By: Julia Berman
John D. Gosch, born November 12th,1969 in Des Moines, Iowa went missing on September 5th,1982 when delivering on his usual newspaper delivery route. Johnny was only twelve years old when he went missing, and he’s been missing for almost forty years.
The day of his disappearance, Johnny had asked to complete his paper route on his own, his father always had accompanied him, and of course his father refused to allow little Johnny to go out on his own. So Johnny took things into his own hands, and that was the last time he was ever confirmed to be seen. Johnny supposedly got up at 5:45 in the morning without waking his father like he was supposed to and left by himself. Witnesses, including Johnny’s neighbor Mike, said they had seen Johnny talking to a man in a blue Ford with Nebraska License plates. He was apparently giving the male suspect directions, but at 7:00AM Johnny’s usual customers had called his house saying they had not received their papers. Their dog who had accompanied Johnny, returned to their residence shortly after and they had even found his wagon with the papers still inside, only two blocks from his house.
Noreen, Johnny's mother, strongly believed that Johnny was not dead but he was being held captive. She even took the extra step to hire private investigators to look into her missing son’s case. She admits that she thinks that he has been taken to be sold in a pedophile prostitution ring. Noreen insists that she was visited by her son when she testified in a trial for a pedophile crime organization in 1999. She says in the middle of the night she came to her apartment in March of 1997 with an unidentifiable male. She claims that her son had feared the male and looked to him for permission to speak. He told her that he would not see her again, in fear of his own safety.
There were multiple suspicious connections that had seemed to connect to Johnny’s case, but they were all dead ends. In August 2006, Noreen found photos left by her front door. The pictures showed three boys, one of them resembling John, and all of them were bound and gagged. In one of the pictures, the boy who was thought to be John was wearing sweatpants similar to the pair John had worn when he had gone missing. Other people reported receiving the same photos that Noreen had received via multiple methods, including online and physical photographs. Noreen believed the photos were of Johnny, but the police disagreed. They stated they thought whoever gave the photographs to Noreen may have been playing a cruel prank. Another boy, Eugene Martin had also disappeared from the same area as John in 1984. He was also a newspaper carrier, but it is still unknown if the two are related.
In 1990, the John D. Gosch case had been reopened when a John E. Gosch’s body was found in northern Mexico. The similar names gave the West Des Moines Authorities, as well as Johnny’s family hope for finally finding their son, but it ended up just being an unfortunate coincidence. Not only were their names a coincidence, but there’s even more shocking similarities between the cases. The man found in a drainage ditch in Mexico was born only two weeks before Johnny’s birthday, and only weeks later after this found connection, the Des Moines Police traveled to the south of Mexico to investigate an alleged sighting of Eugene Martin.
What happened to Johnny has been a huge mystery for decades, and in 2016 a documentary was released on Amazon called Who Took Johnny, exploring every detail of this devastating case. Some crucial information that was included in the film includes how about 10 years after the case went cold, a jailed pedophile makes the astonishing admission that he helped kidnap Johnny Gosch for a network of pedophiles that wanted to sell him, but it wasn’t believed by the authorities. The police seem to have an active disinterest in solving the case, and many say that is the reason that Johnny has never been found. This documentary produces extensive evidence and it is revealed the West Des Moines police department never even investigated any of the evidence given. Interviews with members of the West Des Moines police department are very frustrating in this film. Past officers from the case can barely defend their work when trying to find Johnny and newer officers can barely back them up either, and you can sense their lack of truth when they talk about tracking evidence and following up on the man, Mr. Bonaci who admitted to helping with Johnny’s abduction. FBI officer Mr. Hosko, flat out denies any awareness of the Johnny Gosch case which is extremely infuriating, and practically impossible with how well-known this case is.
The disappearance of Johnny Gosch is a devastating and heartbreaking case. Watching this documentary and learning about how the case was treated as if it was insignificant is agitating to hear as a viewer and one can only imagine how it felt to be Noreen during the investigation and even to the present day.
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