Wednesday, September 12, 2012
The Oct. 19 conference in Des Moines will bring some of world's top experts on child abductions and human trafficking.
Noreen Gosch, the West Des Moines mother profiled last week in a series of Patch articles on the 30th anniversary of missing paperboy Johnny Gosch’s disappearance, will be one of the featured speakers at an Oct. 19 Preventing Abuse Conference in Des Moines. Also speaking at the organization’s 10th annual conference will be Drew Collins, the father of Elizabeth Collins, who disappeared in July with her cousin, Lyric Cook-Morrissey, after they went on an afternoon bicycle ride in the northeast Iowa town of Evansdale. Topics to be covered include child protection and abduction, human trafficking and the role of drug cartels in financing such operations. Gosch waded into the dark underworld of human trafficking as she searched for answers into…
"Each time the Johnny Gosch Law was used to help families in Iowa and the other states where it was passed it was a legacy left by Johnny for others."
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Wednesday, September 12, 2012
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped during the past 30 years: The thousands of people came out and searched in the first few days after the kidnapping; the people brought food, comfort and kindness to our family; all of the volunteers who joined the Johnny Gosch Foundation, helping with every event which was planned to keep the case alive and promote awareness for the safety of all children; and the many thousands of people who have never stopped praying for my son and for my strength to continue. It has been a long struggle and I could not have done it without all of you. My sincere thanks and gratitude to everyone. Soon after Johnny was kidnapped, a woman called me, she had lost her daughter to …
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Is an Iowa mom whose son vanished 30 years ago so threatening that we persecute her?
Over the summer, I sat down with Noreen Gosch for several hours over several days. To be brutally honest, I expected to find a shattered woman, broken by 30 years of wondering and 30 years of being criticized for not only wondering out loud what happened to her son when he didn’t come home from his paper route, but for seeking answers to the questions that nagged her. I had already written pieces of the story on scraps of paper that I wadded up and recycled after my first meeting. Noreen Gosch has not been driven to madness by the disappearance and probable kidnapping of her son, although I’m not sure why. I suspect she has greater inner strength and courage than most of us can ever know, that we wouldn’t know we possessed unless we had to…
Saturday, September 8, 2012
“Every parent wants the best for their children and it breaks my heart to know that your innocence and childhood were robbed from you,” writes his mom, Noreen Gosch.
Editor's Note: Over the past week, Iowa Patches have observed the 30th anniversary of the disappearance of paperboy Johnny Gosch with a special series, Iowa’s Missing Kids: Innocence Abducted. Johnny’s mother, Noreen Gosch of West Des Moines, steadfastly maintains that her son was kidnapped and held in the dark world of child sex trade. Her private investigators assert the boy was almost certainly stalked and kidnapped by a nationwide ring of pedophiles trafficking children, a theory described by former Nebraska state legislator John DeCamp in his book, The Franklin Cover-Up: Child Abuse, Satanism and Murder in Nebraska. In this open letter to her son, she expresses her hope that he is still alive, that he is happy and healthy, and living …
Friday, September 7, 2012
Investigators say better relationships with media and faster response times have improved how missing children investigations are conducted.
Part 4 of a Series. Within hours of the disappearance of Elizabeth Collins, 9, and her cousin Lyric Cook-Morrissey, 10, the town of Evansdale was crawling with people searching for the girls. The girls went missing while riding their bikes near Meyers Lake in Evansdale on July 13. They were last seen at 12:30 p.m., and the family reported them missing at 3 p.m. That afternoon, officers knocked on doors across Evansdale and conducted an extensive ground, air and water search. Hundreds of volunteers helped canvass the town and surrounding woods, continuing into the night and picking up again the next morning. It was a huge contrast to the response to a missing Iowa boy 30 years ago. When Johnny Gosch didn't come home from his West Des Moines…
Urbandale DARE Officer Jeff Casey tells kids to always pay attention to their surroundings.
One of the best ways to protect children is to teach them ways to protect themselves. It's an important reminder in light of this summer's abduction of two Evansdale girls from a city park, a recent attempt by a stranger to lure a Waukee girl into a vehicle, and this week's 30th anniversary of the disappearance of West Des Moines' Johnny Gosch while he was on his morning paper route. Parents, schools and police need to instill kids with the tools they need to remember if someone attempts to abduct them, said DARE Officer Jeff Casey of the Urbandale Police Department. "My number one rule I have for my (sons) is to always pay attention," Casey said. "Because if you don't pay attention you're going to get hurt, or someone's going to get hurt…
The longtime director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation says police officers do a better job of taking care of their own.
The case of missing paperboy Johnny Gosch is one investigation longtime Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation director Gene Meyer wishes he could have closed before ending a 38-year law enforcement career last year. It’s a bit like a pesky gnat. Brush it away, but it keeps coming back. “I’d love to have an answer, as would his parents, but I’d also like to know what happened to Eugene Martin and who killed Evelyn Miller,” Meyer said. “It’s the ones you don’t solve that you think about. That’s how it is in law enforcement. Anyone in this business will tell you that. They don’t happen as a matter of course, thank God.” Meyer’s stake in the case goes beyond that of a police investigator. About two years after then 12-year-old Johnny failed …
Thursday, September 6, 2012
A 30-year journey through a world that trades children profoundly changed Noreen Gosch, who discovered her true avocation – protecting children’s innocence – along the way.
Part 3 of a Series. Thirty years of studying the sinister world of human trafficking and child pornography have made Noreen Gosch a person of dark corners and shuttered windows, places she can sit in semi-seclusion and see what’s going on before anyone sees her. That’s what can happen to a mother whose son has been missing for 30 years, 30 years of wonder and fear about what may have happened to her 12-year-old son, Johnny, who vanished while delivering papers in his West Des Moines neighborhood. Gosch is just one mother of many: Some 2,185 kids are reported missing each day. Of the 5,354 people reported missing in Iowa in 2011, 4,593 of them were juveniles, according to an Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation report. Gosch’s eyes are …
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Police say it’s “likely” Johnny Gosch was abducted and “possible” his mom’s right and he fell into a vortex of child prostitution, snuff films and pornography.
Part 2 of a Series. It isn’t a huge leap to believe that missing Iowa paperboy Johnny Gosch was kidnapped and forced into the sex trade, says an Iowa police detective overseeing the 30-year-old case, which remains open. Johnny’s disappearance on Sept. 5, 1982, while delivering the Des Moines Sunday Register is classified as a missing persons case, and there’s “a strong likelihood” Johnny was abducted, said Detective Tom Boyd, a 25-year veteran of the West Des Moines Police Department. Abductions like the one Gosch says took her son away occur infrequently among the scores of children reported missing in Iowa every year and the 2,185 kids nationwide who are reported missing each day. But when they do, ubiquitous media coverage can amplify …
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
High-profile cases like Johnny Gosch’s and the disappearance of two girls from Black Hawk County this summer increase anxiety in the heartland.
First in a series. During her 30-year search for her son, Noreen Gosch has been called confrontational, emotional and delusional, all harsh words for a woman living through every parent’s nightmare – the disappearance and possible abduction of a child. Gosch has deflected it, singularly focused on bringing her boy home. “Your child is the true victim,” Gosch told Patch recently. “You have been left with a terrible heartache, but if you always think of the child, you can’t allow yourself to be the victim.” Thirty years after Johnny’s disappearance – on Sept. 5, 1982 – nobody knows for certain what happened to the mop-haired kid who started his day delivering the Des Moines Sunday Register and then, suddenly, was nowhere to be found. But …
John M. Zielinski
3:33 pm on Wednesday, January 23, 2013
As a long time author/publisher I did an interview with John and Noreen in 1990, by 2000 I wrote the cover story for media by-pass based on the Nebraska Legislative Investigation written up extensively by State Senator John DeCamp who was also featured in the film called "Conspiracy of Silence" which can be see by going to Franklincase.org. I am John M. Zielinski and I wrote a series of Iowa … more ›