John David Gosch Case: Unexpected Turns and Surprising Developments

1 / 20

2 / 20

3 / 20

4 / 20

5 / 20

6 / 20

7 / 20

8 / 20

9 / 20

10 / 20

11 / 20

12 / 20

13 / 20

14 / 20

15 / 20

16 / 20

17 / 20

18 / 20

19 / 20

20 / 20

❮ ❯

In the early hours of September 5, 1982, the quiet suburb of West Des Moines, Iowa, was shattered by the disappearance of 12-year-old paperboy Johnny Gosch . What started as a routine day for young Johnny, delivering newspapers with his trusty red wagon, soon turned into one of the most chilling cases of a missing child in American history. On Sunday , September 5 , 1982 , John Gosch started getting calls at the family’s west Des Moine home from neighbors, saying that they were concerned because Johnny hadn’t delivered their morning newspaper yet. What began as the seemingly ordinary disappearance of a 12-year-old paperboy from West Des Moines, Iowa, quickly spiraled into a decades-long mystery filled with chilling claims of abduction, conspiracy, and unanswered questions. Johnny was last seen around 6 a.m. By a friend as they picked up their Sunday newspapers at the paper drop at 42nd Street and Ashworth Road. Minutes later, the friend spotted Johnny talking to a man wearing a baseball cap near 42nd Street and Marcourt Lane. John David Gosch – known as Johnny – disappeared in 1982 aged just 12 while working as a paper boy, having vanished while completing his paper round. While most accept he was kidnapped, accounts of Johnny reappearing and strange events in the case mean that there are many unanswered questions. Johnny would become a tragic abstraction, a face on a milk carton, a story that warned other kids away from paper routes and changed the way police handled missing-children cases . The reasons for. According to The Des Moines Register, the Johnny Gosch case changed the way missing children cases were reported and investigated. Feeling like they were forced to take matters into their own hands, Noreen and John pushed for changes in the way law enforcement dealt with kidnappings. In March 1997, approximately fifteen years after Johnny went missing, his case took an interesting turn . Noreen reported she was awoken by a knock on her front door at 2:30 a.m. She stated when. It’s been 40 years since 12-year-old Johnny Gosch disappeared while delivering newspapers near his West Des Moines home. West Des Moines police have never classified his disappearance on Sept.