The Franklin Files

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060901/NEWS10/609010385

Police check out possible photos of Gosch
The pictures of the long-missing boy were anonymously delivered recently to his mom.

By LEE ROOD
REGISTER STAFF WRITER


September 1, 2006



Police are investigating photos that could show Johnny Gosch, the West Des Moines boy whose disappearance in 1982 at age 12 triggered nationwide concern for abducted children.

Noreen Gosch told The Des Moines Register on Thursday that the photos were anonymously delivered to her over the weekend. She believes at least two of the images are of her son.

In one black-and-white photo, the boy she says is Johnny appears to be lying alone on a bed, wearing sweat pants. In one color photo, three boys are lying next to one another on a bed, fully clothed. In both, the youths' mouths are gagged, and their hands and feet are bound with what appears to be white material.

Noreen Gosch took the photos to West Des Moines police Tuesday. Other people connected to the case also have reported receiving copies of the photos via anonymous deliveries or the Internet.

"Noreen did contact our detective and come in with these photos," said Lt. Jeff Miller, a spokesman for the West Des Moines Police Department. "We've seized the photos, and we are in the process of researching where they came from and whether they've been doctored up."

Noreen Gosch said Thursday that when her son disappeared, he was wearing sweat pants like those on the boy in the photo. Early accounts of the boy's disappearance said he was wearing black sweat pants or cutoff jeans at the time.

Gosch said she didn't want to be interviewed extensively about the photos until she and others had a chance to identify the two other youths pictured. However, she said, she believes her son is in both photographs. She said that the FBI, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and Sen. Charles Grassley's office had been notified.

"This is a huge break in this case," Noreen Gosch said. "We don't know who had these photos. ... This is much bigger than the city of Des Moines right now."

Jeff Tarpinian, a spokesman for FBI offices in Omaha and Des Moines, said copies of the photos had been forwarded to the National Center for Analysis of Violent Crimes. Currently, he said, FBI agents are not actively investigating, although "that could change down the road."

Over the years, there have been numerous theories about what happened to Johnny Gosch since he vanished before dawn on Sunday, Sept. 5, 1982. He was last seen picking up copies of the Register for delivery. His wagon, full of papers, was found two blocks from the Gosches' home.

Police recovered little evidence after Gosch's disappearance and arrested no suspects in connection with his case.

The photos that surfaced this week were first sent to the Register by James Rothstein, a retired New York police detective who offered investigative assistance to Noreen Gosch. Rothstein said he was sent the photos by Noreen Gosch; a child-sex ring conspiracy theorist he knows; and Michael Corbin, a Colorado radio talk-show host who has done several programs on the Gosch case. Rothstein has acted as a criminal justice specialist for Corbin's show, "A Closer Look."

Noreen Gosch told the Register that she found the photos on her doorstep when she woke up Sunday morning. E-mail files of the photos, sent from Gosch to Rothstein, have a subject line that reads, "I got this tonight," and show the date sent as Aug. 26.

Corbin said Thursday that he has been in contact over the past two years with a man who claims to have been kidnapped as a child and to have broken away from a child-sex ring with Gosch. He said the man identifies himself as Jimmy Gibson and has told him he wants to speak publicly about their kidnappings after hiding out for years from abductors.

"I've kind of teetered toward believing the veracity of what he's said," Corbin told the Register. "But with these photos, I am really confused.... If they are on the run, I'm curious as to how they got access to those photos, because (the photos) would have been in the possession of their perpetrators."

An official from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said the center had no record of an abduction of a Jimmy Gibson, although the boy may have been listed under a similar name.

In one of the photos sent to Noreen Gosch, someone has circled an apparent mark on the youth's arm and labeled it "the brand." Rothstein and Corbin said the symbol circled could be the brand of the sex ring into which Gosch purportedly was abducted.

Noreen Gosch and others have said they believe that Johnny's disappearance was linked to a sex-ring case involving Paul A. Bonacci, a witness in the Franklin Credit Union embezzlement scandal in Omaha. In 1989, Bonacci told his attorney, John DeCamp, that he personally participated in Gosch's abduction. Bonacci also implicated other seemingly unconnected public figures in his allegations, and was subsequently sent to prison for perjury. Since then, however, he has received a $1 million judgment for abuse he suffered as a youth under the ringleader of the Franklin Credit scandal.

DeCamp, whose office is in Lincoln, Neb., was on the list of people who were e-mailed the purported Gosch photos, according to Corbin. He could not be reached for comment, nor could the boy's father, John Gosch.

John and Noreen Gosch divorced in the mid-1990s. Since then, she has hired private investigators to hunt for her son, written a book called "Why Johnny Can't Come Home," and testified in a 1999 federal court case that her son visited her once in 1997. In that case - surrounding sex-ring allegations as part of the Franklin Credit Union scandal - Noreen Gosch testified that Johnny Gosch, then approximately 27 years old, appeared at her door with a man she had never seen before and stayed for more than an hour, detailing his breaking away from a human-trafficking ring.

Johnny reportedly told his mother that he was in hiding and probably would never see her again.