IA IA - Johnny Gosch, 12, W Des Moines, 5 Sept 1982 - What happened? - #3

[Roy Harrold]

Hi Theresa! Perhaps you might be able to clarify something.

Do you know if PI Sam Soda was a resident of Omaha, Nebraska as one of Shadow's article reprints suggests, or a resident of Des Moines, Iowa as Noreen Gosch has implied?

 

[Dr. Doogie]

I have posted numerous times that it's very possible whoever was a head of the religious camp JG went to 2 weeks prior to his disappearance was the one who kidnapped Johnny However he was never checked out per Noreen's orders. Denny Whelan and my other PI friend wanted to investigate him but Noreen wouldn't allow them too. Her excuse was that a man of religion wouldn't do anything like that...

There might be a few altar boys who would disagree.

 

[shadowraiths]

There might be a few altar boys who would disagree.

Quite true. Though society was certainly reluctant to admit so up through the early 1990s. In fact, those who did come forward with tales of abuse within the sacristy, often (imho) embelished their stories with hints of Satanic Black Mass—something that I personally suspect had more to do with wanting to be believed as opposed to truth—were often written off as wanna-be victims. After all, people of faith do not do that sort of thing. Right? Of course, by the time the early lawsuits (which began wending their way through our courts in the early 1990s) finally began appearing in media headlines—with sensationalistic, "Paedophile Priests"—the overwhelming proof could not be denied.

That aside, Since Teresa is a local and says she's followed this case from its early stages, I admittedly, give her pov far more weight than I do, say... someone who has stumbled upon this case decades after the fact. And, I would venture to guess (though, I could be wrong) that she has more often than not found herself somewhat horrified wrt the monstrosity into which this tragic case has evolved. No matter. I do think Teresa's suggestion about the religious camp bit is worthy of further exploration. Just as I think Sykora & Bishop should be investigated further. Don't know that such will actually do much this late in the game, but who really knows?

 

[Roy Harrold]

This posting relates to questions such as; what is the truth about Paul Bonacci's relationship to this case?, is it really true that Noreen Gosch was visited by her son as an adult? and, has Noreen Gosch been victimized by hoaxers?

but I'm not going to offer answers to those questions.

Someone, whose opinion on the subject I respect, recently suggested to me that clubbing people over the head with facts may not help them to escape any self-delusions they may be suffering from. It is true, that I've been pretty hard-*ssed at times in this thread, about confronting ideas that are unsupported by proof or even contradicted by facts - so I'm feeling a need to state something very clearly.

Highly intelligent, well-educated, savvy, successful people sometimes get drawn into a hoax. Anyone can be a victim of a hoaxer, and getting sucked in does not mean the person is unintelligent or unworldly or even gullible.

There is an excellent chance that hoax victims will be caring, community-minded and compassionate people.

Hundreds of thousands of people, from very different backgrounds and walks of life, have been caught up into literary hoaxes in recent years. I'm going to talk about one of them, briefly, because it has exploited/abused boys as themes and that's a central theme of various Gosch theories also. It's interesting to note two things about this hoaxes - it drew in highly intelligent, successful professionals and celebrities who even believed that they were having personal relationships with a youth who did not actually exist and - some people continue to choose to believe that this hoax is "real" despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

This is the story, told in the book:
"A Rock and a Hard Place: One Boy's Triumphant Story" of Tony Godby Johnson -

"By his twelfth birthday, Tony had already been to hell and back. Born to outwardly average parents in New York City sometime in 1978, he was brutally beaten and pimped out to his policeman father’s friends on a routine basis from the age of four. He was deliberately deprived of food, a proper bed, and even minimal affection. By rights, Tony should have suffered psychological disturbance that would make Harry Harlow’s monkeys look as calm as Buddhist monks, but Tony had the fortune to be an infinitely old soul with a blazing intellect. He mothered himself with episodes of Mr. Rogers and huge quantities of aspirin, and took such solace in study that he was enrolled in a Brooklyn school for gifted children. Even a spell of suicidal depression at age 11 couldn’t keep him down, for he found unexpected salvation in the form of a suicide-hotline worker. The man, Johnson (a pseudonym), immediately dispatched a social worker named Vicki to rescue Tony. Finally freed from the pedophile ring in 1989, the boy was diagnosed with several serious ailments, including untreated syphilis that had had reached such an advanced stage it had caused permanent damage to his lungs. He would spend most of his teen years in and out of hospital, always on the verge of death."

