John David Gosch
(born November 12, 1969; disappeared September 5, 1982) was a 12-year-old
paperboy in West Des Moines, Iowa,
who disappeared without a trace between 6 and 7 a.m. on September 5, 1982. He
is presumed to have been kidnapped. As of 2019, there have been no arrests made
and the case is now considered cold but remains open.
His mother, Noreen
Gosch claimed that Johnny escaped from his captors and visited her with an
unidentified man in March 1997. She claimed that her son told her that he had
been the victim of a pedophile organization and had been cast aside when he was
too old but subsequently feared for his life and lived under an assumed
identity, feeling it was not safe to return home. Gosch's father, John,
divorced from Noreen since 1993, has publicly stated that he is not sure
whether or not such a visit actually occurred. Authorities have not located Gosch or
confirmed Noreen Gosch's account,
and his fate continues to be the subject of speculation, conspiracy theories,
and dispute.
The case received huge publicity in 2006 when his mother
claimed to have found photographs on her doorstep depicting Gosch in captivity.
Some of the photos received were claimed to be children from a case in Florida, but one boy in the photos was
never identified. Noreen Gosch
insists that the boy is Johnny.
Gosch's picture was among the first to be featured on milk
cartons as part of a campaign to find missing children.
Disappearance
On Sunday, September 5, 1982, in the suburb of West Des Moines, Johnny Gosch left home before dawn to begin his paper route. Although it was customary for Johnny to awaken
his father to help with the route, the boy took only the family's miniature
dachshund, Gretchen, with him that
morning. Other paper carriers for The Des
Moines Register would later report having seen Gosch at the paper drop,
picking up his newspapers. It was the last sighting of Gosch that can be
corroborated by multiple witnesses.
A neighbor named Mike reported that he observed Gosch
talking to a stocky man in a blue two-toned Ford
Fairmont with Nebraska plates;
Mike did not know what was discussed because he was observing from his bedroom
window. As Gosch headed home, Mike noticed another man following Gosch. Another witness, John Rossi, saw a man in a blue car talking to Gosch and "thought something was strange". He
looked at the license plate, but could not recall the plate number. He said, "I keep hoping I'll wake up in the
middle of the night and see that number on the license plate as distinctly as
night and day, but that hasn't happened." Rossi underwent hypnosis and
told police some of the numbers and that the plate was from Warren County, Iowa.
John and Noreen Gosch,
Johnny's parents began receiving phone calls from customers along their son's
route, complaining of undelivered papers.
John performed a cursory search of the neighborhood around 6 a.m. He
immediately found Johnny's wagon full of newspapers two blocks from their home.
The Gosches immediately contacted the West
Des Moines police department, and reported Johnny's disappearance. Noreen,
in her public statements and her book Why
Johnny Can't Come Home, has been critical of what she perceives as a slow
reaction time from authorities, and of the policy at the time that Gosch could
not be classified as a missing person until 72 hours had passed. By her estimation, the police did not arrive
to take her report for a full 45 minutes.
Initially, the police came to believe that Gosch was a
runaway, but later they changed their statement and suggested that Gosch was
kidnapped, but they were unable to establish a viable motive. They turned up little evidence and arrested no
suspects in connection with the case.
A few months after his September 1982 disappearance, Noreen Gosch has said her son was
spotted in Oklahoma, when a boy
yelled to a woman for help before being dragged off by two men.
Over the years, several private investigators have assisted
the Gosches with the search for their son. Among them are Jim Rothstein, a retired New
York City police detective and Ted
Gunderson, a retired chief of the Los
Angeles FBI branch.
In 1984, Gosch's photograph appeared alongside that of Juanita Rafaela Estevez on milk cartons
across America; they were the second
and third abducted children to have their plights publicized in this way. The
first was Etan Patz.
Another missing
paperboy
On August 12, 1984, Eugene
Martin, another Des Moines-area
paperboy disappeared under similar circumstances. He disappeared while delivering newspapers on
the south side of Des Moines.
Authorities were unable to prove a connection between the
two cases, yet Noreen Gosch claims
that she was personally informed of the abduction a few months in advance by a
private investigator that was searching for her son. She was told the
kidnapping "would take place the
second weekend in August 1984 and it would be a paperboy from the southside of
Des Moines."
Noreen Gosch's claims
According to Noreen
Gosch's account, she was awakened around 2:30 a.m. one morning in March
1997 by a knock at her apartment door. Waiting outside was Johnny Gosch, now 27, accompanied by an unidentified man. Gosch
said she immediately recognized her son, who opened his shirt to reveal a
birthmark on his chest. "We talked
about an hour or an hour and a half. He was with another man, but I have no
idea who the person was. Johnny would look over to the other person for
approval to speak," says Gosch. "He
didn't say where he is living or where he was going."
