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Was Missing Iowa Paperboy Johnny Gosch Forced Into a Pedophile Prostitution Ring?
Tuesday, Nov. 17 2009 @ 10:32AM
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12-year-old paperboy Johnny Gosch vanished in 1982 while delivering newspapers on his route.

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Johnny Gosch, 12, had been working as a paperboy for a little more than a year when he vanished from his West Des Moines route in 1982 while delivering the Des Moines Register.  He left his parents' home at 5:45 a.m. on September 5, 1982, with his pet dachshund in tow. 

Suspicions of foul play, however, did not arise until about two hours later, when one of Johnny's customers called to say that his newspaper had not been delivered. Johnny's dad, Leonard, instructed his wife to call the police and went out looking for his son. He had gone barely two blocks from his house when he found Johnny's red wagon  full of newspapers, so Leonard delivered them to Johnny's customers...

Johnny's mother, Noreen Gosch, told police and newspaper reporters that Johnny had a perfect record for never delivering a paper late, and had received a perfect service award from the newspaper for his efforts.

She also told them that Johnny's dachshund came home on its own, without Johnny.

According to police reports, witnesses said they had seen the boy talking to a man in a car described as a blue Ford Fairmont. He appeared to be giving the driver directions.  However, after he finished talking to Johnny, the man drove away, made a u-turn and was seen asking another paperboy for directions nearby.

Unhappy with the local police work, Noreen Gosch hired a private investigator who reportedly found witnesses who claimed they saw Johnny being pulled into the car in question.  Noreen and the private investigators believe that Johnny was kidnapped and forced into a child prostitution ring operated by pedophiles, a theory which the local police discount but won't entirely dismiss.

"We have no evidence to suggest that Johnny was swept into a pedophile ring," said Lt. Cameron Coppess of the West Des Moines Police Department.  "It is not an impossible theory, but one that we have not been able to support through facts."

But Johnny's mother disagrees, and says that photos have been sent to her and dropped off at her house depicting a bound and gagged young boy that appears to be Johnny.  Some of the photos also appeared on a Russian child pornography website. She has created an informational website about her son's disappearance where she has published some of the photos. The police don't believe the photos are of her son.

"There have been multiple names of people put forward to us that were suspected of being involved in the disappearance," Coppess said. "But there's not been one substantial piece of evidence that has tied any of those individuals to the disappearance of Johnny Gosch."

Noreen Gosch said that Johnny visited her home for a few hours at approximately 2:30 a.m. in March 1997, at which time he would have been 27. She said that he told her how he had been kidnapped and forced into a life of child prostitution. When asked why he could not stay, she said that Johnny told her his life was still in danger and that it was necessary for him to leave Des Moines.

She has not seen or heard from him again.

She said that the police made critical mistakes during the first hours of the investigation, including one in which the police chief at the time, Orval Cooney, instructed a group of searchers to stop looking for the boy because he was just a runaway.

Twenty-seven years later, Johnny Gosch is still considered a missing person by the police, and his case remains open. Currently there are no new leads for the cops to run down.  Investigators are asking that anyone with information about the Gosch case to please call the West Des Moines Police Department at 515-222-3345 or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-THE LOST.


Tags: Iowa