Speaker 1: This week's episode deals with disturbing themes of child sexual assault.
Speaker 1: Parental discretion is advised. It was still dark out when
Speaker 1: Joe Gosh knocked quietly on his brother Johnny's bedroom door
Speaker 1: sometime around five thirty am. Joe waited patiently until Johnny's
Speaker 1: weary reply came back finally from the other side. It
Speaker 1: was Sunday, September fifth, nineteen eighty two, and like every
Speaker 1: Sunday for the last year, twelve year old Johnny Gosh
Speaker 1: had a job to do, delivering papers for the Des
Speaker 1: Moines Register and Tribune. Ordinarily, Johnny's father, John Senior liked
Speaker 1: to accompany him on his rounds, but since he couldn't
Speaker 1: join him that morning, Johnny had asked his brother to
Speaker 1: make sure he got up in time With his job complete.
Speaker 1: Joe tapped the door again in response, and then swiftly
Speaker 1: headed off to work. It was roughly thirty minutes later
Speaker 1: when the Goshes neighbor Lawrence Headlin heard the familiar creak
Speaker 1: of Johnny's red newspaper wagon being pulled through the back
Speaker 1: of his garden toward Ashworth Road that ran past the
Speaker 1: back of his house. Headlin and the Gauches lived on
Speaker 1: forty fifth Street, in a quiet, affluent area of West
Speaker 1: den Moyne characterized by expensive houses and large, finally manicured lawns.
Speaker 1: From there, it was just a short three block walk
Speaker 1: east to the corner of Ashworth and forty second Street,
Speaker 1: where Johnny's stack of papers were waiting for him. The
Speaker 1: paper round had been Johnny's own idea to help toward
Speaker 1: the purchase of an off road bike so he could
Speaker 1: ride out to the parks at the weekend with his
Speaker 1: older brothers, whom he idolized. He was a diligent and
Speaker 1: dependable worker who early on in the job had even
Speaker 1: won a sales competition, which is why it was especially
Speaker 1: strange when a call came through to the gosh family
Speaker 1: home around seven forty five am from a disgruntled customer
Speaker 1: demanding to know where his Sunday paper was. Not knowing himself,
Speaker 1: the concerned John Senior, who took the call, promptly hung
Speaker 1: up the phone and called out to his son. When
Speaker 1: there was no reply, he made a quick dash upstairs
Speaker 1: to check if he was in his bedroom, but there
Speaker 1: was no one there. Just then, John heard the gentle
Speaker 1: pitapata of the family's small hazel nut dash hound Gretchen
Speaker 1: and went downstairs to find her ambling about the kitchen,
Speaker 1: trailing a lead that was still clipped to her call.
Speaker 1: John called out for his son again, to no avail.
Speaker 1: The dog, it seemed, had come back all on her own.
Speaker 1: Disconcerted by the dog's reappearance, John quickly grabbed his coat
Speaker 1: and hurried out to look for his son. At the
Speaker 1: top of their short road, John rounded the corner onto
Speaker 1: Mark Court Lane, where at the far eastern end he
Speaker 1: spotted Johnny's paper wagon, seemingly left abandoned on the pavement.
Speaker 1: When he finally caught up to it, he saw it
Speaker 1: was still stuffed with undelivered papers, but Johnny was nowhere
Speaker 1: to be seen. Perhaps he was just helping another deliverer somewhere,
Speaker 1: or he'd somehow lost Gretchen and had gone off looking
Speaker 1: for her, thought John in about. He looked up and
Speaker 1: down the deserted street and back to the papers. With
Speaker 1: the sun now well and truly up, time was running
Speaker 1: out to get them delivered, and so John took the
Speaker 1: handle of the cart and set off down the street
Speaker 1: to deliver them. It was eight thirty am when he
Speaker 1: got home to find that Johnny had still yet to return.
