Episode 24 Have you seen me? | The Missing Children Milk Carton Program - video Dailymotion

The Dark Mystery Lounge

Throughout the 1980s and into the mid to late 1990s, missing children's info was printing on milk cartons. Due to number of reasons, the program failed.   #missingchildren #milkcartonkids

Transcript

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.

Episode 24 Have you seen me? | The Missing Children Milk Carton Program

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended