Season 06 Episode 25: Once There Was a Way (Pt.2 of 3)

was at home, but Don didn't understand. Eugene Orgeanne as his family called him, wasn't due back from his root for another half hour or so. But that's just the thing, explained the manager. He wasn't on his route. His papers were still on the sidewalk, all stacked up, waiting to be taken away for delivery. Strangely, he added, Eugene's bag was next to it, with ten of the papers already tucked inside, but there was no sign of Eugene. Don

felt his mouth go a little dry. As a Des Moines resident, he knew all too well about the story of the young missing newspaper deliverer. Johnny Gosh, doing his best to ignore the rising, sickening feeling in his stomach, He assured the manager that his son would be back soon to finish the job. But thirty minutes later and Eugene's bag and stack of papers was still out on

the sidewalk, while Eugene was nowhere to be found. Frasier Street, where Eugene lived with his father Dawn and stepmother Sue, was barely a ten minute walk from the corner of Southwest fourteenth and high View Drive, where his papers were located. There was just no way he would have disappeared without telling anyone, and if he had gone home for any reason, he would have showed up by then. Deep down, Dawn

knew something terrible had happened. By midday, the Des Moines Police were notified that yet another Des Moines Register paper carrier was missing, and in circumstances all too familiar for everybody's comfort. This time, however, in light of the Johnny Gosh case, the Des Moines Police immediately sprang into action on the assumption that Eugene was not simply missing, but

had been the victim of a crime. Statements quickly gathered from Eugene's fellow carriers only served to exacerbate their worst fears. Like Johnny Gosh, Eugene had been seen talking to an unknown man shortly before he disappeared. The man was described as being somewhere between thirty to forty years old, between five ft nine and six feet tall, and being clean shaven with a generally neat appearance. Eugene was said to have spoken to the man sometime around five twenty am,

when it was still dark. Some said the man appeared to be the owner of a green Chevrolet Malibu, Others that he had put his arms on Eugene at one point, while some said that the two had conversed in a cordial manner, almost as though they knew each other. For a city still reeling from the mystery of what happened to Johnny Gosh, it wasn't long before most people heard

the news about Eugene Martin two. By Sunday afternoon, Des Moines police had been joined by over a hundred volunteers in their search for Eugene, while all emergency service personnel

were instructed to look out for him too. Even officers who were otherwise engaged used any spare time between callouts to aid in the search, friends were contacted and any favorite hangouts checked and double checked, while every street in the surrounding area was searched over and over again, and so too was Denman Woods, water Work Park and Gray's Lake. But by the end of that first day the search

had yielded nothing. On Monday, a man came forward claiming to have seen a young boy on the Sunday afternoon who looked just like Eugene, riding in the back of a car close to Southwest fourteenth and Indianola Avenue, not far from where Eugene was last seen, who looked to have been beaten around the face, but without any details of the car, the sighting was useless. Before long, one day of Eugene missing turned into two and then three.

The Friday after Eugene's disappearance was his fourteenth birthday. For Eugene's parents, Don and Janice, who lived on the other side of town, it was the loneliest of days. After another two weeks of looking, with police by then working alongside some of the FBI's finest, neither Eugene nor any substantial clue as to where he'd gone had been found On August twenty eighth, volunteers who continued looking for him every day, numbering in their hundreds at the weekend, were

politely asked to stand down. Just as it was with Johnny Gosh, a fund had been set up buffering money in exchange for information leading to Eugene's whereabouts, but also as it was for Johnny, despite growing to almost a hundred thousand dollars in size, no one was able to

provide the relevant information. In October, a man contacted police to say he'd seen someone carrying a limp looking body, possibly that of a teenage boy, under a bridge on Highway to The bridge runs from east to west about forty miles south of Des Moines and is located about a mile away from a well known fishing shack. However,

