Episode Transcript
Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.
Use Ctrl + F to search
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
Now a word from our sponsor Better
7:25
Help. It can be tough to train your
7:27
brain to stay in problem solving mode
7:29
when faced with a challenge in life, but
7:31
when you learn how to find your own solutions,
7:34
there's no better feeling. A therapist
7:36
can help you become a better problem solver,
7:38
making it easy to accomplish your goals,
7:41
no matter how big or small. Better
7:43
Help is committed to facilitating great
7:46
therapeutic matches, so they make it
7:48
easy and free to change therapists
7:50
if needed. It's more affordable than
7:52
traditional offline therapy, and financial
7:55
aid is available. Better Help
7:58
wants you to start living a happy life
8:00
today. Just fill out a brief survey
8:03
and get matched with a therapist today,
8:05
and you can switch therapists anytime
8:08
if you so wish. When you want to be a
8:10
better problem solver, therapy can
8:12
get you there, Visit betterhelp dot
8:14
com. Slash unexplained one
8:16
zero today to get ten percent
8:19
off your first month. That's better help
8:23
dot com. Slash unexplained
8:25
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.
32:59
To receive a says to add three episodes,
33:01
just go to patron dot com forward
33:03
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
podcast dot com or Twitter
33:42
at Unexplained Pod and Facebook
33:44
at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash
33:47
Unexplained Podcast
Podchaser is the ultimate destination for podcast data, search, and discovery. Learn More