Johnny Gosch - Noreen Gosch's Visitors

Noreen Gosch's Visitors

In 1999, Noreen Gosch testified in Bonacci's lawsuit against King. During her testimony, DeCamp asked her whether she had seen or heard from her son since his disappearance. She responded that Gosch had visited her once, in 1997. She had not told her ex-husband John, and it was the first time she mentioned this visit in public.

According to Noreen Gosch's account, she was awakened around 2:30 a.m. one morning in March 1997 by a knock at her apartment door. Waiting outside was Johnny Gosch, now 27, accompanied by a man she had never seen before. Gosch said she immediately recognized her son, who opened his shirt to reveal a birthmark on his chest. "We talked about an hour or an hour and a half. He was with another man, but I have no idea who the person was. Johnny would look over to the other person for approval to speak," says Ms. Gosch. "He didn't say where he is living or where he was going."

In a 2005 interview, Ms. Gosch said, “The night that he came here, he was wearing jeans and a shirt and had a coat on because it was March. It was cold and his hair was long, it was shoulder-length and it was straight and dyed black.” After the visit, she had the FBI create a picture she says looked like Johnny.

On her website, Ms. Gosch gives more details of her account:

• Johnny Gosch confirmed Paul Bonacci's account of his abduction, named the people responsible, and asked his mother not to reveal that he had been to her home
• Johnny Gosch was angry, but he feared for his life because he could name his captors, and was living under an assumed identity for that reason

Noreen Gosch self-published a book in 2000 titled, Why Johnny Can't Come Home. The book presents her understanding of what her son went through, based on the original research of various private investigators and her son's visit.

Gosch's father, John, now divorced from Noreen, has publicly questioned the credibility of all of these allegations.