The Disappearance of Johnny Gosch Part 2

Welcome to the P.I.C. True Crime Podcast, where co-hosts Heather, Bree, and Mike delve into some of the darkest and most disturbing true crime cases. In this gripping series, we explore the infamous disappearance of Johnny Gosch, a case that shook the nation and uncovered a web of corruption, cover-ups, and unspeakable crimes.

Join us as we unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding Johnny's abduction, the relentless quest of his mother, Noreen Gosch, for justice, and the horrifying revelations that followed. From suspicious police behavior to high-profile involvement, we leave no stone unturned in our investigation of this 40-year-old mystery.

In each episode, we provide detailed analyses, eye-opening theories, and the latest updates on the case, all while paying homage to the bravery of those fighting for the truth. If you’re a fan of deep dives into true crime, this podcast is for you.

Subscribe, share, and tune in weekly as we navigate the complexities of one of America’s most haunting unsolved cases. The truth is out there, and together, we will uncover it.

Transcript

Johnny Gosch 2 (00:00)
Welcome back to the PIC True Crime Podcast. I'm Heather. I'm Bree And I'm Mike. And this will be part two of the Johnny Gosch disappearance. The last time we sat down, we heard about a boy who vanished into thin air one Sunday morning back in 1982. The sightings of strange men lurking around, unfamiliar cars and odd phone calls in the night were happening long before Johnny went missing.

But it's the absolute insistence of the police to avoid opening a case on the 12 -year -old that was the most frustrating and even more suspicious than the guys taking photos of school kids walking home from school. The Des Moines Police Department was corrupt, rotten to the core, and if you can believe it, their deplorable behavior towards the Gosch family is about to get even worse.

FBI are going to prove to be even less helpful than the boys in blue.

Another paperboy went missing along with a slew of other children and Noreen Gosch Johnny's desperately searching mother, begins to prove that she's not just a relentless and determined force to be reckoned with.

made it clear that not even the police could scare her off from finding out what happened to her boy. And she was fighting tooth and nail for answers. She was changing the legal system as we know it. Not just for her Johnny, but for every kid in America who's ever gone missing. Noreen Gosch is without a doubt one of the most impressive women we've ever had the chance to cover. She truly is a real life hero.

haven't heard the first installment of the Johnny Gosch case, please go listen to part 1 first.

This is very, very complicated case and you really want to have all the details in order before going any further.

us when we say mom and I have been driving ourselves up the wall with the first three years after Johnny went missing and we still have 39 more years to go. If that was the start, I'm a little scared of what's in store for us.

I'm guessing we've barely scratched the surface of this mystery.

Johnny Gosch 2 (02:10)
You know, I've come with the receipts and theories that'll make your hair curl. It's going to get even crazier.

Get ready for cover -ups, death threats, more witnesses, and bizarre clues that lead to truths that the world probably still isn't ready to admit is happening. As excited as I am to tell you about all of it, I'm also terrified.

Because If what Noreen says is true, then there is an underbelly in the USA that's darker and goes deeper than we can ever fathom.

An evil that is so horrible that I don't even know if I can fully wrap my head around it. So let's get into it.

kicking off from when Noreen changed the rules on a federal level, making sure that missing children can and must be searched for at the moment they go missing. No more 72 -hour window before authorities are forced to act.

any child, no matter what the circumstances, is considered an emergency situation.

Even after glaringly obvious evidence that her son was abducted, the Des Moines Police Department insisted that Johnny was just another runaway. And even those that were willing to volunteer their help and services were actively shown the door by the very people who were supposed to be doing the investigation.

This is starting to look more and more like a cover up. There's still no sign of 12 year old Johnny, nor any suspects. Just a whole lot of suspicious characters with no names and a police department and the FBI refusing to do anything about it.

In the next few years, a lot of things happened.

In 1985, three years after Johnny's disappearance and a year after Eugene's abduction, a woman received a dollar bill in change after she made a purchase at a gas station. On the bill, there was a note that said, I am alive and it was signed Johnny Gosch.

No one's been able to trace the bill and it's possible that it's just a stupid prank. And now, are you ready for some real crazy?

Hasn't this been crazy enough already? I mean, I'm pulling my hair over here.

