00:00Hello and welcome to the Dark Mystery Lounge.
00:03You know, the other week I got one of those Amber Alerts on my phone.
00:07I clicked on the link to see what was going on and how far away it was.
00:12Come to find out it was in my city and within 24 hours, the kidnapped child was recovered
00:17in another state only a few hours after the alert went out.
00:21This got me to thinking about a long forgotten method of how a missing child case was handled
00:26back in the day, milk cartons.
00:28That also got me to wondering, whatever happened to these kids?
00:32Were they ever found?
00:33Let's go ahead and dive right into this one and find out what happened.
00:44Back in the day, there really was no uniform system established for raising awareness of
00:49missing children.
00:51Sure, you can make flyers, but those would only be seen by the local public.
00:54When a child goes missing, you want as many eyes on their picture as possible and to
00:59be on the lookout for them, in hopes of bringing them back alive and safe, in a timely manner.
01:05In September of 1984, Anderson and Erickson Derry printed on their milk cartons the images
01:11of two local paperboys who had been kidnapped in Des Moines, Iowa, Johnny Gotch, age 12, and
01:18Eugene Martin, age 13.
01:20Johnny Gotch disappeared on the morning of September 5, 1982, between 6 and 7 a.m., while on his
01:28newspaper route.
01:28The last time anyone saw Johnny was when he went to pick up his newspapers from the Des Moines
01:34Register and hasn't been seen since.
01:37Almost two years later, on August 12, 1984, Eugene Martin disappeared while on his newspaper
01:44route with the same newspaper, the Des Moines Register.
01:48Witnesses said they saw Eugene talking to a clean-cut white male in his 30s sometime between
01:545 and 5.45 a.m. at Southwest 12th Street and Highview Drive.
01:59Others recall seeing the teen folding newspapers and talking to a man sometime between 5.45 and
02:076.05 a.m.
02:09Between 6.10 a.m. and 6.15 a.m., Eugene's bag was found on the ground outside of Des Moines
02:15with 10 folded newspapers still inside.
02:18When customers called to report not receiving their morning newspapers, the manager went out,
02:24found the bag, and delivered the papers.
02:25At approximately 8.40 a.m., the search for Eugene began.
02:30He has not been seen since.
02:33A similar milk carton advertising program for missing children launched in Chicago, Illinois
02:38with support from the police and statewide in California with support from the government.
02:45In either late 1984 or early 1985, depending on the source, the non-profit organization National
02:52Child Safety Council latched on to this idea and soon created a nationwide program called the
02:58Missing Children Milk Carton Program.
03:01This program featured high-profile missing children cases.
03:05One of the first missing children to be featured on this program was little Eton Pats.
03:10Eton was just six years old when he disappeared on his way to the school bus stop only two blocks
03:16away from his Manhattan home.
03:19This was the first time he would walk to the bus stop by himself.
03:22Eton's teacher noticed that he was absent but did not report it to the principal.
03:27When Eton did not return home after school, his mother, Julie, called the police.
03:33Eton's body was never found and he was declared legally dead on June 19, 2001.
03:39His killer, 51-year-old Pedro Hernandez, who confessed to kidnapping and murdering the little boy,
03:46was tried and convicted in 2017.
03:48He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.
03:54Now, not all missing children cases that were on a milk carton ended in a cold case.
04:00There was at least one success story.
04:02Little Bonnie Lohman was seven years old when she spotted her picture on a milk carton while
04:08grocery shopping with her stepfather.
04:09She showed her stepfather the carton, not sure what it said, because she had never been to school to learn how to read.
04:17He agreed to purchase the milk for her.
04:19They went home, drank the milk, and then cut out the little photo of Bonnie and gave it to her to keep under one condition.
04:27She was never allowed to show it to anyone.
04:29Bonnie carried that cutout with her everywhere.
04:31One day, she went to a neighbor's house to play and left the cutout in a box of toys.
04:37The neighbor saw the cutout with the words missing person and immediately called police.
04:43Bonnie was reunited with her father.
04:45She didn't know that her mother and stepfather abducted her when she was three years old
04:50and had kept her hidden for years.
04:52That trip to the grocery store was the first time that she had been taken anywhere outside of her home.
05:01The Missing Children Milk Carton Program looked good on paper, but there were a lot of flaws.
05:09The campaign brought attention to the idea of stranger danger.
05:13It's a good idea to teach your child about stranger danger, but most of the time the child is abducted by a family member.
05:20Bonnie Lundman was a fine example.
05:22Another problem was with racial bias.
05:25Majority of children on these milk cartons are white.
05:27Stand-up comedian Eddie Griffin performed a white kids on milk cartons routine
05:33based on his recollections that the children featured on the milk cartons were usually white.
05:39This is not representative of the demographics of missing children.
05:43In 1997, while making up only 15% of U.S. child population,
05:49black, non-Hispanic children were 42% of all non-family abductions.
05:55Hispanic children were also slightly more likely to be victimized this way,
06:00making up 16% of the population, but 23% of non-family abductions.
06:06By contrast, white, non-Hispanic children, at 65% of the population, were only 35% of the non-family abductions.
06:16Another issue was with emotional distress.
06:19In late 1980, pediatrician Benjamin Spock said that the cartons terrified small children at the breakfast table
06:26with implications that they, too, might be abducted.
06:30Lastly, what killed the program is its lack of success.
06:34Out of the billions of cartons printed out, majority of the cases went cold.
06:39No real leads, no real progress, and no way to track how successful it was.
06:44The program had begun to fade in the late 80s and was obsolete when the Amber Alert system was created in 1996.
06:52The last child printed on a milk carton was in the year 2000.
06:5616-year-old Molly Bish disappeared from her lifeguarding job in Massachusetts in 2000.
07:02Her parents became active in raising awareness about missing children.
07:06The girl's remains were found three years later, five miles from where she disappeared.
07:11Even though the milk carton program was a failure, it did help change how we handle missing persons cases here in the States.
07:19It used to be that you could only report someone missing after 48 hours, but now it's done immediately.
07:26Time is of the essence for any missing child, and every second counts.
07:30I vaguely remember the milk carton program, but at that time I didn't really know what it was,
07:39because I was just starting to learn how to read.
07:42The faces of some of those kids haunted me for quite a while.
07:45I'm glad things have changed, and if someone goes missing, we get an Amber Alert out immediately.
07:51The kid that went missing in my city was found unharmed within only a few hours,
07:56and her kidnapper was promptly arrested, which was a huge relief.
08:00I like seeing a happy ending, because the last thing I want to see is another kid put on a list of kids that were never found.
08:08Well, if you found this video interesting, smash that like button.
08:12And if you really like what I do, subscribe, will ya?
08:14When you do, don't forget to tickle that little bell icon so that you don't miss out on the next episode.
08:20You never know who I will cover next.
08:21Thank you for hanging out with me in the Dark Mystery Lounge.
08:24This is Phoenix, signing out.
08:26Have a good evening, and stay safe.
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