0:00

This week's episode deals with disturbing

0:02

themes of child sexual assault. Parental

0:05

discretion is advised. You're

0:17

listening to part two of Unexplained,

0:20

Season six, episode twenty

0:22

five. Once There was a

0:25

Way. It

0:32

was seven fifteen on the morning of

0:35

Sunday, August twelfth, nineteen

0:37

eighty four, when Don Martin received

0:39

a call at his home on Frasier Street

0:42

in southern Des Moines from the route

0:44

manager of his son Eugene's

0:46

paper round. The

0:48

manager wanted to know if the thirteen

0:50

year old Eugene was at home, but

0:53

Don didn't understand. Eugene

0:57

Orgeanne as his family called him,

1:00

wasn't due back from his root for another

1:02

half hour or so. But

1:04

that's just the thing, explained the manager.

1:07

He wasn't on his route. His

1:10

papers were still on the sidewalk, all

1:12

stacked up, waiting to be taken

1:15

away for delivery. Strangely,

1:18

he added, Eugene's bag was

1:20

next to it, with ten of the papers

1:22

already tucked inside, but

1:24

there was no sign of Eugene. Don

1:28

felt his mouth go a little dry.

1:31

As a Des Moines resident, he knew

1:33

all too well about the story of

1:35

the young missing newspaper deliverer.

1:38

Johnny Gosh,

1:40

doing his best to ignore the rising,

1:43

sickening feeling in his stomach, He

1:45

assured the manager that his son would

1:47

be back soon to finish the job. But

1:51

thirty minutes later and Eugene's

1:53

bag and stack of papers was

1:56

still out on the sidewalk, while

1:58

Eugene was nowhere to be found.

2:02

Frasier Street, where Eugene

2:04

lived with his father Dawn and stepmother

2:07

Sue, was barely a ten minute

2:09

walk from the corner of Southwest

2:11

fourteenth and high View Drive, where

2:13

his papers were located. There

2:16

was just no way he would have disappeared

2:18

without telling anyone, and if

2:20

he had gone home for any reason, he

2:23

would have showed up by then. Deep

2:26

down, Dawn knew something

2:28

terrible had happened. By

2:31

midday, the Des Moines Police were

2:33

notified that yet another Des

2:36

Moines Register paper carrier was

2:38

missing, and in circumstances

2:41

all too familiar for everybody's

2:43

comfort. This

2:45

time, however, in light of the

2:48

Johnny Gosh case, the Des Moines

2:50

Police immediately sprang into action

2:52

on the assumption that Eugene was not

2:55

simply missing, but had been the

2:57

victim of a crime. Statements

3:00

quickly gathered from Eugene's fellow

3:02

carriers only served to exacerbate

3:05

their worst fears. Like

3:07

Johnny Gosh, Eugene had been

3:09

seen talking to an unknown man

3:12

shortly before he disappeared. The

3:15

man was described as being somewhere

3:17

between thirty to forty years old,

3:20

between five ft nine and six feet

3:22

tall, and being clean shaven

3:24

with a generally neat appearance. Eugene

3:28

was said to have spoken to the man sometime

3:30

around five twenty am,

3:32

when it was still dark. Some

3:36

said the man appeared to be the owner of

3:38

a green Chevrolet Malibu,

3:41

Others that he had put his arms on Eugene

3:43

at one point, while some

3:45

said that the two had conversed in a cordial

3:48

manner, almost as though they knew

3:50

each other. For

3:58

a city still reeling from the mystery

4:00

of what happened to Johnny Gosh,

4:02

it wasn't long before most people heard

4:05

the news about Eugene Martin two.

4:08

By Sunday afternoon, Des Moines

4:10

police had been joined by over a hundred

4:13

volunteers in their search for Eugene,

4:16

while all emergency service personnel

4:18

were instructed to look out for him too.