With the new chief in place, the police weren't as hateful as they were before.

Look, Noreen wasn't exactly the department's favorite buddy, but the harassment and the tails that she had at least stopped.

A deputy gave Noreen a call one day and he said that he received a call from an informant from inside one of Iowa's biggest crime syndicate rings.

Iowa's got crime lords and syndicates. I know the Italian mob bosses were taken out around the 70s and 80s. But don't tell me they got a demotion so bad that they ended up in Iowa. Iowa's actually got a huge violent crime rate, especially given how small the population is compared to other US states.

400 out of every 100 ,000 people were arrested for a violent offense in 2023. Compare that to Florida's 462 people per 100 ,000.

I think that might be the most surprising fact I've heard in this entire case. Who thought Iowa would have it in them to have some street cred?

Sorry, go on. The deputy calls Noreen

Anyway, this informant said that there was a contract out on Noreen's head. Someone was going to lure her out of the state with promises of good or evidence surrounding her son's disappearance and then they were going to kill her.

The deputy knew the informant and trusted his information. Andy asked Noreen that if she got a call to let him know.

Hmm, I don't know how I feel about trusting the cops after the terrible things they did. Noreen had feared for her life from them before. Why trust them now?

Well, that was because she had agreed to keep in touch with him only if he got the FBI on board. Despite their reluctance to take the case before, she knew that if she can get federal resources, the case might finally get some proper traction. And did he?

yes, the deputy was adamant that this was legit and he was right to be nervous. Two days later, Noreen got a call at five in the morning.

A man on the other end promised to give her proof of her son's whereabouts.

She was to catch a flight to Kansas City, take another flight from there to Oklahoma, and once there she was told to book into a specific hotel using her name. Someone was going to give her a call there and take her to some unspecified location. Don't tell me she went through with it.

If she did, she'd be dead right now. The FBI wanted her to go unarmed and accompanied by an agent posing as her husband. But that deputy stood his ground. He was sure that if Noreen got on that plane, she was never coming back.

and Noreen thankfully trusted his judgment.

So far, he was the only one in the Des Moine department who had given her any help at all.

The FBI sent an agent who looked like Noreen instead. The agent followed the man into a remote area and just as he tried to kill her, he was arrested. It was indeed a hit. The deputy was right.

He's in jail, but no information about who hired him, who he was connected to, or even his name has been released. Cover up?

It doesn't look like it. He just isn't talking.

Just weeks after this assassination attempt, another paperboy named Mark Allen goes missing. Same circumstances, and he's never been found either.

That year, the huge Franklin cover -up of 1986 began to unravel. This is a whole can of worms on its own.

To make things simple, 80 individuals came forward, some of them still underage.

They all claimed to have been sold into a pedophile ring.

A lot of the adults who had aged out of the ring became involved in the, shall we say, criminalities of the groups themselves.

Johnny Gosch 2 (07:51)
Very high profile names were named and important figures were directly implicated. Judges, senators, head of police, you get the idea. Well, we know for certain that this definitely happened. There's no question about it, but it's hard to say how big it really was.

One of these witnesses came forward saying they had information about Johnny Gosch.

Bonacci was a victim himself, and when he got too old for the elite clientele, he became a scout of sorts.

luring children into the abuse or kidnapping them outright.

But Bonnoci was in jail for defamation, since he named police chiefs and senators in his statement.

To make matters worse, he also had serious mental health problems, namely multiple personality disorder and possibly schizophrenia. Bonacci wasn't exactly a reliable informant, but Noreen humored him anyways.

turned away a tip or a witness before, no matter how insane it sounded, and she wasn't gonna start now. Bonacci was in jail for a few years before Noreen went to see him in 1991.

How reliable is his testimony, you know, given his psychiatric conditions?

multiple personality disorders occur only if an individual suffered early childhood trauma. His many, many years of abuse in this ring started when he was still a toddler.

the specific condition he had actually gave credence to his claims.

And Bonacci knew things that Noreen and her PI had uncovered way back in the first year after Johnny's disappearance. Information that no one else knew, not even the police.

He said that he and another man followed Johnny for two months before kidnapping him. They took pictures of him walking home from school.

