Eugene Wade Martin

Case background and investigation

Eugene Wade Martin was 13 years old when he left his home on the south side of Des Moines, Iowa, around 5:00 a.m. on Sunday, August 12, 1984, to deliver morning editions of the Des Moines Register. According to Iowa Cold Cases, Eugene normally worked the route with his older stepbrother but went alone that morning, hoping to earn extra money during Iowa State Fair season. He reached his pickup corner near Southwest 14th Street and Highview Drive around 5:15 a.m. and began rolling his papers. Witnesses reported seeing him between about 5:00 and 5:15 a.m. near Southwest 12th Street and Highview Drive talking with a clean-cut man who appeared to be in his thirties; accounts described the exchange as friendly, with no vehicle seen nearby. The man was never identified.

Around 7:15 a.m., after customers complained about missing papers, Eugene's route manager found his canvas delivery bag still at the corner with about ten rolled newspapers inside, but no sign of the boy. His father, Don Martin, searched the neighborhood by motorcycle with his brother before calling police at approximately 8:40 a.m. Having learned from the 1982 disappearance of 12-year-old paperboy Johnny Gosch in neighboring West Des Moines, the Des Moines Police Department responded rapidly, issuing all-points bulletins, setting up roadblocks, canvassing the neighborhood, and bringing in the FBI the same day. Federal agents said at the time there might be a definite connection to the Gosch case, and authorities treated Eugene's disappearance as a kidnapping, though no link between the cases was ever confirmed.

The investigation was extensive but produced no arrests and no physical evidence beyond the abandoned paper bag. According to A&E, an investigator on the case traveled as far as Mexico and Canada and estimated he chased down between 2,000 and 3,000 leads, none of which proved credible. Johnny Gosch's mother, Noreen Gosch, later claimed a private investigator had warned her in advance that another paperboy would be taken in August 1984, a claim that was never substantiated by authorities. In March 1986, another Des Moines boy, Marc Allen, vanished; police were never able to establish definitive links among the three disappearances.

Eugene's case left a lasting mark on American child-safety practices. In the fall of 1984, Des Moines-based Anderson Erikson Dairy began printing photographs and short biographies of Eugene Martin and Johnny Gosch on its milk cartons — the first missing children ever featured that way. The idea, suggested by a dairy employee who knew the Martin family, spread through the Midwest and then nationwide, with roughly 700 dairies eventually participating, and helped fuel the broader 'stranger danger' awareness movement of the 1980s.

More than four decades later, Eugene Martin's disappearance remains unsolved. His case is still open with the Des Moines Police Department, and although he has never been legally declared dead, authorities have said he is presumed dead. Both of his parents died without learning what happened to him. At the time of his disappearance, Eugene was 5 feet tall and about 110 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes, and was last seen wearing a gray-and-white striped shirt with red sleeves, blue jeans, and blue Trax sneakers.