Marc Allen

Case background and investigation

Marc James-Warren Allen II, born May 13, 1972, was 13 years old when he disappeared from Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, March 29, 1986 — the day before Easter. That evening he told his mother, Nancy Allen, that he planned to walk to a friend's house down the street from their home on southwest Emma Avenue and possibly go to a movie, and he asked her to save some pizza for when he got back. He never arrived at the friend's home. His mother realized the next morning that he had not returned, and after checking with his grandmother, friends, and neighbors without finding him, she contacted police. At the time of his disappearance Marc stood roughly 4'11" to 5'0" tall and weighed 85 to 90 pounds, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a small scar on the top of his head. He was last seen wearing a light blue t-shirt, blue denim shorts, white socks, and gray sneakers with velcro fasteners.

According to his mother, police initially told her they could not act for 48 hours, and early investigators treated Marc's disappearance as a possible runaway case. The family had moved several times: Marc spent his early childhood with his grandmother, lived with his father in Minneapolis for a period, and had returned to his mother in Des Moines in January 1985. Investigators checked with his father in Minnesota and his paternal grandmother in Connecticut, but found no trace of the boy. Over time the case was reclassified from a suspected runaway to a non-family abduction. The Des Moines Police Department has said it followed up on every lead in the weeks after the disappearance, but the case went cold and no arrests were ever made.

Marc's disappearance is frequently discussed as a possible third case in a string of Des Moines-area child abductions. Johnny Gosch, 12, vanished from West Des Moines on September 5, 1982, and Eugene Martin, 13, disappeared from Des Moines' south side on August 12, 1984; both boys were abducted while delivering newspapers in the early morning. Marc, by contrast, disappeared in the evening and was not delivering papers when he vanished, though media reports sometimes described him as a third missing Iowa paperboy. The CrimeReads account of the cases notes that Marc's home was only about two blocks from the corner where Eugene Martin was last seen. Despite these proximities, investigators have never established any definitive connection among the three cases, all of which remain unsolved.

Unlike the Gosch and Martin cases, which drew national attention and appeared on early milk-carton campaigns, Marc Allen's disappearance received comparatively little publicity, and writers covering the case have noted it remained largely unknown to the public for years. His information is registered with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and in NamUs (case MP5790), where dental records have been entered and a DNA sample was submitted; according to Iowa Cold Cases, testing had not been completed as of mid-2016. The Iowa Missing Person Information Clearinghouse continues to list Marc as a missing person. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Des Moines Police Department or the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.