Speaker 1: With a rising panic and a parent's intuition, John told
Speaker 1: his wife Noreen to call the police immediately and ran
Speaker 1: straight back outside to look for his son. It was
Speaker 1: sometime around nine am when the officer arrived at the door,
Speaker 1: a little too unconcerned for Noreen and John's liking their
Speaker 1: child was missing. They said to the officer, however, there
Speaker 1: seemed only two realistic possibilities. Either he'd skipped work for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, or he'd run away entirely. Had he ever
Speaker 1: run away before? He asked, a shocked gnawing didn't miss
Speaker 1: a beat. No, she said her son had never run
Speaker 1: away before. The officer made a quick note in his book. Then,
Speaker 1: after taking a look around Johnnie's bedroom, he set about
Speaker 1: getting statements from the four other paper deliverers who'd been
Speaker 1: working that morning's run with Johnnie, and gradually a picture
Speaker 1: of sorts began to emerge, both mundane and deeply troubling.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard mc lean smith.
Speaker 1: Each of the five newspaper deliverers had gathered at the
Speaker 1: corner of Ashworth Road and forty second Street to pick
Speaker 1: up their day's papers and greeted each other briefly before
Speaker 1: heading off on their respective rounds. Teenager Mike Seskis was
Speaker 1: just picking his papers up when he saw Johnny walking
Speaker 1: toward him along Ashworth Road, when all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: a two door, two tone blue and silver Ford Fairmount
Speaker 1: drove slowly past him, before stopping and backing up to him.
Speaker 1: Mike saw Johnny talked at the driver for a moment
Speaker 1: before they drove off again, turning around to head back
Speaker 1: east along the road. John Rossi, the only adult paper
Speaker 1: carrier who was out that morning, was at the corner
Speaker 1: of Ashworth and forty Second when Johnny picked up his papers,
Speaker 1: and when moments later the Ford Fairmount returned, Rossie watched
Speaker 1: on as Johnny approached the car again. According to Rossi,
Speaker 1: the drive of the vehicle, who was later described by
Speaker 1: another witness as being of stocky build with a mustache
Speaker 1: and receding dark hair, was strangely jacked up, as though
Speaker 1: he were on some kind of stimulant. Whatever it was,
Speaker 1: it was unusual for six am in the morning. As
Speaker 1: Rossi continued to watch, Johnny talked to the man. The
Speaker 1: boy then suddenly turned to him and waved him over
Speaker 1: to join them, asking if he could help give the
Speaker 1: man some directions. Rossi then made his way over to help,
Speaker 1: only for the car to suddenly whip out away from him,
Speaker 1: complete a sharp you turn, and screech off up the road.
Speaker 1: A short time later, as Johnny made his way north
Speaker 1: up forty second Street with his wagon full of papers,
Speaker 1: Mike Sescus then claimed to have seen a man step
Speaker 1: from between two trees on the opposite side of the
Speaker 1: road and cross over to where Johnny walking. Two brothers
Speaker 1: out delivering the paper together were then said to have
Speaker 1: walked past Johnny as he continued on his way north
Speaker 1: up forty second Street before turning west into Mark Court Lane.
Speaker 1: It was around then, at roughly six thirty am, when
Speaker 1: local resident P. J. Smith, who lived at the corner
Speaker 1: of Mark Court and forty second heard a car door
Speaker 1: slam outside its window. Smith looked out his curtains to
Speaker 1: see what he described as a silver and black Ford
Speaker 1: Fairmount parked up on the street for a brief moment
Speaker 1: when it shot off suddenly into forty second Street without
Speaker 1: stopping at the stop sign, and then sped off up
Speaker 1: the road. And it was a short time after this
Speaker 1: that the two brothers coming back down forty second Street,
Speaker 1: passed the turn off to Mark Court Lane to see
Speaker 1: Johnny's red paper wagon parked up on the pavement, but
Speaker 1: no sign of Johnny. Now a word from our sponsor
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Speaker 1: Along with the mysterious Ford Fairmount, a second car with
Speaker 1: the Warren County license plate was also apparently seen in
Speaker 1: the area at the time, driven by a man wearing
Speaker 1: a baseball cap. For Captain Bob Rushing of the West
Speaker 1: des Moines Police Department, who reviewed the various statements from
Speaker 1: the numerous witnesses, none of it amounted to anything especially suspicious,
Speaker 1: and furthermore, there was no crime scene, no witnessed act
Speaker 1: of wrongdoing, and absolutely no evidence that anything sinister had
Speaker 1: taken place. For the increasingly desperate Noreene and John Senior,
Speaker 1: Johnny had disappeared without a trace, which was all the
Speaker 1: evidence they needed to know that something terrible had taken place.
