The Abduction of Johnny Gosch and the Franklin Scandal Coverup

IMAGE: Hipecreative.com

Nearly half a million children have gone missing in the U.S., and given the reluctances of law enforcement to investigate, the real annual numbers of abducted, sexually exploited, trafficked and murdered children could easily be in the thousands.

One stunning case that vividly illustrates the issue is that of Johnny Gosch. Johnny was 12 years old when he was kidnapped while working his early morning paper route in Des Moines, Iowa, on Sept. 5, 1982. Despite alarming eyewitness accounts and evidence of an abduction, law enforcement exhibited disinterest in investigating Johnny’s sudden disappearance as a crime and instead immediately labeled him a runaway.

The morning of his kidnapping, a neighbor named Mike reported to police that he observed Johnny talking to a stocky man in a blue two-toned Ford Fairmont with Nebraska plates. Mike didn’t know what was discussed, because he observed the interaction from his bedroom window. As Johnny headed toward home, Mike noticed another man emerge from the bushes and follow Johnny.

Another witness, John Rossi, saw a man in a blue car talking to Johnny and “thought something was strange.”

Then, Johnny simply vanished.

On Aug. 12, 1984, Eugene Martin, another Des Moines-area paperboy, disappeared under similar circumstances, while delivering newspapers on the south side of town. Authorities said they were unable to prove a connection between the two cases.

Yet, months before Eugene’s abduction, Johnny’s mother, Noreen Gosch, went to police to warn them of a possible plot to abduct another boy. The tip-off came from a private investigator who was searching for her son. Noreen told police that the kidnapping “would take place the second weekend in August 1984, and it would be a paperboy from the south side of Des Moines.”

These cases fall under the general umbrella of what later came to be known as the Franklin Coverup.


“When you have control over law enforcement, the media, and the judiciary, even a pedophile ring can proceed undisturbed.” — Omaha State Sen. Jim DeCamp (1941-2017)


In August 1984, Noreen testified in Senate hearings and spoke about “organized pedophilia” and its alleged role in her son’s abduction. She began receiving death threats. She then states that she started getting tips, intel and personal protection from a mafia operative working to counter pedophile rings.

To accept the Franklin scenario, one needs to examine and believe the accounts of two individuals: Noreen and Paul A. Bonacci, a man who confessed to being involved in the abduction of Johnny.

A remarkable two-hour interview with Noreen in 2005 (see below) takes us down one of the deepest rabbit holes of all time. Those of the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil and Hanlon’s Razor perspective may reject most of these personal accounts simply out of hand. However, Winter Watch is not in that fallacious camp. We find Noreen and Bonacci credible.

The core of Noreen’s personal account involves the egregious misconduct of law enforcement in her son’s case. She accuses them of being party to organized pedocracy kidnappings and provides numerous convincing details. In 1997 — 15 years after his kidnapping — her son appeared on her doorstep in the middle of the night and visited with her for a few hours.

“He didn’t say where he is living or where he was going,” Noreen recalls. He told her he was in hiding, and he told her to tell no one she had seen him.

Noreen revealed his visit two years later when testifying to a grand jury. Johnny had somehow escaped his captors several years earlier and — for reasons that are obvious once one understands the whole story — he decided to remain in hiding rather than appear publicly.

Johnny Gosch abduction: Disturbing interview from 2005 – Elite’s pedophile playground

Bonacci: Fonte of Information of the Broader Network

Bonacci was recruited into and entrapped by the Franklin pedophile network at the age of 12. In 1989, he accused Republican party activist and businessman Lawrence E. King, Jr. — who served as director of the Franklin Credit Union in Omaha, Nebraska — of running an underage prostitution ring and victimizing him since an early age. Bonacci was also forced to run herd over the boys caught in the ring.

Bonacci confessed to playing a role in Johnny’s abduction, claiming that he chloroformed the nabbed boy inside the getaway car. Noreen met with Paul in a jailhouse to hear his story. She says Bonacci told her things “he could know only from talking with her son.”

