The Disappearance of Johnny Gosch Part 1

In this episode of the P.I.C. True Crime Podcast, Mike, Bree, and Heather explore the chilling and mysterious disappearance of Johnny Gosch, one of the first missing children to appear on milk cartons. This episode delves into the complex web of pedophile rings, potential government cover-ups, and the tireless fight of a determined mother, Noreen Gosch, who refused to give up on finding her son. The hosts unpack the haunting details of this decades-old case, discussing the implications and lingering questions that continue to baffle the true crime community. Tune in for a deep dive into one of America's most perplexing unsolved cases.

Transcript

Johnny Gosch Part 1 (00:00)
The name Johnny Gosch is widely regarded as one of the most perplexing, unsolved cases in the true crime community and one of the first faces that were showcased on the now iconic milk cartons.

Johnny Gosch Part 1 (00:12)
But very few realize just how deep the disappearance of the newspaper boy really goes. It's a rabbit hole of pedophile rings and government cover -ups. But most importantly, it's a story of the survivors, the deceit of those that are supposed to protect us, and most of all, it's a tale of a mother. A mother relentless in her search and brave beyond belief. A mother who only ever wanted to bring her son home, but instead became the warrior that

every stolen child in this country needed. Here are the lives in the lifelong battles fought by Johnny and Noreen Gosch

Welcome back everybody to the PIC True Crime Podcast. I'm Mike. I'm Bree And I'm Heather.

We all remember the milk carton kids, missing children's posters plastered on the milk carton that stood beside your morning cereal.

And even if you're too young to have lived through that era between the 80s and late 90s, you've undoubtedly seen some pop culture reference to it in a movie somewhere. It's iconic as commonplace back then, as amber alerts on our phones and on the highway billboards are now. And it all started with three boys. Six -year -old Etan Patz. I'm so sorry if I pronounced that wrong.

who went missing in 1979 while walking to the bus and two paper boys, 13 year old Eugene Martin, who went missing in 1984 and Johnny Gosch

the 12 year old whose little red coat full of newspapers was found turned over on the side of the road in 1982.

There were two major social crazes that started in the 70s. One was the satanic panic, and definitely a subject that we'll be looking into in the future.

And the other was the Stranger Danger campaigns that's still so deeply ingrained in our culture today. Every school -aged child has had a lesson in not talking to or accepting anything from strangers at one point or another.

How exactly the topic transitioned over to milk cartons is uncertain and no one can agree on which dairy company first came up with the idea.

Either way, in 1984 Anderson Erickson Dairy and Hawthorne Melody Farm Dairy both began to circulate Johnny Gosch, Etan Patz, and Eugene Martins' faces to just about every household in the United States.

And the very first milk carton boys that started the beginning of an era of hope that missing children of America would be found would sadly remain missing until this very day, forever frozen in their black and white pictures staring over at you at the breakfast table.

Now today we're going to focus on the case of Johnny Gosch specifically, but there will be other potential victims that make appearances later

Because Des Moines, Iowa almost certainly had a serial abductor problem on his hands in the 80s. And this person, or persons, targeted Paperboy specifically.

Johnny, seems, was victim zero, the first of who knows how many. Now, since Heather gave us such a roller coaster ride with the Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders last week, I decided that it was my turn to give everyone the creeps and the frustration this time around.

So let's take it from the top. Johnny's case really starts two days before his disappearance, or at least that's what his mother believes.

The Gosch family lived in Des Moines, Iowa in a very middle -class neighborhood.

John and Noreen Gosch took their youngest son to watch a high school football game on a Friday, the 3rd of September.

Johnny's older brother was playing in the game and they went to support him. Sometime during the game, Johnny asked if he could go get some popcorn from the concession stand.

Noreen agreed to let him go alone since they had a very clear view of the stand from where they sat.

A few minutes went by and Noreen glanced over to see what was taking Johnny so long, but Johnny was no longer in line.

John went to look for Johnny thinking that he had seen a friend from school or maybe he had gone to the bathroom. Instead, he found Johnny talking to a West Des Moines police officer.

