Original subtitles

[ Crackling ]

-And here is a close-up

of a 14-year-old boy in terrible trouble.

John David Gosch was kidnapped on a Sunday morning

as he delivered newspapers in suburban Des Moines.

With us now live are Noreen and John Gosch, his parents.

If someone sees him, what should they do?

Who should they call?

-They should call our home telephone number,

which is area code 515-225-7456.

-Well, if anyone sees a little boy

that looks anything like Johnny Gosch,

call that number.

-Thank you very much.

♪♪

-Sunday, September 5th, approximately 6:00 AM --

12-year-old John Gosch had been delivering papers

in this affluent neighborhood of West Des Moines.

That was the last time he was seen.

-The parents believe the boy is alive

and has been kidnapped.

-Let us know what you want as far

as, uh, anything.

-Johnny, we love you.

We're waiting for you to come home.

We're doing everything in our power to get you back.

And we're leaving the porch light on every night.

Moms are like that.

Take care, babe.

-Johnny Gosch is somebody that you just say the name

and people know about it.

-Johnny Gosch was a paper boy.

He went to deliver some papers and just never came home.

And then they pretty much found zero evidence about it.

-I think ever since then,

parents just don't let their kids do things

that they did before.

-The Gosches' busy schedule never stops.

So what keeps them going?

Hope that their son is still alive

and hope that they can help prevent future abductions.

-Noreen, the mom,

is kind of looked on as kind of a nut anymore,

which is too bad, but --

but it certainly affected her drastically and the dad.

I don't even know whatever happened to him, so...

-Please contact us if you have our son.

We'll work with your demands 'cause we want him back.

-The investigation into the missing John Gosch

is continuing.

-We begin this half hour

with a desperate search for two young cousins.

-The search continues for 8-year-old Elizabeth Collins

and 10-year-old Lyric Cook.

The cousins' bikes were found by the lake last Friday.

Yesterday, we learned that Lyric's parents,

Misty and Dan Morrissey...

-We're going to Waterloo, Iowa, today,

and we're gonna be visiting with Drew and Heather Collins,

uh, who just lost their little daughter to a kidnapping.

And they have no answers as yet.

And yesterday would've been Elizabeth's ninth birthday.

What's the biggest thing

that concerns you other than getting your daughter back

and her safety?

-I don't know what's harder,

not knowing or knowing. I mean, that's --

If there's something bad that's happened, I mean...

-I know. It's hard,

'cause when you don't know, your mind kind of imagines

what might be happening.

-Oh, that's all we do all day.

-Mm-hmm.

-When Johnny was kidnapped, we lived in West Des Moines.

And I remember that just vividly,

being scare --

really scared as a -- a kid, a little boy.

The fact that they've never found him,

just that terrifies me.

-I always tried to have a plan

for the next day, something,

whether it was an activity, whether it was something

I was doing on the case to keep it going,

to keep it, um, alive.

You just take the plunge,

and you start going back into normal,

day-to-day things.

-It just seems weird at our house because...

-She was the center of attention.

-She's, like -- If she was here in this room,

she'd be upside-down on that coffee table

or she would be doing something crazy

to get attention.

I mean, she was the center of attention wherever we went.

I mean... So it's --

it's just weird how quiet it is without her there.

-I'm glad that I went to visit with Heather and Drew.

This was a pretty dramatic, uh,

gutsy move by the kidnappers,

to take these girls in broad daylight,

and to take two children.

It's difficult for me

because it just brings back just every bit of information

during Johnny's kidnapping.

And now, here we are 30 years later,

and Johnny's never been found.

Hello. How are you folks?

Can I get your names, please?

This is summer yoga.

My name is Noreen Gosch,

and I've been teaching yoga for 40 years.

It's a long time.

It's a long time to stick with one thing.

And people often ask me, "Well,

how can you do the same thing?

Doesn't it get boring?"

No.

It works.

I was born and raised in Eastern Iowa.

I got married relatively young.

I had two children.

I was given the news my husband had cancer,

and that there was no way for him to survive.

But 2 months before he died, we were hit with a tornado.

Everything was destroyed.

When I started looking for my children,

I couldn't find them.

I was pulling apart rafters of the house, walls.

I found the two kids lying facedown

in gravel and broken glass.

And then the rain came, torrents of rain.

When the rain hit them, they started screaming,

and that was, like, music to my ears.

It meant they weren't dead.

And then, just a few short weeks later,

my husband died.

There I was with two little kids

to raise, starting over.

And I remember just trying to rest a little bit.

And my little girl came walking over to the couch.

She said, "Are you gonna die,

too, like daddy?"

Wake-up call. Time to get up.

Time to get moving.

I did not want my children to feel that insecure.

That experience,

it either makes you or breaks you.

And I had a choice.

I either get up and start moving or go down in despair.

A couple of years after the death of my husband,

a good friend called me.

And she said, "It's time that you need to get out

and start seeing people."

And there was the man that they wanted me to meet.

-We met through a friend that I was in

the Marine Corps with.

-We started dating.

And then we got married, had a nice wedding.

And then a couple of years later, we had Johnny.

Life was good.

We were a normal little family.

-Johnny and I, we were best friends.

I remember building snow forts.

We used to dig caves.

And we actually had candles and different rooms

inside the snow fort.

Um, to us it was, uh, an adventure.

It was, uh, our little getaway.

We had a lot of fun with that.

-Johnny just enjoyed doing so many things.

He had such a joy about him.

-Any time

that somebody had a birthday, he would spend a lot of time

getting the right present for 'em,

and always wanting to do something special.

-You couldn't live in a better place

or have a better environment.

Middle of America, great --

great neighborhood.

-Johnny's first morning on his paper route.

-He did the Sunday morning paper.

And he had his wagon, and he would take Gretchen.

And they delivered the paper together.

-He wanted the paper route

because, uh, he wanted to get himself a dirt bike.

-He became quite the little businessman.

He saved his money, and he bought it.

And then he and his brother

would go riding out in the fields.

-At first, I didn't understand.

I think I -- I blocked a lot of it out.

Um, but as I matured

and as life developed, you know,

it became more and more...

I -- I -- I'm at a loss for words here.

It -- It became shocking to learn

that your best friend is gone.

-That particular Sunday, we got a phone call

from one of the neighbors wondering where the paper was.

