- Joined
- Nov 10, 2022
This doubles as a Conspiracy Theory for the 'what conspiracy theories do you believe in' thread but here it goes:
The Johnny Gosch Case
As per Wikipedia, these are the officially acknowledged facts:
- That Johnny disappeared between 6 and 7am on September 5, 1982
- That the case remains open
- That Noreen Gosch claims Jonny had escaped from his captors and visited her with an unidentified man he introduced as 'his handler' in 1997.
- That Noreen Gosch claimed her son had been a victim of a pedophile organization and cast aside when he got too old.
- That Noreen's ex husband and Johnny's father publicly questions Noreen's account of Johnny being alive and having visited his mother
- That photographs were left on Noreen's door showing children in BDSM knots.
- That fellow paperboys reported having seen Johnny talk to a stocky man in a blue car
- That Noreen's been open about what she considers a 'slow reaction' from authorities
- That Police established Johnny had been kidnapped without a viable motive
- That Noreen was informed about her son being spotted in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1982 and tries to get help before being dragged away by two men.
- That other paperboys had been missing: Eugene Martin in August 12, 1984 and Marc James Warren Allen on March 29, 1986.
- That Noreen Gosch claims to have been informed in advance of the disappearance of Eugene Martin. 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"
- That Noreen recognized the man visiting her in March 1997 by a birthmark on his chest.
- That the Des Moines Police received an anonymous letter claiming the children appeared in the pictures bound and gagged were 'challenging each others to an escape contest' and that 'no wrongdoing was established' and that the pictures being sent to Ms Gosch were a 'Reprehensible joke [played] on a grieving mother'
- That Nelson Zalba from the Hillsborough County, Florida Sheriff's Office said the details of the letter were true and tat he had 'interviewed the kids, and they said there was no coercion or touching [...] I could never prove a crime
- That the children from the black and white picture with his mouth gagged, his hands and feet tied and an apparent human brand on his shoulder that Noreen identified as her son could never be identified.
- That in 1989 Paul A. Bonacci tod his attorney he had been abducted into a sex ring with Gosch as a teenager and that he was forced to participate in his kidnapping,
- That Noreen met Bonacci and confirmed he told her things 'he could only know from talking with her son'
Now I have compiled relevant information from different sources verbatim:
The Johnny Gosch Case
As per Wikipedia, these are the officially acknowledged facts:
- That Johnny disappeared between 6 and 7am on September 5, 1982
- That the case remains open
- That Noreen Gosch claims Jonny had escaped from his captors and visited her with an unidentified man he introduced as 'his handler' in 1997.
- That Noreen Gosch claimed her son had been a victim of a pedophile organization and cast aside when he got too old.
- That Noreen's ex husband and Johnny's father publicly questions Noreen's account of Johnny being alive and having visited his mother
- That photographs were left on Noreen's door showing children in BDSM knots.
- That fellow paperboys reported having seen Johnny talk to a stocky man in a blue car
- That Noreen's been open about what she considers a 'slow reaction' from authorities
- That Police established Johnny had been kidnapped without a viable motive
- That Noreen was informed about her son being spotted in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1982 and tries to get help before being dragged away by two men.
- That other paperboys had been missing: Eugene Martin in August 12, 1984 and Marc James Warren Allen on March 29, 1986.
- That Noreen Gosch claims to have been informed in advance of the disappearance of Eugene Martin. 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"
- That Noreen recognized the man visiting her in March 1997 by a birthmark on his chest.
- That the Des Moines Police received an anonymous letter claiming the children appeared in the pictures bound and gagged were 'challenging each others to an escape contest' and that 'no wrongdoing was established' and that the pictures being sent to Ms Gosch were a 'Reprehensible joke [played] on a grieving mother'
- That Nelson Zalba from the Hillsborough County, Florida Sheriff's Office said the details of the letter were true and tat he had 'interviewed the kids, and they said there was no coercion or touching [...] I could never prove a crime
- That the children from the black and white picture with his mouth gagged, his hands and feet tied and an apparent human brand on his shoulder that Noreen identified as her son could never be identified.
- That in 1989 Paul A. Bonacci tod his attorney he had been abducted into a sex ring with Gosch as a teenager and that he was forced to participate in his kidnapping,
- That Noreen met Bonacci and confirmed he told her things 'he could only know from talking with her son'
Now I have compiled relevant information from different sources verbatim:
- On February 5, 1999, in a civil action in a U.S. District Court in Lincoln, Nebraska, Paul Bonacci recounted the details of Johnny Gosch's abduction and his forced participation on it.
- In 1985, the Gosches received a phone call around 9PM one evening. The caller told John that she’d received a dollar bill in change from a grocery store in Sioux Falls, Iowa that had their son’s name on it. John asked her to send it to him. Written on the front of the dollar bill were the words:
“i am alive johnny gosch”
Noreen and John felt confident that this was their son’s handwriting, however nothing ever came from the dollar bill.
- Bonacci has been diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, a side effect from having suffered sexual abuse since the age of 8.
- According to Bonacci, Johnny was brought into the world of child sex trafficking, with Paul claiming to be the first person to molest Johnny on film, as a sort of advertisement for predators. Bonacci said he saw Johnny again in 1986, where he was being held with other children in a house in Colorado.
- The accused operator of this Omaha-based prostitution ring was Lawrence E. King, general manager of the Franklin Federal Credit Union. One of the rising black stars in the GOP, King was the former Vice Chairman of the National Black Republican Council and sang the national anthem at the 1984 Republican National Convention. Known for extravagant personal spending and throwing $100,000 parties, in April 1988 the FBI raided his bank and charged King with embezzling nearly $40 million.
- A state senate committee formed in November to investigate both Lawrence E. King’s financial dealings and the allegations of sex trafficking. The claims originated in the foster care system where a social worker’s report on victim’s stories had been forwarded to authorities but was ignored. Boys Town, the nationally renowned orphanage, had numerous connections to the Franklin Credit Union, including commercial accounts and sending minors to gain work experience under King.
- The senate committee hired private investigator Gary Caradori to separate wheat from chaff and compile evidence. Caradori, a former state trooper, drew up a leads list of sixty potential victims and conducted videotaped interviews that added up to twenty-one hours of testimony. In July 1990, while allegedly in possession of photographs taken at King’s sex parties, Caradori’s small plane inexplicably disintegrated mid-air over Illinois. He and his eight-year-old son were killed, and his briefcase was never found.
- The grand jury indicted Lawrence E. King for financial crimes and for paying men for sex—for which he would serve ten years in prison—but called allegations of sex trafficking a “carefully crafted hoax.” The grand jury accepted that the teens had been abused, but not by the people they identified. Their conflicting conclusions were denounced by the senate committee.
- The Goschs (who divorced in 1993) had other advisors telling them the opposite. In a rare interview in 2018, John Gosch Sr. recalled that Kenneth Wooden, who had written extensively on missing and murdered children and lectured on the topic at Iowa State University in 1981 and 1982, told Noreen, “Whatever you have to do to keep the story alive, do it, because if you don’t, law enforcement will move on with their lives and go on their merry way.”
- In her book, Noreen credits Wooden with setting her on the right course. Though there wasn’t evidence Johnny was sexually abused, Wooden convinced Noreen her son had likely fallen victim to a class of deviants known as pedophiles. He believed pedophiles were seeking to change the culture, and were gaining influence through organizations like NAMBLA — a barely existent group that never achieved notoriety outside of conspiracy theory circles and one memorable South Park episode.
- Noreen took an offer from Ted Gunderson to conduct a private investigation into the vanishings. Gunderson, who died in 2011, was a retired FBI agent and far-right figure who helped perpetuate the infamous allegations of satanic ritual abuse at the McMartin preschool in California, perhaps the definitive case of the satanic panic. Like Infowars’ Alex Jones, Gunderson believed government mind control and anti-Christian New World Order forces are behind America’s most deadly terrorism events.
- The body of a man called Johnny Gosch was found in Mexico
-One question that has never been answered is why Johnny, on the one day he got abducted, did the paper route by himself instead of being accompanied by his father as usual. As Noreen stated in 1988 and in her 2000 book, Leonard John Gosch always went with Johnny on Sunday mornings, and LJG himself said in the film Who Took Johnny that "I was with him every Sunday morning except that particular Sunday morning that he was kidnapped".