Even with his confession, Des Moines police once again “dropped the ball” and never even bothered to interview Bonacci in person. The FBI also dismissed Bonacci and ignored the leads he provided. Bonacci, his confession and accounts were gas lighted by pervert justice warriors and the Lugenpresse at every turn.

A court-assigned psychiatrist diagnosed him as having multiple personality disorder (MPD), likely nurtured in him by his pedo-ring keepers. Though MPD-controlled individuals are dismissed and hidden from view by the entire Crime Syndicate system, they are integral to its function. We discussed this recently in “George Estabrooks, Sick Godfather of Hypnotic Mind Control.” Sodomy also plays a critical role in controlling young children and adolescents and splitting their personality.

Bonacci did a series of revealing interviews with detail that can’t just be fiction. For instance, in the following 1993 interview, he describes being present at the founding of NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association) in a Boston Catholic church.

Paul Bonacci Was at the Formation of “N.A.M.B.L.A.”,in 1978[Interview w/Ted Gunderson’93]

King’s Pedophile Network

The initial allegations against King began from the serious abuse of children at the hands of Jarret and Barbara Webb, the former a member of the Franklin Credit Union board and the latter a cousin of King, who adopted various foster children and would proceed to subject them to horrific physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

Girls who lived in the Webbs’ house told of being taken to various parties in the Omaha area, where King and other important local figures sexually abused them. One of the girls, Eulice Washington, recalls being flown on King’s private jet to be abused across the country.

From the book “The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse and Betrayal”:

Among the first accusers was Eulice Washington, who claimed King flew her to out-of-state pedophilic orgies. She had been adopted by relatives of King’s in the 1970s. Her new ‘mother’ was King’s cousin Barbara Webb, and her new ‘father’ was husband Jarrett Webb, who sat on the board of the Franklin Federal Credit Union. To Eulice Washington, King had been Uncle Larry.

‘Larry King set up the pedophile ring,’ says Eulice. ‘From my knowledge and from what I saw go down, he was the man who got it moving and rolling. Everything went through him. He loves boys. He loves them like he shouldn’t.’

The Foster Care Review Board was the first organization to suspect King’s abuse, based upon interviews with Eulice Washington and others. The board wrote numerous letters to Nebraska’s Attorney General Robert Spire, urging an investigation. Their pleas were ignored.

Lawrence King singing national anthem at 1984 GOP convention

More rumors of sexual abuse began to arise, with multiple allegations that King was abusing children from Boys Town, the nearby charitable community and Catholic boarding school for orphaned and at-risk youth.

King’s yellow sports car was notorious on the Boys Town campus. He would cruise around and pick up boys for his pedophilic activities. Management at the Catholic school denied any connection to King, but financial records showed that Boys Town had a close-knit relationship to the Franklin Federal Credit Union. Federal and local authorities immediately moved to close the investigation and seal evidence, claiming that allegations of child abuse were unfounded.

Omaha Chief of Police Robert Wadman stated to the press: “Every step that should have been taken, was taken.”

However, Wadman would later confess that he had never contacted Washington, one of the children abused at the hands of Webb, nor Child Protective Services agency that handled Washington’s claims. Wadman would later be identified as a child abuser at King’s parties by four different victims.

King later went to prison for embezzlement involving his credit union, but he was never charged with child-related crimes.

Bonacci later won a million-dollar civil suit against King, which was never paid.

King, in a Sept. 7, 1988, interview with Omaha Weekly Metropolitan just before the scandal broke, said this about his cronies: “They were the key to my success. I had really great, great people who were counselors and teachers, who were over some of the major companies in the city … so I have to say the Omaha power structure has some of the best people to work with.”

Sheila McGuire, former manager of The French Cafe, a night spot partly owned by King, says it was named by victim-witnesses as a place where pedophilia activity occurred. She told Gary Caradori, an independent investigator researching King, that King would host parties for his friends upstairs in her apartment.

As written in Caradori’s transcript of the interview, McGuire said, “If Larry King investors wanted drugs, booze, children or hookers, we’d get them … King took good care of the local and out-of-town high rollers. If you had money to invest at Franklin, King would cater to your most deranged perversion.”

Caradori’s Mysterious ‘Accident’

Caradori was an ex-highway patrolman hired to investigate the suspected child-trafficking ring associated with King and Franklin Credit Union members. As a former law enforcement officer and trained investigator and interviewer, he had sufficient credibility to be employed by the Nebraska legislature for such a sensitive task.

In January 1990, Caradori wrote to Nebraska Secretary of State Alan Beerman: “We – my employees and myself – have been followed and questionable situations have arisen during this investigation. Threatening situations have resulted numerous times. Why? Am I too close to something they do not want to become public?”

During his investigation, someone broke into Caradori’s home, tampered with his vehicles and tapped his phone.

Caradori interviewed a number of victims and obtained such damning evidence that on July 10, 1990, he called his boss, Nebraska State Sen. Loran Schmit, to inform him that they now had the subjects of their investigation “by the short hairs.” He had photos and film obtained from Rusty Nelson, King’s personal photographer.

The next morning, however, Caradori and his 8 year old son died in a small plane crash he was piloting. The crash occurred in the same Illionis county where the aforementioned former Omaha Police Chief Robert Wadman was now in office. Caradori’s personal effects were recovered — but the briefcase of evidence he was transporting back to Nebraska “was lost.” He had documented 60 victims. In the following interview at minute 00:18:00, Nelson describes what happened with Caradori; and earlier, describes Wadman’s role in the operations, as well as other incredible insights. [Related: “Hunter S. Thompson: Dark Accounts and Suspicious Demise“]

Rusty Nelson Interview by Michael Corbin MUST HEAR!!

John DeCamp, in his book “The Franklin Cover-Up,” wrote that a farmer reported he saw a flash of light, heard an explosion and saw the plane plunge to the ground. The eyewitness account of the flash of light and the explosion was on the early edition of television news in Nebraska but was pulled from subsequent reports, which then said that the plane “exploded on impact,” strewing wreckage for over a mile.

Two years later, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the wings of Caradori’s plane snapped off due to stress. A FOIA request by Muckrock for all related documents made to the Illinois State Police went unanswered.



More White Hats Fall in Battle

Former CIA Director William Colby, who’s a friend of John DeCamp’s, was retained by the Nebraska committee to investigate the circumstances around the crash that killed the Nebraska committee’s lead investigator and his young son. You will see Colby speak in the suppressed Conspiracy of Silence documentary.

Colby made this observation: “This case (Franklin) is so much bigger than you think. It goes to the very highest levels.”

In a possible message to influential white hats, Colby himself was found dead two years later. His death was deemed “a boating accident” even though he was an expert swimmer.

Hijacked Grand Juries

When the news broke of the financial corruption aspects of King’s Franklin Credit Union, Bonacci and others came forth with allegations against some of Omaha’s more prominent citizens. This, in turn, was taken to hijacked state and federal grand juries. The juries claimed his testimony was ”scripted by a person or persons with considerable knowledge of the people and institutions of Omaha and was a hoax.”

A grand jury accused Caradori, now conveniently deceased a few weeks earlier, of being the main perpetrator behind the hoax. It indicted Bonacci and fellow witness Alisha Owen on perjury charges. Both served long prison terms.

How could Bonacci be part of Caradori’s hoax when he first reported being abused by Harold Andersen, publisher of Omaha World-Herald, King and billionaire Alan Baer to the Omaha Police Department in 1986 — two years before the start of the Franklin investigation?

In June 1978, Chicago police officers had seized tens of thousands of pink index cards from the Chicago apartment of John Norman, who ran a child prostitution ring until his arrest. The pink cards were the records of Norman’s customers. Each file card contained the customer’s name and their sexual preferences regarding the boys Norman was prostituting. More on Norman in tomorrow’s post -stay tuned.


