Hey, I've been one of those people who said things like, "fine, be a skeptic." I know that phrases like that really mean that the skeptic is perceived as needling the non-skeptic.
Please do not take my skepticism personally.
As to open mind -- after all the research I've done writing professionally and as a blogger over the last couple of years, I've found that more often than not, the more prosaic answer is the resolution of the mystery. BTK was a nebbishy dog catcher in Park City, not Hannibal Lecter.
Conversely, when the Groene children were first abducted, I just couldn't believe that family had been killed by a sexual predator so motivated to kidnap two children that he would kill three other people with exceptional violence to do so. Turns out I was dead wrong, unfortunately, and that was (allegedly) precisely what happened. I know there are exceptions to all these 'rules.'
I will say this -- one angle I can't even begin to seriously entertain is the Jeff Gannon/James Guckert/Johnny Gosch connection. Guckert is 10 years older than Gosch would have been. How much plastic surgery would Johnny have had to end up looking like Guckert? The bone structure is all wrong.
That said, I know there are a ton of people who can't stand the idea that a story like this may be simpler than it seems. I don't completely reject the idea that some sort of network of sexual predators might have been responsible for Johnny's disappearance as well as some of the photos Noreen has -- but I don't accept it at face value, is what I'm saying.
Steve