IA IA - Johnny Gosch, 12, West Des Moines, 5 Sept 1982 #4

November 12, was Johnny's 40th birthday.

Mr. E said:

I've heard the runaway theory too, on another website, and I think it's possible but unlikely. Johnny was spotted on his paper route. He talked to other carriers and he was seen folding his papers. He had his paper bag with him, his dog, and I think a wagon. I don't know why he would decide to runaway while delivering papers. If he thought, I'll pretend like I'm going to deliver papers, but really I'm all packed and ready to runaway, then why would he have actually shown up for his route?

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Possibly, because some older person associated with the newspaper delivery system was going to help him run away? Perhaps, by picking him up from the route in a car? Refer to my next posting for a potential candidate to be such a person...

Armchair14: You are very kind, but let me assure you that I am far from being "brilliant".

Somewhere in the archives of these threads, Shadowwraith posted links to some old newspaper articles about the Gosch case. In one of those, investigator SAM SODA talks about uncovering evidence that a man involved in working with the newspaper carriers had been hosting "parties" for the boys after delivery hours, with allegations of sexual advances and providing alcohol if I recall correctly. [refer to my post #55 of this thread]

Bizarrely, in a later article, Noreen Gosch is quoted as urging young newspaper carriers not to pay any attention to these allegations (!?!).

Personally, I believe this is part of the reason why Sam Soda is later fingered by Bonacci as "being in on" the abduction of Johnny Gosch - Soda angered Noreen by conducting investigations related to her son's disappearance without her knowledge or consent, and people who anger Noreen (or John DeCamp) often seem to get written into the evolving plot as suspected perpetrators. At one point, Noreen is quoted in an article attempting to order the FBI to stop investigating her son's disappearance - in contrast to her later claims that the FBI refused to investigate it at all.

Armchair14 said:

If there is another photo of a different kid in the same setting as the first three boys (and I’ll take your word for it as I don’t want to go wading through them again on her website), it is explained within my last post. Who sent Mrs. Gosch the original photos? I’m betting it was the man who took the pictures or another of his kind whom he shared his collection with.

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The photos were sent to Noreen Gosch by a Tim White. His online claim of responsibility is quoted in various places throught these threads. Tim White claims to have received the photos from "Jimmy Gibson"

Mr. E said:

The only person I could think of who would have contact with the paper carriers on a daily basis would be customers on the route. I haven't read what the police did in the initial search, but I assume and hope they looked at every person on the route.

Then again, since Johnny's papers were undelivered that day, maybe it wasn't someone on the route. Were there businesses nearby? A bakery would have people working early. Maybe somebody saw Johnny alone that morning and took a chance. I know there was a church nearby -- somebody from there, maybe?

Witnesses (other carriers) said they saw two men -- a man in a car (this is the man they made a sketch of as a POI) and a man following Johnny on foot. The man in the car asked Johnny for directions. Johnny felt uncomfortable and said, "That guy is weird; I'm going home" (or something like that). Later, another man was seen following Johnny on foot.

I think there could have been more than one person who took Johnny. Like you said, he was a big kid. It would make sense that there was more than one person to snatch him.

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Yes, this is logical. Sadly, in some cases this logic has been tragically defied. In the case of the paperboy killer John Joubert, for example.
Joubert was a very small man - barely bigger than his victims. In pictures, he looks like a child. According to Joubert, his victims initially simply obeyed his commands:
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/john_joubert/16.html

and the next page in that series (warning! disturbing descriptions of kidnapping & murder).

It seems that, in some cases in the past, victim's reflexive response to a startling & scary encounter was to obey the adult. Perhaps, as a society, we went overboard in drilling that reflex into children: "in an emergency, obey the adult!" I think we've since made progress, but probably we could do more to encourage a different response, one of shouting: "help! not my father!" or "not my mother!" and making as much of a scene as possible.

Roy Harrold said:

Possibly, because some older person associated with the newspaper delivery system was going to help him run away? Perhaps, by picking him up from the route in a car? Refer to my next posting for a potential candidate to be such a person...

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Dear Roy,

Your modesty aside, I maintain my characterization of you as brilliant! With this quote, you’ve done it again.

I had completely dismissed the possibility that Johnny might have run away for the same reason as had Mr. E., to whom you are responding here. Quite simply, why would the boy get up and start his newspaper route and then suddenly—on the seeming spur of the moment?!—decide to take off? If Johnny had decided to run away for some reason, then perhaps the adult who helped him as you suggest (and presumably the perp if the boy was later murdered) had instructed him to go through the pretense of starting his route before he was to pick the boy up.