Read “Was John Wayne Gacy Connected to a Ring of Homosexual Sadists, Murderers?”

During an interview by Ted Gunderson, Bonacci mentioned a Chicago schoolteacher named Joe Reynolds, who abused him and ran a nationwide boy prostitution network. Reynolds had a “pink” collection of file cards, listing customers and the kinds of boys they liked, which had been passed from Norman after his arrest. According to Bonacci, Omaha’s Baer and Andersen had pink cards, which implicates them both in the Franklin case as homosexual pedophiles.

Schmit, the Nebraska senator who headed the state’s investigation, labeled the grand jury’s report ”a strange document.” The jury spent most of its time discrediting testimonies rather than analyzing or investigating Caradori’s many leads, which totaled 291 potential witnesses.

The grand jury’s special attorney in charge was retired judge Samuel Van Pelt. Three people who testified before the Douglas County Grand Jury charged that Van Pelt intimidated them and tried forcing them to change their story.

Bonacci said to the legislative committee, “They kept telling me that if I stuck to my story, they were going to make me be in trouble for it.”

Van Pelt delivered on his threat.

Abuse accuser Owen, as well as her parents, testified to the State Senate committee that the FBI had given her former lawyer, Pam Vuchetich, a proposal stating that if Alisha recanted her story, she would be released from prison (she was serving a short sentence for passing bad checks) and wouldn’t be charged with perjury. Additionally, the FBI instructed Owen to say that Caradori had set the whole thing up and provided her with scripts of what to say.

More Dead and Intimidated Witnesses

In the course of his investigations, Caradori conducted the following Nov. 25, 1989, interview with child sex abuse victim Troy Boner that confirms more details about the Omaha ring. However, under duress and following the mysterious “Russian Roulette” death of his brother, Boner later recanted his testimony.

Following the death of Caradori, his wife, Sandie, received several phone calls from Boner.

She wrote in her notes: “Troy [said]: ‘Gary wasn’t lying. He didn’t tell me what to say. What I told him was the truth. (He spoke rapidly, fighting back tears). They made me take it back. They threatened me … You don’t understand, they threatened me. They made me take it back. I was so scared’ …”

In 1990, according to DeCamp and well covered in Conspiracy of Silence

Troy Boner was going to provide the information in open court, under oath, that would blow the lid off the Franklin case and force a new trial for Alisha Owen … As Troy came into the courthouse, he was immediately ushered into a private room by county judicial authorities …the hearing was delayed for one hour … Troy was in the room with a ‘Special Attorney’ and with other officials from the prosecutor’s office – the very same prosecutorial team Troy was about to testify against. …

Troy leaned over and whispered to me, ‘Oh God, forgive me. They guaranteed if I talk here today, they will put me away for 20 years … told me I would be charged with perjury for my original testimony if I opened my mouth today in court.’

In late 2003, Boner walked into a hospital in New Mexico screaming, “They’re after me! They’re after me because of this book!”

The book Boner was waving was “The Franklin Cover-Up.” Boner, according to reports, was “mildly sedated and calmed down … and put in a private room for observation. When nurses came back to check on him early next morning, Boner was sitting in a chair, bleeding from the mouth and quite dead. Former FBI Los Angeles Bureau Chief Ted Gunderson tried to get autopsy and other information and details that were promised him on Boner’s death, but he and apparently every other entity, were totally shut out of all information.”

Gary Caradori’s Interview of Troy Boner

‘Conspiracy of Silence’ Documentary

In 1995, a Yorkshire TV crew produced “Conspiracy of Silence,” a documentary scheduled to air on the Discovery Channel on May 3, 1994. This documentary exposed a network of religious leaders and Washington politicians who flew children to Washington, D.C. for sex orgies.

Many children suffered the indignity of wearing nothing but their underwear and a phone number displayed on a piece of cardboard that hung from their necks when being auctioned off to foreigners in Las Vegas, Nevada and Toronto, Canada.