There's a lot more to the story, but there never was a "Tony Godby Johnson", as revealed in these articles:

http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2006/08/boy-wonder-tony-johnson-was.html

http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2006/08/tad-friend-dug-deeper-still.html

and this video:

http://www.olbermann.org/ko/video_detail.cfm?id=1081

and here's a hoax that I will admit having fallen for myself - the fantasy of boy-hooker turned literary 'genius' who never existed, JT LeRoy:

http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2006/11/faux-bro-not-so-true-story-of-j.html

 

[shadowraiths]

Hundreds of thousands of people, from very different backgrounds and walks of life, have been caught up into literary hoaxes in recent years.

And literary hoaxes have "what" to do with this case? That I am aware, the majority of those named do exist. Also, even though Bonacci & Owens were convicted of perjury, that they refused to recant can mean several things:

• they lied about everything
• they had false memories about everything
• they misremembered some things
• they accurately remembered everything

I personally, am inclined to go with item 3. Then again, I'm not one for the all or nothing bit. Esp since it makes it too easy to discard everything out of hand or conversely believe everything as fact.

 

[Roy Harrold]

And literary hoaxes have "what" to do with this case? That I am aware, the majority of those named do exist. Also, even though Bonacci & Owens were convicted of perjury, that they refused to recant can mean several things:

• they lied about everything
• they had false memories about everything
• they misremembered some things
• they accurately remembered everything

I personally, am inclined to go with item 3. Then again, I'm not one for the all or nothing bit. Esp since it makes it too easy to discard everything out of hand or conversely believe everything as fact.

The point is simply this - whatever the truth ultimately turns out to be, no one should feel badly about themselves if their beliefs turn out to have been based on hoax - because successful hoaxers know how to push the buttons of their target audience and it is our caring and compassion (not stupidity or gullibility) that makes us vulnerable to any deceptions about a case like this that we may fall for.

That's all.

 

[Sobe1]

I've always been curious about the car the suspected man/men were seen in talking to JG that morning. I've heard from a couple different sources that at least on of the witnesses got a good description of the vehicle along with a partial plate# and the county.

As I remember it they believed the car was a 1979 Ford Fairlane two-tone blue in color. Along with the partial plate the witness also observed the county- Warren County IA which is the first county directly south of Des Moines. BTW- I'm from the area.

With this info you would think a review of DMV records would have yielded a possible suspect(s) or at least a similar matching vehicle. I realize the car/plates could have been stolen etc. But I don't think they were. The suspect(s) did little to conceal themselves otherwise.

This would tend to make me believe in the local perp(s) theory in the abduction of JG. Keep in mind there are 99 counties in IA which only has a pop of approx 3 million state wide. I'm sure there would have been several cars matching this general description for Warren Co. but far from being " a needle in a hatstack" odds.

I've followed this case for a longtime but have heard little regarding the mysterious blue car. Can anyone add to this ??

 

[iowa gurl]

I've followed this case for a longtime but have heard little regarding the mysterious blue car. Can anyone add to this ??

The police didnt follow up on the car until it was too late. Remember law enforcement told Noreen to go home. Johnny would come home he was a mere runaway. They even showed up at mobilized search areas and told volunteers to go home too.

Noreen was treated like a KOOK from the get go.

 

[Sobe1]

The police didnt follow up on the car until it was too late. Remember law enforcement told Noreen to go home. Johnny would come home he was a mere runaway. They even showed up at mobilized search areas and told volunteers to go home too.

Noreen was treated like a KOOK from the get go.

I realize the case was handled poorly fron the begining and LE did very little at the outset. I still don't understand how it could ever be too late to f/u on the evidence they had in regards to the car.

This seems to be one of the only decent leads they had.
I wonder if there was ever a description of the car used in the EM abduction?

A partial plate#, county and car description should have generated some type of a lead!!

 

[dorca the just]

I don’t think the EM case was similar in this respect, at least as I recall. And what I recall is that one of the perps who got JG was rather dark-complected (probably this Emilio person), but that the driver of the second vehicle was more of a white guy. I also believe that I’d heard very early on after the EM disappearance that someone supposedly saw him in a car being driven out of town. The boy (EM) appeared to have been battered and beaten. Very disturbing; sometimes I’d not been able to sleep if I thought of these cases overmuch.