This would explain why Johnny had gone out by himself that day, against the orders of his mother, as Mrs. Gosch relates it, and why (again according to Mrs. Gosch) he had asked for permission the night before, only for it to have been denied by his mother (though, according to her account, favored by the boy’s father). This also explains why a boy who would have seemed an unlikely target, 5’ 7”, 140 lbs. at age 12, for peverts had been abducted. The perp didn’t have to worry about the logistics of the actual kidnapping, a possible physical confrontation with the boy.

I’m not saying that I am convinced that Johnny had initially run away, only that it no longer seems incredible as it had to me before reading your latest insight on the matter.

To recapitulate, the “coincidence” of Johnny (and later of Eugene Martin) having been abducted on the first and only day he went out on his route by himself seemed too glaring to me to be dismissed as such. Yet, the only possible suspect I could think of capable of having orchestrated Johnny’s abduction would seem to have had no motive, or at least not one the police presumably would have promptly investigated. Mrs. Gosch herself seems to suspect her ex-husband. (He might have secretly given Johnny the okay to go out alone the next morning, telling the boy he’d take care of it with his mother.)

But again, what possible motive could the man have had? If there had been any significant amount of life insurance (very unusual in the case of a working class kid), that would not only have looked very suspicious (as he would have well known), but without a body wouldn't he have to have waited seven years (I think) for the boy to be declared legally dead so that he could collect? (By the way, has Johnny been declared legally dead?)

If he would have received any other appreciable amount of money in the wake of his son’s disappearance, wouldn’t that have come to light and he would have had to account for it? So if we leave aside money, what other motive could he have had? None that I can discern.

Since I dismissed Mr. Gosch as a suspect in my mind, that still left the “coincidence," a mystery that I couldn’t explain, until I read your posts. You should be a detective, if you're not already! If the police are still actively investigating this case, they should go back to the day of the boy's disappearance and comb through every adult associated with the delivery kids, including any who would be there some days but were not scheduled to be that day. Cross-checking names with the Martin case couldn’t hurt either.

Best regards,

No, I'm not a detective and wouldn't want to be one. I like this place, and I think it has been helpful to several cases. I don't see anything wrong with this kind of "armchair" dissection of & discussion about unsolved cases.

But, I'm the guy who walks over to the local cops taking a break in the doughnut shop (Tim Hortons, around here), shakes their hands and thanks them for their service to the community. I strongly believe that 90% of criminal investigations are best handled by real law enforcement officers - not by parents of victims, not by "concerned parents" community groups, not by private investigators and certainly not by self-appointed vigilante witchhunters.

I still favor the possibility of JG being a victim of Joubert. That would involve a fair slice of the coincidental circumstances that you are rightly troubled by, though Joubert was the kind of opportunist who would literally troll a neighborhood repeatedly waiting for the right circumstances to present themselves. An opportunist who worked with the boys in some capacity would require less "coincidence", though.

The runaway scenario is not one that I'd given much serious thought to, honestly. However, I've recently read "The Franklin Scandal" by Bryant, John DeCamp's book (ghostwritten by Larouchite Anton Chaitkin), and studied postings on two other forums where these topics are discussed (one of which is officially 'defunct' I believe) - and all of that has made me even more sceptical of Paul Bonacci's story and a lot more sympathetic to Jimmy Gibson's scenario. It's possible, of course, that neither of them is telling the truth.

I can conceive of a scenario wherein an adult who worked with the boys, and held drinking & sexual seduction parties with some of them outside of work hours, might have been a friendly enough figure for the boys to discuss being unhappy at home with. I can conceive that such a person might suggest that he could help them run away if they wanted to, only they'd have to be alone on the route so he could pick them up without interference. I can conceive this person driving the naive boys back to his pedophilic nest, maybe turning them on to drugs and/or prostitution, maybe passing them on to a friend with similar inclinations in another town or state...

That would all be sheer speculation. But, there was such an employee of the Des Moines papers who alledged confessed to molesting carriers. He allegedly passed a lie detector about being involved in the abductions, but perhaps they asked him the wrong questions. Would he have passed if they had asked him if he helped the boys run away? I dunno.

