Hey everybody welcome back to Cold Case Murder Mysteries. I'm your host Ryan Kraus

behind the mic once again as we take a detour into perhaps the most mesmerizing

disappearance in true crime lore, which is the kidnapping of 12-year-old paper boy Johnny Gosh.

Shortly before 6 a.m. on Sunday, September 5th, 1982, in West Des Moines, Iowa, Johnny left his

family's two-story suburban home pulling a red wagon and accompanied by their many dachshund named Gretchen.

His father, John Gosh Sr., normally accompanied him as well.

But on this day, Johnny decided to go alone. All of the local paper

carriers had to pick up their newspapers on a nearby corner in their

neighborhood while it was still dark outside. So Johnny was simply making that same track again as he always did.

Soon after he left, however, John Sr. woke up to his phone ringing off the hook with complaints that people weren't getting their Sunday morning papers.

Since he didn't accompany Johnny that morning, he didn't seem to know exactly when his son left.

He figured maybe Johnny was just running late.

It's dark outside, so maybe he overslept.

So his dad gets in his car and figures he'll find Johnny and drive him along his route to

expedite the process and make the customers happy.

But there's no sign of Johnny.

Yet just a couple of blocks from his home, what he does see is Johnny's abandoned

wagon.

Johnny is nowhere to be found.

The newspapers are still in the wagon.

Now, for anyone unfamiliar with how this process worked back then,

what the distributor would do is send somebody in a van or truck in the early morning hours to drop the bundles of papers for the carriers

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