4:21

Even officers who were otherwise engaged

4:24

used any spare time between callouts

4:27

to aid in the search, friends

4:30

were contacted and any favorite

4:32

hangouts checked and double checked,

4:35

while every street in the surrounding area

4:37

was searched over and over again,

4:40

and so too was Denman Woods,

4:43

water Work Park and Gray's

4:45

Lake. But by the end of

4:47

that first day the search

4:49

had yielded nothing. On

4:52

Monday, a man came forward

4:55

claiming to have seen a young boy on

4:57

the Sunday afternoon who looked

5:00

just like Eugene, riding in

5:02

the back of a car close to Southwest

5:04

fourteenth and Indianola Avenue,

5:07

not far from where Eugene was last

5:09

seen, who looked to have been beaten

5:11

around the face, but without

5:14

any details of the car, the sighting

5:16

was useless. Before

5:19

long, one day of Eugene

5:21

missing turned into two

5:24

and then three. The

5:27

Friday after Eugene's disappearance

5:30

was his fourteenth birthday. For

5:32

Eugene's parents, Don and

5:34

Janice, who lived on the other side

5:37

of town, it was the loneliest

5:39

of days. After

5:42

another two weeks of looking, with police

5:45

by then working alongside

5:47

some of the FBI's finest, neither

5:50

Eugene nor any substantial

5:52

clue as to where he'd gone had

5:55

been found On

5:57

August twenty eighth, volunteers

5:59

who continued looking for him every

6:01

day, numbering in their hundreds

6:04

at the weekend, were politely

6:06

asked to stand down. Just

6:09

as it was with Johnny Gosh, a

6:11

fund had been set up buffering money

6:13

in exchange for information leading

6:16

to Eugene's whereabouts, but

6:18

also as it was for Johnny,

6:20

despite growing to almost a hundred

6:23

thousand dollars in size, no

6:25

one was able to provide the relevant

6:27

information. In

6:30

October, a man contacted

6:32

police to say he'd seen someone

6:35

carrying a limp looking body, possibly

6:37

that of a teenage boy, under

6:39

a bridge on Highway to The

6:42

bridge runs from east to west about

6:44

forty miles south of Des Moines and

6:46

is located about a mile away from

6:48

a well known fishing shack. However,

6:51

the area was thoroughly searched and

6:53

nothing was found. When

6:56

self described psychic Evelyn

6:58

Quick later claim aim she had a vision

7:01

of Eugene's body near a body

7:03

of water and some kind of shack,

7:05

police return to the bridge to search

7:08

the area for a second time, but

7:10

again they found no evidence that

7:13

Eugene or the body of any

7:15

other person had been dumped there.

7:23

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one zero for

8:31

Johnny gosh It's parents, Noreen

8:33

and John, who contacted

8:35

the Martin family immediately after

8:38

Eugene was declared missing to

8:40

offer whatever support they could. It

8:43

was another devastating blow Despite

8:46

all they'd done to alert local authorities

8:49

to the danger of child abduction, it

8:51

had seemingly happened all over again.

8:55

That Eugene had disappeared under such

8:57

similar circumstances For Noreen

9:00

at least, was further evidence too

9:02

that a shadowy child abuse

9:05

ring was actively snatching

9:07

children from America's streets.

9:10

Though not everyone was willing to agree,

9:13

it was hard to ignore the growing sense

9:15

among many Americans that there

9:17

was something rotten at the core of

9:20

their country that seemed to be

9:22

getting worse by the day. In

9:25

nineteen seventy nine, six

9:27

year old Eton Pats went

9:30

missing as he walked to his school

9:32

bus stop in Lower Manhattan. The

9:35

boy was never seen again. Then,

9:39

in July nineteen eighty one,

9:41

six year old Adam Walsh went

9:44

missing from a shopping mall in Hollywood,

9:46

Florida. Adams

9:48

severed head was found in a drainage

9:51

canal two weeks later. The

9:54

rest of his body has never

9:56

been located. With

9:59

Johnny Gosh and then Eugene Martin

10:01

to add to that list, a stranger

10:04

danger panic began to take

10:06

hold. People started

10:08

to wander if it was safe to

10:10

let their children out at night at all.

10:14

For then President Ronald Reagan

10:16

and his advocates it was all

10:19

the fault of a vulgar social

10:21

liberalism that had been steadily

10:23

creeping into American society.

