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'Who Took Johnny'
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Chicago Tribune
Posted: February 13th, 2017
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/ct-chicag...
In 1982, 12-year-old Johnny Gosch disappeared while on his early morning paper route in suburban Des Moines, Iowa. The case remains unsolved, but there are clues to what might have happened. Filmmakers David Beilinson, Suki Hawley and Michael Galinsky tackle the story from the point of view of the boy's mother, Noreen Gosch. When she and her husband first reported Johnny's disappearance, police assumed he had run away and declined to involve the FBI. Gosch expressed her displeasure with regularity, prompting this quote in the newspaper from the local police chief: "I really don't give a damn what Noreen Gosch has to say. I really don't give a damn what she thinks. I'm interested in the boy and what we can do to find him. I'm kind of sick of her." The story takes several unusual turns. A dollar bill surfaces at a store with a handwritten message: "I am alive. Johnny Gosch." A young man incarcerated in Nebraska admits some involvement in Johnny's abduction as part of an organized child prostitution ring. Gosch then admits to seeing her son one time, on her doorstep, decades after his disappearance. A swirl of conspiracy theories, professional incompetence, grief, finger-pointing and bizarre details, the story only gets stranger as it goes. And more disturbing. Decades after his disappearance, Gosch received photos of boys who were bound and gagged. The images, though PG, are upsetting on such a deep level. What really happened to Johnny, at least according to his mother, sounds outlandish. Horrifying. But it's not implausible.
Note: This film is intimately related to one of the most revealing documentaries ever made - "Conspiracy of Silence" - which you can learn about and watch on this webpage. Learn lots more on the website put up by the mother of Johnny Gosch and on this webpage.
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