On September fifth, nineteen eighty two, twelve year old Johnny Gosch walked out of his West Des Moines home before dawn to deliver newspapers and vanished without a trace. His case changed America forever, leading to the first missing child on a milk carton and landmark legislation that transformed how we handle abducted children.

But the story most people know barely scratches the surface of what really happened.In this episode of The Redacted Report, we dig into the buried facts, the covered-up connections, and the questions that powerful people have spent four decades trying to silence.We begin with Police Chief Orval Cooney, the man tasked with finding Johnny. What most people don't know is that Cooney had a violent past, including a nineteen fifty one assault conviction. Just months before Johnny disappeared, eighteen of his own officers went on record accusing him of brutality, harassment, and drinking on duty. When volunteers searched for Johnny, witnesses say Cooney climbed onto a picnic table and told everyone to go home, calling the missing boy a damn runaway. He stonewalled the family at every turn until his sudden death in two thousand three, just as a lawsuit was about to expose what he knew. Then there's the newspaper itself. 

Johnny delivered papers for the Des Moines Register, the same company that employed Frank Sykora, who admitted to molesting at least seven paperboys, and Wilbur Millhouse, a former circulation manager found with a list of twenty two hundred boys' names when he was arrested. Millhouse reportedly told people for years that he knew who took Johnny and why. We examine the chilling prediction made two months before thirteen year old Eugene Martin vanished in nineteen eighty four. According to Noreen Gosch, a private investigator warned her another paperboy would be taken the second weekend of August on the south side of Des Moines. She passed this information to authorities. They did nothing. Eugene disappeared exactly when and where predicted. The episode explores the proof of life that emerged after Johnny's abduction. 

A confirmed sighting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where investigators said a boy crying for help was positively identified as Johnny. A dollar bill with his authenticated signature surfacing in Sioux City three years later. Signs that Johnny was alive, somewhere, trying to send a message. We dive deep into the Franklin Credit Union scandal and the testimony of Paul Bonacci, who claimed he was forced to participate in Johnny's kidnapping. Bonacci knew physical details about Johnny that weren't public knowledge. A federal judge ruled his testimony truthful and awarded him one million dollars in a civil judgment. Yet police never interviewed him about the Gosch case.

he investigation into Franklin led to tragedy. State investigator Gary Caradori was collecting evidence, interviewing witnesses, building a case against powerful people. On July eleventh, nineteen ninety, his plane came apart in midair over an Illinois cornfield. He and his eight year old son were killed. His briefcase of newly obtained evidence was never recovered. A documentary about the scandal called Conspiracy of Silence was pulled from the Discovery Channel before it could air. We trace the trafficking network run by John David Norman, a career predator whose operations spanned decades. His thirty thousand customer index cards were sent to the State Department and destroyed. His associate Phillip Paske worked for John Wayne Gacy. 

Investigators following witness testimony found an abandoned Colorado ranch with a hidden underground chamber and children's initials carved into the walls. The episode covers Noreen Gosch's claim that Johnny visited her in nineteen ninety seven, fifteen years after his disappearance, and the mysterious envelope of photographs left on her doorstep in two thousand six showing bound and gagged children, one of whom she believes is her son. Johnny Gosch would be fifty five years old today. 

No arrests have ever been made. No body has ever been found. The West Des Moines Police Department still refuses to release their complete case file. Someone knows what happened that September morning. Someone drove the blue Ford Fairmont. Someone flicked that dome light three times. And someone has kept this secret for over four decades. This is the story they buried. This is The Redacted Report.