What to know about Johnny Gosch's disappearance and unsolved case 40 years later

It's been 40 years since 12-year-old Johnny Gosch disappeared while delivering newspapers near his West Des Moines home. West Des Moines police have never classified his disappearance on Sept. 5, 1982, as a kidnapping — it officially remains a “missing persons” case. His parents, John and Noreen Gosch, who divorced in 1993, have publicly disagreed about what and who they think were involved in the case. But both believe he was kidnapped. Police today say they believe that, too. A motive was never established, and no arrests have been made. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, all eyes are on Iowa. Here's what we know — and some of what we don't — about Johnny's case. Johnny Gosch was a 12-year-old Des Moines Register paperboy who had a route in the area around his West Des Moines home for about a year before his disappearance. He was a reliable and prompt paperboy, according to a story in the Register the day after he went missing. He had won an airplane ride over Des Moines in a sales contest. On the morning of Sept. 5, 1982, Johnny defied his parents by leaving the house alone to start his paper route, accompanied only by the family's dachshund. John and Noreen Gosch had told him that he needed to go with his father. At the time, Johnny was 5-foot-7 and 140 pounds, with light brown hair and blue eyes. He had freckles on his face, a gap in his front teeth, a birthmark on his left cheek and a horseshoe-shaped scar on his tongue. The youngest of three Gosch children, Johnny was well-liked by schoolmates, according to a Des Moines Tribune story on Sept. 7, 1982. He played football and took karate lessons. He was a seventh-grader at Indian Hills Junior High School. Around other students, he was known to speak out against drug use. When did John and Noreen Gosch find out Johnny was missing? Around 7:45 a.m. the morning Johnny vanished, John and Noreen Gosch began receiving calls from customers along the route complaining that their papers had not been delivered. When John drove around the neighborhood, he found his son's red wagon full of newspapers a few blocks from the family home. © Left: Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Register; Right: Special to the Register Johnny Gosch's mother Noreen Gosch, left, and father John Gosch, right, estimate they spent $350,000 or more searching for their son after he went missing in 1982. They divorced in 1993 and both have remarried. Noreen Gosch now lives on a houseboat in East Dubuque, Illinois. John Gosch has traveled the country in a recreational vehicle for years and is now at a ranch in Arizona. Johnny's disappearance was reported to the West Des Moines Police Department. However, Iowa law at the time dictated that Gosch could not be classified as a missing person until 72 hours had passed. According to Gosch's mother, other paperboys witnessed a man in a blue car pull up and talk to Gosch shortly before his disappearance. How did Johnny Gosch's disappearance change missing child investigations? One success was the "Johnny Gosch bill," passed by the Iowa Legislature in 1984, which required law enforcement to immediately investigate missing child cases where foul play was suspected. Noreen and John Gosch divorced in 1993 and both eventually remarried. Noreen Gosch has expressed her belief that her son was taken by a child pornography ring and is still alive, and she claims to have seen him alive as an adult in 1997. However, authorities were never able to confirm this story. Noreen Gosch is one of the administrators of the private Official Johnny Gosch Group on Facebook, where she often answers questions from people curious about the case. From 'Who Took Johnny' to 'Why Johnny Can't Come Home,' where can you find more? Noreen Gosch self-published a book in 2000 titled "Why Johnny Can't Come Home." The book provides an in-depth look at what she believes happened to her son based on her research and the work of private detectives. Johnny's disappearance has been the subject of many true-crime podcasts, such as "True Crime Obsessed: Who Took Johnny?" available through Apple Podcasts. In 2014, Brooklyn-based Rumur studios released a documentary titled "Who Took Johnny," combining archive footage and new interviews with Noreen Gosch, John Gosch, investigators and others involved with the case. The documentary, which played to a sold-out audience at the Fleur Cinema in April 2015, grew out of a one-hour special commissioned by MSNBC to recognize the 30th anniversary of the disappearance. Rumur filmed the special in 2012, and the program “Missing Johnny” aired in December that year. © Special