1984 | The Day Eugene Martin Disappeared

SEQUESTERED Podcast

Road Trip Studios

True Crime, Places & Travel, Society & Culture

4.1 • 802 Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On Sunday morning, August 12, 1984, thirteen-year-old Eugene Wade Martin left his home in Des Moines, Iowa, to deliver the Sunday paper. He was five days away from his fourteenth birthday. He was saving money for the fair and a bicycle.

But somewhere along the way, Eugene's paper route stopped.

His newspapers were found. But Eugene was gone.

Less than two years earlier, another Des Moines Register carrier, Johnny Gosch, had vanished from his own Sunday morning route. So when Eugene disappeared, the fear in Des Moines shifted. What had once seemed like an ordinary childhood job now felt exposed, vulnerable, and dangerous.

In this episode of SEQUESTERED, we trace the morning Eugene disappeared, the witnesses who may have seen him speaking with an unknown man, the flood of tips that followed, and the massive search that covered neighborhoods, riverbanks, wooded areas, and nearly seventy square miles. We also look at what Eugene's disappearance did to his family; the phone calls, the license plates, the Apple II computer filled with names, and the long vigil of parents who never stopped looking.

If you have any information about the disappearance of Eugene Wade Martin, please contact the Des Moines Police Department at 515-283-4811, the FBI Iowa office at 515-223-4278, or the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST / 1-800-843-5678. NCMEC case number: 601815. Official contact details are listed by NCMEC, and Eugene is also listed with the Iowa Missing Person Information Clearinghouse.

Photos, source material, and additional case information are available at sequesteredpod.com.

Transcript

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0:00.0	A dusty old Chevrolet slips past a house on Fraser Avenue in Des Moines, Iowa.
0:10.0	Inside the house, Sue Martin sees it, and in an instant, the room changes.
0:15.0	She says, Don, it's that car again. Get the license number.
0:19.0	Don Martin moves fast. He's out of the chair, across the living
0:22.9	room and through the screen door before the car can get too far out of sight. The car is
0:28.6	already moving down the street, so Don watches. He studies the plate and tries to hold the numbers
0:34.8	in his mind before the Chevy turns the corner and disappears.
0:39.7	A year earlier, a car passing the house might not have meant anything.
0:44.2	But now every car could be the car. Every stranger could be the man. Every phone call could be the lead.
0:52.7	By now, Don and Sue had spent almost a year chasing anything that
0:57.1	might bring their son home. Phone calls, sightings, license plates, psychic tips, and any name
1:04.4	somebody thought might matter. Every tip was documented in their Apple II computer at home.
1:13.5	More than 1,600 names would be entered.
1:15.7	They weren't detectives.
1:17.1	They were parents.
1:21.4	And parents do not really get to stop looking when their kid goes missing.
1:25.7	Before Eugene Martin became part of a larger story,
1:29.5	before his face appeared beside another boy on reward posters and grocery sacks, before Des Moines began to wonder whether one missing paper
1:35.4	boy had now become two. Eugene Wade Martin was just Jean, a 13-year-old boy, five days away from his 14th birthday.
1:46.6	He was saving up part of his paper route money for the fair, looking forward to picking
1:50.9	out a bicycle with his dad.
1:53.5	But on that Sunday morning, he stepped into the dark with a paper route to finish and never
	...

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