Dear Roy,

You think that Johnny Gosch could have been a victim of John Joubert? Joubert was convicted of murdering Ricky Stetson on August 22, 1982 in Maine. Johnny went missing September 5, 1982 in West Des Moines. The only reason why Joubert was later (1983) in Nebraska was because he had afterwards enlisted in the Army, some say to get away from Maine in the wake of the Stetson murder. Why would you place him in Iowa at the time of the Gosch disappearance?

Armchair14 said:

Dear Roy,

You think that Johnny Gosch could have been a victim of John Joubert? Joubert was convicted of murdering Ricky Stetson on August 22, 1982 in Maine. Johnny went missing September 5, 1982 in West Des Moines. The only reason why Joubert was later (1983) in Nebraska was because he had afterwards enlisted in the Army, some say to get away from Maine in the wake of the Stetson murder. Why would you place him in Iowa at the time of the Gosch disappearance?

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I can't place Joubert in Iowa at that time. And, he was in custody I believe when Martin went missing. However, Joubert admitted to the two murders in Nebraska but denied responsibility for the Stetson murder. Joubert's first Nebraska victim, Danny Joe Eberle, went missing from his Omaha paper route just like Johnny. Perhaps Joubert was simply inspired by coverage of the Gosch disappearance to try the same "modus operandi" himself? I really don't know. Do you have any insights about Joubert?

Paul Bonacci has claimed to have been a participant in Johnny Gosch's abduction. For a long time, I've chosen to take that claim at face value and then exploring unexamined implications of his claim. With the help of information I've recently reviewed, I now believe that Bonacci's claim can be entirely debunked.

On several internet sites, John DeCamp has been quoted over the years stating that he became involved in Bonacci's case "after a young man contacted me from prison and said he had information about the Gosch kidnapping". These statements appear to be inaccurate. According to DeCamp's book, DeCamp was already Bonacci's lawyer when - upon reviewing notes of Bonacci's statements to his psychiatrist - DeCamp came across references to victimization of a paperboy and a partial name that caused DeCamp to recall the Gosch kidnapping. Bonacci did not, initially, claim to have been involved in the Gosch case nor give anyone the detailed account he has later been quoted as giving to people such as the Gosch family or Ted Gunderson.

Presumably, DeCamp then gathered every scrap of information he could find about the Gosch case and gave it to Bonacci to see whether that information would "jog his memory". Someone, probably DeCamp but possibly also Dr Mead or others, gave Bonacci details of the Gosch case which Paul would then later feed back to them with great embellishment and a frank "confession" of involvement. I don't have access to Dr Mead's notes about his sessions with Bonacci, of course, but it seems possible to me that if Bonacci had ranted about a paperboy and the name "John", he might equally have been attempting to claim forced involvement in John Joubert's kidnapping & murder of an Omaha Nebraska paperboy - before DeCamp suggested to him that he might have been involved in the Gosch case.

This kind of suggestive questioning of alledged satanic abuse MPD patients was common practise at that time, particularly among SRA true believers in psychiatry, child welfare and social work agencies - and absolutely rampant among Satanic Panic instigators, many of whom Bonacci was exposed to while in prison as well as after his release including the Rev. James Bevel, Dr Densen-Gerber, Ted Gunderson, and persons affiliated with Lt. Larry Jones' network. This type of suggestion-feedback dynamic is how little children were induced to claiming that they had committed murders before the age of 2 years old, for example. You can see it at work even in the videos of Bonacci being "debriefed" by Gunderson, where Gunderson repeatedly prompts Paul to say something about the FBI. At first, Bonacci doesn't "get it" and says no when Gunderson asks if he had said something about an FBI agent, but Ted is patient and keeps prompting him until Paul figures out what Ted wants him to say and states that he was intimidated by an FBI agent questioning him.

After much of this kind of "debriefing", Bonacci's story of forced involvement in the Gosch case has been refined to the point where DeCamp feels comfortable releasing it to the Gosch family and the press. Coincidentally, this occurs shortly before Bonacci's parole hearing. One of the more common ploys for gaining early release from prison, is to offer details about an unsolved major felony in exchange for parole. Bonacci offers details about the Gosch kidnapping just before his hearing and sure enough, the board votes to release him! Unfortunately for him, the board is later persuaded to reverse their decision. Nevertheless, there was a clear motivation of personal gain when Bonacci & DeCamp first made their claims of Paul's involvement in the case.

One of the aspects of Bonacci's claim that I thought was highly credible, at one time, was the idea that he had been brought along on the abduction as a lure. This idea, that a kidnapper would pull up to a potential victim with a carfull of other teens, and the teens would invite the victim to come along for a party or something, makes a lot of sense to me. I think, sadly, that such a ploy would have a high chance of success. And this is what Bonacci claims as the rationale for his being in the abduction vehicle. But, he then goes on to completely contradict that whole idea. He states that he was "acting out" and was therefore locked in the trunk of the vehicle until just before the actual snatching. He states that he was then moved to the floor of the back seat and ordered to keep down out of sight. He states that his role in the crime therefore ended up amounting to opening a door and pulling Gosch inside. So, he wasn't used as a lure after all. He wasn't even visible to the intended victim. So why, then, would he have been brought along at all? Anyone could have pulled a victim into the vehicle, including the driver himself. So why choose to use troublesome, acting out, 14 year old Paul Bonacci for that purpose. It doesn't make sense.

Roy,

Joubert was one of the worst characters I’ve ever read about. He’s not as infamous as many of his ilk only because (thankfully) his death toll was modest compared to other serial killers of greater renown. That is small comfort to his victims’ families, of course. He was perhaps stopped before he otherwise would have been because in the case of Danny Eberlie the rope he had tied the boy up with was foreign manufactured and rare in the United States. Upon investigation, it turned out that it was made in South Korea and sold to the United States military. Joubert had been at the time in the Air Force (and not the Army as I previously stated in error). This was a rare and careless mistake made by a serial killer of his ilk. (Joubert did not have a bondage fetish. Danny was the only one of his victims he had bound and that was only because of the logistics of that particular situation.)

I say that Joubert was one of the worst I’ve ever read about because he had been a pure sadist. He seemed to have no other sexual fetishes and, from what I can discern reading about the cases, did not sexually molest his victims. Rather, he was aroused by their terror and would shortly after his murders attend to his perverse sexual desires in private. He took the lives of three young boys so he could masturbate remembering them. That is what it amounted to.

I think you are wrong that he denied the Maine murder. I believe he ultimately confessed to that as well. However, even if I am wrong, there is no doubt of his guilt, and he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in Maine which (unfortunately) does not have the death penalty. Fortunately, Nebraska does.

Here is a link to a discussion of Joubert that has some very interesting comments following the article. Among those who commented are a gentleman who had been Danny Eberlie’s childhood best friend (though he hadn’t known him long as the poster came from a military family and had just recently moved to the area) and a gentleman who had been Joubert’s supervisor where he worked on the Air Force base:

http://pysih.com/2007/07/26/john-joubert/

From the way the former writes of his little friend, Danny had been a really neat kid. From the way the latter speaks, Joubert had always seemed weird.

I’ll make a later post regarding JG when I have time.

An interesting fact emerges from the Bryant & DeCamp books on Franklin.
The three principle "witnesses" upon which Gary Caradori was building his case against prominent Nebraskans; Alisha Owen, Troy Boner and Danny King, never mentioned Paul Bonacci as being present or a participant at the alleged sex & drugs parties despite naming several other young persons besides each other - until after Bonnaci himself claims to have been there. In fact, none of these three mention even knowing Bonnaci in any way, prior to that. This seems very odd, in light of what Bonacci and several of the above named would subsequently state: that Bonacci was more fully immersed in the alleged ring than any of them, and was present at most of the parties.

By the time Caradori does interview Bonacci, whose name he got from another person (not one of the above three), DeCamp's memo naming the principle suspects has been widely circulated and even reported in the press. And DeCamp claims, in his memo:
"A reporter has to deaf, dumb, blind and corrupt not to know the names of the personalities involved and the scope of the allegations. Stop on any street corner in Omaha, go into any cofeeshop, have a drink in any bar, or...walk around...Lincoln and simply listen to the discussion. Here is what you will learn:" (the names of the suspects and details of the allegations)

So, even DeCamp has claimed that before Bonacci was questioned, the names of the suspects and details of the allegations were everday common knowledge in the area. Then why, or how, could Bonnaci's possession of this information be considered of any significance at all - let alone be considered absolute proof of his own involvement and confirmation of all the allegations of the other three?

