For us who live in Dsm, Maury street is very well apart of the greater Southside, more closer to the fairgrounds is considered east side. If you look up the home on zillow or trulia it will even state the home is nestles on the Southside of Des Moines.
The article said he used the excuse for having over 2000 boys information as using it to recruit the boys. It doesn't mean the police believed that to be correct and in fact in the article they said that was probably not even possible. They also found proof he was doing inappropriate things and using inappropriate phone lines that have connections to exploitation. The article also states the investigation was brought in because of missing newspaper boy.
The November 1986 Register article appears to be clipped by someone on
newspapers.com and available publically, so I am linking it here:
11/18/86 Millhouse Charges - Newspapers.com
Again, his previous employeer spells his name with a 'U.'
The police reported that it was unlikely that Millhouse had contact with all 2000 boys, not that it was unlikely he ever used the information for recruiting. The Register confirmed that Millhouse worked for the paper for many years recruiting and managing adults/teens delivering newspapers.
The article also states: "The house was searched after two fifteen year old boys accused Millhouse of sexual abuse." It does not say that he was investigated because of the missing paperboys.
There is another article about the raid of Millhouse's home in 1986. The title of this article is "Police Raid finds No Link to Gosch, Martin Cases." - by Frank Santiago.
Unfortunately, it does not appear to be freely available to link. However, in the article Noreen is quoted as saying "All systems seem favorable that if there is something there, we will have an answer. My husband and I are very concerned over the new information, but we have no details to make any judgements."
I'm not trying to say that there's no way Wilbur Millhouse was involved with Johnny's disappearance, but the local police didn't come out and say they thought he was then and neither did Noreen. If you have another source please share it. Otherwise, it puts us all to a disadvantage here to not be working with the facts.
Additionally, while I won't be sharing my home address with a bunch of internet strangers, I will say that I understand why a real estate agent trying to sell a Des Moines home might call it Southside instead of Eastside. However, 2553 Maury Street is both North and East of the river. Any one can take a quick look at Google Maps and see that it is significantly closer to those Eastside State Fairgrounds than Eugene Martin's home or the area Google Maps has labeled as "Greater Southside."