Speaker 1: That he'd been abducted, that he might have run away
Speaker 1: was simply unthinkable. Johnny, they said, was a kind and
Speaker 1: generous boy, someone who always wanted to find the right
Speaker 1: present for a friend if it was their birthday, and
Speaker 1: someone who was dedicated to a job that's entire purpose
Speaker 1: was to save money. At the time, paper carriers were
Speaker 1: charged seventy five cents for every paper that wasn't delivered
Speaker 1: For Johnny, that would have meant forfeiting twenty seven dollars
Speaker 1: seventy five in total, far more than he was getting
Speaker 1: paid to do the job. However, as many in the
Speaker 1: West des Moines Police Department at the time felt it
Speaker 1: was simply unheard of that in such a peaceful and
Speaker 1: affluent area someone might drive into it and snatch a
Speaker 1: child from the street. As far as they were concerned,
Speaker 1: Johnny was simply missing and would most likely return before long.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Noreen and John's insistence, however, the police eventually
Speaker 1: agreed to mount a search for the boy. By Sunday afternoon,
Speaker 1: roughly thirty officers pulled in from the Polk County Sheriff's office,
Speaker 1: Iowa Highway Patrol, as well as off and on duty
Speaker 1: Des Moines police were out looking for him and throughout
Speaker 1: the day. As news of Johnny's disappearance began to spread
Speaker 1: through the neighborhood, they were joined by dozens of others
Speaker 1: from friends and family to concerned neighbors, and soon the
Speaker 1: media began to pick up the story too, imploring anybody
Speaker 1: to be on the lookout for a twelve year old
Speaker 1: boy described as being white, five foot seven inches tall,
Speaker 1: weighing roughly one hundred and forty pounds, who was last
Speaker 1: seen wearing a white T shirt, blue shorts, and black sandals,
Speaker 1: and carrying a bright yellow newspaper satchel. But by the
Speaker 1: end of that first day, no trace of Johnny was found.
Speaker 1: The following day, a terrified and bleary eyed Norine and
Speaker 1: John joined over a thousand volunteers at the West Des
Speaker 1: Moines police station to begin the second day of their
Speaker 1: search for Johnny. Being the Labor Day holiday, everyone from
Speaker 1: young kids to the elderly joined up to help find him. Together,
Speaker 1: inching slowly over the land, endless lines of people trudged
Speaker 1: over thousands of acres through damp and nettle strewn parkland,
Speaker 1: batting away gnats and mosquitoes as they went, while others
Speaker 1: trawled the county's many ditches and roads side verges for
Speaker 1: any sign of the boy or his clothing. But once again,
Speaker 1: no sign of Johnny was found. By Tuesday, September seventh,
Speaker 1: Johnny had been missing for forty eight hours, but still
Speaker 1: the police remained hopeful that he would soon turn up.
Speaker 1: The fact that no trace of him had been found
Speaker 1: seemed only to prove further to the police that he'd
Speaker 1: probably just run away. In the meantime, the Des Moines
Speaker 1: Register and Tribune put up an offer of five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for any information leading to the discovery of Johnny's whereabouts.
Speaker 1: Around this time, a photo fit likeness was made of
Speaker 1: the man who'd apparently asked Johnny for directions, but the police,
Speaker 1: concerned that it wasn't entirely accurate, decided not to release it.
Speaker 1: It was sometime on Tuesday afternoon that West Des Moines
Speaker 1: Police East Chief Orville Cooney, who was tasked with overseeing
Speaker 1: the search for Johnny, informed the press that his department
Speaker 1: had been contacted by fifty year old self described psychic
Speaker 1: Greta Alexander. Although some detectives believed Cooney should be concentrating
Speaker 1: on facts alone rather than engaging so called psychics, Cooney
Speaker 1: preferred to keep an open mind, saying he was from
Speaker 1: the old school and would listen to anything first before
Speaker 1: deciding what to do next. The charismatic Greta Alexander from Delavan, Illinois,
Speaker 1: had a long history of assisting the police on a
Speaker 1: variety of cases. After hearing about her possible involvement in
Speaker 1: the Gosh case, Fort Dodge police Chief Don Hensley recalled
Speaker 1: how Alexander had helped his team find the body of
Speaker 1: eighteen year old Roger Haabab Junior and twenty year old
Speaker 1: Ruth Anne Phillips, who'd both drowned in separate accidents back
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty. Alexander had been hooked up via a
Speaker 1: phone line to a team of divers who were searching
Speaker 1: a quarry pit at the time. As one of the
Speaker 1: divers swam about on the surface, Alexander shouted down the
Speaker 1: phone for the diver to stop immediately and dive down
Speaker 1: into the water. A short time later, they returned to
Speaker 1: the surface holding the body of Rogerhabab. Hensley, who described
Speaker 1: the incident as being real spooky, said that Alexander had
Speaker 1: been right with about ninety percent of her suggestions. Polk
Speaker 1: County Deputy John Hempel, who in nineteen seventy seven was
Speaker 1: working the case of a missing postal worker, recalled how
Speaker 1: Alexander reveal to him not only that they would find
Speaker 1: the body in the Sailorville reservoir, but what condition it
Speaker 1: would be found in, and that three people would find
Speaker 1: it together. Three months later, the woman's body was found
Speaker 1: in that same reservoir by three fishermen and former Johnston
Speaker 1: Police Chief Robert Brunk also praised Alexander for helping him
Speaker 1: find the body of Ramon de Virgilio, who'd been missing
Speaker 1: for six weeks at the time. Alexander had apparently guided
Speaker 1: a police officer to the precise spot where his body
Speaker 1: was found. When asked by the press if Gretta Alexander
Speaker 1: thought Johnny Gosh was alive, West des Moines Police Chief
Speaker 1: Cooney paused for a moment before answering that he didn't
Speaker 1: want to comment. As it transpired, Alexander claimed that Gosh
Speaker 1: was still alive, having a apparently visualized him being kept
Speaker 1: sitting down somewhere against his will. Alexander told the press
Speaker 1: that it didn't appear good, but remained hopeful, and also
Speaker 1: that something would happen on Wednesday afternoon. Best Fiends is
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Speaker 1: arrived with still no sign of Johnny and no further
Speaker 1: clues as to his whereabouts and steadily. Wednesday turned to Thursday,
Speaker 1: and despite Greta Alexander's claims, no further news arrived. With
Speaker 1: Johnny now missing for longer than the requisite seventy two hours,
Speaker 1: the West Des Moines Police stepped up their efforts to
Speaker 1: trace him. Cards featuring pictures of the two cars mentioned
Speaker 1: by the witnesses were sent out to all local law
Speaker 1: enforcement agencies and some neighboring states too, while friends, teachers,
Speaker 1: and classmates were interviewed in an effort to try and
Speaker 1: establish the boy's state of mind at the time. As
Speaker 1: for Noreen and John Senior, they were told to simply
Speaker 1: sit tight and wait for more information. It was just
Speaker 1: over a week later, on Monday, September twentieth, when fourteen
Speaker 1: year old Shawn Jacobson left his home in Milford, Iowa,
Speaker 1: roughly two hundred miles north of the Goshes home in
Speaker 1: West Des Moines, to walk to school. Jacobson had spent
Speaker 1: the previous week at home, laid up with the flu,
Speaker 1: and had seemed eager to get outside and back to school.