 

[Sobe1]

I don’t think the EM case was similar in this respect, at least as I recall. And what I recall is that one of the perps who got JG was rather dark-complected (probably this Emilio person), but that the driver of the second vehicle was more of a white guy. I also believe that I’d heard very early on after the EM disappearance that someone supposedly saw him in a car being driven out of town. The boy (EM) appeared to have been battered and beaten. Very disturbing; sometimes I’d not been able to sleep if I thought of these cases overmuch.

Very interesting...I've never heard of the possible sighting of EM in a car on the way out of town. I did hear they had found his newspaper bag later that day on the outskirts of town. Do you remember or does anyone else know which side of town that would have been?

 

[dorca the just]

Unfortunately I don’t know which side of town; I don’t think it was ever specified in the news article. Sitting here now, though, I remember that article very, very clearly. My parents and I had gone to see my aunt and uncle in Michigan just days after the Martin affair began. I’m thinking that the snippet I heard was on the evening news while we were there, and this was probably the Wednesday or Thursday after EM disappeared. Not wanting to spend the money and wait weeks, quite possibly, for the video of this news article, I never got it from the Vanderbilt University’s library to confirm it. Wish there was a repository of such news clips. Wish I could get my hands on the Nov. ’92 and the ’99 AMW shows. Wrote to them once about it, but they don’t release their back issues unless, I think, there’s some special need to do so. Obviously this little person here in the Twin Cities area (even if I’m emperor of all the known universe) doesn’t have a special reason to be allowed to glom onto it. More’s the pity. On we go, then.

 

[AmandaBrown23]

I just wish they could find him and put this all to rest

 

[Sobe1]

I heard recently that Iowa is going to receive funding to re-open investigations that go back as far as the 1960's. These "cold cases" will be re-opened soon but I believe they only pertain to unsolved murders. If this is the case, the JG and EM cases and those similar will not be revisted.

 

[Teresa Larson]

Well did you figure out who kidnapped Johnny yet?? I haven't read any posts on here
lately It doesn't seem as if too much is going on. 2 weeks since the last post??

 

[iNTERESTEDWOMAN]

Well did you figure out who kidnapped Johnny yet?? I haven't read any posts on here
lately It doesn't seem as if too much is going on. 2 weeks since the last post??

Oh boy, what a brilliant observation. :silenced:

 

[Mr. E]

I realize the case was handled poorly fron the begining and LE did very little at the outset. I still don't understand how it could ever be too late to f/u on the evidence they had in regards to the car.

This seems to be one of the only decent leads they had.
I wonder if there was ever a description of the car used in the EM abduction?

A partial plate#, county and car description should have generated some type of a lead!!

My daughter was assaulted in the park on a Sunday afternoon by a strange woman. The park was full of witnesses and we got the woman's plate number. This was nearly 3 weeks ago. The police have done absolutely nothing. My feeling is, if the police didn't care or want to find the mystery car, the mystery car would remain a mystery.

 

[Sobe1]

My daughter was assaulted in the park on a Sunday afternoon by a strange woman. The park was full of witnesses and we got the woman's plate number. This was nearly 3 weeks ago. The police have done absolutely nothing. My feeling is, if the police didn't care or want to find the mystery car, the mystery car would remain a mystery.

Hope everything is well with your daughter and they find the responsible party.

 

[iNTERESTEDWOMAN]

My daughter was assaulted in the park on a Sunday afternoon by a strange woman. The park was full of witnesses and we got the woman's plate number. This was nearly 3 weeks ago. The police have done absolutely nothing. My feeling is, if the police didn't care or want to find the mystery car, the mystery car would remain a mystery.

Oh Mr. E, so sorry to hear of your daughters assault. That is just awful. I sure hope she (and the rest of the family) is coping okay. My prayers are with your family.

 

[Mr. E]

Thank you so much. We're all fine. She wasn't beaten or anything, but she was assaulted. A woman slapped her across the face, and it did leave a bruise and a scrape.

I think I've got a better idea now about what Noreen felt when the police wouldn't help her. Her son was missing and they downplayed it, weren't active in her case, kept her in the dark about details. I know how that is now, but only to a small degree compared to what Noreen went through.