the area was thoroughly searched and nothing was found. When self described psychic Evelyn Quick later claim aim she had a vision of Eugene's body near a body of water and some kind of shack, police return to the bridge to search the area for a second time, but again they found no evidence that Eugene or the body of any other person had been dumped there. Now a word

from our sponsor Better Help. It can be tough to train your brain to stay in problem solving mode when faced with a challenge in life, but when you learn how to find your own solutions, there's no better feeling. A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, making it easy to accomplish your goals, no matter how big or small. Better Help is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches, so they make it easy and free to

change therapists if needed. It's more affordable than traditional offline therapy, and financial aid is available. Better Help wants you to start living a happy life today. Just fill out a brief survey and get matched with a therapist today, and you can switch therapists anytime if you so wish. When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there, Visit betterhelp dot com. Slash unexplained one zero today to get ten percent off your first month.

That's better help dot com. Slash unexplained one zero for Johnny gosh It's parents, Noreen and John, who contacted the Martin family immediately after Eugene was declared missing to offer whatever support they could. It was another devastating blow Despite all they'd done to alert local authorities to the danger of child abduction, it had seemingly happened all over again.

That Eugene had disappeared under such similar circumstances For Noreen at least, was further evidence too that a shadowy child abuse ring was actively snatching children from America's streets. Though not everyone was willing to agree, it was hard to ignore the growing sense among many Americans that there was something rotten at the core of their country that seemed to be getting worse by the day. In nineteen seventy nine, six year old Eton Pats went missing as he walked

to his school bus stop in Lower Manhattan. The boy was never seen again. Then, in July nineteen eighty one, six year old Adam Walsh went missing from a shopping mall in Hollywood, Florida. Adams severed head was found in a drainage canal two weeks later. The rest of his body has never been located. With Johnny Gosh and then Eugene Martin to add to that list, a stranger danger panic began to take hold. People started to wander if it was safe to let their children out at night

at all. For then President Ronald Reagan and his advocates it was all the fault of a vulgar social liberalism that had been steadily creeping into American society. In a reelection campaign speech delivered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in late September nineteen eighty four, President Reagan even name checked both

Johnny Gosh and Eugene Martin. Reagan promised to be tough on crime and to uphold the key American tenets of family, neighborhood, and good hard work, as if everyone from any political spectrum didn't already hold those dear Some decried the crimes as marking an irreversal loss of innocence for the nation, while executive editor of the Des Moines Register James Gannon saw Johnny and Eugene's potential kidnapping as the inevitable consequence

of a general softening on a crime which, according to him, was threatening to turn the safe and sane heartland of Middle America into Detroit or Chicago. For Norain Gosh, she was mostly just happy that the President had picked up on her son's case earlier in the year, thanks to the work of Adam Walsh's parents and in part to the Gosh's tireless campaigning to keep Johnny's case in the news. In June nineteen eighty four, the National Center for Missing

and Exploited Children was set up. Then in September, a campaign to have the profiles of missing children displayed on milk cartons was launched. Johnny Gosh and Huge Jean Martin were the first of what would become known as the Missing Milk Carton Kids, but by the end of that year, no further news of their whereabouts had come to light. It was late one night in nineteen eighty five when a woman called the Gosh family home with an incredible

story to tell. The woman had been visiting a grocery store in Sioux City, Iowa, about a three hour drive west of Des Moines, where she received a dollar bill in her change with something scrawled over it in penn. Looking closer, she nearly dropped her bag of groceries when

she saw what it said. Written and capital letters were the words I'm alive, and underneath that was the scribbled signature of Johnny go Noreen claimed to have had three handwriting experts analyzed the note, with all three confirming it as a match for Johnny. It offered nothing in the way of clues to find the boy, but it was enough of a sliver of hope for Noreen and john to hang on to. Then, in July nineteen eighty five

something even more incredible. While out publicizing Johnny's case in Kansas City, Noreen was approached by a burly looking man who introduced himself as Samuel Forbes Dakota. The man claimed to know exactly what had happened to her son and promised to write it all down in a letter for her in the next few weeks. Sure enough, on August ninth, the letter arrived at the Gosh family home in it.