That's consistent with the witness that the PI talked to back then and the license plate number that the woman threw in the garbage. I mean, didn't I tell you that they dropped the ball big time? Bonacci had a lot more details in store for Noreen, too. He described the family home to a T.

He said they took pictures of several kids, but Johnny's picture was the one that caught the client's eyes, and they were under explicit instructions to kidnap Johnny and no one else.

Bonacci was lying in the backseat of the blue car, and when the driver flickered the dome lights three times, another accomplice walked out from between the houses.

When Johnny turned the corner, the blue car was already waiting on that street and then he was shoved into the backseat.

Bonacci then put a rag of chloroform over the boy's mouth until he was unconscious. They wrapped Johnny in a sheet or a rag of some kind and transferred him into a van that was parked a few blocks away.

Bonacci also admitted that he was the first one to abuse Johnny, even before he was delivered to the client.

He knew about the scar on Johnny's leg and the stammer he got into when he got nervous. Bonacci said they dyed his hair and kept him drugged for two weeks in a barn until the client paid them.

He described Johnny's abuse those first few days of his captivity in detail and he was graphic about it.

Well, I don't really want to get into it. If you don't mind, it's not pleasant.

He did say that he was forced to do it under a threat of death.

don't think I want to hear it to be honest, I think we have enough information to know what he was talking about. But what I do want to know is, you said 80 victims came forward. What happened to the names they disclosed? Was anyone brought to justice?

Franklin cover -up is a whole other story for another day. But let's just say one or two people were taken to court for fraud and embezzlement, that sort of thing, but none of them were investigated for human trafficking, child abuse, or any claims that the victims made.

but a few of the victims themselves were put in prison for defamation and whatever else could be pinned on them.

If their stories are true, and I believe they are, then they were groomed and psychologically destroyed from such a young age that by the time they, to use their words, aged out, they were sucked into doing the dirty work for all these elites committing all sorts of crimes for them.

and were predators themselves and not always because they were given a choice in the matter.

Bonacci was only 18 years old when Johnny was taken, and by then he was broken human being and knee deep in all the illegal things that the ring did.

So the ones who could talk, the victims, were incriminated and silenced? That's another level of sick.

And you never hear of it. I've never heard about the Franklin cover -up till today. The information sure is out there, but it gets suppressed for long enough until people just start forgetting it ever happened. And if it happened back then, then it's happening now. But if you bring it up, it's made to look like such a ridiculous tall tale that you might as well be claiming that there were purple people living in your closet.

elites, illuminati, mass government experiments on the public, and pedophile rings run by the elites. When does a theory go from plausible to laughable?

to a case like Johnny's, it's hard to deny that the things labeled as conspiracy theories all probably have some grain of truth to them. The Franklin cover -up certainly ended up being very, very real. With all of this, did they finally look into Johnny's case properly?

Nope. Bonnaci was not a credible witness, no matter how many things he got right. And the chief at the time said, and I quote, we don't want to reinvent the wheel. Whatever the hell that's supposed to mean.

But Noreen once again did her homework and she followed up on every single thing that Bonacci had to say. For one, they tracked down the barn. It was exactly where he said it would be.

and then they followed up on some of the names of the other boys he gave them. They all were either missing or they were runaways. One of those runaway boys was a teenager that was not reported as missing because of his frequent runaways.

just gave up on filing police reports after a while.

Bonacci said that this kid was in Johnny's company for a while and that the two of them and another boy attempted then escape.

They ran for it, stole the car and stayed over at the habitual runaways father's house for a few days before moving on.

The father was tracked down and he confirmed that the three young men, his son among them, did show up at his doorstep one night.

One of the boys had hair that was very clearly dyed an unnatural shade of black and he was positive it was Johnny. Johnny would have been around 18 or 19 years old at that time.

Now Bonacci didn't know if they managed to get away or if the ring caught up to them, but he never saw or heard from Johnny after that.

Did Johnny manage to escape for good or did the Ring find them?

The escape is going to be important later. Remember, Noreen has a talent for leaving no stone unturned.

But let's get back to Bonacci He took the police to a house in the middle of nowhere and he said he was kept there when he was a child and later brought other kids there himself.

Underneath the house, an entire new floor was dug out and held up by wooden poles completely hidden from the outside.

know it was there, no one could find it.

