Where is Johnny Gosch?
However, three decades later, none of the three boys’ lawsuits have been resolved.
Authorities were unable to establish a link between the three cases. Still, Noreen Gosch claims that a private detective looking for her son notified her of Eugene Martin’s kidnapping a few months beforehand.
The abduction “would happen the second weekend in August 1984, and it would be a paperboy from the southside of Des Moines,” was what she was told.
Case Of Wire Fraud
Robert Herman Meier II, then 19 years old, wrote Noreen Gosch a letter in 1985 from Saginaw, Michigan. Samuel Forbes Dakota had signed the correspondence. Meier said in the letter that he was a motorcycle club security when Gosch’s son vanished in September 1982.
Meier claims that Gosch’s son was abducted as a part of a major child-slavery network run by the club. According to the FBI, Meier solicited and got $11,000 from the Gosches. Meier also asked for an additional $100,000 and a commitment to repatriate their son.
Another age progression of Johnny Gosch
FBI investigators detained Meier at the Canadian border in Buffalo, and he was eventually charged with wire fraud. In his letter, Meier claimed that Gosch’s son had been sold to a “high-level drug dealer residing in Mexico City.” Despite the fraud allegations, Noreen Gosch is said to have taken Meier at his word.
She later blamed the FBI, claiming that Meier’s detention by the agency damaged their reputations with anyone who would have accepted their offer to pay a ransom for their son.
Johnny Gosch Visits His Mother
Noreen Gosch claims that she was startled awake one morning in March 1997 at around 2:30 a.m. by a knock at her apartment door. Johnny Gosch, now 27 years old, and another man were waiting outside. Gosch claimed that when the boy lifted his shirt to display a birthmark on his chest, she knew it was her son right away.
“We spoke for maybe an hour or hour and a half. I don’t know who the second man was, but he was with him. When Johnny wanted to talk, he would turn to face the other person,” argues Gosch. “He made no mention of his residence or travel plans.”
Gosch stated in an interview from 2005, “He arrived here that evening with a shirt and pants and a coat because it was March. He had long, straight, black hair that reached his shoulders, which was also cold.” After the visit, she asked the FBI to take a photo that, in her opinion, represented Johnny.
In 2000, Gosch self-published Why Johnny Can’t Come Home. Based on her son’s visit and original information from numerous private investigators, the book describes her interpretation of what her son endured.
Gosch claimed on September 1, 2006, that she had discovered images placed at her front door, some of which she had uploaded online. Three boys are bound and gagged in one color image.
She claims that 12-year-old Johnny Gosch is visible in a black-and-white photo with his mouth gagged, his hands and feet restrained, and what seems to be a human brand on his shoulder. In the third image, a man appears dead and may be wearing a necktie.
The picture that sparked a renewed interest in the case
“The man was one of the perpetrators that assaulted [my] son,” according to Mrs. Gosch. Gosch then claimed that the first two images came from a website containing child pornography.
An unidentified letter was sent to the Des Moines police on September 13.
Gentlemen,
Someone made a disgusting joke about a mother who was grieving. The image in question is not of her son but rather of three boys competing in an escape challenge in Tampa, Florida, in the late ’70s or early ’80s. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Florida investigated that image. No wrongdoing was found, and no charges were brought. Zalva was the name of the investigating officer. It should be simple enough to investigate this claim.
The specifics of the letter are accurate, according to Nelson Zalva, a former deputy sheriff for Hillsborough County, Florida, who added that he also looked into the black-and-white in “1978 or 1979,” before Gosch’s disappearance. “I interrogated the children, and they denied any compulsion or touching. Therefore, I could never establish a crime,” claims Zalva.
Zalva was pressed for evidence that this was the identical photograph from the investigation over three decades earlier, but he could not do so. Only three of the youngsters in the images were recognized by police authorities, but not Johnny, according to the 2014 documentary Who Took Johnny. Still, Noreen Gosch thinks the images are of her son.
Paul A. Bonacci, then age 21, informed his lawyer John DeCamp in 1989 that he had been coerced into joining a prostitution ring with Gosch while he was a youngster and had been complicit in Gosch’s kidnapping.
Johnny Gosch’s photo appears on a milk carton
When John DeCamp met Bonacci, he thought he was being sincere. Later, Noreen met him and claimed he revealed information to her that “he could only know from communicating with her son.” He claimed that although a description of the birthmark had been widely disseminated, information regarding the scars had yet to.
Johnny had a burn scar on his lower thigh, a scar on his tongue, and a birthmark on his chest. Additionally, according to Bonacci, Johnny had a stammer when he was angry. The FBI or the local police have not questioned Bonacci because they do not think he is a reliable witness in the case. His siblings informed police that he was at home when Gosch was taken.
Nationwide Benefit by Noreen Gosch
As Noreen Gosch became more vocal about the inadequate nature of law enforcement’s investigation of situations involving missing children, the case garnered widespread attention. In 1982, she founded the Johnny Gosch Foundation, through which she lectured at seminars and toured schools on the tactics used by sexual predators.
Mr and Mrs Gosch
She advocated for the passage of “The Johnny Gosch Bill,” state legislation requiring an immediate police response to missing kid complaints. A similar or identical measure was later enacted in Missouri and seven other states, and the bill was signed into law in Iowa in 1984.
Noreen Gosch testified in Senate hearings on organized crime in August 1984, discussing “organized pedophilia” and its alleged connection to the kidnapping of her son. She started getting threats to her life.
Next read about the case of the Colorado Monster: The Slide Rock Bolter, and the Horrifying Nutty Putty Incident!
