Who Took Johnny

Who Took Johnny? is a spooky time. This documentary reaches back to 1982, when Johnny Gosch, a West Des Moines, Iowa paper boy, was abducted. Noreen, his mother, has powered on with the search since then up until now. The film initially follows the inaction on part of the local law enforcement to effectively identify Johnny as a missing person (the law used to require 72 hours for the kid to be gone), and initially wrote his disappearance off as him running away. After a couple years of the community turning up nothing, the imprisoned Paul Bonacci turned up to say that he had helped kidnap Johnny into the horrendous world of child sex trafficking. Because he was diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder, however, law enforcement eschewed this lead and never questioned him, despite the facts he knew about Johnny's body that convinced his parents that this was indeed what happened to their son. The Devil's in the details with this one, as the world of child sex trafficking becomes exposed and entangled in the different facets of the investigation, centered in Omaha, Neb., 10 hours away. Who Took Johnny? has an Unsolved Mysteries vibe to it (creepy, I know), scary as much as it is informative about the issue of missing children. It's definitely worth a watch if you can see it.

It must be very hard to make a documentary about subject matter as inconclusive as this. Missing kid, lot of assumptions but no resolution several decades later.

Summing it up it follows a boy who went missing during his paper round and a string of people who may or may not be connected and claims by the mother that understandably come into question.

Full of archive footage and interviews from as far back as the early 80's when the boy went missing the documentary is competently made but the whole thing is nothing but one big question mark.

Though a couple of mysteries regarding other children are solved this case has never and almost certainly will never be.

The most interesting thing to come away from this documentary and case are the stances of the police/FBI. Was there a cover up? If so why? Or was this just good old fashioned incompetence.

Not the most compelling viewing but watchable all the same if you go in knowing you won't really learn anything at all of the case.

This is a powerful piece of work from the RUMUR team of Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley. Anyone with and even probably without kids can identify with the abject terror of having your child disappear without a trace, so it is utterly wrenching to watch people to whom this has actually happened try to figure out how to come to terms with the most profound loss we can imagine. To compound the horror of it all, the film documents with a pretty high degree of confidence what most likely happened to Johnny Gosch: that he was swept up into human trafficking, which more or less means child prostitution and pornography. It ain't pretty, but that's why it is almost necessary viewing. As Gogol so famously said, we can't blame the mirror if our mug is crooked, and "Who Took Johnny" is a mirror that, sad to say, is much less distortive than we would all like for it to be. Watch it.

The film lacks real journalism. At the time the Faded Out podcast was out yet, and I don't think Yellow Bags comments were on Iowa Cold Cases yet. However there were still articles about the pedophile ring that was busted out of Des Moines. There were articles on Frank Sykora, Wilbur Millhouse, and that guy at the mall. The policeman in charge ended up in some scandals too. It wasn't sexual, but still, it shows the police department was corrupt. The filmmakers simply followed Noreen's mess of conspiracy theories. This film lacks any really investigating. All it did was keep Johnny's name out there, and in a way it gave light to Eugene and Marc, but most people only talk about Johnny. I can see why the film was taken off Netflix. Faded Out, the comments on Iowa Cold Cases, articles from the time, and even reddit threads have done more for this case than this film ever has.

This is a very good documentary that unfortunately only scratches the surface of what would become known as the Franklin cover-up. This documentary should be mandatory viewing for everyone. Unfortunately the facts of child kidnapping from Boy's Town by Lawrence E King Jr. are missing from this documentary which would lend more credibility to the claims of Paul Bonacci. Paul Bonacci also help expose the child sex-ring in Washington D.C. which was outlined in the Washington Post and corroborated by actual receipts. Those facts were missing from the documentary and lend credibility his testimony.

Unfortunately Rumor did not release this to Netflix where it would get mass exposure and opted to go the rental route which is a horrible mistake and hurts the cause terribly. Unfortunately human trafficking(slavery) still very much exists and due to the mass media black out of films like this and Conspiracy of Silence the problem will only get worse.