Author Nick Bryant states that he has never caught Bonacci in a lie, but Bryant glosses over & excuses away most of Bonnacis more ludicrous public allegations of satanic cult abuse and murder as resulting from Bonacci being an "unintegrated" MPD at the time he made them.
Well, in the videos of Gunderson's debriefing of him Bonacci states that he is fully integrated and therefore infallibly capable of discerning fact from fiction in his testimony. This is several years before the lawsuit against Larry King that DeCamp claims to have "won" on Bonacci's behalf. Yet, at the very start of Bonacci's testimony in that lawsuit, Bonacci claims that he is "possessed" by one of his alter-personalities and gives all of his testimony as that "other" person! So much for him being "fully integrated".

Surely, though, now that Bonacci is married, has children, is building a life - surely all of his former dissembling and fantasy is in the past? Ok. So why, then, has he continued to make outrageous claims in public forums, such as his claim made during the last three years, that the CIA trained him to be an assassin while he was an elementary-aged child and that he is proficient at an expert level with a wide range of weapons and weapon systems?

fascinating

surelock said:

I really have no idea what to believe regarding this case. There are a lot of conspiracies and precious little facts.

Maybe the 3 witnesses are weak. If they are wrong then they have conspired to deceive or were themselves mistaken or some combination of the two.

Without a body or a confession why abandon all hope and write John off? The Basken children have re-emerged after 20 years. They may not have been abducted by strangers but all 4 of them hid successfully all that time and the kids did not contact their parents. If their parents had given up then the news article that outed them would not have been published and the parents may have well gone to their graves in the agony of not knowing.

Steven Stayner (thanks Mr Ed) is another example of why to hope that Gosch returns as well as a reminder to not revictimize those lost children who do find their way back home.

It is certainly not my intent to foment conspiracies. This case is frustrating as a parent and I only hope for a resolution for his family as well as the handful of us who also worry and wonder.

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Has it ever been determined if Johnny did indeed visit his mother in 1997?

Did the Baskin kids ever get back together with their parents?

If Johnny did visit his mother in 1997, then I'm the King of England. I think his poor mother is nuts today. And who can blame her? I'd probably go crazy if my kid was kidnapped and there was no resolution for decades.

Regarding the kidnapping of Midwestern boys for child prostitution rings, the other day out of the blue my friend told me he was walking through Central Park in 1986 (he was 16 years old at the time), and found some sort of pamphlet lying on a path. When he picked it up he saw that it was a brochure filled with graphic pictures of undressed caucasian boys.

I immediately thought of the conspiracy theory involved with this case when he told me this. Photos of white boys only in the middle of New York City in the mid-80s. Makes you wonder.

SnowAngels said:

Regarding the kidnapping of Midwestern boys for child prostitution rings, the other day out of the blue my friend told me he was walking through Central Park in 1986 (he was 16 years old at the time), and found some sort of pamphlet lying on a path. When he picked it up he saw that it was a brochure filled with graphic pictures of undressed caucasian boys.

I immediately thought of the conspiracy theory involved with this case when he told me this. Photos of white boys only in the middle of New York City in the mid-80s. Makes you wonder.

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What did your friend do with the pamphlet? Hopefully he turned it in to the police!

Those who believe Johnny is alive talked of a rumor of him making himself known this year, whether it was to come forward to the public, or in some other manner, I don't know. I've waited all year for some word that Johnny Gosch is alive, along with proof, but here it is mid-December and there has been nothing.

I'm not willing to say definitively that I don't believe Noreen, or that Johnny was taken into a child *advertiser censored* ring, because I think much of what Noreen says is plausible. However, if Johnny were still alive, as a man in his early 40s, what could he possibly have to fear? Surely the folks who supposedly took him and held him are either dead, incarcerated, or old now.

I think as soon as he realized what it was, he put it back on the ground. I don't think he went to the police, but I can't say for sure. I guess I can ask him next time I talk to him (kind of an awkward subject to randomly bring up).

DOes anyone have access to the AMW video from 1992 and 1993, specifically march 1993, where the Jimmy is on the show? Ive searched google vids and around other forums, but have been unable to find.

Also, Roy have you found any more problesm with paul bonacci? I feel he is one of the people hurting NG from any credible assistance. Same thing with Tim White (i think?) and the woman (forgot name)claiming she had twins, the govt took one, and replaced him with the child in a picture with Johnny Gosch.

I do sincerely believe in the scenario that JG is either out of the country, or involved in an amish, etc. No ID needed, no bank statements, credit, etc needed. My questions to ask would be if Johnny Gosch was fingerprinted before abducted? is his social securty card still active??

Noreen claims that the AMW episode has disappeared. Noreen can not even get a copy from John Walsh who is her friend.