Dakota claimed that for the past years he'd been a member of the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang, who in that time had been tasked with keeping watch over two hundred children that the gang had helped to kidnap for all manner of people, and one of those children was known to him as Johnny Gosh. Dakota even gave the names of several other people who'd been involved in the boys kidnapping.

But more than that, Johnny, he said, was alive and was being kept as a pet by a high level drug dealer in Mexico City, and if Noreen and John paid him a hundred and eleven thousand dollars, he would personally go down there and rescue him. The letter also came with a warning that, in no uncertain terms, should the Goshes involve the police and the matter, or else

he would vanish and take his secret with him. Feeling they had little choice, the increasingly desperate Goshes agreed to wire the man eleven thousand dollars immediately and promised to pay another hundred if he managed to succeed in rescuing their son. A few days later, they received the devastating news from Dakota that his rescue effort had been unsuccessful, and then he disappeared after finally informing the police about the situation. A few days after that, Dakota was tracked

down to a motel in Ontario by the FBI. As it turned out, he wasn't a Hell's Angel at all, but a man named Robert Herman Meyer the Second from Saganaw in Michigan. After his arrest, Maya pled guilty to two counts of wire fraud and was sentenced to three years in prison On August seventeenth, nineteen eighty five, Eugene Martin's family gathered together for what was the second birthday

in his absence. As painful as it was, they even baked a cake for him, which they placed in the freezer, ready to throw it out the moment he walked through the door. But the moment never comes. Much like the Gosh family, they too, grew angry and frustrated at the police's inability to find even the faintest clue as to Eugene's whereabouts. The police could only reiterate that they were doing everything they could. Then, in March the following year,

improbably it happened again. Thirteen year old Mark Allen lived with his mother, Nancy, on Emma Avenue in southern Des Moines, barely a three minute drive from where Eugene was last seen. In the evening of March twenty ninth, nineteen eighty six, Nancy was making pizza for her two other children when Mark stepped out to meet up with some friends, asking her to save him some for when he got back.

Nancy remembered waving him off, then watching him disappear past some bushes a little further down the road and That was the last she ever saw of him. It wasn't until the following morning that Nancy realized her son had not come home. She thought he'd most likely gone to stay with his grandmother, who he was known to be close with, but she hadn't seen him. More worryingly, he never even made it to the friends he said he

was going to see the night before. His father and mother in law, who lived in Connecticut, hadn't heard from him either. Unlike Eugene Martin, however, Mark Allen was seen as a problem child who had a history of so called behavioral difficulties, which likely stemmed from his unsettled upbringing,

of which he had absolutely no control. Raised by his maternal grandmother from the age of seven months to four and a half, he was eventually allowed to move back with his mother in Des Moines, where he stayed until he was ten before moving again to live with his father in Minneapolis. Then in January nineteen eighty five, he moved back to Des Moines to live with his mother for those reasons. Despite Nancy's please to the contrary, many in the police took the view that her son had

most likely just run away. For many others, However, the press included the simple fact remained here was a third child from Des Moines, last seen only minutes away from Eugene Martin's last known whereabouts, who was now also missing. It was sometime in early nineteen eighty eight, almost six years since Johnny Gosh's disappearance, four since Eugene Martin and eighteen months after Mark Allen's, when Nebraska law enforcement officials were alerted to an audit conducted on the personal taxes

of a man named Lawrence E. King. King, the chief executive of the Franklin Credit Union in Omaha, Nebraska, some one hundred and thirty miles west of Des Moines, had an official annual salary of just over sixteen thousand dollars, something which seemed to conflict with his rather openly lavish lifestyle. Known for his flamboyant dress sense and adorning himself with expensive jewelry, King also owned a seventy thousand dollar Mercedes, as well as a four story house with twenty six