His father told Johnny that he had to stay near the railing where they could see him. But five minutes later, Johnny had disappeared again.

This time John found him under the bleachers talking to the same officer. John wasn't too alarmed though because it was a police officer after all. Nevertheless, he told Johnny to get his butt back to the stand. After the game, the family got in their car to go home. Johnny pointed to the police officer who was now leaning over a railing watching the crowd as the stadium began to empty.

He said to his mother, that's the police officer I spoke to earlier. I think I want to be a policeman when I grow up. And that was that. The family went home to meet their oldest daughter who had just got home from college for a quick visit.

No one got the officer's name or thought that it was weird at all that a grown man was talking to a pre -teen boy? Unfortunately, no name, just a vague description, but I wouldn't put it past any kid to talk to a police officer, especially back then.

We teach them that they are safe to talk to and a 12 year old probably thought policemen had the coolest job ever. I don't blame the dad for not being too bothered by it.

Actually, Noreen and John were a little overprotective for parents in the 80s. They didn't even allow him to go on his paper route without his father. And he wouldn't have been allowed to get popcorn alone if his mother hadn't been able to see him at the stand from where they were sitting.

That's true, it's not like they let him run wild in the woods or anything.

Johnny Gosch Part 1 (06:17)
In later years, Noreen became certain that this encounter with the officer was significant. That the officer was singling Johnny out specifically. We will explore that aspect of the disappearances later.

And it's also important to note that the family had been receiving odd phone calls for weeks,

Every single night, like clockwork, between midnight and two in the morning, the landline would ring from John's nightstand.

He'd pick up and the person on the other end would say that it was the wrong number and hang up.

Every night?

every single night.

Johnny and his father went out to finish the paper route that afternoon. The family sat down for a nice dinner with the oldest daughter and her fiance and spoke about plans to go to the lake the next day. After dinner, Johnny told his mother that he was going to bed early because he needed to be up at five. During the week, the paper boys went out in the afternoon after school to deliver the papers. But Sundays were different. On Sundays, the paper went out between six and seven in the morning.

He did ask his father if he could go and deliver the papers on his own for a change.

Before, even when his older brother had been a paper boy, Noreen never allowed either boy to deliver the 28 papers on their two blocks alone. Johnny's father almost agreed to the request, but Noreen said no and that was the end of the discussion. Johnny wasn't upset about this and went off to bed.

Noreen expecting him to ask to go alone again, but instead he simply gave her a hug, told her that he loved her and that she was the best mom ever. That was the last time the Gosch family saw their youngest son. Seems a little ominous and so sad. Did they get another phone call?

They sure did, but this time John had a short conversation with the person on the other end. Noreen heard him say something along the lines of, sure, all right, and goodbye.

John couldn't later recall what exactly he'd said or what the other person had said. He was half asleep and by now the calls were so regular, he was operating on like autopilot. I need to ask, has anyone ever suspected the dad?

I mean, yes and no, you know, give it time. We'll get there soon enough.

The next morning, Johnny didn't wake his father like he did every Sunday morning.

Instead, Johnny decided to go alone. Maybe he wanted to prove that he could do it himself after all. Whatever he was thinking, he got his wagon and he picked up his newspapers and began delivering to the few blocks that were assigned to him. Johnny did, however, take some company along. He took his family, Daschund, Gretchen, with him.

At seven that morning the phone rang waking the couple up. It was a neighbor calling to say that he hadn't received his paper yet. Noreen thinking that they all overslept hopped out of bed to wake Johnny. But Johnny's bed was empty.

Noreen was getting herself geared up to give her son a good scolding for disobeying her.

But John Sr. told her that he'd go help Johnny finish up so she could get breakfast for the family. He was hoping that she'd calm down by the time they returned.

While Noreen stood in front of the stove, she got a terrible feeling in her gut. Something was wrong. She couldn't shake that feeling that Johnny wasn't okay.

Before she could head out herself, her husband was back. He told Noreen, call the police. Johnny was gone.