On the wood poles, the scores of children kept there over the years had carved out their names and initials.

And even with all of this, there still weren't any moves being made to even open a report or begin an investigation. And the FBI just point blank refused to answer any questions about it. Again, citing Bonacci's questionable mental state and his long criminal record.

just no happy ending to any of this at all. Every time you think it's going to go somewhere, your hopes get crushed to smithereens.

Moving on, after Bonacci had spoken to Noreen and answered all of her questions, she would spend the next few years hunting down and proving every single one of his claims.

hated Bonnaci for what he had done to her son and she had to remind herself constantly that he was a victim of all this too.

We're not done with Bonacci yet. He's going to get a little more time in the limelight later.

Noreen and John got divorced in 1994. The relationship had become violent and by the time John moved out, he had virtually withdrawn from the world.

Noreen was always the spearhead of it all, but John, who had started out at least supporting her in the background, had completely taken himself out of the investigation.

really fault him for being exhausted. We've been lamenting about how much Noreen had to deal with, but it was his son too. And all the stress of it all? I'm not surprised that things fell apart.

is putting it lightly. Noreen claims that the abuse got so extreme that she thought he would kill her one day.

and outbursts were so bad that she couldn't leave the house because of the bruises, and she said he even broke bones.

Okay, nevermind, I don't feel sorry for him anymore. And I believe Noreen, as insane as everything sounds, everything she's said so far has been backed up by witnesses and documentation. I haven't heard of one occasion where there wasn't at least some proof of her claims.

to agree, Noreen, unlike the police department, has always been an open book, even if it meant putting a target on her own back. I get the feeling she was willing to die to get her son and the truth out.

said something in an interview one time that really hit me hard and I think that I'd feel the same way. They made a mistake. They took the wrong kid. They took my kid. And I'm not like others. I'm not going to lie down and let it die. That hits hard when you know what kind of woman Noreen is.

Noreen made a TV appearance in 1997. This time she asked for a favor from the TV network so that she could get a message out to Johnny just in case he was watching.

She wanted to tell Johnny that she'd moved from their home after the divorce.

name was still the same and if he wanted to reach her, all he had to do was look in the phone book for her number and address.

she said she loved him and it didn't matter what his captors had made him do, what felonies they forced him to commit, she will always love him and nothing was gonna change that.

months later, there was a knock on Noreen's door and outside stood two young men. One of them was unmistakably her son. Hold the phone. Johnny got away? He actually escaped? He's alive?

on, a lot of things were said that night that we need to get into.

for the first time, we only have Noreen's words to go by. No witnesses, no recordings, just her words.

say why he hadn't come home when he'd got away? I said, hold on. I know you're a little excited. Can you blame us? No, I can't for a minute. I thought him showing up would mean the end of all of this. But no.

Johnny had a lot to say and all of it confirmed what Bonacci had said five years before. He was branded on his shoulder, he'd been sold and used and sold again and again and again.

who had taken him made sure that all of their captives were implicated in some kind of criminal act and they'd made them believe that if they ever tried to go for help that they'd get arrested.

not to believe them. Look at what happened to Bonacci.

and the young man with him escaped like Bonacci said they did. He confirmed how he had been abducted and kept in the barn for two weeks after he was taken.

when they escaped when Johnny was 18, they lived like vagabonds, living hand to mouth with no social security, IDs, or driver's license.

to stay incognito because they were certain that if they made a blip on the radar, that people in high places would go out of their way to silence them.

so they stayed on native reservations.

fall under their own sovereign state, so their laws and the system they go through is mostly separate from the state.

anyone got suspicious or asked too many questions, they'd move on to the next reservation.

He couldn't come back home. He couldn't risk coming out in the open. At best, he'd go to jail, but more unlikely, he'd be killed. He confirmed some things Noreen already suspected. Noreen had collected quite a lot of informants over the years.

who are in the business of trafficking kids, police officers who thought there was a cover -up going on, even the mob and kids who had escaped or gotten out of it.

the kids were being moved across state lines, how they were being sold, and what the kidnappers were doing to threaten them into silence. Bonnaci and Johnny were telling exactly the same story that their informants were.

his mother not to tell anyone that he had been there or that he was even alive.

her to not stop her mission of putting these predators behind bars. He believed she could do it. He really did.

36 years old by that time and Noreen kept her promise for two years.

1999, Bonacci sued the people who had taken him as a child. The man he was taking to court was named Larry King.

one of those rabbit holes that's tied into the Franklin cover up.

clubs that cater to pedophiles and he was pretty well connected to the Washington suits.

was called to the stand to prove that despite his mental health conditions, he was telling the truth. Just before the trial began, Noreen got a phone call from the Des Moines Police Department detective. no, what do they want now?

they were now on their third police chief since 1982, so the department didn't look anything like it did back in the day.

detective, who Noreen hadn't even met before, was disturbed by the way the new chief had told the department when news of Bonacci's trial came to light.

them that under no circumstances were they give Noreen any help if she contacted them.

as he was concerned, there was no case and they were not to be associated with anything involving Johnny or Noreen Gosch.

heavily implied that there were higher ups involved in this trafficking ring or cover up or whatever it was, they were not going to allow any of her findings to be investigated.

too powerful for a nobody like him and Noreen to stand a chance against. Noreen did not back out of testifying on the Bonnaci case.

the closest anyone had ever gotten to taking any of the traffickers to face justice. She couldn't let this chance go to waste, not after all of these years of fighting tooth and nail.

judge asked Noreen on the stand if she'd ever seen Johnny, she did not lie on her oath. She admitted that he had visited her at the residence two years before.

was another more disturbing bombshell that dropped during these proceedings.

When asked how Bonnaci and his accomplices knew that Johnny would be alone on that particular day when his father always accompanied him on his paper route, Bonnaci said that someone called John Gosch the night before at one in the morning and arranged with him that Johnny would go without him.

Well, I didn't see that one coming.

to interject here. I don't want to be on the cop side here. Did everything he said check out? Or were there at least some parts that couldn't be proven? Like, I realize that he might have truly believed some things happened, but given what had been done to him and how fractured his mind was by that time, is it possible that he could have been deluded?

possible. He said that Johnny visited him throughout the years and that's highly unlikely.

His conditions were so severe that I honestly don't think that prison was the right place for him.

He did terrible things. Of that there is no doubt. But he was deeply mentally unstable man and it would have been better for him to be under constant psychiatric help.

say his mind was fragile is an understatement.

he could have been mistaken about the father.

have, but Noreen doesn't believe that.

was absent to say the least.

he was always in the picture or in the background of the press conferences, but he never did anything to look for his son except look pretty for the press.

and no one even knows what's happened to him after the Larry King vs. Bonacci trial, so we can't ask him.

the trial wrapped up, John left Des Moines and just disappeared.

once before Bonacci's statement did Noreen ever suspect her ex -husband of anything nefarious, nor did she blame him for not being with Johnny that day. But that testimony changed everything.

had yet to lie to her about anything, so why would he start now?

He had never got anything out of talking to her. Not a reduced sentence, not a transfer to a better prison. He had absolutely nothing to gain from talking to her other than putting his conscience to rest.

and every single one of his claims could be proven. He'd always told the truth, even if it made him a target in prison for harming children. So if anything, telling the truth made his life harder.

According to Bonacci and a photographer that Larry King hired to photograph boys at the club he owned, they both seen John Gosch attending the parties that were hosted for men who were looking to, let's just say, hire a child for the evening.

none of this has been proven with any evidence other than a mentally unstable man and a photographer who was proven to have taken inappropriate pictures of kids.

I do have to point out that neither of them had anything to gain from pulling John into this.

If anything, he did all of the guilty parties a favor by beating the living daylights out of the woman who was giving them a run for their money.

sounds farfetched, but man, I think you have to decide whether you believe Bonacci completely or not at all.

It's just hard to wrap my head around a parent possibly selling their own kid.

That's what makes a lot of this so impossible to swallow. It's just outrageous.

The judge ruled that Bonacci was telling the truth. But for some reason, the judge sealed all of the files related to the proceedings. No one can access it, and we only have the accounts from the people who were present during the proceedings.

But why? Why bother with all that just to seal it?

Everything here is a cover -up or a direct attempt to make things more difficult.

