Johnny Gosch missing 34 years

At the request of Brittany K., I am writing about John David Gosch on the 34th anniversary of his disappearance.

The facts are these: Johnny was a twelve-year-old paperboy in West Des Moines, Iowa and on the morning of his disappearance, he slipped out of the house before 6:00 a.m. to do this route alone — something he wasn’t allowed to do; he was supposed to bring his dad with him. A witness reported seeing Johnny talking to guy in a car.

After that, no one really knows. Johnny kind of walked into a void. He was missed at seven o’clock when customers began to complain that they hadn’t gotten their papers. Johnny’s wagon and newspapers turned up on the sidewalk just two blocks from his house.

The internet is rife with theories and speculation as to what happened — the more so because Johnny’s mother, Noreen Gosch, claims her son secretly visited her in 1997 and told her he had been abducted by a pedophile ring.

Eugene Wade Martin, a 13-year-old paperboy from Des Moines, also disappeared while on his route, less than two years after Johnny did, and there are a lot of theories that the two cases are connected somehow. And I should note that Marc James-Warren Allen disappeared from Des Moines, less than two years after Eugene Martin, but I don’t know much about his case. He wasn’t a paperboy.

With the latest news about Jacob Wetterling’s remains being found, some people have suggested Danny Heinrich (the prime suspect in Jacob’s case) should be looked at in the Des Moines disappearances as well. I have no idea whether the police have looked into this or not. But I do want to point out that Des Moines is a four-and-a-half-hour drive from St. Joseph, Minnesota, the town where Jacob was taken.

(If you guys are wondering why I haven’t resolved his case yet, it’s because according to my user stats, everyone is looking at right now. I’ll give it another day or so before I pull him.)

Eugene Martin’s father and Erika Cirioni’s brother have died

Donald Martin, the father of Eugene Wade Martin, one of the missing paperboys from Des Moines, Iowa, died of Alzheimer’s Disease and colon cancer a few days ago. He was relatively young, only 65 years old. Eugene’s mother is also deceased. I’m not sure whether his stepmother is still alive, though I do know that she and the father got a divorce sometime after Eugene’s 1984 disappearance. The article includes a picture of Donald.

And over in Connecticut, Erika Marie Cirioni‘s older brother, Dominic, committed suicide. He was 36 years old. Their mother says the siblings were very close and she thinks Erika’s disappearance played a major role in Dominic’s death. I found his obituary and it says one sister, Lori, predeceased him, but it lists Erika as still living. Their mother is raising Erika’s two sons.