Was the dog gone with Johnny as well?

No, Gretchen was still tied to the red wagon when John found it. She was unharmed.

okay. Thank you. Go on.

Anyway, Noreen phoned the police and John went off to deliver the rest of the papers because the phone was ringing off the hook Half the neighborhood was calling to find out where their papers were. John had found his son's wagon with Gretchen tied to it, two blocks away from their house, abandoned at the corner. The papers were still in the wagon and there were no signs of struggle or anything out of the ordinary.

except of course johnny wasn't there

By the time John got back, 45 minutes had passed and the police arrived just as he stepped back into his driveway. Despite the station only being 10 blocks away from Gosch's residence.

Yay, another case where stellar police work is going to drive me nuts. I'm guessing we can prepare ourselves for shoddy police work throughout this case.

Well, let's just say Noreen had every reason to give the cops a hard time and she spent her life criticizing the investigation and everyone on the force for more reasons than just taking their time to arrive when a child goes missing.

While they waited on the cops, Noreen was not going to spend 45 minutes doing nothing.

Noreen was not going to spend 45 minutes doing nothing. She got on the phone, called up the company that dropped off the papers, and got the names and numbers of every kid that was on duty that day.

Hell hath no fury like a mama bear looking for her son. That's an understatement. The information Noreen got in less than an hour was more than police got in a week. I'm really liking this woman. So am I.

From what Noreen could make out, all the kids waited at a corner, the truck arrived, hand out everyone's papers, and the kids spent a few minutes rolling up the papers and binding them with rubber bands.

The boys said Johnny walked up to them with Gretchen riding shotgun in his wagon, but before he reached the drop off corner, a car pulled up next to him.

It was a two -tone blue Ford Fairmount or a Mercury Zephyr.

Johnny ignored the man in the car who was trying to get his attention. The car drove away, turned around and headed back towards the boys folding papers at the corner.

An attorney named John Rossi pulled up to pick up papers for his son, who was also a paper boy, when the car pulled up next to Johnny for a second time.

Johnny called over Mr. Rossi saying that the man in the car wanted directions and if the attorney could maybe help him instead. Upon hearing that, the Ford hightailed out of there, never giving Rossi a chance to even exit his car completely to come over and help.

Smart kid.

He was.

Johnny picked up his papers and told the other boys that he thought it was weird and that he's going to take his papers, go home, and get his dad to join him on his route after all.

And the attorney didn't do anything?

He did say that he found it odd, but when the car sped off, he just assumed that the danger had passed and let the boys go on about their business as usual.

Something odd that the boys and Rossy noticed is that before the man drove away, he flipped his dome light on and off three times. A signal?

See, that's what Noreen thought too, but it gets worse. Only one boy remained on the corner, a 16 year old still folding his papers.

As Johnny, with his wagon and his dog, walked back the way he had come, another man stepped out from in between two houses, falling in behind Johnny on the sidewalk.

The teenager heard Gretchen growling, and once Johnny took a left at the corner ahead, the older boy lost sight of him and the man fallen about ten paces behind.

From the direction where Johnny went, he heard a car door slam, tires screeching, and the next moment, the same blue car sped past him, running over the stop sign.

He never even realized that Johnny had been abducted and he didn't think it was strange until Noreen called to ask for more information. Another man saw the car speeding by his house, but he described it as a two -tone silver and black car, not blue.

But given the time of morning, it's likely that the dim morning light affected his view of the car.

The boys had seen it up close. This witness saw it from his window.

I want to be very annoyed with the people who ignored the warning signs, but in all fairness, Paperboys had been delivering the news for years and no one had any problems before.

I'd have expected the lawyer to hang around after the blue car came around, the first time at least, given that he'd probably handled this kind of thing in his line of work before. But the 16 -year -old probably knew nothing else but the security that came from the time.

Kids today don't have that luxury, do they? Now a six -year -old would know better and raise the alarm. Shows you what the world's come to, doesn't it?

I mean, maybe that's why the police acted the way they did in the beginning. They didn't expect it to be anything serious.

But even then, I can't give the Times too much credit. They were nothing short of incompetent. And back then, the police were under no obligation to begin an investigation before 72 hours had passed.

Let me guess, just another runaway.

Yep, despite the fact that the dog and the red wagon were abandoned mid route and the many witnesses that Noreen had written down for them with their addresses and numbers included.

The responding officer made it quite clear that they thought the boy ran away. They took the statement and didn't come back for eight hours.

The Gosch's weren't going to sit on their hands all day.

Noreen single -handedly rang up the entire neighborhood and even friends who lived farther away.

and her search party scoured the entire neighborhood. searched the nearby river, abandoned houses, junkyards, and alleyways anywhere that they could possibly go. They looked, they called, and they asked.

When a detective arrived at three that afternoon, he made it no secret of the fact that if Johnny didn't run away, then the parents were to blame for whatever happened to him.

Every time the parents go through the ringer like this, it gets me so mad. All that time wasted putting already traumatized family members through hell when they could be out looking for leads. I actually agree with investigating the family first. Statistically speaking, children are more likely to be abducted and murdered by someone close to them.

I'm not saying it's got to be pleasant, but give the cops what they want, answer the questions, and get it over with so that they can move on from you and work on other avenues.

Clearing the parents, no matter how much you suspect them, doesn't explain why the detective wouldn't even take the photographs of Johnny that Noreen already put aside for them.

Actually, there was no investigation of the parents, just a few snide comments.

There was no file opened on Johnny, virtually no investigation, just no moves made to find him at all.

So you're telling me they took no steps in trying to even look for a lead for this missing little kid?

I'm not even kidding. It was the press who heard of the missing boy on the police scanners that got the picture out to the news.

When they turned up at Gosch's door, Noreen took the opportunity to get her son's name and face out there as far and as wide as she could.

Kid obviously got his smarts from his mom.

Check this out, the cops were furious that the press were now all over this. News of the missing paper boy was spreading across the state like wildfire and it was out to the entire country in just a few days. If they planned on writing this off as a runaway, well, there was no way the news, the public or the family was gonna let that happen now.

Noreen told the reporters about the witnesses, about the creepy policeman that had spoken to her son two days prior, and the police lackluster approach to the apparent abduction of her son.

She was sure that this was a planned abduction.

The flickering lights were a signal and the second man proved a coordinated operation. The cops were not happy about our outspokenness and they were about to get nasty.

First, they arrived at some of the other Paperboys houses. They asked them a few questions, not speaking to any of them for more than 15 minutes. And they didn't even have a notebook with them to write anything down. Then they began to interfere with the search parties.

A search party arrived at the gosh's house, giving them a disturbing update on the search at a local park. The Des Moines police department's chief, Orvale Cooney, arrived at the park very clearly intoxicated. He got up on a park bench and with a megaphone announced to the crowd of 20 people, you folks go on home. This kid's nothing but a damn runaway.

What the actual hell? Incompetence is one thing, but actively stopping people to look for a 12 year old is insane.

I don't think I've ever heard of a level of petty going on that low before.

Please tell me our girl gave them a run for their money. I have a feeling that Noreen didn't let this slide. Did you really think Noreen was going to go down without a fight?

She got in her car and stormed into the police station demanding to know why their searches had been forcibly stopped. Why was there no Bolo out for the car? Why had no one taken an official statement from the witnesses? And why was there no attempt to search for Johnny from the department at all?

They just informed her that not enough time had passed yet and that they did not feel it was urgent enough to do more than what they was doing at that time.

Johnny Gosch Part 1 (18:58)
This was a missing persons case, a child no less, and it definitely justified the FBI's involvement.

Again, they said it wasn't urgent enough to get the bureau involved. So Mama Bear went home and called the feds herself.

Good for her. Don't get too excited.

They said they'd look into it and that was it for now.

Noreen got off the call feeling like they weren't going to do anything either.

