Johnny Gosch

A lot of theories but I think the poor kid is long dead.

This is one of those scary cases because it is unsolved and so much of it seems so sinister--for instance, there were several boys who saw a suspicious car following him, his parents found his news paper wagon abandoned, and he was taken the one morning that his father didn't go out with him to follow him on his newspaper route. And yet it was a quite peaceful suburban neighborhood.

Also, there have been creepy theories about his parents. People have said his mother is crazy and melodramatic, but I don't know. I think she was just trying to keep the public interest alive and maintain hope.

And there are freaky theories that his father might have been somehow involved, but it has been a while since I've researched the case, so I forget what those theories were.

Remember when there was the theory that Jeff Gannon, the muscular escort who inexplicably turned up in the Bush Jr. WH Press Room, was really Johnny Gosch?

R1 is correct

R5 That was such a crazy theory! Creepy but also somewhat hilarious. It was really interesting until (I think) it was debunked.

So I wonder who really killed him?

The sinister thing is it might have been someone watching him for many weeks in his own neighborhood, knowing his route and waiting for the one morning his father didn't go with him . . . which means his body could have been close to his house or he could have been imprisoned by someone close by. Scary thoughts.

Or maybe someone accidentally ran over him and then hid the body?

I know is mom acts crazy but with what she’s been through who can blame her. I remember the Jeff Gannon thing. I heard it was debunked too but his appearance at a GWB press conference is still bizarre.

Wasn't there a theory that his father had some sort of trouble with money and might have sold him to someone since there was a lot of underground organized crime and a pedo ring close to the town??

Didn't some pictures of a kid tied up and gagged pop up somewhere and many believed it was him?

I had known very little, almost nothing about that particular case until I listened to a whole season of a podcast ("Faded Out") dedicated to the disappearance of Johnny Gosch. It was reasonably well researched, with a lot of interviews of the people involved in the case but, being a full-season podcast, towards the end, it started suffering from the usual time padding which seems to plague a lot of these long podcasts about a singular unsolved case. Certain "revelations" get introduced over and over again and it gets a bit repetitive at times, but, overall, it was a pretty decent expose.

[quote]And there are freaky theories that his father might have been somehow involved, but it has been a while since I've researched the case, so I forget what those theories were.

Someone fed that rumor to Noreen, Johnny’s mother and she ran with it. Noreen did a great deal of good for missing children but the loss of her son understandably took an extreme toll on her mental health. Most of what she says is verifiably untrue, such as the photo of the bound and gagged boys. That photo ended up being debunked by police in Florida. You feel for her, certainly.

Fischer and the other local paperboy Eugene Martin were probably abducted and killed by the same person, someone who either worked for the newspaper or stalked both boys on their routes.

*Gosch, not Fischer

Jeff Gannon was James Dale Guckert who escorted in DC under the nom de porn of Bulldog

Was there really a pedo ring kidnapping boys? If so, did they kill them or give them new idenities and warn them never to come home?

and if the pedo ring was real, was it really politicians involved? keep in mind that this predates pizza gate by decades and allegedly involved republicans . . .

Wow, this sounds interesting, but no one felt the need to link to anything that I could possibly read more about the case. Another shitty OP.

Johnny really was kind of an unfortunately looking child. He was a ginger, but in that awkward way. Very pale, lips too large, conservative haircut, goofy large teeth with goofy smile, loads of freckles. Would a pedophile really want that?

That's why I don't buy this story. Especially if it was an organized pedophile ring, wouldn't they have kidnapped a kid who was more attractive?

Dear OP,

He was white! A white boy! He didn't have to be attractive as long as he was extra white. That's all that republican pedo ring cared about--white bread USA hometown boy.

yes. keep in mind the times. everyone wanted cheap store bought white Wonder Bread, the whiter the better. No one wanted whole wheat or artisan or ethnic breads. this was a standard order for good decent wholesome plain white bread boy.

Somebody tried to smear all of gay Omaha with this crap

Johnny would be 52 if alive today.

Johnny was the JonBenet Ramsey of 1982. Think about it.

For R20--Fifteen years after Johnny Gosch's disappearance in 1982, his mom claims he visited her in the middle of the night for one hour with a stranger.

Gosch and Martin disappeared amid an intensifying moral panic concerning “stranger danger” and child exploitation. They joined other high-profile cases—namely those of Etan Patz in Manhattan (1979), Adam Walsh in South Florida (1981), and Kevin Collins in San Francisco (1984)—to distort Americans’ understanding of the threats confronting the nation’s children. Publicized by concerned politicians, bereaved parents (such as John Walsh and Johnny Gosch’s mother, Noreen), and an increasingly tabloidized news media, these cases and the inflated statistics surrounding them drastically exaggerated the “stranger danger” threat. (Some insisted that 50,000 or more children fell victim to stranger kidnapping in the U.S. each year.) The media and political emphasis on these sorts of cases seemed to imply that white children like Gosch and Martin were most likely to be victimized. Yet stranger kidnappings were and remain extremely rare (fewer than 300 cases annually), and children of color have long been underrepresented in news media coverage of missing children."

In the early morning hours of Sunday, Sept. 5, 1982, 12-year-old Johnny Gosch vanished while delivering copies of the Des Moines Register. Two years later, 13-year-old paperboy Eugene Wade Martin disappeared under virtually identical circumstances on the south side of Des Moines. These cases terrified residents of Des Moines and Iowa, many of whom believed that the Midwest—a “safe,” and implicitly white, place—ought to be immune from “this type of terrorism,” as one local put it in 1984. “This city and this geographical area are supposed to be comfortable, safe places to raise children, work and lead productive lives,” he wrote in a letter to the Register.

Present-day accounts often trace the origins of the 1980s “stranger danger” scare, which still haunts parents today, to the Etan Patz and Adam Walsh kidnappings. But the lesser-known kidnappings of Gosch and Martin played a crucial role in stoking this panic and the parental anxieties associated with it. Even though Gosch and Martin were never seen again, and their cases were never solved, they live on—not only as cautionary tales for Iowa parents and children, but also as potent symbols of endangered white childhood. That’s partly because Gosch and Martin were the first missing children to be featured on the sides of milk cartons. After two Des Moines dairies began placing missing children’s photographs, including Gosch’s and Martin’s, on their products in the fall of 1984, the practice caught on in the Midwest and then nationwide. All told, some 700 dairies took part, producing and distributing approximately 3 billion milk cartons adorned with images of missing kids. At a moment of national economic and political uncertainty, as fears of familial and national decline abounded, the image of imperiled white childhood resonated far and wide, from the prairies to the sea. The consequences have been dire.

Flanked by his dachshund Gretchen, Johnny Gosch, with his red wagon in tow, set out to deliver copies of the Des Moines Register on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, 1982. By 7:45 a.m., one of the boy’s 37 customers, growing impatient, phoned the Gosch residence to determine the whereabouts of their Sunday paper. Johnny’s father, John, checked the boy’s bedroom but found no trace of his son. Stranger still, the family’s dachshund had returned home. “We went searching and found his little red wagon,” Johnny’s father told the Register. “Every single [newspaper] was in his wagon.” After delivering the papers his son never had the chance to distribute, John Gosch called the police around 8:30 a.m.

he ensuing investigation yielded few meaningful leads, which aggravated John and his wife, Noreen Gosch, and prompted them to hire their own private investigators. In the months following her son’s disappearance, Noreen also began to cultivate a public persona as an outspoken victims’ rights advocate. She routinely lambasted local law enforcement officials in the press and petitioned for more robust laws to safeguard children from kidnapping and exploitation.

Her efforts transported her to Capitol Hill, where she testified before an August 1984 Senate committee concerning the “effect of pornography on women and children.” In her prepared statement, Gosch falsely accused the North American Man/Boy Love Association of abducting her son as part of “organized pedophilia operations in this country”—a speech that now feels like an antecedent to the conspiratorial thinking of QAnon.

In 1989, a man named Paul Bonnaci came forward with some shocking assertions. He claimed that he had been abducted by human traffickers as a teenager and was forced to help in the kidnapping of Johnny Gosch. Bonnaci claimed that the ring trained children to work for the government and participate in sexual acts in order to make the blackmail of politicians possible. This sex ring, Bonnaci claimed, was the work of a man named Lawrence E. King, then director of the Franklin Credit Union in Omaha, Nebraska.

Bonnaci claimed he knew Johnny—he identified a birthmark on Johnny’s chest and said that Johnny had talked about going to yoga classes with his mother, a fact his family had not shared with the public

Is there anyone on DL who has any information or theories on this crime?

Shades of John Mark Karr, who got a free flight from Thailand to the US out of it. Get serious R34. First of all pedophilia was much more common in the 60s and70s than the late 80s, when it already had a fearful stigma attached. Sond, pedophiles are usually insecure in their adulthood and would find it difficult to form "rings." And organized crime was homophobic enough in the 80s not to touch gay stuff. So he keeps all these stories festering? Political propagandists, that's who.

Does anyone out there know Johnny? Have any of you seen him lately? He might be your husband, boyfriend, or coworker going by a different name. Please give it a think.

If alive, Johnny would be a 52 year old man who may be claiming to be 20 years younger or older. He is likely going by a different name, bald now, since he was a ginger. Does this sound familiar? He might be using fake ID. He might not like to discuss the past, where he is from, or his family. He might have no photos of family. He might be highly over sexed or sex avoidant.

"Pedophile rings" are QAnon stuff

The curious thing about making Omaha the source of a child sex ring is that they have a place tailor made for one: Boys Town. No need to drag the Franklin Credit Union into it. Or Old Town.

R40 The Boys Town aspect is what makes me wonder if there is some truth to the rumors of a conspiracy, but not the conspiracy that was given to the media. Boys Town is sketchy and connected to the religious right and could really draw a bad element. Franklin Credit Union was a convenient target as a scapegoat. I believe the accused was a prominent black male and the crime created white panic.

Hard to believe that the West Des Moines PD or the FBI never interviewed Paul about this case.

I just watched the documentary on Prime (thanks for nothing, OP), and it's initially hard to trust the Mom because of her make-up.

I think the Right has started to throw around "pedophile" and "groomer" around as insults to desensitize people to their actual meaning. It's hard to believe no one in Des Moines had heard to word "pedophile" in the early 80s.

It is suspect that this was decades before pizzagate and yet seems a model for today's QANON. It's almost as if the right wing religious faction of Boys Town were caught in connection to this, covered it up, and then used the hidden truth to model a fiction. This would be the prefect way to hide the truth while taunting the world--by making nutty conspiracy theories that included the truth so that no one ever believed any story like it, even if true. Brilliant PR tactic.

Well it would fit the pattern of the GOP always accusing the left of what they themselves do. Why was Kerry swiftboated" Because GWB was an actual deserter. Why was Obama born in Kenya? Because McCain was born in Panama. Why are Dems vote fraudsters? Because Katherine Harris, Kenneth Blackwell, William Welch, Chuck Hagel, Dan Quayle, the Uroseviches, ,et al were trying their best to generate conservative outcomes.

The mother is out of her goddamned mind. I bet she killed him.

The father delivering the papers before calling police seems odd and dramatic.

I wouldn't be so quick to judge the mother. Losing your son when he's so young--or at any age, really--is one of the worst things that can happen to a parent.

I was at Iowa State in the 1980s while Johnny's sister was enrolled. I heard she was having a really hard time because her parents were so focused on finding her brother.

R45 Why do you say that?

Are Johnny Gosch's parents still alive?

There have been so many near-kidnappings caught on video the past years that I'm certain there are sex slaves chained in basements all over the U.S. Or buried in makeshift graves, never to be found.

R50 Totally agree

R50 and R51 you're a drooling moron.

This book had some really creepy stories @ Larry King, he moved to DC once he got out of prison. He would try to entice people to snatch street kids if I am remembering correctly. I thought teen boy escorts were also taken to the Bush WH for a midnite tour?

......

Larry king was involved in the pedo ring?

A different Larry King! I think he was a black politician or banker???

So if all these accusers were convicted of perjury, where does that leave our case?

R57 Sadly, nowhere. Once everything is untangled, it seems they know nothing about what happened to Johnny.

Johnny: If you are on DL, please respond. Where are you? What happened to you? How did you die?

I watched a documentary on that ages ago. It was on one of the subreddits I subscribe to which lists documentaries.

His mother can do whatever in the heck she wants for all I care. She obviously lost part of her whole mind over her son's abduction. Leave her be. Whatever it takes for her to get through, I say.