Speaker 1: Later that day, Jacobson's father, Raymond, received a call from
Speaker 1: the Milford school secretary to ask why his son had
Speaker 1: not shown up for his classes. It wasn't long after
Speaker 1: that that a pile of school books was found tucked
Speaker 1: under a lunch pail near a water filled gravel pit
Speaker 1: to the west of the town. The books were identified
Speaker 1: as Shorns. Over the next two days, three hundred people,
Speaker 1: including sixty of its fellow pupils, with support from sniffer
Speaker 1: dogs and a search plane, failed to find any sign
Speaker 1: of the boy. The gravel pit was also dredged to
Speaker 1: no avail. Around about the same time, two teenage boys
Speaker 1: entered a service station in pipe Stone, Minnesota, about ninety
Speaker 1: miles northwest of Milford. Convinced there was something a little
Speaker 1: off about them, the service station attendant kept a close
Speaker 1: eye on the boys as they disappeared into the rest room,
Speaker 1: before reappearing moments later, only to then hurriedly leave. When
Speaker 1: the attend went into the restroom after them, they found
Speaker 1: a scrap of paper left out by the sink with
Speaker 1: the words help, I've been kidnapped scrawled across it. After
Speaker 1: being examined by police, however, it was decided it was
Speaker 1: unrelated to Shawn Jacobson's disappearance. Gerald Shanahan, the chief of
Speaker 1: Iowa's Division of Criminal Investigation, who'd by then been brought
Speaker 1: in to help with the Johnny Gosh case, was also
Speaker 1: shown a note. Sadly, the handwriting was no match for
Speaker 1: Johnny's either. It was early in the evening of Friday,
Speaker 1: February twenty fourth, four days after the Jacobson disappearance, that
Speaker 1: a cattle farmer whose cattle grazed a patch of land
Speaker 1: on an abandoned farm about six miles west of Salt Lake,
Speaker 1: fifteen miles northwest of where Jacobson was last seen alive,
Speaker 1: stepped into an old barn to grab some feed for
Speaker 1: the animals. Inside the shed was an old, unplugged and
Speaker 1: long abandoned refrigerator. The farmer, Tom Underwood, later said he
Speaker 1: didn't know what had prompted him to open the refrigerator door,
Speaker 1: but when he did, he found the cold dead body
Speaker 1: of Seawan Jacobson crouched down inside it. Despite being fifteen
Speaker 1: miles from his hometown and being judged to have likely
Speaker 1: died the day he went missing, the autopsy conducted on
Speaker 1: Shawn Jacobson found no indication of foul play. As a result,
Speaker 1: the fourteen year old death was judged to have been
Speaker 1: caused by asphyxiation after either accidentally shutting himself in the
Speaker 1: random refrigerator he found on a random farm that he'd
Speaker 1: likely never been to before, or he'd deliberately locked himself
Speaker 1: inside to end his life. A single set of footprints
Speaker 1: leading into the barn, thought of being Jacobsen's, seemed all
Speaker 1: but confirmed to police that he'd been alone when he died,
Speaker 1: and the case was promptly closed. By early October, there
Speaker 1: was still no sign of twelve year old Johnny Gosh,
Speaker 1: nor any further evidence to help locate him, and despite
Speaker 1: Noreen and John's insistence that their son had been abducted,
Speaker 1: the police continued to resist their demand to escalate his
Speaker 1: case from being one of a simple missing person to
Speaker 1: a potential victim of kidnapping. At some point, the Goshes
Speaker 1: were approached by a man named Kenneth Wooden, a child
Speaker 1: safety expert who often lectured on the subject Iowa State University.
Speaker 1: Like many would and couldn't help but be caught up
Speaker 1: in the Goshes story. But more than most, he felt
Speaker 1: compelled to reach out to Noreen and John. What he
Speaker 1: had to tell them would shake them to the corps.
