Watch Who Took Johnny For Free

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A Masterpiece!

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Blistering performances.

It must be very hard to make a documentary about subject matter as inconclusive as this. Missing kid, lot of assumptions but no resolution several decades later.Summing it up it follows a boy who went missing during his paper round and a string of people who may or may not be connected and claims by the mother that understandably come into question.Full of archive footage and interviews from as far back as the early 80's when the boy went missing the documentary is competently made but the whole thing is nothing but one big question mark.Though a couple of mysteries regarding other children are solved this case has never and almost certainly will never be.The most interesting thing to come away from this documentary and case are the stances of the police/FBI. Was there a cover up? If so why? Or was this just good old fashioned incompetence.Not the most compelling viewing but watchable all the same if you go in knowing you won't really learn anything at all of the case.

In 1982, missing children reports were so rare, that often times the local authorities didn't take them seriously. Most of these kids were considered runaways, as authorities at the time couldn't even fathom the depths of depravity that some people are capable of sinking to. In the case of Johnny Gosch, not only wasn't he a runaway, the compelling documentary, Who Took Johnny?, and the subsequent books by his mother, Noreen, have shown that not only may Johnny still be alive 35 years later, but he may have suffered more torture than anyone in the history of this planet. On September 5, 1982, Johnny Gosch, a local paperboy was abducted from Des Moines, Iowa. Despite eyewitness statements, the local police, considered him to be a runaway. Over the years evidence and even a witness go to the FBI to say that Johnny was used for human trafficking. Pictures have turned up and even his mother claims, Johnny stopped by the house for a brief time, 15 years after he'd disappeared. The documentary shows how the local authorities, didn't care and mishandled the case right from the very beginning, and how the FBI kept the family completely in the dark. To this day, despite the fact that her son could be god-knows-where, Noreen Gosch has become an outspoken defender for missing children and the rights of their parents. There is no doubt that this documentary is anything but unbiased and impartial, and while I'm not sure I believe everything Mrs. Gosch says, when taken as a whole, one can't ignore everything that happened in this case. The other side of this gave blanket statements or declined to be interviewed, which tells me, she's right about more than a few things, and even if a third of this is true, it's appalling. When catastrophe strikes, we rely on those in power to take care of us and make things right, but what happens if they just don't want to? This documentary is truly eye-opening and provides plenty of ammunition to victims rights advocates.

A very superficial treatment of the ongoing horror which is systemic, international, high level kidnapping, pedophilia and blackmail used as a tool of political control. This is what happens to congressional freshmen after they move to Washington.If you want to know what this case is really about, see the book "The Franklin Cover-up" by John DeCamp, a Nebraska state senator who was on the Nebraska senate investigative committee, and the documentary "Conspiracy of Silence" produced by Discovery Channel and Yorkshire TV. Also search forFranklin Cover-up: The White House Call Boy Ring thought crime radio

This is a powerful piece of work from the RUMUR team of Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley. Anyone with and even probably without kids can identify with the abject terror of having your child disappear without a trace, so it is utterly wrenching to watch people to whom this has actually happened try to figure out how to come to terms with the most profound loss we can imagine. To compound the horror of it all, the film documents with a pretty high degree of confidence what most likely happened to Johnny Gosch: that he was swept up into human trafficking, which more or less means child prostitution and pornography. It ain't pretty, but that's why it is almost necessary viewing. As Gogol so famously said, we can't blame the mirror if our mug is crooked, and "Who Took Johnny" is a mirror that, sad to say, is much less distortive than we would all like for it to be. Watch it.