I personally do not put much faith in Noreen's identification of Johnny either in 1984 or in 1999. Noreen has always claimed that "A mother will know her child" which I would normally agree with, but Noreen seems to be an exception to that maxim.
Considering what she has gone through, I can't say that I'm surprised. Esp considering the phone calls that, if they were pranks, were pretty offensive in and of themselves. Add to that, the Randy Alan Buckalew bit? Can you imagine being the parent of a missing child who is already agonizing and then going through what these people went through?
She is undecided if Jeff Gannon is Johnny and her actions following the visit by the adult "Johnny" in the 1990's still leave her looking for the 12 year old Johnny instead of searching for the adult JG.
Which isn't surprising at all, from the psychological point of view. After all, for her, Johnny's visage is frozen in time.
As a quick aside, I have a friend whose son went missing (very diff circumstances, lost at sea in a boating accident) well over 40 years ago. She says that even though she knows in her heart that he is gone, she cannot help but to sometimes dream that he will one day come walking through her front door. Some of her friends get irritated with her bc she hurts to this day. I feel sad that she not only lost her son but that there was no means for true closure. Bc the fact is, miracles can and do happen, and without a body, there will always be that hope, no matter how slim.
That being said, I feel nothing but compassion for Noreen Gosch, whom, from the very beginning, was assailed by utter and complete assholes (i.e., the threatening call, GPB, possible prank calls pretending to be Johnny, etcetera), and later assailed by the tin foil hat crowd and their reptilian manchurian candidates. In fact, in light of what she has gone through, I am surprised she is fairing as well as she seems to be, and I hold nothing but the utmost respect for the woman, and hope that she will one day find the answers to that which she seeks.