In a 2005 interview, Gosch said, "The night that he came here, he was wearing jeans and a shirt and
had a coat on because it was March. It was cold and his hair was long; it was
shoulder-length and it was straight and dyed black." After the visit,
she had the FBI create a picture she
says looked like Johnny.
Gosch self-published a book in 2000 titled Why Johnny Can't Come Home. The book
presents her understanding of what her son went through, based on the original
research of various private investigators and her son's visit.
On September 1, 2006, Gosch reported that she found
photographs left at her front door, some of which she posted on her website.
One color photo shows three boys bound and gagged. She claims that a
black-and-white photo appears to show 12-year-old Johnny Gosch with his mouth gagged, his hands and feet tied and an
apparent human brand on his shoulder. A third photo shows a man, possibly dead,
who may have something tied around his neck.
Mrs. Gosch alleged the man was
one of the "perpetrators who
molested [my] son".
Gosch later said the first two photos had originated on a
website featuring child pornography.
On September 13, an anonymous letter was mailed to Des
Moines police.
Gentlemen,
Someone has played a
reprehensible joke on a grieving mother. The photo in question is not one of
her son but of three boys in Tampa,
Florida about 1979–80, challenging each other to an escape contest. There
was an investigation concerning that picture, made by the Hillsborough County (FL) Sheriff's Office. No charges were filed,
and no wrongdoing was established. The lead detective on the case was named
Zalva. This allegation should be easy enough to check out.
Nelson Zalva, who
worked for the Hillsborough County,
Florida Sheriff's Office in the 1970s said the details of the letter were
true and adds that he also investigated the black-and-white in "1978 or 1979", before Gosch's
disappearance. "I interviewed the kids, and they said there was no coercion or
touching. ... I could never prove a crime," Zalva says. When asked for proof that this was indeed the
same photo from the investigation nearly three decades prior, Zalva could not
provide any. According to the documentary film Who Took Johnny (2014), only three boys in the pictures were
identified by law enforcement, but not the one thought to be Johnny. Noreen
Gosch still believes the pictures to be of her son.
National interest
The case generated national interest as Noreen Gosch became increasingly vocal about the inadequacy of law
enforcement's investigation of missing children cases. She established the Johnny
Gosch Foundation in 1982,
through which she visited schools and spoke at seminars about the modus
operandi of sexual predators. She lobbied for "The Johnny Gosch Bill", state legislation that would
mandate an immediate police response to reports of missing children. The bill became law in Iowa in 1984, and similar or identical laws were later passed in Missouri and seven other states.
In August 1984, Noreen
Gosch testified in Senate
hearings on organized crime, speaking about "organized
pedophilia" and its alleged role in her son's abduction. She began
receiving death threats. Gosch also
testified before the U.S. Department of
Justice, which provided $10 million to establish the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Gosch was
invited to the White House by President Ronald Reagan for the
dedication ceremony.
Bonacci allegations
In 1989, 21-year-old Paul
A. Bonacci told his attorney John
DeCamp that he had been abducted into a sex ring with Gosch as a teenager
and was forced to participate in Gosch's kidnapping.
John DeCamp met
with Bonacci and believed he was telling the truth. Noreen later met him and
said he told her things "he could
know only from talking with her son." He said that Johnny had a
birthmark on his chest, a scar on his tongue and a burn scar on his lower leg;
although a description of the birthmark had been widely circulated, information
about the scars had not been made public. Bonacci also described a stammer that
Johnny had when he was upset. The FBI and local police do not believe
that Bonacci is a credible witness in the case and have not interviewed him.
Bonacci accused Republican
party activist and businessman Lawrence
E. King Jr (b. 1944) who also served as director of the Franklin Credit Union in Omaha, Nebraska, of running an underage
prostitution ring and victimizing him from an early age.
In 1990, a county grand jury declined to charge King,
finding the allegations to be "a
carefully crafted hoax". Paul
Bonacci and Alisha Owen were
indicted on state perjury charges. A federal grand jury also declined to indict
anyone for child prostitution but did return indictments against Owen for
perjury and King for fraud related to the credit union; the latter was accused
of looting $40 million from the bank and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The bank was shut down in November 1988 when it was raided by the FBI, the IRS, and the NCUA. King
was released from prison in April 2001.
On February 27, 1999, the U.S. District Court of the District
of Nebraska awarded Bonacci $1 million in compensatory damages and punitive
damages. Bonacci had sued King, who failed to respond to the civil lawsuit.
Thus a default judgment was entered against King, who ceased his appeal attempt
in early 2000.
Documentary film
The 2014 RUMUR-award-winning-produced documentary, Who Took Johnny (80 minutes, 2014), is
available for streaming through Amazon
video on demand service. It is also available on Curiosity Stream. The documentary film includes interviews with
Gosch's parents.
No comments:
Post a Comment