- That Johnny broke this pattern for the first time on September 5, 1982 and happened to be abducted the same day is incredible enough to raise suspicion that him being alone that morning was planned. At first glance, since it was up to Johnny to wake his father, not the other way around, this suspicion does not reflect on LJG. Noreen stated as far back as 1988 that on the night before his kidnapping, Johnny asked to do the route alone, and she and her husband refused, but he disobeyed to deliver papers by himself that morning
- But Noreen claimed in her book that when Johnny asked to do the route on his own, LJG initially said yes before Noreen overruled him. Furthermore, even though Noreen refused his request, Johnny came back downstairs shortly after going to bed to hug his mother again and tell her "you are the best". Based on that, there are indications that LJG went behind Noreen's back to ensure that Johnny would go out unaccompanied the next morning.
- This was far from the only irregular occurrence involving LJG that Noreen alleged in her book. According to her, LJG began acting very erratically a few months prior to Johnny's abduction, and his behavior only worsened afterwards.
- Early on in 1982, LJG allegedly developed a very hateful attitude, which he took out on all of Noreen's kids but especially her older son Joe Gosch. In June 1982, he purportedly arranged a fishing trip with Joe and Johnny to Lake of the Ozarks because it might be their "last or only opportunity to do so", and when they got back, Noreen's sons told her that LJG was very evidently depressed. The next month, while LJG was on a business trip in Raleigh NC, he allegedly called Noreen threatening to kill himself because he could "no longer live with it", and she had to make the Raleigh police do a welfare check. It can be surmised from Noreen's account that something happened in 1982 that put LJG under a substantial amount of stress.
- Then in August 1982, Noreen claims that LJG took Johnny on a day trip to Omaha, with one of their destinations being Offutt Air Force Base. Johnny was said to have had a foggy memory of the trip. Per Noreen's account, immediately after the Omaha trip, she and LJG began receiving those hang-up phone calls every Sunday morning around 1 AM. They continued until the day of Johnny's abduction, when LJG answered not with "Wrong number" as he usually did, but instead gave the caller a series of affirmative responses. After Johnny was kidnapped, the calls stopped. These calls have only received limited corroboration (see below), but if true, they raise questions about what LJG was up to in the weeks just before Johnny's abduction.
- After Johnny was kidnapped, Noreen was forced to shoulder most of the responsibility for keeping the case alive, as LJG was less inclined to go out in the public eye. Behind the scenes, meanwhile, the marriage was in serious turmoil according to Noreen. LJG began spending most of his time on purported business trips, not informing Noreen of his plans, whereabouts, or contact information while he was gone. Much of his time away was spent in Lincoln NE and Omaha NE. They did still make public appearances together on the case, but some of them turned disastrous. Following an event near Davenport IA on August 17, 1984 that they were invited to, LJG severely beat Noreen, an accusation corroborated by Scott County sheriff's deputy Sam Raley.
- After Franklin scandal victim Paul Bonacci confessed his involvement in Johnny's abduction, his attorney John DeCamp informed the Gosch family, but Noreen has accused LJG of hiding this information from her. It was acknowledged even back in 1992 that LJG checked out Bonacci on his own for several months before Noreen found out, and LJG confirmed in 2018 interviews that he visited Bonacci in prison with John DeCamp and private investigator Roy Stephens but not his wife.
