UK UK - Andrew Gosden, 14, Doncaster, South Yorks, 14 Sept 2007

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Wanted to just drop this here (I think it has been posted before) for UK users AND GUESTS! Takes two seconds to write off an email with info needed.

Posted by Andrew's dad, Kevin, on his own page and other Andrew facebook groups.

1. Later this year the police and Missing People are launching a scheme similar to the Amber Alert scheme - it will work by texting info. about abducted kids to people in that specific area who can keep a look out. Missing People are trying to get this off to a good start by collecting mobile numbers and postcodes from people prepared to receive these alerts. Because it is area specific, it should not mean many messages per year. If anyone here is willing to sign up for that, please message me with those details (or email me kevin.gosden@hotmail.co.uk) and I shall pass that info. along and then delete it here to protect your privacy.

2. Missing People are also trying to sign people up to receive an email every couple of months with news about the charity, people currently missing and so on. If you are prepared to sign up for that, please include your email address and I shall follow the procedure I have outlined above.

3. Please share with friends & family, the mobile messaging service in particular will be most effective if as many people as possible sign up for it.

Thanks all for reading this post & I should add that you can of course unsubscribe from the above should you change your mind at any point, Kevin
 
An interesting and disturbing case. My heart breaks for his Father and Sister and indeed the rest of his family.

Kings Cross is a seedy place indeed. About ten years ago now I went to see a gig in London with a friend. We were both horrendously drunk and ended up getting off accidentally at Kings Cross. By the time we pulled ourselves together the tube and trains had stopped running. We both jumped into a closed park nearby. The real seedy part was waking up at around 7am on a bench, my friend was on a nearby bench and used hypodermics were all around the benches. I got up and started looking for a way out of the park when an Asian man called me over from behind the park fence. He propositioned me to come to his place there and then, I was pretty glad there was a fence between us. He offered me money. It was a very creepy experience. So those are my abiding memories of Kings Cross.

This is a sad case for me as the last footage of Andrew seems to show him so very carefree, the bag over his shoulder and the way he weaves away after the exit indicate to me someone that had a plan. I find it problematic to accept Andrew planned to stay away for any amount of time though, the lack of coat and the fact he was travelling so light. Just because he refused a return doesn't mean he had no plans to return, he just might not have been returning through this location. This might, I guess, indicate someone was due to pick him up. What is certain is that he kept all these plans from his family and I wonder if that is because he thought he would be back before they returned or found out where he had been?

The trouble with London is that it is such a jungle and so easy to find anonymity in, it sadly just seems to have swallowed him up. We are also by all accounts dealing with a very intelligent boy. If he had contact online with someone he was meeting (perhaps someone posing as a girl?) face to face in London then Andrew would certainly have the wherewithal to hide the online communications if he wanted. There is of course the possibility that this was just an adventure that ended in misadventure or someone taking advantage of the boy. The Father mentioned that Andrew was reading Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, this jumped out at me because I am still working my way through that one! In this context perhaps it could be seen as a rebellious text considering The Families strong Christian identity. I don't think this is an indication of Andrew running away though, more that he might have been after an adventure. Of course the sad truth is in London that people will kill you for a great deal less than £200. In London you also have lowlifes of various stripes looking to scam anyone who looks like they do not live in the area, goes double for a younger person on their own. I used to see this type of scamming behavior all the time when I lived in Hackney, a stones throw from Bethnal Green tube station. If Andrew were mugged of his money and bag by an individual or a gang might this have led to a sequence of events that ended fatally for him?

Its a hard case as Andrew seemed to be intelligent and rather sensible, I do feel if he was in danger or the victim of a crime he would have gone to a police station. I'm sad to say that my gut feeling is that Andrew might well have been lured to Kings Cross (through Xbox messaging perhaps?) by someone posing as a girl. I just see few other reasons why this well adjusted intelligent boy would travel all that way. I know what my teenage libido was like. I know I am reaching but perhaps this person posing as a girl asked him to stay the night as well? All it would take for Andrew to silently vanish would be someone posing as the girls father or brother to pick him up for this fake rendezvous. Note that the motive could be chiefly one of two possibilities, firstly it could be a case of mugging that went wrong (Andrew does after all bring his console and £200 in cash to London) or more disturbingly it might be a sexual motive.

As for Andrew just running away to start a new life I would like to believe that is the case so he is still out there doing his thing but this is by all accounts a close supportive comfortable family. The fact Andrew puts his uniform in the washing machine and leaves no note just make this all seem highly unlikely for me. And his demeanor as he exits Kings Cross Station is almost carefree, I just can't believe that someone fleeing their life would be seeming so casual and open as he looks in this footage.