-On weekends, his dad

would help Johnny on the paper route.

And, um, that's not what happened.

-I was with him every Sunday morning

except that particular Sunday morning that he was kidnapped.

I wasn't there.

Got up. Got in the car.

Went up to the corner. Found the wagon.

Didn't see him anywhere around,

and told Noreen, I said, "Something's wrong."

She called the police right away.

-It took about 45 minutes before the police arrived.

-The police department was only 10 blocks away.

-The cop looked at me, and he said, "Uh, well,

has your son ever run away before?"

-That kid never ran away.

That really upset us.

-I was absolutely panic-stricken.

I couldn't even be sure I was still breathing.

It was like, "This can't happen.

This isn't happening to us."

-I was there that morning.

Johnny was doing his wagon.

Johnny's dog was there with him.

There were two or three other, uh,

carriers there, doing the same...

I -- I was the only adult, though.

Uh, there happened to be a car on 42nd Street,

and there was a guy in there.

And he was talking to Johnny Gosch.

Johnny said, "Hey, can you come over here and help this guy?"

And all of a sudden, this car just swerved.

He made a U-turn, took off.

I thought it was kind of strange that he would do that.

-One witness said Johnny told him,

"There's something wrong with this guy.

I'm scared."

-There was a consensus, as I recall,

amongst the other paper boys

that there was somebody there asking directions.

It became a witness that we would like to have identified,

but to say

that somebody stopped and asked directions of a paper boy,

that would not be at all out of line.

We still don't know what happened that morning.

-John apparently left the residence

sometime around 5:45,

as a neighbor reported hearing a wagon being pulled

through the back of his yard.

Mike was picking up his morning papers

and noticed a car stop

and then back up to the point where John Gosch was walking.

And it appeared that John spoke briefly

to the driver of the vehicle.

-People saw him talk with a man in a car.

That car left Johnny.

Johnny proceeded to where the newspapers had been dropped.

-Vehicle is described as a two-tone blue,

two-door Ford Fairmont.

-That car came back.

The man in there asked directions.

-I think I told the police

he looked like he was mad about something.

He wasn't drunk, but he looked like he's,

uh, been drinking a lot of caffeine.

You know, that kind of thing.

Not sleepy. Well, he wasn't sleepy.

He was... Looked like he was on the...

You know, ready to go.

That's kind of odd at 6 o'clock in the morning.

-All of a sudden, the witness that was sitting on the corner

saw a tall man come out from between two houses

and follow my son.

-Mike saw an individual step from the curb

onto 42nd and travel towards John Gosch.

-The next two people

that see him are two juvenile newspaper carriers

that say, "Hey, Johnny." He says, "Hi."

They proceeded to where the newspapers have been dropped.

-At about this time, P.J. Smith

reported hearing a car door.

And upon sitting up in bed,

he observed a silver and black Ford Fairmont

start up from the area

where John Gosch was last seen and made a left turn

after rolling through the stop sign without stopping.

-The second window was where he slept.

And of course, it all happened right here.

The car ran the stop right there, and it turned left.

In fact, his wagon was still sitting right there.

Yeah.

-Those two newspaper carriers,

they get their newspapers, turn around

and walk back by that same corner.

And when they walk by, the wagon's there

with the newspapers and no Johnny.

-There was no crime scene.

Nobody saw anything that,

to us, was an explanation for the boy's disappearance.

He just vanished.

This is just that unsolved, unexplained missing person case.

-You know, the trail, it gets cold real quick.

And they just thought, like all cops do,

it's a runaway, a kid ran away.

No. This kid didn't run away.

He... Johnny was our paper boy.

Knew him, knew his parents, been out to dinner with them.

Um, Johnny would not run away.

-Altogether, we had five witnesses

that each saw this crime that took place.

And the cops stated again,

"Has your son ever run away before?"

They were completely excluding the fact that we had witnesses.

-At that time, when a kid disappeared

it was generally a kid who ran away from home.

Nobody would believe

that somebody would take a 12-year-old boy off the street

in the middle of the morning.

That was not acceptable.

And the more you got into it, the deeper the mystery got.

-We still don't have a crime scene.

We still don't know if...

What, uh -- What happened that morning.

The only thing that's certain is Johnny Gosch is --

has -- has not been -- not been located.

-And that began a whole new dimension of life

that has gone on for 30 years.

-It would be hell to have a child disappear.

It's just hard to -- hard to fathom.

And I think if that happens,

you're gonna do everything in your power

to try to find out what happened.

Why the police didn't take more interest in right away,

I don't know.

-You'd have a person that's missing and a family

who misses their loved one.

Society changes, putting kids on the side of milk cartons

or not letting them walk to school anymore,

always having to escort 'em,

or creating day cares in the morning

so they can be there and protected.

I mean, gigantic societal changes, um,

probably long overdue changes,

but again, they came because of what --

what I would say is a tragedy.

-Law enforcement authorities have no new leads in the case

and had few to begin with.

-Thousands of people have been searching for the boy,

but nothing positive has turned up.

-The drivers of cars in the area

have yet to come forward with information.

-I need 10 people on this side...

-Just follow the creek, there.

The psychics said, basically, close to the creek bottoms.

-As far as any surprises by the police department, I --

I think every day was a surprise.

Most of the time, they weren't doing much.

One day, when we had people searching all over the area,

I pulled up and there was a policeman sitting

there shooting radar for speeders, like,

two blocks from our house.

I told him, I said, "Put that gun away

and go find my son," you know?

-Psychics have told the Gosches the boy is dead,

and his body will be found within 2 miles of their home,

near a creek.

-It's something we have to check out because, otherwise,

uh, you start getting a bunch of snow and everything else

that would tear us apart

if we didn't have any news by then.

-People that we didn't even know came forward to help

because there was nothing organized

by the police, nothing.

-All of us were reading about the turmoil

that was going on with the search.

The laws at this time were 72 hours

is what it takes in order to record a child as missing.

And none of us felt that was right, of course.

-I've got a couple boys of my own,

and I'd hate to lose either one of them.

-The Gosches will inform the psychics of their search

and possibly plan another one.

-Slowly, the searches stopped.

Everybody went back to their lives.

So I asked the police chief,

when was the FBI going to be coming?

And he said, "Well, um,

I don't really think we need the FBI.

We just really don't have a crime here."