- The final alleged incident between Noreen and LJG had to do with the investigation of Charlie Kerr, on whose Iowa farmhouse Johnny was said to be held for a brief period of time following his abduction. Bonacci only knew Kerr by his first name "Charlie", but according to Noreen, he was able to draw a picture which Roy Stephens matched to Kerr with the help of the Sioux City authorities. Kerr was described by Noreen as having a lengthy rap sheet for sexual offenses against children
- The county attorney in Sioux City then purportedly arranged for a months-long surveillance operation on Kerr. One day in 1993, the county attorney informed Noreen that they were about to arrest Charlie Kerr, and she told her husband, believing she could trust him. Later that day Noreen got an angry call from the county attorney, saying that LJG had driven up to Kerr's trailer and gone inside to speak with him, which resulted in Kerr fleeing the area before they could arrest him
- In recounting the morning of September 5, 1982, LJG said on Faded Out that as soon as he found Johnny's wagon abandoned, he knew something was wrong and quickly headed home to have Noreen call the police. This has been a fairly consistent part of LJG's story, also being told by him in America's MIA Children (1992) and Who Took Johnny (2014). Yet a September 6, 1982 news article says that after neighbors called the Gosches at 7:45 AM asking where their Sunday papers were, LJG went out and found the wagon, realized Johnny was missing, but delivered all of Johnny's papers before calling the police at 8:30 AM. The 8:30 AM time is corroborated by the police report
- Noreen claimed to receive additional confirmation of LJG's involvement in the Franklin milieu from a West Des Moines co-worker of hers. This co-worker was a younger man who had grown up in Omaha. According to Noreen, he kept looking at her while on the job, and when she went to the stockroom he followed her inside, asking to speak with her. Noreen's co-worker recounted how, as a teenager, he used to go to an Omaha club called The Mark. While at The Mark, Larry King attempted to recruit him for child pornography and prostitution, and LJG was also seen there numerous times. The club was allegedly well known as a place where pedophiles could pick up young boys and young girls.
- More claims linking LJG to Franklin soon came out directly from Omaha child abuse victims. In 2008, apparent Franklin victim David Shurter released a walking tour of the Old Market area in Omaha. One of the locations he pointed out (a "favorite hangout" in his words) was Stars Restaurant (below Godfather's Pizza), where he had worked as a waiter. Shurter expressed a tentative belief that he had seen LJG eating at Stars.
- Los Angeles pedophile ring victim Darron Reimer told his own disturbing story that paralleled the Omaha allegations about LJG. In 1974, at the age of 10, Darron ended up getting drawn into a well-connected pedophile group involved in child prostitution and the production of child pornography. He was one of many children forced to act in pornographic films/photo-shoots and sexually service men (who appeared to be quite wealthy). The network's apparent ringleader was Guy Strait,
- Darron was adamant that Leonard John Gosch was one of the men who he saw at that nightclub. He claimed that upon seeing a photo of LJG for the first time, he had a flashback to his own experience back in 1974 at the Green Horse. Though he first experienced this around 2008 when he began studying Franklin, he still experienced these flashbacks when shown a photo of LJG in 2018. Noreen had allegedly confirmed to Darron that LJG, whose job involved taking business trips across the country, did in fact visit Los Angeles.
- In 1985, the Gosches received a phone call around 9PM one evening. The caller told John that she’d received a dollar bill in change from a grocery store in Sioux Falls, Iowa that had their son’s name on it. John asked her to send it to him. Written on the front of the dollar bill were the words:
“i am alive johnny gosch”
Noreen and John felt confident that this was their son’s handwriting, however nothing ever came from the dollar bill.
- Bonacci has been diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, a side effect from having suffered sexual abuse since the age of 8.
- According to Bonacci, Johnny was brought into the world of child sex trafficking, with Paul claiming to be the first person to molest Johnny on film, as a sort of advertisement for predators. Bonacci said he saw Johnny again in 1986, where he was being held with other children in a house in Colorado.
- The accused operator of this Omaha-based prostitution ring was Lawrence E. King, general manager of the Franklin Federal Credit Union. One of the rising black stars in the GOP, King was the former Vice Chairman of the National Black Republican Council and sang the national anthem at the 1984 Republican National Convention. Known for extravagant personal spending and throwing $100,000 parties, in April 1988 the FBI raided his bank and charged King with embezzling nearly $40 million.
- A state senate committee formed in November to investigate both Lawrence E. King’s financial dealings and the allegations of sex trafficking. The claims originated in the foster care system where a social worker’s report on victim’s stories had been forwarded to authorities but was ignored. Boys Town, the nationally renowned orphanage, had numerous connections to the Franklin Credit Union, including commercial accounts and sending minors to gain work experience under King.
- The senate committee hired private investigator Gary Caradori to separate wheat from chaff and compile evidence. Caradori, a former state trooper, drew up a leads list of sixty potential victims and conducted videotaped interviews that added up to twenty-one hours of testimony. In July 1990, while allegedly in possession of photographs taken at King’s sex parties, Caradori’s small plane inexplicably disintegrated mid-air over Illinois. He and his eight-year-old son were killed, and his briefcase was never found.