The documentary team had interviewed Boner. Sometime after that, when the grand jury was over, Troy, guilt-stricken because of his lying over Caradori’s death, contacted DeCamp and told the truth about what had happened. This is recorded in a remarkable affidavit [see Chapter 20 of DeCamp’s book]. The Yorkshire TV team spent a small fortune to confirm Troy’s charges. They flew Troy to Chicago and paid for a lengthy lie-detector test at the Keeler Polygraph Institute. With the results of that test, the Yorkshire team was so convinced that Troy was telling the truth that they featured him in their documentary.

The three witnesses featured are shown giving their videotaped testimony. All of them either ended up in prison for perjury and cooked-up star-chamber-justice charges or dead.

At the last minute, just before the documentary was scheduled to air, an unnamed congressmen threatened the TV cable industry with restrictive legislation. Almost immediately, the rights to the documentary were purchased by unknown persons who had ordered all copies destroyed.

A copy of this videotape was furnished anonymously to DeCamp and can be viewed here. (link is good)

Franklin Ties to D.C. Power Broker

The late Craig Spence at the 1976 GOP Convention

Craig Spence (1941-1989) was an influential D.C. lobbyist who operated under the blackmail-and-compromise model. He had wired his mansion in D.C. to record orgies and pedophile activities. He was also at one time a correspondent for ABC News.

An UPI article on Spence’s “suicide” states: “Spence’s friends say he often boasted of being a CIA agent, of associating with high-ranking government officials, of bugging his friends and associates and of blackmailing people.”

Spence once asked, “How do you think that a little faggot like me moved in the circles I did? It’s because I had contacts at the highest levels of this government.”

On June 28, 1989, an article in the Washington Times identified Spence’s involvement with a homosexual escort service and drug dealing being investigated by the Secret Service, the District of Columbia Police and the United States Attorney’s Office for suspected credit card fraud. The newspaper said he spent as much as $20,000 a month on male prostitutes.

On July 31, 1989, Spence was arrested at the Barbizon Hotel on East 63rd St. in Manhattan for criminal possession of a firearm and criminal possession of cocaine

Next, Michael Hedges and Jerry Seper of The Washington Times reported on Aug. 9, 1989, that Spence gave White House tours to the call boys as part of the festivities. Spence suggested the tours were arranged by “top level” persons, including Donald Gregg, the national security adviser to George H.W. Bush, who was U.S. vice president when the tours were given.

On Nov. 10, 1989, Spence, despite being broke, was allegedly found dead in Room 429 of the Boston Ritz Carlton. He was dressed in a tuxedo and had three dollars in his pocket. According to the police report, when found by hotel employees he was attired in a “black Tux with white shirt, bow tie, white suspenders, black socks and shoes.” Prior to his death, he spoke of possibly disappearing and that it may look like a suicide. In black felt-tip marker, he had written on a mirror of his room:

Chief, consider this my resignation, effective immediately. As you always said, you can’t ask others to make a sacrifice if you are not ready to do the same. Life is duty. God bless America.

During a lengthy interview at a Manhattan apartment a few months before his death, Spence alluded to more intricate involvements.

“All this stuff you’ve uncovered (involving call boys, bribery and the White House tours), to be honest with you, is insignificant compared to other things I’ve done. But I’m not going to tell you those things,” he said.

Henry Vinson and Nick Bryant wrote a book called “Confessions of a D.C. Madame: The Politics of Sex, Lies and Blackmail.” Vinson ran the largest gay escort service to have ever been exposed in Washington, D.C. He stated that Spence and Franklin’s King had pressured him to procure children for sexual activities, which he refused, and that he came across Spence’s blackmail equipment and had seen it first hand.

Vinson was then indicted by a D.C. Grand Jury on a 43-count RICO charge. Facing 300 years in prison, Vinson agreed to no more disclosures in a plea bargain for five years. Nevertheless, after his prison term, he did conduct this interview in which he provides the particulars. A deep dive into this with Bryant and Ed Opperman is available below. The second video is a much-shorter 11-minute synopsis with Sean Stone. One person that Vinson mentioned in his blog (memory holed) and in the interviews as involved in compromising activity (preferred 18-year-old males) was former Reagan CIA Director William Casey.