And if Des Moines Department didn't reach out to them and it didn't look like it was going to anytime soon, then it was unlikely they'd get involved.

After Noreen stormed into the station, Orvale Cooney blasted her on the news when the reporters cornered him, claiming that her insistence on getting the case spread as far and as wide as she could was interfering with their investigation. What investigation? Doesn't sound like they were doing much to me.

After that, Noreen found search and rescue canines that were willing to offer their services for free. Cooney personally stepped in to stop them from doing so, threatening to charge them with obstructing an investigation. Looking back, that entire police department was a hot mess.

Officers had complaints against him for police brutality.

The chief himself was accused of beating up a man at a bar. Des Moines Police Department was in serious need of an intervention and it was in no condition to investigate a child abduction anyways.

There's a lot about the department that we're going to get into, but for now, let's just say that the corruption goes deep. And it's thought that they were very intentionally trying to stymie any attempts to open an official investigation.

I have to agree that they're doing an awful lot to put a stop to a mother looking for her missing child. Going out of your way to stop volunteer searchers who were not doing anything other than walking through a public park is a little extreme. But what about the FBI? Did they ever get back to the Gosch's? You're not going to believe this. They did. Two agents went to the Gosch's residence only to tell the parents they would not be investigating Johnny's disappearance.

They said they didn't have enough sufficient evidence to classify this under a kidnapping, and they let slip that Chief Cooney didn't feel like the department needed assistance for the case.

I want to bang my head against this desk. How? How is screeching tires, strange men trying to corner boys, and an abandoned dog in the middle of doing a job that he was paid for, not enough evidence of an abduction? These poor parents must have been out of their minds by now. Well let me tell you, Noreen was relentless.

Thousands of people turned up to help with searches.

They kept it to the neighborhood and a few miles beyond, but without any leads or clues, they really didn't have any idea where else to look.

She did manage to make contact with the governor of Des Moines at that time, Robert Ray.

She wanted the city's helicopters to aid in the search as they had done for countless other missing persons in the past. But Ray told her that if she wanted that, she would need to pay the helicopters an hourly rate.

The governor is in on this too? Drunk, incompetent cops is one thing, but the FBI and the governor? I can see why you say this goes so deep.

While Noreen was despised by the police, she'd gotten used to the police cars finding excuses to pull her over or just to follow her around and make her feel so uncomfortable.

And even the media was starting to turn on her. The public felt that she wasn't emotional enough for a mother who was missing her child. But this woman isn't the kind of person to quake under the pressure.

Noreen was stoic. She was willing to knock on every door, take every chance in front of the camera to let more people know, and she damn well didn't have time to waste over tears if she were ever going to get Johnny back.

cry too much and you're putting up an act. Don't cry enough and you must be the one who did it. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Definitely something like that.

Then one day a police car follows her again and pulls her over.

Noreen expected another trumped up speeding ticket or something similar. This had been going on since the abduction, but Noreen was in for a shock.

Out got a man who introduced himself as the police chief of Dallas County, just next door to Des Moines.

He wanted to let Noreen know personally that his department sent every man they could to aid in the search on the day her son disappeared. And his department wasn't the only one who did. All of the surrounding counties offered up men and resources.

But when help arrived, Cooney sent them all away, telling them that Des Moines didn't need their help. This was just another runaway.

Noreen already suspected a cover -up, but she'd never been vocal about it. It was here that she decided that the world was free to think that she was crazy or guilty. She didn't care.

Not only did she need to find her son, she needed to make the world aware of the deeply corrupted police department that was supposed to keep their county safe. Noreen started keeping a notebook on her, writing down every single word spoken to her with the dates and times of those conversations.

People began driving by their houses shouting obscenities, calling them child killers.

The chief himself went to the gawsh's house to scream at Noreen for doing a press conference. After that, she began getting phone calls where a man would tell her over the phone that if she didn't stop talking to the press, then she'd be dead. This all happened in the six weeks after Johnny's disappearance.