- The grand jury indicted Lawrence E. King for financial crimes and for paying men for sex—for which he would serve ten years in prison—but called allegations of sex trafficking a “carefully crafted hoax.” The grand jury accepted that the teens had been abused, but not by the people they identified. Their conflicting conclusions were denounced by the senate committee.
- The Goschs (who divorced in 1993) had other advisors telling them the opposite. In a rare interview in 2018, John Gosch Sr. recalled that Kenneth Wooden, who had written extensively on missing and murdered children and lectured on the topic at Iowa State University in 1981 and 1982, told Noreen, “Whatever you have to do to keep the story alive, do it, because if you don’t, law enforcement will move on with their lives and go on their merry way.”
- In her book, Noreen credits Wooden with setting her on the right course. Though there wasn’t evidence Johnny was sexually abused, Wooden convinced Noreen her son had likely fallen victim to a class of deviants known as pedophiles. He believed pedophiles were seeking to change the culture, and were gaining influence through organizations like NAMBLA — a barely existent group that never achieved notoriety outside of conspiracy theory circles and one memorable South Park episode.
- Noreen took an offer from Ted Gunderson to conduct a private investigation into the vanishings. Gunderson, who died in 2011, was a retired FBI agent and far-right figure who helped perpetuate the infamous allegations of satanic ritual abuse at the McMartin preschool in California, perhaps the definitive case of the satanic panic. Like Infowars’ Alex Jones, Gunderson believed government mind control and anti-Christian New World Order forces are behind America’s most deadly terrorism events.
- The body of a man called Johnny Gosch was found in Mexico
-One question that has never been answered is why Johnny, on the one day he got abducted, did the paper route by himself instead of being accompanied by his father as usual. As Noreen stated in 1988 and in her 2000 book, Leonard John Gosch always went with Johnny on Sunday mornings, and LJG himself said in the film Who Took Johnny that "I was with him every Sunday morning except that particular Sunday morning that he was kidnapped".
- That Johnny broke this pattern for the first time on September 5, 1982 and happened to be abducted the same day is incredible enough to raise suspicion that him being alone that morning was planned. At first glance, since it was up to Johnny to wake his father, not the other way around, this suspicion does not reflect on LJG. Noreen stated as far back as 1988 that on the night before his kidnapping, Johnny asked to do the route alone, and she and her husband refused, but he disobeyed to deliver papers by himself that morning
- But Noreen claimed in her book that when Johnny asked to do the route on his own, LJG initially said yes before Noreen overruled him. Furthermore, even though Noreen refused his request, Johnny came back downstairs shortly after going to bed to hug his mother again and tell her "you are the best". Based on that, there are indications that LJG went behind Noreen's back to ensure that Johnny would go out unaccompanied the next morning.
- This was far from the only irregular occurrence involving LJG that Noreen alleged in her book. According to her, LJG began acting very erratically a few months prior to Johnny's abduction, and his behavior only worsened afterwards.
- Early on in 1982, LJG allegedly developed a very hateful attitude, which he took out on all of Noreen's kids but especially her older son Joe Gosch. In June 1982, he purportedly arranged a fishing trip with Joe and Johnny to Lake of the Ozarks because it might be their "last or only opportunity to do so", and when they got back, Noreen's sons told her that LJG was very evidently depressed. The next month, while LJG was on a business trip in Raleigh NC, he allegedly called Noreen threatening to kill himself because he could "no longer live with it", and she had to make the Raleigh police do a welfare check. It can be surmised from Noreen's account that something happened in 1982 that put LJG under a substantial amount of stress.
- Then in August 1982, Noreen claims that LJG took Johnny on a day trip to Omaha, with one of their destinations being Offutt Air Force Base. Johnny was said to have had a foggy memory of the trip. Per Noreen's account, immediately after the Omaha trip, she and LJG began receiving those hang-up phone calls every Sunday morning around 1 AM. They continued until the day of Johnny's abduction, when LJG answered not with "Wrong number" as he usually did, but instead gave the caller a series of affirmative responses. After Johnny was kidnapped, the calls stopped. These calls have only received limited corroboration (see below), but if true, they raise questions about what LJG was up to in the weeks just before Johnny's abduction.
- After Johnny was kidnapped, Noreen was forced to shoulder most of the responsibility for keeping the case alive, as LJG was less inclined to go out in the public eye. Behind the scenes, meanwhile, the marriage was in serious turmoil according to Noreen. LJG began spending most of his time on purported business trips, not informing Noreen of his plans, whereabouts, or contact information while he was gone. Much of his time away was spent in Lincoln NE and Omaha NE. They did still make public appearances together on the case, but some of them turned disastrous. Following an event near Davenport IA on August 17, 1984 that they were invited to, LJG severely beat Noreen, an accusation corroborated by Scott County sheriff's deputy Sam Raley.
- After Franklin scandal victim Paul Bonacci confessed his involvement in Johnny's abduction, his attorney John DeCamp informed the Gosch family, but Noreen has accused LJG of hiding this information from her. It was acknowledged even back in 1992 that LJG checked out Bonacci on his own for several months before Noreen found out, and LJG confirmed in 2018 interviews that he visited Bonacci in prison with John DeCamp and private investigator Roy Stephens but not his wife.
- The final alleged incident between Noreen and LJG had to do with the investigation of Charlie Kerr, on whose Iowa farmhouse Johnny was said to be held for a brief period of time following his abduction. Bonacci only knew Kerr by his first name "Charlie", but according to Noreen, he was able to draw a picture which Roy Stephens matched to Kerr with the help of the Sioux City authorities. Kerr was described by Noreen as having a lengthy rap sheet for sexual offenses against children
- The county attorney in Sioux City then purportedly arranged for a months-long surveillance operation on Kerr. One day in 1993, the county attorney informed Noreen that they were about to arrest Charlie Kerr, and she told her husband, believing she could trust him. Later that day Noreen got an angry call from the county attorney, saying that LJG had driven up to Kerr's trailer and gone inside to speak with him, which resulted in Kerr fleeing the area before they could arrest him
- In recounting the morning of September 5, 1982, LJG said on Faded Out that as soon as he found Johnny's wagon abandoned, he knew something was wrong and quickly headed home to have Noreen call the police. This has been a fairly consistent part of LJG's story, also being told by him in America's MIA Children (1992) and Who Took Johnny (2014). Yet a September 6, 1982 news article says that after neighbors called the Gosches at 7:45 AM asking where their Sunday papers were, LJG went out and found the wagon, realized Johnny was missing, but delivered all of Johnny's papers before calling the police at 8:30 AM. The 8:30 AM time is corroborated by the police report
- Noreen claimed to receive additional confirmation of LJG's involvement in the Franklin milieu from a West Des Moines co-worker of hers. This co-worker was a younger man who had grown up in Omaha. According to Noreen, he kept looking at her while on the job, and when she went to the stockroom he followed her inside, asking to speak with her. Noreen's co-worker recounted how, as a teenager, he used to go to an Omaha club called The Mark. While at The Mark, Larry King attempted to recruit him for child pornography and prostitution, and LJG was also seen there numerous times. The club was allegedly well known as a place where pedophiles could pick up young boys and young girls.
- More claims linking LJG to Franklin soon came out directly from Omaha child abuse victims. In 2008, apparent Franklin victim David Shurter released a walking tour of the Old Market area in Omaha. One of the locations he pointed out (a "favorite hangout" in his words) was Stars Restaurant (below Godfather's Pizza), where he had worked as a waiter. Shurter expressed a tentative belief that he had seen LJG eating at Stars.
- Los Angeles pedophile ring victim Darron Reimer told his own disturbing story that paralleled the Omaha allegations about LJG. In 1974, at the age of 10, Darron ended up getting drawn into a well-connected pedophile group involved in child prostitution and the production of child pornography. He was one of many children forced to act in pornographic films/photo-shoots and sexually service men (who appeared to be quite wealthy). The network's apparent ringleader was Guy Strait,
- Darron was adamant that Leonard John Gosch was one of the men who he saw at that nightclub. He claimed that upon seeing a photo of LJG for the first time, he had a flashback to his own experience back in 1974 at the Green Horse. Though he first experienced this around 2008 when he began studying Franklin, he still experienced these flashbacks when shown a photo of LJG in 2018. Noreen had allegedly confirmed to Darron that LJG, whose job involved taking business trips across the country, did in fact visit Los Angeles.