acres of land overlooking the Missouri River. He also thought nothing of spending ten thousand dollars a month on his own private limousine, and in one particularly outlandish thirteen month period managed to spend one hundred and fifty thousand dollars on flowers alone, a popular expense euphemism in the music industry, at least for drugs. King was an active member of the Republican Party and a well respected member of the local community who'd at one time been the Business committee

chairman of the National Black Republican Council. The self made King, who preached to pull yourself up by the bootstraps philosophy, often made charged donations to charitable causes, and had been celebrated for his unparalleled ability to persuade numerous charities and nonprofits to deposit money at his Franklin Credit Union, which served a largely low income client base in North Omaha. In truth, however, it appeared that King was quite likely

siphoning money from the union for himself. But just as police were preparing to investigate King, something else came to light. In June nineteen eighty eight, a social worker who worked at a psychiatric hospital in Omaha made an astonishing accusation to the Nebraska Foster Care Review Board. He claimed that he had good reason to believe that a child prostitution ring was actively operating in Nebraska, and at the center

of it all was Lawrence E. King. In November nineteen eighty eight, FBI agents stormed the Franklin Community Building in Omaha and closed it down, and Lawrence King was arrested and accused of embezzling millions of dollars from the credit union. However, while King's arrest for potential corruption made headline news, the other accusation, perhaps due to its largely spurious nature and

lack of evidence, remained a secret. That was until the following month, when, during an executive board meeting of the state legislature in Lincoln, Nebraska, state Senator Ernie Chambers made the public announcement that King had also been accused of facilitating countless incidences of child abuse. Chambers went on to say that he believed the accusations to be just the tip of the iceberg, and that in time, many other public figures would be outed for their involvement in it too.

In response, the FBI were forced to reveal that they had also been informed at the accusation and were looking into it as part of their ongoing investigation into King's alleged fraudulent activities. While the Nebraska Attorney General revealed it was also aware of the accusation and had instructed the state police to investigate it. A state government committee was set up to carry out its own investigation into how the Franklin credit union had collapsed, headed by Republican state

Senator Lauren Schmidt. However, with some in the state government, Schmidt included, having appeared to have already made up their mind about the abuse seleegations, the Franklin Committee, as it came to be known, also doubled up as a secondary investigation into those two. The committees soon came to loggerheads about how best to proceed, with Kirk Nayla, the lawyer tasked with overseeing all legal implications, especially apprehensive about legitimizing

the abuse accusations. In the end, Nayla decided to stand down, after which the committee appointed a private investigator, Gary Karadori, to find the cold, hard evidence to back up the accusations. Over the next few weeks, Karadori claimed to have uncovered sixty potential survivors of the abuse and had recorded over twenty one hours of testimony from a handful of them. In late December, these tapes were handed over to the Nebraska Attorney General's Office, the FBI, and the Douglas County

Sheriff's office where Omaha is located. A teen solo hiker who was terrorized for days by unknown figures dressed in white. Two cops who quit their job at a local theater because of unexplained encounters with an alleged demon. An isolated forest in Canada where people keep turning up headless. These are just some of the strange, dark and mysterious stories

you'll hear each week on the Mister Balland podcast. In each episode, Mister Balland shares real life haunting accounts, like the case of Hailey Zeger, who disappeared from a hiking trail for fifty one hours. When search and rescuers finally found her and asked how she survived, she said simply that a friend helped her. She described his friend as

four years old with black hair and brown eyes. This friend was initially dismissed until they realized that a girl had gone missing in that exact spot twenty three years earlier and was never found. She was four years old with black hair and brown eyes. Hey Prime members listened to the Amazon Music exclusive podcast missed the ball In podcast Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories. Download the app to day.

Former Nebraska State Senator John DeCamp was among the most vocal supporters of those willing to go on record to accuse King of his involvement in the alleged child prostitution ring. DeCamp was adamant that the accusations were true, and pender letter to the Omaha World Herald newspaper listing the names of four other prominent and powerful men who had been accused along with King, of taking part in the abuse. It was he believed conspiracy that went all the way

to the highest echelons of American society. The letter was then mailed to ten thousand homes in eastern Nebraska by a candidate running for state office at the time. When the police investigation into the allegations were complete, a grand jury was arranged to take place in July to determine whether there was enough evidence to pursue a formal prosecution of King and the other men who had been accused

alongside him. That same month, Gary Karadori, the Franklin Committee's lead investigator, who had compiled the twenty one hours of testimony and had apparently tracked down sixty potential survivors of the alleged abuse, flew himself and his son to Chicago to watch a baseball game. On the return flight, early in the morning of July eleventh, nineteen eighty nine, Karadori's playing fell out at the sky and crashed four miles south of Ashton in north central Illinois, killing him and

his eight year old son. The plane was later judged to have mysteriously broken up in midflight. According to some Karadori had not just traveled to Chicago for a baseball game, but also to rendezvous with a child pornographer called Rusty Nelson in order to collect incriminating photographs that purported to show numerous well known individuals in compromising situations with young children.

This claim, however, is entirely unproven. A few days later, the Douglas County Grand Jury found that there was absolutely no evidence that Lawrence King, or anyone else for that matter, had been involved in any ring of organized activity to sexually exploit miners, transport miners in interstate commerce for sexual purposes,

or to traffic and controlled substances. The jury also concluded that John De Camp had most likely written his accusatory letter for personal political gain and possible revenge for past actions alleged against him, and that all in all, the accusations were a carefully crafted hoax scripted by a person or people with considerable knowledge of the people and institutions

of Omaha. The case seemed fairly open and shut when it was then revealed that two of the four witnesses who'd volunteered testimony to the Franklin Committee later recanted their statements, saying that they'd simply made up the allegations in the hope of making some money from it. The two other witnesses, Alicia Owens and Poor Banazi, who claimed they were survivors of the prostitution ring and had named specific individuals of being involved in it, maintained that it was all true.

Both were found guilty of perjury and received hefty prison sentences for their involvement in the adjudged hoax. Despite the Grand Jury's ruling, it did little to diminish the ever growing moral panic that seemed to have much of America in its grip. The all too convenient timing and suspicious nature of Garry Karadori's death, as some saw it, only

served to fan the flames. The following day, after the grand jury released its verdict, a pole conducted by local TV station k e t V revealed that more than ninety percent of viewers disagreed with its findings. Many turned their ire on the media, the FBI, and local law enforcement,

accusing them all of not doing their jobs properly. The FBI said they were satisfied there was no substance to the allegations, while the Omaha Police and state Attorney General said their investigations into the rumors were thorough and failed

to find any evidence to corroborate the accusations. The editor of the Omaha World Herald newspaper also defended its involvement, arguing that dedicating seven hundred stories to the case, with more than seven thousand hours clocked by journalists looking into it, was hardly a dereliction of duty. Their credibility was somewhat damaged, however, when one Omaha World Herald journalist was soon after arrested in an unrelated incident for abusing to children by fondling them.

Though Laurence King was not charged with perpetrating child abuse, you was eventually found guilty of embezzling almost forty million dollars stolen from the Franklin Credit Union and was sentenced to fifteen years for the crime and keeping a keen eye on it all from their home in Des Moines, Iowa. Were Noreen and John Gosh still heartbroken and still desperately searching for their son. You've been listening to Unexplained, Season six, episode twenty five, Once There Was a Way, Part two

of three. The third and final part, will be released next Friday, November eighteenth. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help support us, you can now do so by a patroon. To receive a says to add three episodes, just go to patron dot com forward slash Unexplained pod to sign up. Unexplained, the book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon,

Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas. Regarding the stories you've heard on the show, perhaps you have an explanation of

your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast