The disappearance of a 12-year-old child upset the family and the community of the town where he lived. Even after three decades, it is not known exactly what happened.
On September 5, 1983, Johnny Gosh, a 12-year-old boy from West Des Moines, Iowa, disappeared without a trace. The kid delivered newspapers to make pocket money, but one day he never returned from work. His little cart, full of newspapers, was found two blocks from his house, but no one knew about Johnny.
Frightened, his parents notified the authorities and began the search for the boy, but without success. The boy’s picture even appeared on the milk cartons. In vain.
Grieving, Johnny’s parents learned to live with the loss. Then, one night, after 15 years, the boy’s mother heard a knock on the door, and when she opened it, she had was shocked. It was her son, changed, matured, with a stranger.
Noreen, the boy’s mother, claims that her son visited her in the middle of the night, sometime in 1997. He was with a man who would not let him talk and took him with him.
The woman says that she received in the mail pictures with her son and other children, who had their hands tied, which is why she was convinced that Johhny is alive and was kidnapped.
Police found no evidence of Noreen’s encounter with her son, and the photos turned out to be rigged by someone who wanted to make a joke on Johnny’s parents.
The boy has not been found to this day. He is the first missing child whose picture appeared on milk cartons in the United States.