The Disappearance of Marc Allen
On March 29, 1986, thirteen-year-old Marc James Warren Allen had been at home with his family. They lived on Southwest Emma Avenue, in Des Moines, Iowa. It was the day before Easter, and Marc’s siblings were eagerly getting ready for a pizza and movie night. Marc asked his mother if he could head out to his friend’s house just down the road. When she agreed, Marc rushed out to visit his friend.
The last thing that Marc had told his mother, was a hurried, ‘Save me some pizza, Mom! I’ll be hungry when I get home!’ Then, he had rushed down the sidewalk, and after waving at his mother, Marc was out of sight past the nearby bushes. He was only supposed to be gone a short while, so at first, his family wasn’t too concerned with his absence. Unfortunately, Marc never made it to his friend’s house. He hasn’t been seen since, and Marc Allen is still considered a missing person.
Marc wasn’t reported as a missing person straightaway. His mother noticed on Easter Sunday, that her son was not at the house. She thought that maybe he had just gone to his grandma’s house, because she would always hand out Easter baskets for each of her grandchildren. But when Nancy called her mother, she was told that Marc wasn’t there.
Nancy started calling up Marc’s friends, asking if anyone had seen her son. But nobody knew where he was. It was then that she called the police. She was informed that they wouldn’t do anything for the first forty-eight hours. When the two days were up, the police contacted Marc’s father in Minnesota, and also reached out to the boy’s grandmother in Connecticut. Neither relative knew where Marc was.
When Marc first went missing, a lot of people thought about some of the other teen boys who had gone missing in Des Moines around that time. Twelve-year-old Johnny Gosch had disappeared on September 5, 1982, and thirteen-year-old Eugene Martin disappeared on August 12, 1984. They had both been working on their paper routes, and had disappeared under similar circumstances. It was believed that they had both been abducted, possibly by the same kidnappers. They had never been seen since. And there was a great deal of other missing children from the area.
Nancy Allen didn’t know if the same person had taken Marc, or if there was any connection to her missing son. But she hoped that the police would investigate thoroughly, and find out what had happened to Marc. Unfortunately, the police were not keen on putting too much effort into looking for him.
Nancy Allen said the following: ‘I just feel like, at this time, they were just afraid of . . . afraid of what would happen with the Eugene Martin, and Johnny Gosch thing. I got the distinct feeling that they did not want parents to be frightened to let their children sell newspapers or do different things.’
Although Nancy was convinced that the police were needed to put in a great deal more effort in finding Marc, there were some members of the Des Moines Police Department who had spoken out in media interviews to say they had worked diligently to bring the missing boy home.
Sgt. Jeff Edwards conducted a 2010 interview with WHO-TV, stating the following: ‘I know detectives followed up on leads that did not pan out. They were not able to locate him. He’s still listed as a missing person.’
Marc James Warren Allen was born on May 13, 1972. At the time of his disappearance in 1986, Marc weighed 85 pounds, and was five feet tall. He had brown hair, and blue eyes. The day he went missing, Marc had been wearing blue jean shorts, a light blue t-shirt, white socks, and grey sneakers with Velcro. He had a scar on the top of his head.
Marc was described as ‘being a handful’ by his mother, Nancy Allen. He had somewhat of an unstable childhood, as Marc was constantly being moved back and forth between his mother’s Iowan home, and his father’s home in Minnesota. This went on for years. Marc had a reputation for getting into trouble.
Marc Allen’s mother, Nancy Allen, struggled to cope with the loss of her young son. She wanted desperately to get him back, but as the days and weeks went on, the hope of finding Marc started to dwindle. Over time, it felt less and less realistic that her son was going to come home.
There was a great deal of fear that perhaps Marc Allen had been kidnapped by the same people who had taken Eugene Martin, and Johnny Gosch. The two missing paperboys had their photos featured on milk cartons, in hopes that someone might recognize them and contact the authorities. There was a great deal of conspiracies, and theories about what happened to the missing paperboys, but one of the main beliefs were that they had been trafficked by a local pedophile sex-ring who were transporting the children back and forth across the country, to be bought and sold by rich people. Marc Allen might’ve been taken by these same people, and met the same disturbing, unfortunate fate.
In November 2010, Nancy Allen conducted an interview with Aaron Brilbeck, from ‘WHO-TV Channel 13’. She stated the following about her missing son: ‘It was hard because he had been living with his dad for a while, and then came back and lived with me. His younger brother, and older sister were real close, and he wanted to be in there, in tight.’
Nancy Allen made a point of following news stories in Iowa. Every time she heard about a body being found in the area, Nancy would go through a series of mixed emotions. She wanted to know if the body belonged to her missing son. It was important for her to get closure in the event that her son had been found dead, but it was always extremely painful, because that would mean facing the fact that her son was well and truly dead. Nancy needed to lay him to rest. But as his body was never recovered, she was never able to properly lay Marc to rest. She would also never be able to find out what had happened to her young son all those years ago.
For a long time, Marc’s disappearance was believed to be connected to the other missing boys, as they believed he was another missing paper boy. However, on August 18, 2013, the ‘Des Moines Register’ published an article, stating that Marc Allen had not actually been a paper boy in Des Moines. He may still be connected to the other missing boys in the area, but he was not the third paper boy, as some believed he’d been. Johnny, Eugene, and Marc are all still missing persons, and their cases are unsolved. Marc Allen’s dental records, and DNA samples were submitted to various databases — however, they have yet to yield any results.
SOURCES
https://iowacoldcases.org/case-summaries/marc-allen/
https://www.reddit.com/r/JohnnyGosch/comments/15n2mqb/sam_soda/