Face on the Milk Carton: What Happened to Johnny Gosch?

Decades later, the question remains...

johnny gosch
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  • Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

It’s been well over three decades since 12-year-old Johnny Gosch vanished while on his paper route in a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa. The case is heartbreaking, and made all the more haunting by the strange theories that now seek to explain his disappearance.

That morning of September 5, 1982 started out like any other for the Gosch family. Johnny set out on his local paper route. On this particular day, however, his father did not accompany him as he usually did. By 6:00 A.M., the Gosches received calls from their neighbors complaining that their newspapers had not been delivered. Johnny’s father, John, set out to search the neighborhood. Just two blocks away from the family home, John found his son’s abandoned wagon, full of undelivered newspapers. Johnny was nowhere to be found.

Related: Before the Lindbergh Kidnapping, There Was the Abduction of Charley Ross 

There were no witnesses around at the time of Johnny’s disappearance, though a neighbor later claimed he’d seen Johnny and another paperboy talking to a man driving a Ford Fairmont convertible. Another neighbor also reported seeing a man in a blue car talking to Johnny. However, with no further evidence of abduction, the Gosches faced considerable obstacles in convincing the police their son had been kidnapped.

After a 23-day search, authorities were unable to uncover any evidence as to Johnny’s whereabouts or any motive as to his kidnapping. His parents, in particular his mother Noreen Gosch, lobbied intensely to keep the case in the public eye. Because law enforcement took such a long time to respond, John and Noreen Gosch were forced to taken matters into their own hands. They were able to get Johnny’s disappearance into multiple headlines around the country—they went on television and distributed over 10,000 posters with Johnny’s picture on it.