10:27

In a reelection campaign speech delivered

10:30

in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in

10:32

late September nineteen eighty four,

10:35

President Reagan even name checked

10:37

both Johnny Gosh and Eugene

10:39

Martin. Reagan promised

10:42

to be tough on crime and to

10:44

uphold the key American tenets

10:46

of family, neighborhood, and good

10:48

hard work, as if everyone

10:51

from any political spectrum didn't

10:53

already hold those dear Some

10:57

decried the crimes as marking an

10:59

irreversal loss of innocence

11:01

for the nation, while executive

11:03

editor of the Des Moines Register

11:05

James Gannon saw Johnny

11:08

and Eugene's potential kidnapping

11:10

as the inevitable consequence of a

11:12

general softening on a crime which,

11:15

according to him, was threatening

11:17

to turn the safe and sane heartland

11:19

of Middle America into Detroit

11:22

or Chicago. For

11:25

Norain Gosh, she was mostly

11:27

just happy that the President had picked

11:29

up on her son's case earlier

11:33

in the year, thanks to the work of

11:35

Adam Walsh's parents and in

11:37

part to the Gosh's tireless campaigning

11:40

to keep Johnny's case in the news.

11:42

In June nineteen eighty four, the

11:45

National Center for Missing and Exploited

11:47

Children was set up. Then

11:50

in September, a campaign

11:52

to have the profiles of missing children

11:55

displayed on milk cartons was launched.

11:58

Johnny Gosh and Huge Jean Martin were

12:01

the first of what would become known

12:03

as the Missing Milk Carton Kids,

12:06

but by the end of that year, no

12:09

further news of their whereabouts

12:11

had come to light. It

12:20

was late one night in nineteen eighty

12:22

five when a woman called

12:24

the Gosh family home with an

12:26

incredible story to tell. The

12:29

woman had been visiting a grocery store

12:31

in Sioux City, Iowa, about

12:34

a three hour drive west of Des Moines,

12:37

where she received a dollar bill in her

12:39

change with something scrawled

12:41

over it in penn. Looking

12:44

closer, she nearly dropped her

12:46

bag of groceries when she saw

12:48

what it said. Written

12:50

and capital letters were the words

12:53

I'm alive, and underneath

12:56

that was the scribbled signature

12:59

of Johnny go Noreen

13:02

claimed to have had three handwriting experts

13:04

analyzed the note, with all

13:06

three confirming it as a match

13:09

for Johnny. It

13:11

offered nothing in the way of clues

13:13

to find the boy, but it was

13:15

enough of a sliver of hope for Noreen

13:17

and john to hang on to. Then,

13:21

in July nineteen eighty five something

13:24

even more incredible. While

13:27

out publicizing Johnny's case

13:29

in Kansas City, Noreen

13:31

was approached by a burly looking man

13:34

who introduced himself as Samuel

13:36

Forbes Dakota.

13:39

The man claimed to know exactly

13:41

what had happened to her son and

13:43

promised to write it all down in a letter

13:46

for her in the next few weeks. Sure

13:49

enough, on August ninth,

13:52

the letter arrived at the Gosh family

13:54

home in

13:56

it. Dakota claimed that

13:59

for the past years he'd

14:01

been a member of the Hell's Angels motorcycle

14:04

gang, who in that time had

14:06

been tasked with keeping watch over

14:08

two hundred children that the gang

14:11

had helped to kidnap for all manner

14:13

of people, and one

14:15

of those children was known to

14:17

him as Johnny Gosh.

14:21

Dakota even gave the names

14:23

of several other people who'd been involved

14:25

in the boys kidnapping. But

14:28

more than that, Johnny, he

14:30

said, was alive and

14:33

was being kept as a pet by a high

14:35

level drug dealer in Mexico City,

14:39

and if Noreen and John paid

14:41

him a hundred and eleven thousand dollars,

14:44

he would personally go down there and

14:46

rescue him. The

14:49

letter also came with a warning that,

14:51

in no uncertain terms, should

14:54

the Goshes involve the police and the

14:56

matter, or else he would vanish

14:58

and take his secret with him.

