The Strange Vanishing of Johnny Gosch: What Happened to Him?

On the quiet morning of September 5th, 1982, Johnny Gosch left his family home with his dog and a little red wagon.

The 12-year-old was a paperboy in West Des Moines, Iowa, and was on his way to begin his delivery route. However, before he could deliver a single newspaper, Johnny was kidnapped.

**Johnny Gosch stands outside his home, preparing for his early morning paper delivery.**

The investigation was flawed from the start because the local police department initially believed the boy was a runaway.

Once investigators recognized the seriousness of the case, the potential evidence had long been gone, leaving only the eyewitness accounts.

Despite extensive nationwide media coverage, the abduction of Johnny Gosch remains unsolved to this day.

Background

John David Gosch, better known as Johnny, was born on November 12th, 1969, in Des Moines, Iowa. In 1982, Johnny was a 7th grader at Indian Hills Junior High. He loved football, karate, and building model rockets.

His parents, Noreen and John Gosch, described him as a reliable kid who took his job of delivering papers for The Des Moines Register seriously. The customers on Johnny’s route appreciated his punctuality and knew they could count on him to deliver their daily papers on time.

The disappearance

Early in the morning on Sunday, September 5th, 1982, Johnny Gosch left his home in West Des Moines to begin his paper route.

For the last thirteen months, he would usually wake up his father to accompany him while the boy delivered papers. But this time, Gosch decided to let his parents sleep in and took the family dog, Gretchen, with him instead.

He was seen arriving at the paper drop to pick up the newspapers before starting his route. Around this time, a fellow paperboy saw Gosch talking to a man in a blue two-toned car near the paper drop.

Just before 6:00 AM, Gosch’s parents, Noreen and John, began receiving phone calls from people who expected to have their newspapers delivered that morning. John thought that Johnny was probably late, so he went out to help him.

To his complete horror, he found his son’s wagon two blocks from their house. It was still full of newspapers, and the family dog was sitting nearby, but the boy was nowhere to be found.

John ran back home and told Noreen to call the authorities right away, which she did.

Not wanting to waste a single moment, Noreen started contacting Johnny’s friends and fellow paperboys, asking them if they had seen her son that morning. She quickly gathered plenty of useful information to pass on to the police.

John Rossi, another boy who was at the paper drop, reported seeing a man in a blue car talking to Johnny. The missing boy told Rossi that the man was asking for directions. Another boy saw a man following Johnny as he started his paper route.

Additionally, a neighbor who was up early informed Noreen that they heard a car door slam, and a Ford Fairmont sped away from the location where Johnny’s wagon was later discovered.

The police arrived 45 minutes later, but even though all the evidence pointed towards a kidnapping, they concluded that Johnny had probably run away from home. They advised the Gosch family to wait for 72 hours before officially reporting him missing.

Police investigation

Instead of waiting for law enforcement’s help, Noreen and John took action by contacting the media in an effort to put Johnny’s abduction out there. They printed thousands of missing person posters and distributed them throughout the county.

**A volunteer searches along Walnut Creek in Clive, Iowa, in October 1982, two months after 12-year-old Johnny Gosch disappeared.**

Soon, the local police department began treating Johnny’s case as a kidnapping and started interviewing the witnesses who had seen the 12-year-old on the morning of his disappearance.

Aside from the description of the suspicious man seen at the paper drop that morning, investigators had little to go on. Johnny’s parents hired several private investigators over the years, but they weren’t any closer to bringing their son home.

During this time, private investigators believed that Johnny had been kidnapped by a ring of child molesters. Noreen channeled her energy into establishing the Johnny Gosch foundation and began visiting schools in and around Des Moines to give presentations on how to spot a sexual predator.

Recognizing the mistakes made by law enforcement in the initial days following Johnny’s abduction, Noreen proposed state legislation that would require a fast police response to reports of missing minors. The bill was passed in Iowa in 1984.

The disappearance of Eugene Martin

On August 12th, 1984, nearly two years after the abduction of Johnny Gosch, another paperboy from Des Moines, Iowa, disappeared while delivering newspapers.

The 13-year-old picked up his copies of The Des Moines Register and started walking toward the beginning of his morning route. However, his bag was found a couple of hours later, still full of newspapers.

Eyewitnesses reported seeing Eugene talking to a man before his disappearance. It was impossible to ignore the similarities between the two cases. Parents in the once-safe community of Des Moines began discussing stranger danger with their children, and everyone seemed to be on edge.

While law enforcement couldn’t find any evidence to connect the two disappearances, Noreen Gosch stated that a private detective who was searching for Johnny at that time informed her that another Des Moines paperboy would be abducted in August 1984.

Following the disappearance of Eugene, a local dairy company printed photos of both missing paperboys on their milk cartons in hopes of bringing them home safely. This idea soon took off across the country, making Johnny Gosch one of the first missing children to appear on a milk carton.

Potential sightings

Just months after Johnny’s disappearance, reports of his alleged sightings started coming in. In late 1983, a woman from Tulsa, Oklahoma, contacted the local law enforcement, saying she had seen Johnny Gosch in March of that year.

According to her, a boy ran up to her asking for help and stating his full name. Before she could do anything, two men appeared and dragged the frantic boy away.

At that time, she was completely unaware that the boy was indeed missing. Months later, she saw Johnny’s photo on TV and recognized him.

**Noreen Gosch holds up a sketch in 1984 of the man who was believed to have abducted her son, Johnny Gosch. To her left is the boy’s father, John Gosch.**

In July 1985, a woman shopping at a grocery store in Sioux City, Iowa, received a dollar bill with her change. Once she took a closer look at the bill, she saw a note written on it. It read: “I am alive.” Beneath this message was Johnny Gosch’s signature.

She immediately informed the police, who sent the dollar bill to handwriting analysts. According to them, the signature wasn’t forged, and Johnny himself wrote the message. But since no one could trace the origin of the bill, this potential lead quickly went cold.

Hoaxers

From the very beginning of the case, the Gosch family was approached by various hoaxers, including psychics who were trying to get involved in the investigation. But in 1985, Noreen received a letter that sounded promising to her.

The writer, identifying himself as Samuel Forbes Dakota, claimed that Johnny had been sold to a drug dealer from Mexico City. Samuel was allegedly a member of a bike club who worked as a guard at the time of Johnny’s abduction. According to him, this particular bike club was running a child ring.

Samuel asked for $11,000 from the Gosch family in exchange for traveling to Mexico City to bring back their missing son. Shortly after, he requested an additional $100,000. Once the FBI learned of the situation, they quickly identified the person Noreen had been corresponding with.

He was a 19-year-old Robert Herman Meier II from Saginaw, Michigan. He was arrested at the Canadian border and charged with wire fraud.

Investigators confirmed that the teenager had no ties to any motorcycle club and had fabricated the story to extort money from the Gosch family.

In 1989, a 21-year-old man named Paul Bonnaci told his lawyer that he had been kidnapped by an abusive ring when he was only 15, and had been forced to help with the abduction of Johnny Gosch. By the late 1980s, Paul was in prison for child offenses.

Noreen visited Paul, who provided details about Johnny that hadn’t yet been made public. Even though Noreen believed Paul’s story, law enforcement dismissed it. Furthermore, his siblings confirmed Paul was at home at the time of Johnny Gosch’s kidnapping and most definitely wasn’t involved in it.

Johnny’s alleged visit

By 1993, Noreen and John’s marriage had fallen apart because of all the pressure, and the two decided to get a divorce. In March 1997, Noreen was awakened by someone knocking on her apartment door around 2:30 AM.

Feeling afraid, she approached the peephole and saw two men standing outside. One of them looked like Johnny, who would’ve been in his mid-twenties at that time.

When Noreen opened the door, she immediately recognized Johnny’s eyes, and the two hugged. She invited both men inside and asked Johnny to prove his identity by showing her the birthmark on his chest. And sure enough, it was there.

Noreen and Johnny talked for over one hour, but according to her, he refused to answer all the important questions about his current life. However, he did mention Paul Bonnaci, who was allegedly being held in the same basement as Johnny.

Johnny asked Noreen not to call the police, explaining that he was on the run and hiding from the people who abducted him. He told his mother that he would be free once the kidnappers were arrested. After that, Johnny left with the other man, and Noreen never saw him again.

Aftermath

Upon hearing the story of Johnny’s alleged visit, his father, John, questioned Noreen’s credibility right away. Law enforcement criticized her for not contacting them immediately. Despite their efforts, Johnny still hasn’t been found to this day.

Investigators who worked on the case in the decades that followed developed their own theories regarding the kidnapping. At least a few predators were living in Johnny’s neighborhood in 1982 who could’ve been involved.

Furthermore, Wilbur Millhouse, a former circulation manager for the Des Moines Register, pleaded guilty to abuse of teenage boys in 1987.

Noreen Gosch still believes that Johnny was taken by a sex ring and is currently on the run. Sticking to his story from the late 1980s, Paul Bonnaci claimed he saw Johnny more than ten times since he escaped, and he’s still in hiding.

More than forty years later, the West Des Moines Police Department continues to investigate this case. Surprisingly, tips come in every year, and detectives make sure to follow up on every single one.