It did make things difficult for Noreen

because she took that ruling and went to the Des Moines Police Department again. With her son's information correlating with Bonnaci's, who was proven on a federal level to have told the truth, well, no one could deny that there was enough to finally open a case. Can you guess what they said? I won't put my money on a yes. If you did, you would have lost.

They refused Noreen again, and the FBI were just giving crickets like they always did. Before we get any further, there were many names of judges, senators, and Washington suits named during these trials by Bonacci, the other witnesses, and that Noreen collected through her informants.

intentionally avoided name and name since none except Larry King have ever been proven to be guilty of anything.

As for John Gosch, witnesses placed him in the company of Larry King at these clubs under oath in federal court.

were people who have claimed to have seen John with a woman who looked like Noreen at some of these hearings with Larry King and even visit Bonacci before Noreen ever spoke to him.

is adamant that it wasn't her and that she identified the woman as a PI who was hired to pose as her.

What John had to gain from this is a little unclear. But there were too many people who said that Noreen, or a woman who looked remarkably like her, came to see them with John for us not to mention it.

The woman never said much and John did all of the talking, mostly wanting to know what anyone who had any connection to Bonacci King trial knew about the case.

It looks like he was fishing to see how much he'd be implicated.

And when the trial came to a close, he skipped town and no one can find him to ask him why. In 2013, a sex trafficking ring right in Des Moines was shut down. 103 children were freed and a whole bunch of people were arrested.

And

we have this huge case that should be big enough to go down in the history books. I mean, more than a hundred kids stolen in traffic. That's a massive win, but I've never even heard of it.

Before this case, it was news to me too. This has to have been intentionally suppressed.

Johnny Gosch 2 (28:59)
At the time it made its rounds in the papers, but honestly, it's like it just sort of fizzled out and the only one ever bringing it up is Noreen.

and she gets heat for it every time. She's found blow up dolls with bullet holes in their head left at her front door. She gets threatening phone calls every few weeks and there have been photos left on her doormat of children bound in gags.

He even has a brand mark on his shoulder. But when police were told to look into it, they claimed that they had identified the boys and it was a prank played between friends to see who could escape the ropes and gags first.

How the pictures, which according to the police were taken in 1977, ended up at Noreen's door in the 2000s is a mystery.

The detectives have never disclosed who the children that they supposedly identified even were or how they found them. Noreen believes without a shadow of a doubt that Johnny was one of the boys in the

She feels that he's still alive out there.

And unless she's put under oath again, she won't tell us whether or not he's ever reached out to her again. But given that she's probably always being watched, it's probably safer if he doesn't contact her. Bonacci got out of jail and he even got married and had two kids.

His mental health actually got better over the years and he learned how to manage it better. He died at the age of 56 of natural causes.

He and Noreen did meet up a few times more and she said that he was sure that he had been followed too. But he was afraid to be too vocal about it since the world already thought he was insane.

And Noreen, well, she's still out there fighting the good fight, collecting information that will undoubtedly never be taken by the police or the FBI.

she and everyone who's ever looked into this case believes that this is a massive cover -up and no matter what evidence comes up, it will be buried and it will be avoided because there are too many powerful people who could be implicated if the truth were ever revealed.

And now we reach the 42nd anniversary of Johnny's disappearance, and I hate to say it, but I feel we're farther away from the truth than ever before.

We know what probably happened to him and that some pretty important people were involved, but who they were and how high up it goes, how many kids are stolen to be trafficked every time it looks like we're getting somewhere. Then we end up with more questions. I have my theories.

but I'd like to hear yours first.

Let's start from the top. The multiple witnesses that stretched two months before the kidnapping, the dome light signal, multiple kidnappers. Well, this is coordinated and very well planned out.

When so many people are working together and taking so much time with stalking a child before taking him, it just has to be bigger than cases like these normally are. A lone abductor would have killed Johnny after he was done with him, and we'd have found a body. So, yes, I can definitely believe an organization, or as you put it, a trafficking ring, was behind it. It went too smoothly for it to have been done by a lone individual.

The department and the FBI were actively lying to stall the investigation. I believe Noreen's accounts about their harassment and there are no active files on Johnny being a victim. He's still officially a runaway. I can't see them doing what they did unless they were some part of it. And there's too many children going missing in that timeframe in exactly the same area. Des Moines was being targeted.