Man, that's rough. Did this woman ever get any sleep at all? I highly doubt that. I bet she was fueled by love for her son and hate for the damn police.

Cooney called the family in one day, but he didn't have any news or evidence for them. He just wanted to tell Noreen that the Des Moines Police Department felt it was time to lay the case to rest. Or in his words, there's nothing coming in, it's time to put this case on the back burner. Noreen got them a private investigator and with his help in less than 48 hours,

They proved that the car was indeed blue and that in the opaque light of the morning, coupled with the street lights coloring, it would appear gray or black from afar.

And he got the attorney and the witness who saw the car from his window to work with the sketch artist. And that was the first time we got a glimpse of the men that abducted Johnny

Noreen took those sketches and circulated them on every news program and talk show that would have her. The PIs found another witness too. A

man who lived three or four blocks away from the abduction site recalled that he'd gotten up early on the morning of Johnny's disappearance.

In front of his house, he saw a van parked with its engine running. He found this unusual, so he kept an eye on the vehicle as he drank his coffee.

A two -tone blue car stopped next to the van and unloaded a bundle wrapped in what looked like a sheet into the van, and both cars drove off.

And before you ask, yes, that bundle was big enough to be Johnny. A man whose kid went to Johnny's school came forward with his own story.

He said he saw two men in a car taking pictures of a boy walking home from school. The man thought it looked like Johnny. This sighting took place two months before the disappearance

And this was corroborated by a woman who reported to the police that there were men taking pictures of school kids the same week that this man saw them.

The woman who called in even had a California license plate that she wrote down, but police never made a report

But police never made a report and she later threw the scrap of paper away.

This is going to come back as critical piece of information, isn't it? Another thing that could have blown the case wide open and it got lost because the police were corrupt.

yes, they dropped the ball big time.

Keep in mind the color of the car, the witness that saw men taking pictures, the suspicious van, and the transfer of what the private investigators in the Gosch's thought was Johnny wrapped in a sheet was not released to the police or FBI. If either of them were willing to open a case file for Johnny, they would have handed the information over, but no one ever did. So the family and the PI kept the information hidden from the public.

At least this way, they could have something to compare to all the hundreds of tips coming in. Noreen, never one to sit for too long, used the next two years to set up a foundation. With many other missing children's families, they founded the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Noreen went around the country to raise awareness, making no secret of the fact that she thought that Johnny and countless others were stolen only to be sold into human trafficking. This was an organized crime spree and she certainly didn't hide it that the police were in on it. She went to the Department of Justice with scores of parents behind her.

For those children whose cases were swept under the rug, kids that the FBI refused to investigate, and she demanded that the FBI's funding be cut down to fund a new department, one that was dedicated to missing and exploited children.

Less than a week after that speech, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children got their first $10 million from the Justice Department.

Then, in 1984, another paperboy went missing. Eugene Martin was 13 years old, and he was abducted shortly after he was seen speaking to a man in his mid -30s while he was folding up his newspapers that were about to go out to the residents. But the similarities don't stop there.

This also happened in a suburb of Des Moines, and only Eugene's bag, newspapers still inside, was found lying on the sidewalk.

The Gosch family were taking in all the tips because the police obviously couldn't be bothered to. Just two weeks before Eugene went missing, a call came in from a man who claimed to be a police informant. He didn't give his name, but he did say that another boy was going to go missing in the next two weeks, specifically in the second week of August.

Noreen tried to get it to the police department, but they refused to take the tip. Then she took it to another news station and they released it in a brief statement on TV.

The biggest difference between Eugene and Johnny was that the detective assigned to Eugene's case actually gave a crap. Detective James Rowley followed tips and leads well into his retirement, and he had Eugene's missing poster hanging in his garage until his dying day.

Rowley got as much awareness of Eugene's case out to the world as he could, and it didn't take the press or the public long to come

It didn't

Two preteen girls were kidnapped, sold into trafficking, and taken all the way to Omaha, Nebraska before they were found. All of these kids, Eugene included, came from Des Moines. And this upswing happened in the two weeks since the call from the anonymous tipster had come in.