15:02

Feeling they had little choice, the increasingly

15:05

desperate Goshes agreed to wire

15:07

the man eleven thousand dollars

15:09

immediately and promised

15:11

to pay another hundred if he managed

15:13

to succeed in rescuing their son.

15:18

A few days later, they received

15:20

the devastating news from Dakota

15:23

that his rescue effort had been unsuccessful,

15:26

and then he disappeared after

15:30

finally informing the police about the

15:32

situation. A few days

15:34

after that, Dakota was

15:36

tracked down to a motel in Ontario

15:39

by the FBI. As

15:41

it turned out, he wasn't a Hell's

15:44

Angel at all, but a man

15:46

named Robert Herman Meyer the

15:48

Second from Saganaw in Michigan.

15:52

After his arrest, Maya pled

15:54

guilty to two counts of wire fraud

15:56

and was sentenced to three years in prison

16:06

On August seventeenth, nineteen

16:08

eighty five, Eugene Martin's

16:11

family gathered together for

16:13

what was the second birthday in

16:15

his absence. As

16:17

painful as it was, they even

16:19

baked a cake for him, which they

16:21

placed in the freezer, ready to throw

16:23

it out the moment he walked through

16:25

the door. But the moment

16:28

never comes. Much

16:31

like the Gosh family, they too,

16:33

grew angry and frustrated at

16:35

the police's inability to find

16:37

even the faintest clue as to Eugene's

16:40

whereabouts. The police

16:42

could only reiterate that they were doing

16:44

everything they could. Then,

16:47

in March the following year, improbably

16:51

it happened again. Thirteen

16:55

year old Mark Allen lived with his

16:57

mother, Nancy, on Emma Avenue

16:59

in southern Des Moines, barely

17:01

a three minute drive from where Eugene

17:04

was last seen. In

17:06

the evening of March twenty ninth, nineteen

17:08

eighty six, Nancy was making

17:11

pizza for her two other children when

17:13

Mark stepped out to meet up with

17:15

some friends, asking her

17:17

to save him some for when he got back.

17:21

Nancy remembered waving him off, then

17:24

watching him disappear past some bushes

17:26

a little further down the road and

17:29

That was the last she ever saw of him.

17:33

It wasn't until the following morning that

17:35

Nancy realized her son had not come

17:37

home. She thought he'd most

17:40

likely gone to stay with his grandmother,

17:42

who he was known to be close with, but

17:44

she hadn't seen him. More

17:47

worryingly, he never even made

17:49

it to the friends he said he was going

17:51

to see the night before. His

17:54

father and mother in law, who lived

17:56

in Connecticut, hadn't heard

17:58

from him either. Unlike

18:01

Eugene Martin, however, Mark

18:03

Allen was seen as a problem child

18:06

who had a history of so called behavioral

18:08

difficulties, which likely

18:10

stemmed from his unsettled upbringing,

18:13

of which he had absolutely no control.

18:17

Raised by his maternal grandmother from

18:19

the age of seven months to four and a

18:21

half, he was eventually allowed

18:23

to move back with his mother in Des Moines,

18:26

where he stayed until he was ten before

18:29

moving again to live with his father

18:31

in Minneapolis. Then

18:34

in January nineteen eighty five, he

18:36

moved back to Des Moines to live with his

18:38

mother for those

18:41

reasons. Despite Nancy's

18:43

please to the contrary, many

18:45

in the police took the view that

18:47

her son had most likely just

18:50

run away. For

18:52

many others, However, the press

18:54

included the simple fact remained

18:58

here was a third child from Des Moines, last

19:00

seen only minutes away from Eugene

19:03

Martin's last known whereabouts,

19:06

who was now also missing. It

19:15

was sometime in early nineteen

19:17

eighty eight, almost six

19:19

years since Johnny Gosh's disappearance,

19:22

four since Eugene Martin and

19:25

eighteen months after Mark Allen's,

19:28

when Nebraska law enforcement

19:30

officials were alerted to an

19:32

audit conducted on the personal

19:34

taxes of a man named

19:37

Lawrence E. King. King,

19:41

the chief executive of the Franklin

19:43

Credit Union in Omaha, Nebraska,

19:46

some one hundred and thirty miles west

19:48

of Des Moines, had an official

19:50

annual salary of just over

19:52

sixteen thousand dollars,

19:55

something which seemed to conflict with

19:57

his rather openly lavish lifestyle.

20:01

Known for his flamboyant dress sense

20:04

and adorning himself with expensive

20:06

jewelry, King also owned

20:08

a seventy thousand dollar Mercedes,

20:10

as well as a four story house with twenty

20:13

six acres of land overlooking

20:15

the Missouri River. He

20:18

also thought nothing of spending ten

20:20

thousand dollars a month on his own

20:22

private limousine, and in

20:24

one particularly outlandish thirteen

20:27

month period managed to spend

20:29

one hundred and fifty thousand dollars

20:31

on flowers alone, a popular

20:34

expense euphemism in the music

20:36

industry, at least for drugs.

20:40

King was an active member of the Republican

20:42

Party and a well respected member

20:44

of the local community who'd at

20:47

one time been the Business committee

20:49

chairman of the National Black Republican

20:51

Council. The self

20:53

made King, who preached to pull

20:56

yourself up by the bootstraps philosophy,

20:59

often made charged donations to

21:01

charitable causes, and had been

21:03

celebrated for his unparalleled ability

21:06

to persuade numerous charities

21:08

and nonprofits to deposit

21:10

money at his Franklin Credit Union,

21:13

which served a largely low income

21:15

client base in North Omaha. In

21:18

truth, however, it appeared

21:20

that King was quite likely siphoning

21:23

money from the union for himself.

21:26

But just as police were preparing

21:29

to investigate King, something

21:31

else came to light. In

21:35

June nineteen eighty eight, a

21:37

social worker who worked at a

21:39

psychiatric hospital in Omaha

21:42

made an astonishing accusation to

21:44

the Nebraska Foster Care Review

21:47

Board. He claimed

21:49

that he had good reason to believe that

21:52

a child prostitution ring was

21:55

actively operating in Nebraska,

21:58

and at the center of it all was

22:01

Lawrence E. King. In

22:10

November nineteen eighty eight, FBI

22:13

agents stormed the Franklin

22:15

Community Building in Omaha and closed

22:17

it down, and Lawrence

22:19

King was arrested and accused of

22:22

embezzling millions of dollars from the

22:24

credit union. However,

22:27

while King's arrest for potential corruption

22:29

made headline news, the

22:31

other accusation, perhaps due

22:34

to its largely spurious nature

22:36

and lack of evidence, remained a

22:38

secret. That was

22:40

until the following month, when,

22:42

during an executive board meeting of

22:45

the state legislature in Lincoln,

22:47

Nebraska, state Senator

22:49

Ernie Chambers made the public

22:52

announcement that King had

22:54

also been accused of facilitating

22:56

countless incidences of child

22:58

abuse. Chambers

23:00

went on to say that he believed

23:03

the accusations to be just the tip

23:05

of the iceberg, and that in

23:07

time, many other public

23:09

figures would be outed for their

23:11

involvement in it too. In

23:15

response, the FBI were forced

23:17

to reveal that they had also been

23:19

informed at the accusation and

23:21

were looking into it as part of their ongoing

23:24

investigation into King's alleged

23:26

fraudulent activities. While

23:29

the Nebraska Attorney General revealed

23:31

it was also aware of the accusation

23:34

and had instructed the state police

23:36

to investigate it. A

23:39

state government committee was set

23:41

up to carry out its own investigation

23:44

into how the Franklin credit union

23:46

had collapsed, headed by Republican

23:49

state Senator Lauren Schmidt.

23:52

However, with some in the state government,

23:55

Schmidt included, having appeared

23:57

to have already made up their mind about

23:59

the abuse seleegations, the Franklin

24:02

Committee, as it came to be known, also

24:04

doubled up as a secondary investigation

24:07

into those two. The

24:09

committees soon came to loggerheads

24:11

about how best to proceed, with

24:14

Kirk Nayla, the lawyer tasked

24:16

with overseeing all legal implications,

24:19

especially apprehensive about legitimizing

24:22

the abuse accusations. In

24:25

the end, Nayla decided

24:27

to stand down, after which

24:30

the committee appointed a private investigator,

24:33

Gary Karadori, to find

24:35

the cold, hard evidence to back

24:37

up the accusations. Over

24:41

the next few weeks, Karadori

24:43

claimed to have uncovered sixty potential

24:46

survivors of the abuse and

24:48

had recorded over twenty one hours

24:50

of testimony from a handful of them.