The ring that was busted in 2013 proves that. So does the Franklin cover -up. And if the Franklin cover -up is anything to go by, then it's all connected to each other. And there are some pretty powerful people calling shots.

I'm in two minds about Bonacci. I believe he's telling the truth or what he thinks is the truth. Most of it probably is, but given his condition, there may be some false memories or warped recollections of past events, but too much of what he said checked out. So I feel like most of it is true, or at least some version of the truth.

The dad? Well, John Sr. bugs me. My natural instincts make it hard to believe that you can give up your own child. But the reality is, some people are sick in the head, and I have to accept that. If John is guilty of something, it can be one of two things.

One, he could have attended these clubs, in which case the ring would have had evidence of him engaging with kids.

The Franklin cover -up had a lot of this come out during those investigations. And the kids themselves also stated that there were pictures of grown men that were engaging with minors. These pictures were then used to keep the ones who used those services quiet and to force them to pull some strings for them to keep authorities off their tails. Second, he could have been laundering money or some other criminal venture. King was involved in a lot of financial crimes. Either way, both options

place him with King and maybe he owed them money or something else of the sort and they took his son as collateral. If he said anything or refused them, they'd destroy his reputation and probably land him in jail for it.

I agree with it being a planned attack,

But I think the police were paid off to stop Noreen, and the FBI were ordered by an official up ahead not to take the case. I don't think any of the departments had anything to do with it, besides the policemen talking to Johnny at the game, there isn't any evidence to connect them physically to the disappearing children, except that they didn't investigate them. I think they knew what was going on, and that they were paid off to look the other way.

When it comes to the dad, I have no trouble believing that he is capable of putting his own kid up for slaughter to protect

If he had any business with King, whether that involved kids or shady business deals, he was a criminal. And that's enough for me to believe he was capable. Besides, he beat up his wife and didn't do anything to look for his son. And when things got hot, he got the hell out of Dodge as fast as he could. He is guilty of something.

And Noreen, do you think she was right about everything?

I think it's easy to get sucked into believing anything, even if there's no evidence to back it up.

because you're desperate to believe that your child is alive. But I don't think Noreen was prone to wearing rose -tinted glasses like that. She's a hard woman and she put herself in enough risky situations and listened to enough people to know the difference between a made -up story and the real thing. Besides, she never even talks about theories or possibilities unless she has factual evidence to back it up.

Enough people have witnessed the harassment, heard the threatening phone calls, seen the pictures and the dolls with bullets in their heads to know she's not making things up. I think she's legitimate.

I do too, and if she has a theory, even just a personal opinion, I'd put money on her being right. She's been knee deep in this world of trafficking for 40 years now. You don't spend that much time surrounded by these kinds of horrors without getting cynical about every tip that comes in. I have a feeling that she's more logical than all of us. She has to be. And no one's ever been able to prove any of her evidence as false.

Everything checks out except the dollar bill and Johnny's visit.

It's such a horrible thought that it just has to be coming from an insane lady. That's what we tell ourselves so we can sleep better at night, isn't it? But what if it's real? All of it.

No, if Noreen wanted to get attention, she could have claimed her son was abducted by aliens. She put herself in the line of fire for a reason, because she knows it's all true. And it's about time we all admit to ourselves too. There's a very dark underbelly to the world, and as unpleasant as it is to think about, sometimes you just have to accept that it's true,

and that there are very few people brave enough to do what Noreen is trying to accomplish.

And what about Johnny? Do you think he's really alive?

Why would she lie about that? She waited long enough to be sure that he'd moved on from wherever he was hiding out. If she weren't under oath, we probably wouldn't have known about it.

There are hundreds of places he could be, and he's obviously kept himself hidden for this long, so we can only assume he's still out there.

I just hope he checks in once in a while. After the hell Noreen's been through, she deserves to know that the son she's been fighting so hard for is alright. And he's been through even worse. He deserves to be reminded that there's someone out there who loves him unconditionally as she does. I don't blame him for staying hidden. Besides the target on his head, he's probably as broken as Bonacci. I doubt anyone could live a normal life after living through what they did.

But I need to believe, I need to believe he's all right. This case is just too damn depressing for him not to be.

That's the thing, all of this is so dark and inconceivably evil that it's hard not to need some glimmer of hope to hold onto.

And you dad, you've been through the interviews and the paperwork. What do you think?

I'll tell you this, think Noreen's the real deal.

There's no blind belief or naivety with her. She's gotten hard throughout the years, man. Very hard. You can hear it in her voice. She's accepted the truth for what it is. It's like listening to somebody who's lived through a war.

And there are two ways you can come out of that.

Either you fall apart like Bonacci did when your brain splinters into a million pieces to deal with the trauma. You see that a lot with our war veterans. Or you build a wall and deal with it all.

A lot of your humanity gets put to the side because humans weren't made to deal with all that stress.

and it's the best coping mechanism you have at hand.

She's a stickler for the details. If there isn't evidence or at least a corroborating witness to back it up, then she's not talking about it. The only thing they can't be backed up by something is Johnny's visit.

And just like Bonacci, Noreen's never lied. Or at least I don't believe they have. So why lie about that?

For this being a cover up, I've read into the Franklin cover up a little, and it's clear that the missing paper boys, the Des Moines trafficking bust of 2013, and the Franklin case are all connected.

And given the amount of witnesses and investigators that have died suspiciously or simply disappeared, I don't have a shadow of a doubt that this is a government level, elite run, major syndicate all around trafficking children. And it's been going on for decades and it's still going on today.

Like Heather said, the father irks me. I don't know what to make of it. He was snooping for information going so far as to hire a woman to pose as Noreen

And according to dozens of witnesses, he knew King. We know King's a scumbag and that he keeps evidence of people with kids to extort and threaten them. That's been proven.

I could have written it off as John having some involvement with money laundering, drugs, or something else.

But packing up and disappearing into thin air tells me he knows how to stay undetected and that he's got something to hide.

If people were accusing me of selling my kid, I'd go to jail for the rest of my life if that meant clearing my name. He knows something, or his actions says he does anyway.

But one thing I am sure of is that the police and the FBI did everything in their power to stop Johnny's disappearance from being investigated. And they wouldn't have been able to do it without the help from higher up.

not with the pressure from the media and the public.

The FBI especially does not like bad press, and they'll push themselves into an investigation without invitation just to save face.

Why so adamant not to investigate a child's kidnapping that was such a big deal that he ended up on a milk carton, even when the world was begging them to do so?

Bree brought up a good point that I hadn't considered before.

I think she's right that the cops were pretty corrupt, making them easy to pay off, and the feds were probably told from the director or someone high up to stay away. So they probably weren't involved directly, only as a paid protection.

The evidence only suggests that they were slimeballs, not

harassing a grieving and desperate mother is pretty predatory in my opinion.

As for Johnny's case file still being a listed runaway and not an ongoing case, that's proof enough that this is still an ongoing issue. The bust of 2013 was probably just the save face. I'm sure that it's much, much bigger than that.

So we're all in agreement. Was Johnny abducted? Yes. Was the father involved in some way? Probably.

Where Noreen and Bonnaci telling the truth? Almost certainly. And was there a human trafficking ring catered toward pedophiles operating in the eighties and probably still today? Definitely.

And most terrifying of all, the people in charge are a part of it all. Does that about sum it all up?

It sounds even worse when you say it like that, but yes. I might have my misgivings about how much Bonacci got right, but I think he was truthful and most of his information was accurate and real, as much as I hate to admit that.

I'm gutted that I can't say there were any other rest besides Larry King. There's no real end to this. I love a good mystery more than anyone, but this one, still up in the air like this, it breaks my heart. Both for Johnny and Noreen.

and even for Bonacci.

They've all suffered more than any human should. They drive justice and answers and peace.

It's all so unfair. I feel like the only winners are the people getting away with all of it.

And as for you, Dad, you've achieved one thing at least. You've given us nightmares for the next few days.

So while we power through a few sleepless nights after all that, for everyone at home, hug your babies extra tight tonight. I know we will. See you next week with another deep dive into the world of true crime.

Thank you for joining me and my PICs. Remember to subscribe and share. And we will see you next time with more True Crime.