How is this still not a bigger deal? I've seen Johnny's story for years now, we've heard about the drunk police and the terrible investigative work, but it's always sort of written off as an example of how incompetent the police were back in the day, and how safe people believed themselves to be. And if by some miracle a child traffic hinger comes up, it's like this outrageous conspiracy theory.

Anyone with half a brain can tell that there is a very, very clear case of organized crime going on.

At the very least one where the authorities were paid off, that's if they weren't a part of this whole thing themselves. There is no way that this doesn't set off long bells.

Well, Rowley at least got enough traction for Eugene and by association, Johnny's case too, that this was when the milk carton posters began to circulate.

The idea was so popular and successful that the faces of missing children began to appear on pizza boxes, plastic grocery bags, and flyers were added to the mailboxes.

The FBI sent 22 agents this time. They searched with helicopters. They got search parties out into surrounding areas and Eugene got all of the support that Johnny never did.

With this massive amount of support and everyone now operating under the assumption that the cases were connected, Noreen filed a lawsuit for $10 million against the police department, specifically naming the chief as negligent.

Cooney resigned overnight and a new chief was appointed.

Finally some good news! This lady's got guts! She deserves a movie.

Well, that's the end of the good news, I'm afraid. Noreen found a loophole to get the FBI involved.

If she could get the new senator to make a request directly, the FBI had to at least open a report on the case. So that's exactly what she did.

The new senator didn't charge her the $800 per hour for a search and rescue operation. He had none of the previous people's prejudices against Noreen.

and the FBI were outraged that she had the nerve to force their hand.

Two new agents marched to meet Noreen and they told her that she might want to consider having another baby.

That way she could keep herself occupied with a new obsession rather than make trouble for everyone she could.

You're not serious. Can you imagine if this happened today?

Who says it isn't happening today? I wouldn't put it past them. But now we have cell phones and nanny cams. If Noreen had that at her disposal, guarantee that she'd be recording her every move in interaction. But she didn't. Noreen was on her own. I'm astounded that she's still alive, honestly.

Probably because she made sure the public knew about every threat in every conversation she'd ever had with the authorities.

If anything happened to her, there would be a whole nation demanding answers of the Des Moines Department

That would prove that this wasn't some crackpot conspiracy.

I'd like to think that too, but honestly, Noreen was working so fast and so hard. I don't think anyone had any more time to react except out of anger and probably too focused on covering their own tracks that she never gave them a chance to catch up to her.

And before they knew it, she was in front of the Department of Justice giving out names and numbers.

The names and the harassment attached to those names were enough to put the entire Des Moines Police Department on full blast, both legally and from the media.

If they were even thinking about getting revenge now, they wouldn't have any time, given the scrutiny that they were under.

It's also thanks to Noreen that we have the Johnny Gosch bill that forces law enforcement to start searching for any missing child, no matter what the circumstances are. The 72 hour waiting time was officially not in effect when it comes to kids.

So she extended the fight for her son's case to every child victim in America?

I don't think she's gotten nearly enough praise for what she managed to accomplish, and how many kids she undoubtedly saved with her work.

Trust me, she'll go on and do a lot more, but I'm afraid we'll have to get to those accomplishments and literal battles in the next episode. Because there are just too many bombshells and life -changing discoveries yet to come in Noreen's fight to find the truth.

This case is more than 40 years old and every single year another witness, another discovery, and another threat rears its head.

Man, this case has been quite the ride already.

Now all we have to do is keep ourselves from googling the case until the next episode.

I personally promise you it will be worth it.

This one's got my head spinning already.

is going to go supersonic by the time we reach the end. I can guarantee that.

But in the meantime, to my co -hosts and our listeners, we'll meet back here next time to hear the rest of the Gosch's family's journey to uncover the truth of what happened to their youngest son.

Subscribe, share and tune in next week for part two. Bree and I will be waiting on the edge of our seats with the rest of you.

Thank you for joining me, my PICs and we will see you next time with more True Crime.