I have a hunch that very few things would draw Andrew (a studious boy with exemplary attendance) to London that day. Very few things would cause him to keep this trip a secret from his family. I do think that thing was a girl that Andrew had communicated with and fallen for. I'd like to leave it on an an optimistic note and say it is possible that the girl he was talking with was real and that they eloped together. And yet, sadly, the only practical action I can suggest is to look at sex offenders and perhaps violence in the area, admittedly that is some ask for an area as large as London. I'm glad I don't live there anymore.

My thoughts remain with the Father and Sister, do not lose hope.
 
Vox_Veritas_JT said:
An interesting and disturbing case. My heart breaks for his Father and Sister and indeed the rest of his family.

Kings Cross is a seedy place indeed. About ten years ago now I went to see a gig in London with a friend. We were both horrendously drunk and ended up getting off accidentally at Kings Cross. By the time we pulled ourselves together the tube and trains had stopped running. We both jumped into a closed park nearby. The real seedy part was waking up at around 7am on a bench, my friend was on a nearby bench and used hypodermics were all around the benches. I got up and started looking for a way out of the park when an Asian man called me over from behind the park fence. He propositioned me to come to his place there and then, I was pretty glad there was a fence between us. He offered me money. It was a very creepy experience. So those are my abiding memories of Kings Cross.

This is a sad case for me as the last footage of Andrew seems to show him so very carefree, the bag over his shoulder and the way he weaves away after the exit indicate to me someone that had a plan. I find it problematic to accept Andrew planned to stay away for any amount of time though, the lack of coat and the fact he was travelling so light. Just because he refused a return doesn't mean he had no plans to return, he just might not have been returning through this location. This might, I guess, indicate someone was due to pick him up. What is certain is that he kept all these plans from his family and I wonder if that is because he thought he would be back before they returned or found out where he had been?

The trouble with London is that it is such a jungle and so easy to find anonymity in, it sadly just seems to have swallowed him up. We are also by all accounts dealing with a very intelligent boy. If he had contact online with someone he was meeting (perhaps someone posing as a girl?) face to face in London then Andrew would certainly have the wherewithal to hide the online communications if he wanted. There is of course the possibility that this was just an adventure that ended in misadventure or someone taking advantage of the boy. The Father mentioned that Andrew was reading Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, this jumped out at me because I am still working my way through that one! In this context perhaps it could be seen as a rebellious text considering The Families strong Christian identity. I don't think this is an indication of Andrew running away though, more that he might have been after an adventure. Of course the sad truth is in London that people will kill you for a great deal less than £200. In London you also have lowlifes of various stripes looking to scam anyone who looks like they do not live in the area, goes double for a younger person on their own. I used to see this type of scamming behavior all the time when I lived in Hackney, a stones throw from Bethnal Green tube station. If Andrew were mugged of his money and bag by an individual or a gang might this have led to a sequence of events that ended fatally for him?

Its a hard case as Andrew seemed to be intelligent and rather sensible, I do feel if he was in danger or the victim of a crime he would have gone to a police station. I'm sad to say that my gut feeling is that Andrew might well have been lured to Kings Cross (through Xbox messaging perhaps?) by someone posing as a girl. I just see few other reasons why this well adjusted intelligent boy would travel all that way. I know what my teenage libido was like. I know I am reaching but perhaps this person posing as a girl asked him to stay the night as well? All it would take for Andrew to silently vanish would be someone posing as the girls father or brother to pick him up for this fake rendezvous. Note that the motive could be chiefly one of two possibilities, firstly it could be a case of mugging that went wrong (Andrew does after all bring his console and £200 in cash to London) or more disturbingly it might be a sexual motive.

As for Andrew just running away to start a new life I would like to believe that is the case so he is still out there doing his thing but this is by all accounts a close supportive comfortable family. The fact Andrew puts his uniform in the washing machine and leaves no note just make this all seem highly unlikely for me. And his demeanor as he exits Kings Cross Station is almost carefree, I just can't believe that someone fleeing their life would be seeming so casual and open as he looks in this footage.

I have a hunch that very few things would draw Andrew (a studious boy with exemplary attendance) to London that day. Very few things would cause him to keep this trip a secret from his family. I do think that thing was a girl that Andrew had communicated with and fallen for. I'd like to leave it on an an optimistic note and say it is possible that the girl he was talking with was real and that they eloped together. And yet, sadly, the only practical action I can suggest is to look at sex offenders and perhaps violence in the area, admittedly that is some ask for an area as large as London. I'm glad I don't live there anymore.

