The Tragic Story Of The Kidnapping Of Johnny Gosch

May 2024 · 2 minute read

Where some see a family that deserves sympathy, others see an opportunity. It's sadly not surprising that was the case with the Gosch family, who was targeted by a teenage con artist in 1985. It started when Johnny Gosch's parents got a letter from someone claiming to belong to the motorcycle gang who had kidnapped him. The letter, says The New York Times, claimed that he had been grabbed and sold into slavery as part of a much larger human trafficking ring. He was alive, it assured his parents, but he was being held against his will in Mexico City. It was signed "Samuel Forbes Dakota."

Noreen Gosch believed the letter was real and sent the letter-writer a series of checks for a total of around $11,000. Meanwhile, the FBI issued a warrant for the arrest of "Samuel Forbes Dakota," a move that she condemned. Dakota, it turned out, wasn't an informant at all — he was 19-year-old Robert Herman Meier. The Associated Press reported that Meier was ultimately arrested as he attempted to cross the border to Canada via Buffalo, New York, and was indicted on fraud charges at the federal level.

It wasn't the only time the Gosch family was targeted, either. In 1986, UPI reported on another incident where a man named David James Schultz was arrested after trying to get money from the family in exchange for supposed information on Johnny's whereabouts. Once again, Mexico was named as the boy's ultimate location.

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