Nick Bryant: Confessions of a DC Madam / Franklin Scandal/ Jeffrey Epstein

Inside the Franklin Scandal w/Nick Bryant

For more on crime rings and cover ups, we recommend a review of the Dutroux case and the Smiley Face Killers.

11 Comments on The Abduction of Johnny Gosch and the Franklin Scandal Coverup

  1. This has been posted before – not a criticism – I finally brought myself to read it in full (did not watch the videos).

    I can offer an oblique data point: In 2012 – in the wake of the Penn St football scandal – I saw a man about 40 at a near deserted HS Football Field come very close to sexually abusing a 15 year old out in the open – “all over him”, etc – in the guise of one-on-one football practice. They entered a rest room for several minutes then left by car. It dominated my weekend. On the following Tuesday, I spent close to an hour with a detective of the local police dept in my affluent town which has an active youth football program with the associated adult coaches likely well known around town. He listened to my account; took my contact info. End of story.

    In 2015, in my absence, my residence was subjected to a warrantless search; I confirmed with that same police dept that it was done under the “community care” exception. It was almost certainly impermissible under my state’s Supreme Court rulings on the matter. There was a much more involved context in the weeks prior – I need not go into it. The officers stole a gallon of bottled water as a calling card.

    End of story.

    • “There was a much more involved context in the weeks prior – I need not go into it.”

      Uhh yeah you do, otherwise your story doesn’t make sense. What, did you get snitch-jacketed?

      • I appreciate that; perhaps my comment was not appropriate without the “context”. It did involve a greeting by up to 20 LEOs in a park parking lot – simultaneous with the search. (I think it was in part an excuse to have sort of an impromptu party – they were having a good old time – I heard them from a quarter mile off – local, county, federal park LEOs).

        My sense at the time I saw the “assault” was that he would have been a guy well known around town (I never saw him again); and, at the time of the search, my sense was that the “calling card” and the greeting were the point of the exercise – the search would have never held up in court.

        I offered it as just a data point – entirely trivial in this Franklin context – but perhaps illustrative of the approach of local police departments and well-known personalities. Hugely over-policed but under-protected. Cost of the entire operation was not trivial – LEO salaries are generous.

        I still worry about that boy; just how much protection did he enjoy? Would I spend an hour at police HQ in a similar situation? Or was I being dissuaded from doing so?

  2. After Eugene Martin and Johnny Gosch were kidnapped. The Des Moines Register (actually Gannet) only allowed adults to have a paper route. Oh… And GANNET stopped reporting on Eugene Martin.

    Only Johnny Gosch’s mother kept his story alive. The WEST Des Moines police Department was useless in investigating Johnny’s disappearance. ( The WDM Police Chief was a drunk named Orval Cooney who said Jonny ran away).

    The Des Moines Police Department were worse than useless when it came to Eugene Martin’s disappearance.

    All those TV shows, where the cops solve the crime, before the show ends are B.S.

  3. From Wikipedia –> Franklin child prostitution ring allegations — note two things: 1) the article cannot be edited; 2) it dismisses the allegation as a “carefully crafted hoax” — what would be the motive for ‘carefully crafting’ such a “hoax”? — as opposed to the obvious motive for covering up something like that.

      • Makes you wonder about the “bad guys” throughout history. I radically doubt all “official narratives” to the point of inversion, to get a better sense of the truth.

  4. Subsequent to spending a few hours watching and analyzing Noreen Gosch’s interviews at the time of the purported kidnapping of her son not to mention a few done henceforth it is quite apparent there’s something rather fishy with her story, behavior and disposition; and, apparently, i’m not the only 1 who has a similar perspective: see Sarah Dimeo’s podcast on this story via her site, ‘fadedout.’ That is all!! RGB-Y2 out!!!

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