It's weird that no one saw anything but then there was never a trace of him. Just nothing. this is going to sound sick, but no one ever did construction or what have you and discovered his remains or anything. I assume he was kidnapped and then 'God knows what' rather far from his hometown and then murdered.

Poor little boy. He was from that last era in the United States where parents placed their children on the honor system. Like with Etan Katz, he walked to Elementary School by himself oftentimes. People just were innocents then I guess. I'm not originally from the United States so my perspective is different.

... now let's go find your son

R27's post looks like a thread bumping post from Websleuths.

Gosch I just have to bump this.

Gannon was a sleaze but I'd have fucked him.

Was Gannon hooking up with someone on the bush administration?

Was Gannon hooking up with someone on the bush administration?

The assumption was he was fucking Bush and/or Karl Rove.

[quote]It's weird that no one saw anything but then there was never a trace of him.

Two boys saw him talking to a man in a blue car, near where the paperboys picked up their newspapers for the day. Johnny apparently called over to another paperboy and asked him for help, saying the man needed directions. Since Johnny's wagon was later found filled with every single newspaper, and none had been delivered, I would say it's almost certain that the man is the abductor. It was already strange that a man was talking to Johnny at, I believe, about 5:30 a.m., and it would be even more strange if a second, unrelated person came along at that hour and abducted him just moments later.

It is strange and begs the question of who would be driving around at 5:30 AM on a weekend morning talking to paperboys? Someone from the neighborhood? Someone with a paperboy fetish? Someone familiar with Johnny's route or with access to the routes of local paperboys?

^^^ Back in the day, there was a saying, "The early bird gets the worm."

R64 R65 R66 The creepy aspect of the Gannon theory related to Johnny is that there was someone who came forward who had been abducted as a young boy and was now a man. That man claimed to have been held prisoner with Johnny in an underground maze of houses keeping kidnapped boys and training them for powerful men. Eventually, these boys were trained to lure and abduct other boys. This man claimed he was not only held with Johnny but helped abduct him. The theory was that if boys stayed in the network long enough to become men and were favorites, they then became the secret kept lovers of "straight" male Republican politicians like Gannon.

But why did people think Gannon was Johnny? Did they look that much alike? I couldn't tell. Also, there were rumors that Gannon couldn't prove who he was and had no clear proof of identity to prove he wasn't Johnny.

A nugget of information came from retired attorney John Rossi, who had seen Johnny talking to a man in a car early that morning at 42nd Street and University Avenue in West Des Moines, a drop-off spot where carriers loaded their Red Flyer wagons with papers and set off on their routes.

Rivaled only by a few days during the Korean War, Rossi counts that day as one of the most traumatic of his life.

He's spent three decades second-guessing himself, wishing he'd been more observant. What he saw may have meant something, he said, or it might have meant nothing at all.

He and his family were eager to leave town for the Labor Day weekend, so Rossi helped his son, Joe, bundle and distribute newspapers.

"I wasn't observant enough," he said, his voice hushed to the tone people use when they speak of tragedies. "I saw a car parked on 42nd Street and Johnny having a conversation with the man. Somewhere along the way, Johnny asked me, 'Can you help? He wants to know where 86th Street is.' "

Rossi provided directions, the driver made a U-turn and took off.

Police "interrogated the daylights out of me," Rossi said. "They tried to hypnotize me to see if I could remember anything. … The police worked their tails off on this case."

I meant to say in r72 that apparently I was wrong, the second person who saw Johnny talk to the guy in the car was the father of a paperboy, not the paperboy. The father is the one who talked to the man briefly about directions.

R52 is a jerk. Are you familiar with the Steven Staynor case? There are similar kidnapping cases where the kids are found years later and have technically been held captive (at least psychologically) by a pedo. And anyone mocking Johnny's mom as "crazy" or somehow complicit is being very unempathetic. I cannot imagine ANYTHING worse than having a missing child and having to live the rest of your life never knowing for sure if he is dead.

So R73 does this mean that none of Johnny's papers were delievered by Johnny and that all his papers and the wagon where still at the dropoff point?

Yes, when Johnny's dad found the wagon, it was at 42nd Street and University Avenue, and every paper was there, none had been delivered. For some reason, after they reported Johnny missing to police at about 6:00 a.m., Johnny's dad delivered the papers himself. I guess he must have thought he might see Johnny along his route somewhere.