24:54

In late December, these tapes

24:56

were handed over to the Nebraska

24:58

Attorney General's Office, the

25:00

FBI, and the Douglas County

25:03

Sheriff's office where Omaha is

25:05

located. A

25:11

teen solo hiker who was terrorized

25:14

for days by unknown figures dressed

25:16

in white. Two cops who quit their job

25:18

at a local theater because of unexplained

25:20

encounters with an alleged demon. An

25:23

isolated forest in Canada where

25:25

people keep turning up headless. These

25:27

are just some of the strange, dark and mysterious

25:30

stories you'll hear each week on the Mister

25:32

Balland podcast. In each episode,

25:35

Mister Balland shares real life haunting

25:37

accounts, like the case of Hailey

25:39

Zeger, who disappeared from a hiking

25:42

trail for fifty one hours. When

25:44

search and rescuers finally found

25:46

her and asked how she survived,

25:48

she said simply that a friend helped

25:50

her. She described his friend as four

25:53

years old with black hair and

25:55

brown eyes. This friend was initially

25:58

dismissed until they realized

26:00

that a girl had gone missing in that exact

26:02

spot twenty three years earlier

26:05

and was never found. She was four

26:07

years old with black hair and

26:10

brown eyes. Hey Prime members

26:12

listened to the Amazon Music exclusive podcast

26:15

missed the ball In podcast Strange,

26:18

Dark and Mysterious Stories. Download

26:20

the app to day. Former

26:27

Nebraska State Senator John

26:29

DeCamp was among the most vocal

26:31

supporters of those willing to go

26:33

on record to accuse King of

26:36

his involvement in the alleged child

26:38

prostitution ring. DeCamp

26:41

was adamant that the accusations

26:43

were true, and pender letter

26:45

to the Omaha World Herald newspaper

26:49

listing the names of four other prominent

26:51

and powerful men who had been accused

26:54

along with King, of taking part

26:56

in the abuse. It was

26:58

he believed conspiracy

27:00

that went all the way to the highest

27:03

echelons of American society.

27:06

The letter was then mailed to ten thousand

27:09

homes in eastern Nebraska

27:11

by a candidate running for state office

27:13

at the time. When

27:16

the police investigation into the allegations

27:19

were complete, a grand jury

27:21

was arranged to take place in July to

27:24

determine whether there was enough evidence

27:26

to pursue a formal prosecution

27:28

of King and the other men who had

27:30

been accused alongside him. That

27:33

same month, Gary Karadori,

27:36

the Franklin Committee's lead investigator,

27:39

who had compiled the twenty one hours

27:41

of testimony and had apparently tracked

27:43

down sixty potential survivors

27:45

of the alleged abuse, flew

27:47

himself and his son to Chicago to

27:50

watch a baseball game. On

27:52

the return flight, early

27:55

in the morning of July eleventh, nineteen

27:57

eighty nine, Karadori's playing

28:00

fell out at the sky and crashed

28:02

four miles south of Ashton in

28:04

north central Illinois, killing

28:07

him and his eight year old son. The

28:10

plane was later judged to have mysteriously

28:13

broken up in midflight. According

28:17

to some Karadori had

28:19

not just traveled to Chicago for a

28:21

baseball game, but also

28:23

to rendezvous with a child pornographer

28:26

called Rusty Nelson in order

28:29

to collect incriminating photographs

28:31

that purported to show numerous

28:33

well known individuals in compromising

28:36

situations with young children. This

28:40

claim, however, is entirely unproven.

28:44

A few days later, the Douglas

28:46

County Grand Jury found

28:48

that there was absolutely no evidence that

28:50

Lawrence King, or anyone else for

28:52

that matter, had been involved

28:55

in any ring of organized activity

28:58

to sexually exploit miners, transport

29:00

miners in interstate commerce for

29:03

sexual purposes, or to traffic

29:05

and controlled substances. The

29:08

jury also concluded that John

29:11

De Camp had most likely written

29:13

his accusatory letter for personal

29:16

political gain and possible

29:18

revenge for past actions alleged

29:20

against him, and that

29:23

all in all, the accusations

29:25

were a carefully crafted hoax scripted

29:28

by a person or people with

29:30

considerable knowledge of the people

29:32

and institutions of Omaha.

29:36

The case seemed fairly open and shut

29:38

when it was then revealed that two

29:41

of the four witnesses who'd volunteered

29:43

testimony to the Franklin Committee

29:46

later recanted their statements,

29:48

saying that they'd simply made up the allegations

29:51

in the hope of making some money from

29:54

it. The two

29:56

other witnesses, Alicia Owens

29:58

and Poor Banazi, who

30:00

claimed they were survivors of the prostitution

30:03

ring and had named specific individuals

30:06

of being involved in it, maintained

30:08

that it was all true. Both

30:11

were found guilty of perjury and

30:13

received hefty prison sentences for

30:15

their involvement in the adjudged

30:17

hoax. Despite

30:25

the Grand Jury's ruling, it did

30:28

little to diminish the ever growing

30:30

moral panic that seemed to have much

30:32

of America in its grip. The

30:35

all too convenient timing and suspicious

30:38

nature of Garry Karadori's

30:40

death, as some saw it, only

30:42

served to fan the flames. The

30:45

following day, after the grand jury released

30:48

its verdict, a pole conducted

30:50

by local TV station k

30:52

e t V revealed that

30:55

more than ninety percent of viewers

30:57

disagreed with its findings. Many

31:00

turned their ire on the media, the

31:02

FBI, and local law

31:05

enforcement, accusing them all

31:07

of not doing their jobs properly. The

31:10

FBI said they were satisfied there

31:12

was no substance to the allegations, while

31:15

the Omaha Police and state Attorney

31:18

General said their investigations

31:20

into the rumors were thorough and

31:22

failed to find any evidence to corroborate

31:25

the accusations. The

31:28

editor of the Omaha World Herald

31:30

newspaper also defended

31:32

its involvement, arguing

31:34

that dedicating seven hundred stories

31:37

to the case, with more than seven

31:39

thousand hours clocked by journalists

31:42

looking into it, was hardly a

31:44

dereliction of duty. Their

31:47

credibility was somewhat damaged, however,

31:50

when one Omaha World Herald

31:52

journalist was soon after arrested

31:54

in an unrelated incident for abusing

31:57

to children by fondling them.

32:01

Though Laurence King was not

32:03

charged with perpetrating child abuse,

32:06

you was eventually found guilty of embezzling

32:09

almost forty million dollars

32:11

stolen from the Franklin Credit Union

32:14

and was sentenced to fifteen years

32:16

for the crime and keeping

32:19

a keen eye on it all from their

32:21

home in Des Moines, Iowa.

32:23

Were Noreen and John Gosh

32:26

still heartbroken and

32:28

still desperately searching for

32:31

their son.

32:36

You've been listening to Unexplained, Season

32:39

six, episode twenty five, Once

32:42

There Was a Way, Part two

32:44

of three. The third

32:46

and final part, will be released

32:48

next Friday, November eighteenth.

32:54

If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help support

32:56

us, you can now do so by a patroon.

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To receive a says to add three episodes,

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just go to patron dot com forward

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slash Unexplained pod to sign up.

33:06

Unexplained, the book and audiobook, featuring

33:09

ten stories that have never before been covered

33:11

on the show, is now available to buy

33:13

worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon,

33:16

Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones, among

33:18

other bookstores. All elements of

33:21

Unexplained, including the show's music,

33:23

are produced by me Richard McClain smith.

33:25

Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you

33:27

listen to podcasts, and feel free

33:30

to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas.

33:32

Regarding the stories you've heard on the show, perhaps

33:35

you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.

33:37

You can reach us online at Unexplained

33:39

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33:42

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33:47

Unexplained Podcast