Speaker 1: It seemed obvious to him that if Johnny had decided
Speaker 1: to run away that Sunday morning, there was no way
Speaker 1: he would have taken the dog out with him. Clearly,
Speaker 1: as the Goshes had been insisting the whole time, their
Speaker 1: son had been kidnapped. More than that, for someone who
Speaker 1: had experience analyzing cases of child abduction and abuse, it
Speaker 1: was Wooden's belief that Johnny had likely been abducted by
Speaker 1: a pedophile. Back in the early nineteen eighties, Pedophilia was
Speaker 1: not a word that most people were familiar with, and
Speaker 1: it was one that understandably struck fear into Nawing and
Speaker 1: John's hearts. Though they'd feared the worst before, this was
Speaker 1: something they'd yet to fully countenance. Despite the terrifying implications
Speaker 1: of what Wooden was saying, it was none the less
Speaker 1: reassuring to finally have someone with his type of experience
Speaker 1: on their side, and his next piece of advice would
Speaker 1: prove invaluable for navigating the months to come. Whatever you
Speaker 1: have to do to keep the story alive, he told them,
Speaker 1: do it, because if you don't, law enforcement will move
Speaker 1: on with their lives and go on their merry way.
Speaker 1: And so the increasingly hopeless and desperate couple took it
Speaker 1: upon themselves to keep Johnny's case in the news. In
Speaker 1: one report, his mother, gnawing her tired and anguished face
Speaker 1: barely holding it together, turns to the camera and says, Johnny,
Speaker 1: we love you. We're waiting for you to come back.
Speaker 1: We're doing everything in our power to get you back,
Speaker 1: and we're leaving the porch light on every night a
Speaker 1: teen solo hiker who was terrorized for days by unknown
Speaker 1: figures dressed in white. Two cops who quit their job
Speaker 1: at a local theater because of unexplained encounters with an
Speaker 1: alleged demon. An isolated forest in Canada where people keep
Speaker 1: turning up headless. These are just some of the strange,
Speaker 1: dark and mysterious stories you'll hear each week on the
Speaker 1: Mister Balland podcast. In each episode, Mister Balland shares real
Speaker 1: life haunting accounts, like the case of Hailey Zeger, who
Speaker 1: disappeared from a hiking trail for fifty one hours. When
Speaker 1: search and rescuers finally found her and asked how she survived,
Speaker 1: she said simply that a friend helped her. She described
Speaker 1: as friend as four years old with black hair and
Speaker 1: brown eyes. This friend was initially dismissed until they realized
Speaker 1: that a girl had gone missing in that exact spot
Speaker 1: twenty three years earlier and was never found. She was
Speaker 1: four years old with black hair and brown eyes. Hey
Speaker 1: Prime members listened to the Amazon Music exclusive podcast Missed
Speaker 1: the ball In podcast Strange, dark and mysterious stories download
Speaker 1: the app to day Soon reported sightings of Johnny began
Speaker 1: to flood in from all over the country, including the
Speaker 1: apparent sighting by one woman in Oklahoma of a young
Speaker 1: boy who she claimed begged her for help before being
Speaker 1: swiftly dragged off into a car by two men. None
Speaker 1: of it came to anything, but Noreen and john would
Speaker 1: not let up. Now convinced that Johnny had been taken
Speaker 1: by a pedophile or to be sold to a pedophile
Speaker 1: ring for use in child pornography, they urged police Chief
Speaker 1: or Volconey to do more for their son, imploring him
Speaker 1: to bring in the FBI and widen the search, but
Speaker 1: Cooney continued to resist their demands, and soon many in
Speaker 1: the force began to grow tired of the Goshes, In
Speaker 1: particular Norene, apparent desperate to find her missing son, who
Speaker 1: many felt was too pushy in her approach. Some even
Speaker 1: asked to be removed from the case so they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to deal with her anymore. The couple were referred
Speaker 1: to as loons by some in the FBI, and Cooney
Speaker 1: himself was quoted as saying, I really don't give a
Speaker 1: damn what nor In Gosh has to say. I really
Speaker 1: don't give a damn what she thinks. As a result,
Speaker 1: public opinion soon turned again them two, and before long
Speaker 1: Johnny's case had drifted out of the news. Feeling abandoned
Speaker 1: by the police and utterly helpless, the Goshes hired their
Speaker 1: own private detectives at a rate of two hundred dollars
Speaker 1: a day to keep the search for Johnny alive or
Speaker 1: the while to help deal with it all, the couple
Speaker 1: turned their attention to the specifics of the alleged crime
Speaker 1: and doing what they could to raise awareness of the
Speaker 1: dangers that potential pedophiles could pose to children. In time,
Speaker 1: the goshes tireless efforts led to the enacting of a
Speaker 1: new law named in honor of their son, which compelled
Speaker 1: police to search for missing children as soon as they
Speaker 1: reported missing, rather than wait seventy two hours before considering
Speaker 1: it a possible crime. In the summer of nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: eighteen offers made allegations against police Chief Orvale Cooney, accusing
Speaker 1: him of racism and numerous counts of corruption, from fixing
Speaker 1: tickets for friends to interfering with an investigation into his
Speaker 1: own son. Cooney resigned from the fourth six months later. Sadly,
Speaker 1: for Noreen and John Cooney's departure did little to alter
Speaker 1: the overriding sense among the West Des Moines police that
Speaker 1: Johnny was far more likely to run away than being kidnapped.
Speaker 1: After all, why would people go around abducting children from
Speaker 1: street corners when they could much more easily prey on
Speaker 1: the homeless and drug addicts, they reasoned. And still, the
Speaker 1: sightings of Johnny by then from all across America continued
Speaker 1: to come in. By nineteen eighty four, there were twelve
Speaker 1: separate apparent sightings of him in Florida alone. Each time
Speaker 1: a sighting was made, the gosh's private detectives would rush
Speaker 1: to the location, but would always be too late to
Speaker 1: pick up any meaningful leads. One night in February nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, Noreene claimed she received three phone calls from
Speaker 1: a boy she was convinced was Johnny. The boy, who
Speaker 1: she claimed seemed to be drunk or drugged, made little sense,
Speaker 1: and the calls were deemed too short to be traceable.
Speaker 1: It was just after five am on the morning of Sunday,
Speaker 1: August twelfth, nineteen eighty four, when thirteen year old Eugene Martin,
Speaker 1: another Des Moines Register and Tribune newspaper deliverer left his
Speaker 1: home in South Des Moines, about a twenty minute drive
Speaker 1: from where Johnny Gosh had last been seen two years before,
Speaker 1: to begin his newspaper round. At some point around six am,
Speaker 1: Eugene's route manager began receiving calls from irritated customers demanding
Speaker 1: to know where then newspapers were. Having never had any
Speaker 1: trouble from Eugene before, the confused manager apologized profusely to
Speaker 1: his customers, then set out to look for the boy.
Speaker 1: It had just gone six to fifteen am when the
Speaker 1: manager arrived at the corner of Southwest fourteenth and high
Speaker 1: View Street to find Eugene's paper sack with ten undelivered
Speaker 1: newspapers poking out of it, seemingly abandoned on the pavement,
Speaker 1: and Eugene Martin was nowhere to be found. You've been
Speaker 1: listening to Unexplained Season six, episode twenty five Once There
Speaker 1: Was Away, Part one. Part two will be released next Friday,
Speaker 1: November eleventh. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to
Speaker 1: help supporters, you can now do so via Patreon. To
Speaker 1: receive access to add free episodes, just go to patron
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Speaker 1: the book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never
Speaker 1: before been covered on the show, is now available to
Speaker 1: buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
Speaker 1: and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including
Speaker 1: the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain smith.
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Speaker 1: or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show.
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