R76 That's a really sad detail about the dad delivering those papers. A sense of duty or shock or pragmatism. Some time later, people started to suspect him, though there was no evidence.

R77. In my previous Reddit link the mom said that there were several very odd coincidences re her husband. The day he disappeared was the only one his father didn't accompany him.

There was an extremely strange phone call the night before where she overheard the dad say something about not going too.

Not this shit again .

It’s not scary. It’s a case of kidnap and murder & the body was never found, like a million other cases. Go flog your obsession on a subreddit.

The mom has an axe to grind against her now-ex husband. She also claims he’s part of some grand conspiracy involving lookalikes impersonating her. She is not well. Hope one day she finds some peace.

R76 and R77, that timeline is contradicted by another post above, where the father (of Johnny) says the first sign that something was wrong came at 7:45, when someone called to complain Johnny hadn't delivered their paper. So he went out, found the wagon, delivered the papers, and then reported his kid missing at 8:30.

R78 Those are creepy details. Thanks for sharing.

Jeff Gannon is at least 10 years older than Johnny Gosch would be/would have been.

While some think that they have similar facial features, others disagree. Guess it depends on the photo of Gannon.

Either way Jeff Gannon could not possibly be Johnny Gosch.

People were naive in the 60’s and 70’s. Even in the early 80’s. I grew up in an upper middle-class area and there were tons of pervs about because it’s something that most kids wouldn’t tell their parents. If a kid was molested, the kid would think it was their fault.

Sometimes weirdness was just tolerated. There was a guy who lived in the woods behind an elementary school and his parents lived in the adjacent neighborhood. He was tolerated and viewed sympathetically as someone who got into drugs when he was in high school in the 60’s and was completely whacked out. However, the kids avoided him and I remember crossing those woods with friends when I was in Jr. High and being cautioned to stay away from the wackjob’s camp.

I don’t think Jeff Gannon is Johnny but he’s a strange case separately. That was before the Trump days when anything went in Washington and people were crawling out of the gutter to get involved in his administration.

Who if Jeff Gannon?

I've always had a nightmarish suspicion that it was someone in the neighborhood and he may have been held for a while in a house very close to his own by someone who knew his parents and was part of the search.

Wasn't there some detail about his dog? Was the dog with him that morning and found tied to the wagon with the papers? Or was that the one morning the dog didn't go with him? I can't remember, but I seem to recall some sinister or revealing detail related to his dog. Does anyone know what it was?

The dog returned home without him, if I recall. I can't remember anything sinister about the dog.

I don't know how his mom has lasted this long. Her (dis)belief that they will one day be reunited must be what sustains her. Her last thought will be about him.

R91 His last thought may have been about her, so it's poetic. They must have had a deep connection.

This is such a sad case. Eugene Martin and another boy, are no doubt related. All the same age, look, same area, just years apart, never found.

Eugene also was delivering newspapers.

There’s an amazing podcast about the case. A man was found sho links all of it to a guy that worked at the newspaper. Everyone knew about him and had done time for abusing kids.

What’s it called r95?

R79 yeah this story seems to attract morons and QAnon Pizzagate Trump loons. They LOVE it.

I don’t think it’s suspicious that the dad delivered the papers. I’m sure the first thought in his mind wasn’t that his son had been abducted. He probably thought that he ran off with friends and finished his work so that his son didn’t get fired and he could have a talk with him about responsibility. He may have also thought he would run into him on the way.

He probably got nervous at some point while delivering the papers and then went home and called.

I don’t think Johnny visited Noreen. I think interest in the case was waning and Noreen, fully convinced he’s still alive, made up that detail in service of the greater good.

Of course he didn't. The woman's out of her mind, and I bet she's a Trump supporter/QAnon loon. I'm very sorry for what happened to her son, but Jesus Christ.

I went down the Johnny Gosch rabbit hole recently. This entire case is insane. His mother on television right after it happened talks like she doesn’t have a care in the world. It’s so baffling. She makes up so many bizarre stories. The father is suspicious too but there isn’t enough there to pin the thing on them as neighbors saw Johnny that morning. The father had threatened to commit suicide right before it happened.

The father is now living out of his car.

Noreen is 80.

R103 And kooky. I don’t have to see the special. I just hear the stories. Local lore in my neck of the woods.