My thoughts remain with the Father and Sister, do not lose hope.
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To be honest, Kings Cross isn't THAT seedy compared to other train-station areas in other major cities in Europe (compared to Gare du Nord in Paris, Kings Cross even in 2007 is like a garden of paradise...). It was significantly seedier in 2007 than it is now, but still. I spent a lot of time passing through back then, and I live in Kings Cross now. The bigger problem, really, is that he could have quickly gone just about anywhere from Kings Cross. He could have even walked to St Pancras in a second and taken another train away from London, or walked a bit further to Euston. Considering where he's walking out, there is a bus stop RIGHT THERE. Did the police even check bus CCTV? That could have at least shown where he was going.

But his getting to Kings Cross is frustratingly indicative of almost nothing, because he could have gone just about anywhere afterward.


Re:Xbox messages, have read on the FB Group that police did specifically check for this, and Andrew did not have Xbox Live, the Xbox was not connected to internet, he didn't message anyone and didn't even connect to the internet with it at all. :/ Almost no leads at all, I think they hit a dead end pretty early on.
 
I'm more of a lurker than a poster, but I feel compelled to comment on Andrew's thread.

In a lot of the cases I read about, I can occasionally 'imagine' what I believe to have happened. However, in this case, I really have no idea. I don't know why he would have went to London. The trail seems to go completely cold after he stepped out of King's Cross. It's just so, so frustrating.

I really hope his family get some answers someday.
 
I'm still inclined to believe that Andrew was meeting someone in London and with the secrecy involved it makes me think that person was likely posing as a girl. Perhaps they asked him to bring cash with him? It is such unusual behavior that my mind keeps returning to this idea of a secret tryst which he planned to be concluded by the time his Parents returned home, surely otherwise he would have left a note buying time?

Of course it is possible that Andrew was running away, with what scant information we have anything is possible. But from everything the Family has said and noting his behavior I just have a real hard time believing Andrew was either fleeing his life (Uniform in washing machine?) or contemplating suicide. Besides, it seems almost certain that if Andrew were planning to spend an amount of time away he would have at least taken a coat, a toothbrush, a change of clothes, charger for his PSP. I assume the unit he was playing on the train was a PSP as this is the main Sony PlayStation portable device. I'm also pretty sure the PSP has chat capabilities. Perhaps leaving the charger for the PSP is the strongest indication that Andrew did not plan to stay away. The unit becomes useless without a charger and having had one they need recharging pretty regularly. Surely if he either planned to sell the PSP or continue playing it (the witness sitting near him on the train mentioned he was playing it) he would have brought the charger along?

If Andrew had no internet access at home then might he have had internet access at School or through friends? It seems so unlikely to me that any 14 year old would have no imprint online at all, no social networking presence. We know how intelligent Andrew is and subsequently I think he could have very easily hid any communication he had and if he planned to play truant from School to meet a girl (or someone else) then I believe he would have taken extra care to hide this. I also wonder if the choice of band T-Shirt might indicate a gig that he had planned to attend with someone? I guess I will go off and research all the happenings in London around that time, gigs and exhibitions.

Oh and in relation to other CCTV footage, his Father mentions in the radio interview that the police sadly left it too late to capture this. It had already been recorded over when they went to ask for it. This is perhaps the most frustrating aspect, the area is so well covered by CCTV that if they had moved fast enough who knows what leads it may have brought up?
 
Regarding the internet, I think he had a computer which was connected, but police couldn't find anyone he chatted with, anything like that. Which makes me think that he just deleted his things very carefully. He was really into music and games, and was a teenager, at the least I would have thought he'd have joined some forums for a favourite band, something. Covering his tracks doesn't even mean hiding anything criminal, I was basically a "good kid" and always deleted whatever I did online when I lived at home, didn't want my mum snooping.

Totally agree with you on the CCTV front, absolutely. It's interesting though what you've brought up, about the signs of him intending to return home... Combining that with the fact that he refused a return ticket makes me think immediately of two possibilities:

1: He was in London to meet someone (X) and he and X were going to go together to some third place, maybe even out of London. Andrew then planned to return home from that third place.

2: He was in London to meet someone (Y) and would be returning home with Y, maybe? Or Y was going to drive him, or said that he'd get a coach ticket, something.

Another thought is, what kind of return ticket did Andrew refuse to buy? Probably not Day Return, that would have been mentioned. But even with an Anytime Return, they're only valid for one month - maybe he intended to come back later than that.

Also, is it possible that he didn't understand how Return tickets work, and he thought he needed to have the return ticket for a specific time? Maybe he didn't know exactly what time, or day, he'd come back.

Just pondering, but this case is like a brick wall. I really feel for his family...
 
alllads said:
Another thought is, what kind of return ticket did Andrew refuse to buy? Probably not Day Return, that would have been mentioned. But even with an Anytime Return, they're only valid for one month - maybe he intended to come back later than that.

Also, is it possible that he didn't understand how Return tickets work, and he thought he needed to have the return ticket for a specific time? Maybe he didn't know exactly what time, or day, he'd come back.
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I think these are good points. Maybe he'd looked into what ticket to get, asked for that and then didn't want to deviate from what he'd planned so just stuck with the original one way ticket.

I don't know. I can't help feeling someone else was involved, probably someone older, who may have said they already had him a return ticket, or they would drive him home or something. I'm really stuck on how this person made contact with Andrew though. I always thought I was good at covering my tracks as a teenager online, but I'm sure the police could still find out what I'd been up to (nothing weird, I promise :blushing:)
 
I wonder if a thorough enough investigation was able to be conducted at his school? Ideally this would take into account his computer access at the school along with talking to everybody that communicated at all with Andrew, both friends, enemies and acquaintances.

I'm still of the persuasion that Andrew planned to return home later that afternoon, evening or night due to how extremely light he was travelling. If he is running away something just doesn't add up for me about Andrew returning home to change out of his uniform, I just feel its more likely he would have taken his casual clothes with him. If Andrew is leaving his life behind why return the school uniform (to the washing machine) why not just bin it on the way to the destination? It just seems unnatural.

For me the case has all the hallmarks of meeting someone and going onto a planned activity (hence the amount of cash). If he was meeting someone, be it a girl or anyone else then I am optimistic he likely mentioned the person or location at some point prior if only in a passing remark. If he didn't touch on the excursion in person with anyone than perhaps he mentioned it online or to a gaming friend? And it is such an unusual trip then I'm inclined to believe it could have been planned out for days or weeks beforehand. Did Andrew mention a new friend or London in the days or weeks before his journey? I have no doubt the police looked at all this but it makes me wonder if they talked to every person who conversed with Andrew? The journey seems so premeditated to me, I know this is not the literal case (no booked ticket for example) but the whole thing seems so efficient and a boy playing a console the whole train journey does not to me show someone depressed, conflicted or even anxious about the journey they are undertaking.

I generally agree with the poster likening the case to a brick wall, total case of now you see me, now you don't.

I would be interested to know a couple of things if anyone can help. We know Andrew had family around London but how often had he been to London and had he ever been to London by himself? When was the last time he was in London? Also, How often were trains leaving to London from the station he began the trip? It would be interesting to know how long Andrew waited for his train as it might tell us something about how premeditated the trip was.
 
Just scrolling around my subscribed threads and it hit me Andrews birthday is coming up (10th July), and that he'll be 21.

Missing People will be running his details again that week, in the Metro (free paper at train stations that a lot commuters read, especially on the line i live on from the coast to London) and of course, The Big Issue, which have featured a big spread with Andrews photo before.

I can only wish he sees it and comes home in time so his family can share it with him, no matter what has happened in the time since he left.

As unlikely as it truly is, one can only hope...
 
Missed it by a day due to being away but happy 21st Andrew. I lit a candle and thought of you. Your fathers fb posts are heart breaking.
 
Yeah happy belated birthday Andrew. This was a smart kid and I remain optimistic that he might well be somewhere still alive.
 
I often check in on Andrews Facebook page hoping to see he has been found. 7 years already.
 
Somehow ended up thinking of Andrew this evening..... where on earth did he go?

Shadowdancer, did your friend ever hear anything after her possible sighting?
 
ajc748 said:
Somehow ended up thinking of Andrew this evening..... where on earth did he go?

Shadowdancer, did your friend ever hear anything after her possible sighting?
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She never heard a thing. She thinks they didn't take it too seriously. She is certain that she saw him though, the ear especially sold it to her.
 
I always wonder about what happened to Andrew.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I wonder if it ever was considered that Andrew could have been lured to London by someone he knew from Doncaster?

I can't figure out what this person told/proposed/promised him, but I think it would be easy to find a pretext,
why Andrew should travel to London on his own and meet up with the person there.

That scenario would explain
1. why he refused to buy a return ticket. - He thought he already had a ride back to Doncaster.
2. why he traveled so light and why he didn't take the charger of his X-Box - He planed to return very soo'n.
3. why there isn't any trace of an internet communication. - There wasn't any. He met the person offline while doing his daily routine.

The person could also have tricked him in emtying his bank-account to make him look even more like a runaway.

I know that's a horrifying and depressing scenario. But I think it's also one we should take into account.
 
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