🎧️ The Devil Within

Johnny Gosch: The Vanishing Boy

On the morning of September 5, 1982, twelve-year-old Johnny Gosch vanished while delivering newspapers in West Des Moines, Iowa. Within hours, his red wagon was found abandoned. Within days, so was any sense of order.

This is where it begins: a quiet suburban neighborhood, a missing paperboy, and a mother who refused to stay silent. In the first half of our series, we trace the immediate aftermath of Johnny’s disappearance—the police missteps, the media silence, and the moment Noreen Gosch stopped waiting for someone else to act.

But this isn’t just a missing persons case. It quickly mutates into something stranger: rumors of child pornography rings, secret government cover-ups, and a series of whistleblowers who all seem to die under mysterious circumstances. Noreen doesn’t just want answers. She wants names. And if the system won’t give them to her, she’ll start naming names herself.

These are the early days of the Johnny Gosch case—before the public knew what to believe, before the word "conspiracy" became shorthand for delusion, and before the rest of the country realized that something deeply wrong had taken root in the American heartland.

🔭 The Devil Within is a narrative podcast from Evio Creative, written and hosted by Branden Morgan.

Sound design by Bellaire Studios.

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