And he put his hands out like this, and, "We just

really don't have a crime."

-They had to keep doing this.

They had to keep, not agitating,

but reminding the police, "This is what's happened to us.

You say you have no crime to report.

We have no son to put to bed."

-This story had moved from, "My son was abducted,"

to a conflict

with law enforcement of, "You're not doing enough.

You're not running down the leads."

-Noreen is not and never has been,

as far as I know, a shrinking violet.

She will not just stay home and cry in her handkerchief.

There were stories about cops who wanted off this case so bad

because they couldn't handle this woman.

-People would say that Noreen was over the top at times.

She was abrasive, and she didn't really care.

But she was looking for her son, her little boy.

I mean, the horror of that,

that was lost.

-Following this release that we made, the FBI

referred to us as loons.

That is a message to America

that if you try to find your child,

and if you work diligently at it,

you may be referred to as loons by the FBI,

who are doing nothing to help the parents.

-Uh, it's somewhat of a frustrating,

um, investigation.

But, uh, I am very optimistic.

I think that we will find the boy, and,

uh, he will be alive.

-I interviewed Orval Cooney.

And believe me, I remember this, says,

"I don't give a damn about what Noreen Gosch has to say."

And that set off the fireworks.

-Every time you do a negative headline like that,

it affects public opinion about the case

and about the family.

And we had a lot of that to battle here,

simply because we were asking questions.

We asked for the FBI to come in.

We were within our rights to ask for these things,

and yet we were denied with attitude.

We were told by government agencies,

"Well, you have to prove that child's in danger.

To us, he's a runaway until you prove he's in danger."

You can almost become catatonic.

You could almost go into a state of mind

where you don't want to talk to anybody ever again,

not trust anybody ever again.

That's our boy's life.

-The police chief had a lot of personal problems.

He was tired of the media coming down

and bothering him and all that stuff, so...

-The police chief began screaming at me.

And I looked at him and said,

"There is no need for you to yell.

I have perfect hearing."

It was a way to push his buttons.

I will freely admit that.

The man was not handling the case correctly.

It was later proved that he wasn't.

He needed to be removed from office.

-The "Des Moines Tribune" reports 18 officers

making allegations against Chief Cooney,

including doing police work after drinking,

fixing the tickets of friends and relatives,

being racially prejudiced, and interfering

with a department investigation against one of his sons.

Both Cooney and Mayor George Mills,

say the actions of this many officers

in a 37-person department cannot be ignored.

-I know it gets tiring, but any chance of any TV shows

that they want to do, take it.

Take it.

Whenever you do a show, especially a network show,

that stirs up the interest for the leads to come.

-Sure.

-It was our private investigator that told us.

He said, "You got to keep this case going,

and it's gonna have to be you guys that do it.

Nobody else is gonna step up and do it."

-Yeah, I know.

You, like, had, like, no help from them.

But for us, it has been, like, the complete opposite.

-They are completely working with us and just...

-I wish that would've happened in your case.

-Well, and see, they've had a whole revamping

after what happened in the '80s, 'cause it wasn't just us.

There was lots of parents

that had the same thing happen, concerning them.

And, uh, we all banded together,

and we demanded something different.

And a few people can make a difference.

Since Johnny's kidnapping,

I vowed that this horrible tragedy

that happened to him would not go down in history for naught.

I'm still standing.

I'm still investigating.

I never quit.

Others have come and gone.

And I wouldn't still be working in this movement

if I hadn't been honest,

if I hadn't been straightforward and strong.

-John and Noreen Gosch

say they are receiving hundreds of phone calls, all calls

except for the one they're waiting to hear --

the one about where their boy is.

And a stack of letters from all over the country,

some of them from parents who also have lost children.

-Our life has been turned into suspended animation

at this point.

We take each day as it comes, and we're very flexible.

We have to be.

And we're ready to move at a moment's notice

if we have to to get our boy back.

-I think people today would be shocked

at what the real situation was in 1982.

Police were required to wait 72 hours before

they could start investigating for a missing child case.

The FBI would track your stolen car across state lines,

but it would not track your stolen child across state lines.

There was absolutely no national infrastructure

to support the hunt for missing children.

-One of our big breaks in the case was the fact

that a man by the name of Ken Wooden called me.

And he was an expert on pedophilia.

-I was in residence at Iowa State University,

and an article came out in the paper.

A newspaper boy, serving papers,

missing and his dog was still there.

And it was obvious.

If the dog was still there,

he was no runaway.

-I had never heard the word pedophile.

And most of the people around us in this community

had never heard the word either.

-One thing really sticks out in my mind.

I mean, here's a Harvard-educated publisher

of "The Des Moines Register," sitting there,

and he says, "What's this word, "pedophile,"

you keep bringing up? Is that the right word?"

And I said, "Well, that's -- that's the case right there.

The fact that you don't know

what the meaning of that word is,

that is the undercurrent of this entire scenario.

-Innocent children like these can become big money

in the highly lucrative business

of child pornography and prostitution.

This is a catalog for pedophiles.

There are ads like this --

"45-year-old man

seeks contact with others interested in adolescent

and pre-adolescent boys and girls."

-My heart went out to her as a parent,

because I knew she had a big fight on her hands.

-The children need to know

that they must be cautious with their actions.

He said, "If you'll be willing to speak out on this,

we will help you.

But be aware --

people do not want to hear

that there are organized pedophiles in this country,

working to do just what happened to your son."

-You know, we brought in George Gallup.

We brought in Ken Wooden,

world-famous, both of them world-famous.

And we had seats set up for 500 people.

45 people came. It's unbelievable.

"The Register" didn't cover it.

No TV stations covered it.

-It was so outrageous at the time

that somebody would do something to a kid,

that it was not thinkable.

But if they didn't catch the perpetrator,

something like this is gonna happen again.

[ Phone rings ]

-Des Moines Police Hotline, may I help you?

♪♪

-So right now, this is all we have.

This is a, uh, what I would call a composite description

of the six witnesses.

-You just feel completely lost.

You know, you -- you don't know what to do,

where to go, who to talk to.

-It's just like a movie being rerun,

that we're watching a movie, except the actors are different.

It's exactly the way I -- I felt.

-Almost everyone involved thought, "Okay, this is the --

the same thing. The same thing happened again."

-We were in-depth, uh,

trying to find a connection.

We did not find a connection.

The boys were dissimilar in --

in most aspects, other than their gender.

-The police say they cannot connect those two stories,

which I find kind of incredible.

There's so many similarities,

you know, the same date, time,

uh, conditions.

How could you not think they were connected?

-How can it happen twice?

Mr. Martin, did your son, Eugene,

know about the Johnny Gosch case?

-Yes, he's heard of it.

And he's been aware of the story of Johnny Gosch, no.

-Is it possible

that the same person kidnapped both boys?

Or is that just a coincidence?

-It's possible.

At this point, they have not determined

whether there is a link between the two cases yet,

but there is a great many facts that are very striking.

-Are you hopeful that the trail for Eugene Martin

might lead to Johnny, too?

-Yes, we are.

-What I'd do if somebody kidnapped me,

because it'd be kind of scary,

'cause they might kill me or take me away and,

um, brainwash me or something.

-You're talking about the early 1980s.

Kids were out playing in the dark.

Their moms let 'em go to school unescorted.

And this was part of Americana, uh, for --

for a long, long time.

And it's gone, and it started with those two stories.

♪♪

-The gal over there, that's Heather.

That is Elizabeth's mother.

-Okay. Okay.

-So you'll want to get her, too. -If she wants to talk, sure.

Absolutely. Had you met these folks before today?

-Oh, yeah. Yeah. -Okay. Well, great.

-This is Roger. -I'm Roger.

-Nice to meet you. Yeah.

-What -- What's life like for you every day,

getting up, going to bed at night?

How are you coping?

-Um, a lot of prayer. "Lord get me through another day

without having my daughter here."

And so I just ask for a lot of strength

to get me through each day.

Um, yeah. It has been.

Um, she's given a lot of information, um,

a lot of things that she did, a lot of good advice.

It's sad to see

that she didn't get any help or anything like that.

But she's worked so hard to get it -- You know,

things have changed because of what she has done.

-Thank you very much.

-Thanks for coming out, Roger. It was good to see you again.

♪♪

-Noreen was always very intense,

and so sometimes,

the general feeling in the newsroom was,

[Sighs] "Here we go again."

At that time, when most of the people

in the newsrooms in this market were young,

most not married, we were chasing the story.

And I think what we failed to think about was that,

that was somebody's life who was falling apart.

And their son was lost.

And how do you go on?

And she went on and on and on.

And for a young reporter,

that, at times, would be frustrating.

But now, as somebody who has four children,

thank you.

♪♪

-A lady called us one night about 9 o'clock at night

and said that she had received a bill and change

at a grocery store in Sioux City, Iowa.

And I asked her, "Could you please send us the bill?

I'll send you a dollar back for it."

That's what she did.

-The signature is right in this area.

He was somehow able to communicate

that he was still alive.

It was just such a helpless feeling.

When you are a victim of violent crime,

only to be there,

you know the pain and the frustration

in trying to get a case like this resolved.

We've been disappointed.

Things have not been followed through as adequately

as we had hoped.

And so therefore, my husband and I feel we must do

what we humanly can as his parents.

-He walked out the door,

and the kids were getting ready to have pizza.

And I'll never forget it as long as I live.

The last thing he said to me as he walked out the door was,

"Save me some pizza, mom. I'll be hungry when I get home."

And he waved when he got to the bushes, and I waved at him.

And that was that. And I never saw him again.

There are times when the news says that they've found a body.

In one instance, you hold your breath

and bite your fingernails

and hope that it's not your child.

And in other ways, you wish that they would come out

and say that -- that it is your child

so you could finally bury them and -- and go to rest.

-I believe all three of 'em met the same fate

by the same trafficking network.

But back in the day,

they didn't call it human trafficking.

That name wasn't given to it until much later.

-Seems every time I try and --

I want to try and do something to help people,

it gets pushed right back in my face.

I mean, I was... What I want to do

is try and help find these guys who did this stuff.

I was just supposed to,

um, hold this person down in the back of the car

and put the stuff over his face.

-And that was Johnny? -Mm-hmm.

-Paul Bonacci was a victim of a child prostitution network

that was centered in Omaha, Nebraska.

And 9 years after Johnny Gosch's abduction,

Paul Bonacci came forward

and claimed that he helped abduct Johnny Gosch.

That was the big bang in the Johnny Gosch case.

-24-year-old Paul Bonacci,

a victim of sexual abuse since the age of 6.

He is, himself, a convicted sex offender

and has been diagnosed with multiple personality disorder.

-I can hear what these other personalities are saying

and stuff and the things they've done, I mean,

like, with Johnny.

-We spoke to Bonacci recently at the Nebraska State Prison.

He showed us dozens of portraits,

drawn and signed by the personalities

which haunt him.

-And this is bunch of the different personalities

right here and...

-It is only through these personalities

that he remembers the day he helped kidnap Johnny Gosch.

-Every time he would put his head down

and call up somebody, it seemed authentic.

He seemed to me that he couldn't fake that.

This guy probably wasn't capable of coming up

with all these voices and all these different things to say.

-Bonacci can call forth his alter egos at will.

First to emerge, Mark Anderson, 15 years old.

-All I remember 'em talking about was

that this was the boy that they were gonna, um --

one of the boys they were gonna take.

-Paul says a Des Moines accomplice

snuck up from behind as the abduction was made.

Bonacci did his part, chloroforming Johnny.

-I held him down for a second. I put this thing

that Emilio told me to over his face.

And, um, few seconds later, he went out.

-I don't know how long we shot, though.

I think we filled up every tape that I had.

Jim, who is as unflappable a guy as you can get...

He just, you know, handles everything well.

At one point, just turned around and --

and, like, looked at me in disbelief like,

"What do I make of all of this?"

Jim always has a handle on it.

And even Jim didn't have a handle

on what was going on there.

-Bonacci says child pornography,

sex magazines and films involving children as young

as the age of 6

had always been the reason behind Johnny Gosch's abduction.

-And after it was over with, we -- me and Mike talked to him

and told him it was gonna be all right,

that if he just did what everything

he was told to, he -- he'd be alive,

that we didn't know what was gonna happen to him,

but at least he'd live.

-When Paul Bonacci first surfaced,

I needed some time before I could go to the prison

and sit down and meet with him.

I could've strangled him.

But I also knew that he had been forced to do it.

He had been a victim also by the same people.

I don't have hate for Paul at all.

I thought I would,

and a lot of people want me to, but I -- I don't feel that.

-The video can't pick up just how badly Noreen Gosch

is shaking

as she sees Paul Bonacci in the flesh for the first time.

He fills out a consent form,

not knowing who this woman is.

-This is Johnny's mother.

Mrs. Gosch wanted to talk to you.

-Just tell me what happened, please.

-I mean, I feels so...

I feel so bad about it 'cause...

[ Sniffles ]

...of what they made me do.

-It was a moment in time that I'll never forget.

I was anxious. I was upset.

But I was thankful to him

for going out on a limb to share it.

He didn't have to.

He didn't get a better deal.

He still had to serve his sentence.

So I had to admire the young man for the courage to do that.

-Bonacci drew a map of the plan,

a replica of one drawn by the kidnappers.

-Noreen Gosch says this X marks the exact spot of the abduction.

She says

most people mistakenly believe it happened at the corner.

-"Why did they want Johnny?"

Everybody asks me that. I don't know the answer.

-They wanted to get kids that...

And they also liked to get kids

that were close to their families.

-Why?

They did a good job of that.

-This is a composite sketch of Emilio.

The mastermind of the plot

gave Bonacci the job of chloroforming Johnny.

-Is everything that you're telling me

the truth about Johnny?

-Yes. Absolutely.

-For me, to -- hearing all of this,

it was just like my whole body seized up.

I kept thinking, "I can't listen to any more,

but I have to.

I have to hear the rest of what he has to say,

that they kept him tied and gagged a good share

of the time and that Paul

was indeed the first one to molest him on film.

The kidnappers took pictures of that to either advertise him

for sale or, in some way,

entice another pedophile to pay for services.

-He talked about something about meditation,

but I don't know what that meant, or yoga or...

some kind of...

Then, he'd -- he'd say something about that

he'd seen his mom do that or something.

And she told him -- taught him how to do that.

-I have never told the press

that Johnny went with me to yoga classes.

It wasn't relevant to his kidnapping.

Did you ever see any, um, marks

or anything on Johnny's body?

-When we got him in there,

he had a birthmark on his chest or something on his chest.

It was like, uh, looked like South America.

-While information on Johnny's large chest

birthmark was widely circulated,

Bonacci described other markings

which were never made public.

A scar on Johnny's tongue.

Noreen says he bit through his tongue

after falling from a tree house.

A white scar on Johnny's leg just above the ankle.

He'd received a burn

after touching the hot tailpipe of his brother's motorcycle.

Bonacci also described

the stammer Johnny suffered when he was upset.

-These are all things that start to fit a puzzle

that we've known about for a long time.

And these are important things. They might be little things.

And they might not be big things to the police department.

But it's forming a picture.

-After viewing our unedited interview,

West Des Moines police say Bonacci said little

to prove that he had firsthand knowledge of the crime.

-There is no way right now that you can say,

"I'm convinced, and we got to go talk to him."

You can't say that at this point.

-I can't, myself, at this time, no.

-I would have to think that, after all the years

and all the frustration and all the dead ends,

what does it hurt to go and talk to him?

You know, why not do that?

Kind of tends to that whole conspiracy-theory-type,

uh, flavor that the -- the whole thing has is, why won't they?

Why don't -- I mean, just go out there and eliminate

that as a possibility for once and for all if you can do that?

-And so investigators from this department went to Omaha.

They did not interview Paul Bonacci,

but they did interview his siblings.

His siblings put him in Omaha

at the time of the disappearance of Johnny Gosch.

Now we can only go on the information

that was given to us, so,

that information that says,

"We shouldn't continue to go down the path of Paul Bonacci

based on what siblings are saying.

And that's how we do it, is evaluate that evidence.

So, um...

you can make a judgment on that.

We'll stand by what we've done.

♪♪

-It takes 2 hours to get from Omaha to Des Moines, 2 1/2.

And if you've kidnapped somebody,

you're probably driving faster.

I mean, you could get there and back in a day

and your sister might not know you're gone.

[ Laughing ] I don't know.

-You realize you're hanging all your hopes on a child molester

who's done unspeakable things to your son.

-There's just been so many things

that Paul has shared with us that would've been impossible

for him to know had he not been with Johnny.

-Among that information, letters to Bonacci

from around the country that he says are from members

of the alleged sex ring

that kidnapped Johnny Gosch, complete with descriptions

of Johnny's physical condition and his whereabouts.

-Think you can help find Johnny?

-Yes. -Do you think he's alive?

-Yes. -You've got a case

that's been unsolved for 10 years.

I would think you'd be kicking the doors down

to want to talk to him at this point.

-When the time is right, uh, again,

I will reiterate, we may well interview Paul Bonacci.

But it will be when we're ready to do it.

-How much more time has to go by?

-I have no idea. -It is a major cover-up.

-We can't get law enforcement help.

This is when we need it.

We can't take somebody to court without them,

and they know it.

-There was so much information put out about this case.

And of course, the mother

would certainly know more than anyone

that he had information that wasn't publicized.

But I'm skeptical. I really am.

I think some of these people are con men

who knew how to take advantage of the situation.

-I know what it's like to search for your missing child.

I know what it's like to not know what happened.

And so I thought, "Let's go back and look.

Maybe somebody'll have the guts

to finally tell us what happened to Johnny."

For 10 years, they have been fighting,

but Johnny's never been found.

Two years ago, a convicted child molester

surfaced and said he helped kidnap Johnny.

Bonacci claims that an organized ring of pedophiles

abducts children and forces

them into a life of child pornography

and prostitution,

and that it happened to him.

-"America's Most Wanted"

was focused on missing children because our host,

John, uh, had, had his son abducted and killed.

And so we did a lot of stories about missing children.

And as the anniversary approached

of Johnny's abduction,

that was one of the stories we wanted to look at.

-Nobody had found Johnny,

so any excuse is a good excuse to keep it in the light.

-We didn't know who we were going after,

and we had a missing child who had been missing for 10 years.

And the FBI was waving us off right from the very beginning,

saying, "These are not credible witnesses.

We don't believe this information is valid."

So we went into it pretty skeptically,

particularly when you have a character like Paul Bonacci,

who was clearly suffering from multiple personality disorder,

who had huge credibility issues, and who had been in prison.

-'Cause these people,

when they get ahold of young kids and stuff,

and they force you to do things, and they photograph it.

They film it.

Um, and the whole purpose of that is to either blackmail you

into staying with them or to make -- to split your mind up

so that you don't even remember who you are.

-Paul Bonacci's a tough read.

There were so many facts

that he seemed to know that lots of people didn't know.

And the Gosches were convinced that the only way Paul

knew those facts was if he had talked to Johnny.

-Paul claims to have seen Johnny in 1986

on a trip to Colorado,

where Johnny was being kept by a man called the Colonel.

-I guess he tried to run away from him one time,

and they branded him.

-We gave some airtime to Paul Bonacci's story.

He talked about the branding.

He talked about what were pretty amazing accusations.

And then these kids started calling us.

This one kid came forward named Jimmy,

who had the brand and was telling these stories

and confirming what Bonacci was talking about.

"We went to Colorado with Bonacci," you know, he said,

"I'll show you the house where they used to keep us."

And he described this house with a secret,

underground chamber

where they would hide the kids when the police would come.

And there it was.

-So what happened here?

-You okay?

-[ Sobbing ]

I remember this house being where they brought us.

They kept us here to make sure

that we couldn't leave and...

I almost couldn't do it, to even go near the house,

'cause I got up there, and I just...

The memories flooded back of, uh,

the last time I was here.

Before we went in the building, I described it.

And there was a little grate.

We pulled the grate off stuff, and they looked under there

like, "Oh, no. There's the hole."

-It's abandoned. We go underneath it.

And sure enough, there's this chamber dug out under the house

with kids' initials carved in the wood.

-Uh, this is where they kept some of the kids hidden away,

underneath of here so that if anyone ever

tried to come looking for 'em,

they could, uh, run 'em underneath the house here.

-And so that there was this sense

that we're really close.

You know, something is going on here.

But every time we found a clue, we ran into a brick wall.

The owner of the house, which had been abandoned,

was a former prison guard who disappeared.

You know, the people

who had composite drawings never became real people.

We never had names.

We never could go after them as individuals.

We couldn't expose them and get them brought in for questioning.

There's the things you think are true.

There's the things you know are true.

And then there are the things you can prove in court.

And the only thing that matters is what can be proved in court.

And we didn't have anything that we could prove in court.

The Johnny Gosch case has haunted me, you know,

in a way that nothing else

that I encountered on "America's Most Wanted" has.

And we encountered horrific crimes.

If "America's Most Wanted," with all of our resources,

couldn't solve this case,

then chances are, no one would.

And as I looked around, no one else

was trying to solve the case.

-Um, you know, I don't know what else they need.

It seems like they're never happy.

But no matter what comes up on the case,

no matter what it is,

they refute it and say, "It isn't genuine."

"Oh, we're not gonna go see Paul Bonacci.

We're not gonna do this. We're not gonna do that.

But, oh, we want to solve the case."

If you want to solve the case, you have to do some things.

You can't just sit behind your desk

and wait for the driver of the car

to come in and turn himself in.

I guess I'm just more appalled than shocked anymore.

This young man admitted helping to kidnap my son,

molesting my son.

And I was being told by the West Des Moines police

that they would not go talk to him?

-I've been investigating the cover-up of

a pedophile network for about 10 years.

This child prostitution network was centered in Omaha, Nebraska.

And they flew children from coast to coast

and pandered them to the rich and powerful.

The network also deployed blackmail

to compromise the rich and the powerful.

That's when I first heard Johnny Gosch's name.

-Number one, Paul had repeated

the very same story,

word for word, to his attorney

before I ever went to see him.

He never changed a word.

-I was a young senator at the time

and was hearing these strange, insane stories about --

from kids that were telling about

how they were sexually involved

with this prominent individual or that prominent individual.

And I get this letter from a kid in jail

who had just been arrested,

this kid named Paul Bonacci.

And it led to a horrible, horrible, horrible picture

of young children

being used to provide sexual pleasure for adults,

and in so many of the cases, very prominent adults.

God. It just is a monster thing

that I still wish I didn't even know.

I know that sounds crazy.

But I wish I truly didn't even know all this.

-In 1989, the Franklin Credit Union scandal

burst into the headlines.

Paul Bonacci was one of the witnesses

who made shocking allegations of child sexual abuse

by some of Omaha's most influential citizens.

-I -- I don't know who they all are.

All I know is those are the guys

that were controlling everything.

I -- I was not a kept kid.

I was not a, uh, one for sale that way

because I was doing things other for them

that they couldn't -- didn't want to sell me.

Plus, I was damaged goods.

These guys wanted kids

that had not been involved in any sexual stuff.

And Johnny got bought by a guy that was actually in Colorado.

So he ended up there.

And he'd been with a lot of guys there

too that this guy had made him for money, so...

But he never got the money. The guy got the money.

-There were two different kinds of kids.

There were the throwaway kids, the runaways,

drug addicts living on the street hustling for sex.

And then there were the virgins,

and that some of these sick individuals

would pay large sums of money

to have clean kids to abuse.

And that's the part of the story

that I found most horrific and most disturbing.

-Before Paul even admitted that he abducted Johnny Gosch,

he was receiving letters from kids around the country

who did discuss Emilio

and who also discussed JG.

So I think that that's pretty powerful evidence

that Paul did take part in Johnny Gosch's abduction

and that Emilio was involved.

-We couldn't find any reason why he would be making this up.

The dates of some of his earlier interviews

with John DeCamp and some of the recordings

that he made early on,

these things sort of predated a lot of the publicity.

So, yes, it's possible

that he could've gotten some of those details,

but it seems highly unlikely.

Now, whether he was actually there, I don't know.

Did he know people who was there?

I think that's very likely.

Did he know Johnny Gosch

at some point after the abduction?

Yes, I believe he did.

-A grand jury investigated and called the allegations

"a carefully crafted hoax."

Bonacci was charged with perjury,

but the perjury charges were eventually dropped.

During the investigation, the court-appointed psychiatrist

diagnosed Bonacci as having multiple personality disorder

caused by years of sexual abuse.

-The only people I ever spoke to about it was some media.

And they kept asking me

if anybody had come to talk to me about it.

I was like, "Nobody's really come to investigate anything.

Nobody's come to,

you know, hear anything I have to say about it."

-Sometimes, there are forces just too powerful,

people just too big and rich and interests

that you don't even understand or know anything about involved

that make it impossible

for them to allow you to succeed

in getting this exposed or corrected.

-♪ Oh, say can you see ♪

-A Republican from the Midwest, Lawrence E. King

is serving a 15-year prison sentence

for a multimillion-dollar fraud.

-♪ We hailed at the... ♪

-But financial crime is only half the story.

-Paul Bonacci was a victim of King's abuse.

He was also sent by King

to lure Boys Town youngsters off campus.

-We didn't go to Nebraska with a conspiracy theory

in our mind, hoping to prove it.

We went to Nebraska to try and work out what happened.

And we found a conspiracy of silence.

-King was arrested,

and a federal investigation showed he'd stolen $40 million.

The money trail led quickly to the original allegations

of child abuse.

But the FBI's inquiries were secret.

-They didn't ask me very much about Larry King.

They treated the allegations I made about people

who abused me almost like a joke.

-I was very disappointed with the way

the FBI and law enforcement treated the victims.

They, in fact turned them into the offenders,

so to speak.

-"It's not gonna be believed," they said.

"It will not be believed.

You will be found guilty of perjury."

I mean, they weren't telling me maybe.

-We got a message from the Discovery Channel

saying that all work on this program must cease.

Yorkshire Television actually paid

for me to go out to Bethesda

to talk to the senior executives of the Discovery Channel

to try and persuade them to run the program.

And, uh, they just didn't want to know.

They didn't want to talk about it.

They just turned me around, sent me home.

-If you control the media,

if you control the justice department,

if you control the police,

you own the system.

It was just unreal.

When you're talking to somebody,

let's say a law enforcement officer,

and they just...

"I'm not talking to you about this.

I -- I don't -- I don't know.

I don't want to talk about it."

-Excellent.

Um, are you familiar with the Johnny Gosch case?

Uh, he was an Iowa paper boy who disappeared 30 years ago.

-I am not personally familiar with that case.

-But do you know about it?

-Oh, okay, I'm sorry. I -- I didn't...

-Yeah.

-Um, how -- how are, um...

-The FBI is a good organization.

The Catholic Church is a good organization.

It doesn't mean they don't have individuals

who do terrible things.

And the natural response of most organizations

is to protect the organization.

So I do think that there was some institutional protection

of people who had done bad things.

I think that transcends this case.

That happens everywhere all the time.

So I think it's important to understand that

these organizations are not trying to cover up

some grand conspiracy.

They're just trying to cover up some wrongdoing

at a very, very low level

to protect the reputation of the organization.

And I think the Catholic Church is the perfect example

of how that happens

and how it can go on for decades without resolution.

-I still go back to the same thing

I've said from the beginning --

a poor pedophile must go out

and take the risk

of being caught by grabbing their own victim.

Does the rich pedophile take that risk of being caught?

Heavens no. They pay someone.

That's when we develop supply and demand

that now has the name of human trafficking.

And it's going on everywhere in the United States.

-I know that what happened was wrong and I need to,

um, do what I can to try and help stop these guys

from doing this to other children.

♪♪

-I've known Noreen for maybe 30 years or longer.

You know, at our age,

I think it took several weeks or even more than weeks,

maybe a month or 2 month,

before we actually talked about Johnny.

It's quite the story.

More so than I ever believed or could have ever imagined.

I think I was probably like the other 98%

of the people out there that think, "This...

There's so many things involved in here

that it can't be true.

It just can't happen in our society."

I felt somewhat sorry for her,

uh, because nobody believed her.

So you know, it -- it took a while.

It's just been amazing, unfortunately.

-What's -- What's great about Noreen?

What are things that you love about her?

What's...

-It's her willpower.

It's just not the easiest thing in the world to be Noreen Gosch

because so many of the victims' parents have...

You know, it's just torn them apart.

So she's done a great job.

-I could not get my breath.

And I thought I was gonna pass out

as seeing my son like that.

And if you look closely

at this one,

over in this area,

there's dark pigmentation.

It is not a shadow.

That is the birthmark that Johnny had.

It was always up in that area of his chest.

-The hair texture looked similar,

but the face was too small.

We can scan in that entire image,

isolate the face,

but when we make it larger, it gets really worse.

And all the details

that we're looking for just aren't there.

So it -- it wasn't a good candidate

for a serious facial comparison.

-First of all, there's no birthmark on his chest.

And the -- the picture does not even look like him.

His feet were much larger than that

even when he was kidnapped, so as...

Your feet, even if you'd lost a lot of weight,

still say he's stayed the same length, so...

-We located a law enforcement agency in Florida

who has identified the specific pictures

to say, "That was a case we worked.

We identified some of the individuals

in those pictures.

Those pictures did not have Johnny Gosch in them."

-These boys were all from Florida.

This is a case that I worked in 1979.

It was a case

that involved several boys tied up and gagged.

Of course, when I saw the pictures,

there was no doubt in my mind

that this subject was a pedophile.

None of the boys ever admitted that anything happened to 'em,

so no arrests were ever made.

-Have you ever seen this before?

-I -- I -- I can't say that I remember that one.

Uh, you know, it was 33 years ago.

I can't really recall this one.

-Those photographs are my son.

And, you know, it matters not to me

if people think it isn't Johnny.

We know that it is.

And the West Des Moines Police are mistaken.

♪♪

-My wife has been there for me through a lot of things.

She's right there to straighten me out

and correct me and put me back where I need to be.

And she doesn't let me just give excuses.

We've had our rough times, but we've made it 10 years.

You know, if she's made it through this,

that part of it and stuff,

I think the worst is over in our marriage

because I had a hard time getting close.

And communicating has been a big problem.

When I was in prison, I started getting visited

by Reverend John Morrow from Lincoln.

And at that point and stuff, I still had a lot of hatred

and a lot of bitterness towards these people who had abused me.

And actually, getting even more because of all the memories

that were now flooding my mind.

I just wanted to see these guys die in the most horrible way.

And I told Reverend Marrow that.

And, you know, many times I told him that.

And then one time he told me, he says, "You know what,

you're never gonna get any better

till you learn to forgive, give up the bitterness,

the anger and the hatred."

And I remember going back to my cell,

and I said, "I know that what he's saying is true."

Doesn't mean they shouldn't have to answer for what they've done.

It just meant

that I wasn't gonna let it destroy me anymore.

The only person

that I'm destroying by hating them wasn't them.

It was me.

[ Siren wailing ]

-I was asked to be a part of Paul Bonacci's trial

when they were suing his perpetrator.

I was asked during the questioning

whether I had ever seen or talked to my son

in all the years he had been missing.

And I didn't answer.

And the judge instructed me that I would have to answer

or I'd be in contempt of court.

So I said, "Once.

I saw my son once."

♪♪

-If somebody disappears into thin air once,

that's a really unusual, amazing thing.

If they disappear into thin air twice,

that's something that even I have never heard of.

That has happened to Noreen.

-There was a knock on my door, a persistent knocking.

And I went to the door.

And I could see a young man standing out there.

And I kept looking at his eyes.

And the eyes don't change.

And so I said, "Who is it?"

And he said, "It's me, mom, Johnny."

He had another young man with him

who didn't say anything.

And Johnny did not introduce him.

I said, "Let me call somebody to help."

He immediately got very upset.

And he said, "They'll kill me if they know I've been here."

He shared some information about how they traffic the kids

through the country.

He did not go into great detail about the sexual abuse.

And that the kids were forced to do a lot

of things that were illegal.

So therefore none of them would ever go to the police for help.

And then, in a very short time, it was over.

And he said, "I have to go."

Looking back on it,

I probably should have refused and been in contempt of court,

because all hell broke loose.

Before we even drove home, the news was everywhere.

Everywhere.

And then all the criticism started.

-For someone who's so outspoken

and you tell the media everything,

now suddenly, you don't say anything.

-It was very simple.

My son asked me not to say anything.

-She said she didn't tell anybody it.

She didn't tell her mother,

which I thought was kind of odd.

Her explanation was that he asked

not to have this put out because it would endanger him.

I thought, "That's the last thing you'd want.

You'd say something and all of a sudden

you find out this boy is in deep danger."

-Noreen, she either said nothing or,

if she said something, she blew it out straight.

And I made it clear to her we were in court, federal court.

This was a trial.

And either she should say nothing

or tell the absolute truth.

-Johnny truly believes that the reason

they don't want him coming out

is because he knows too much information.

Which is why he believes that if he ever comes out,

he'd be killed immediately or he would disappear.

And that's the main reason,

besides the fact he doesn't want the media circus,

he doesn't want to come out is because,

you know, he either figures he's gonna be killed

or he's gonna go to prison for something.

Which I don't think there'd be much...

I don't think any jury in the world

would convict him of anything with everything

that he's gone through.

-He said, "The kids formed,

uh, kind of a family of their own

to try and look out for each other."

The only part about the mind control

was that he said, "They controlled us.

They did things to us."

Things like that. He kept it...

And I think part of the reason

he kept it a little bit aloof was 'cause

he was talking to his mom.

And maybe he felt some of the raw material

might be too raw.

And it would be not only upsetting to me

but maybe embarrassing to him to do that.

That's the only thing I can figure out.

But knowing that he had gotten away from these people

and probably didn't want them to find him again,

I can totally understand

why he only stayed for about an hour.

I can totally understand

why he slipped away into the night,

wouldn't tell me where he was living

and a few things that were evasive.

That was for his protection and also probably mine.

But I kept that information to myself for 2 years

before I was on the witness stand

and had to answer the question for the attorney.

Lot of parents feel guilty if they enjoy food

because maybe their child isn't getting food,

if you get a good night's sleep because maybe your child

is not permitted to sleep.

There's never anything about that process

that a parent should feel guilty about

because you have to do every single thing possible

to maintain yourself physically and emotionally.

-Yeah. Right -- Right now --

Right now I just look forward to tomorrow every day.

-Mm-hmm.

-I want today to be over already.

-Mm-hmm.

-And then the day after that could be over, too.

-What do you think happened to Johnny?

-I don't have a clue.

I mean, there's all these options,

whether a stranger came by, grabbed him,

sold him.

Who knows?

There are a lot of missing people in this country

that they never get resolved.

-I believe that my son

deserved 110 percent of my energy

to try and rescue him if possible.

Or at the very least,

try to find out what happened to him.

And 30 years after the kidnapping,

I am so much farther down the road

with the knowledge of what happened to him.

It doesn't mean that he's been brought home

and doesn't mean the case is solved,

but at least I know.

And that is huge.

-It's almost impossible for anyone

who hasn't lost their child

to understand what that does to you.

And I think what Noreen and John did on the national level

of trying to make people understand

that you had to have a structure in place

to find these missing kids was really heroic.

And what they did for the missing children movement

can never be underestimated.

-You have to live with,

"What if I could have done something more?"

You know?

What if? What if?

I guess we live with what-ifs all the time, don't we?

♪♪

-Why on Earth would Johnny even want to come forward

and be scrutinized like he's some kind

of a specimen from another planet?

Whatever his life is now, assuming he's alive,

it's working for him.

Sometimes the better decision for a parent

is do what's best for your child,

not just what you want to have happen.

And if that's what's best for Johnny,

rather than stepping out

and being the brunt of all of this,

then he has to do that.

♪♪

-Do you think you have a right for the West Des Moines Police

and the FBI to at least go and talk to Paul Bonacci?

-I think Johnny has a right.

I think his civil rights have been violated unbelievably

since the time he was taken.

Johnny's civil rights.

I have felt, through all of this,

that I have been guided to make the decisions that I have.

And I hope that anyone that sees this film really

realizes what a problem we do have in America

with regard to our children's safety.

-Scientifically, they say about a half

to one percent of the population are technically pedophiles,

are sexually attracted to children.

And those people are gonna appear at all levels

of our society, from coaches

to priests to teachers

to police officers.

-Every day, it's being reported,

but it's such an ugly issue.

People either skip it or don't read it.

-Right now, there are thousands of kids,

children

that are being brought into these exact same abuses.

If one of those kids is looking at this right now,

what do you say to them?

-To tell somebody.

If it's someone in the family doing something, tell a teacher.

Tell a counselor. Tell a minister.

You know, you're not doing anything wrong if

you're the one being victimized.

But you need help.

You need someone that's gonna care for you,

someone who's gonna love you,

someone who's gonna stand up for you.

It'll destroy your life if you --

if you let it continue, if you let it go on.