Where was his sister? Surely she would've noticed he was missing and gone and told her parents? Why didn't they greet him? School for me got out at 2pm. I took the bus home and was the last one to be dropped off. My parents would greet me as soon as they got home from work. If either be watching MTV or hanging out on the family computer updating my LiveJournal/doing other online rubbish. Seems odd they would just assume he's in his room.
UK UK - Andrew Gosden, 14, Doncaster, South Yorks, 14 Sep 2007 #2
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Children can work from the age of 14.
Child employment
Minimum working age and pay for children, how to apply for performance licences and what local council bylaws say about employing children, paying someone over 16
They can also do work experience at 14, they just don’t have the right to be paid for it at that age.
Work experience - Pay and hours for young workers - Acas
Rights on working hours, rest breaks and pay for people doing work experience or an internship.
That's possible then, but would you go looking for work experience in a band tee? Seems like his outfit was too casual for such a thing.Children can work from the age of 14.
Child employment
Minimum working age and pay for children, how to apply for performance licences and what local council bylaws say about employing children, paying someone over 16www.gov.uk
They can also do work experience at 14, they just don’t have the right to be paid for it at that age.
Work experience - Pay and hours for young workers - Acas
Rights on working hours, rest breaks and pay for people doing work experience or an internship.www.acas.org.uk
He couldn't have started full time employment until age 16, but work experience was just a two week placement to give 14/15 year olds a taste of working life.
AFAIK the police have discussed the work experience theory with the Gosdens.
Yeah, I agree, I don’t think that’s what he was doing at all. But I think the issue of his sister going down to London to try to secure work experience when she was of a similar age to Andrew has raised a few eyebrows at times, perhaps in part because there’s a bit of confusion around the legality of it? And also on the practical side, with London being a long way from Doncaster, though I expect she would’ve stayed with relatives down south then caught a commuter train to/from work.
I suppose the link to Andrew is that if his sister could make it to London and back without issue then did that inspire him to bunk off and do the same thing? OK, he didn’t have permission like his sister did but evidently getting down to London was no problem for him. So in some ways it seems bizarre he couldn’t make his way back, too. In this scenario something clearly had to have gone very badly wrong and all within a relatively narrow window of time (if he was planning to return that afternoon or evening, say) in order for him to disappear.
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I think that is the first thing written by AI I've really enjoyed reading. Interesting but bittersweet that it mentioned his case.
It's definitely possible that he wanted to be like his sister and act all mature and show that he can go to London on his own. I mean, my sibling is 10 years older than me and I'm sure there's a couple of times I wanted to be like them. Something must've gone wrong when he got there, but the puzzling part is that there haven't been similar cases to follow to match up.
A classmate had this to say about him:
You can match the classmate's face to this video:
Death Note was a popular anime at the time so don't think this black book is real. His parents would've known about it or his sister would've seen it. He may have bad one in his messenger bag. You never know. I've been keeping a diary since 2001 albeit it's been online via LiveJournal and now somewhere else. My dad used to read it when he was alive because (cringe) I kept forgetting to delete my browser history after using the computer.
I don't understand why he would choose to walk home before his disappearance. Who was he meeting if there's no evidence to suggest he was communicating with someone? Was the family friend involved? Doubtful. There's no evidence to suggest they harmed Andrew and no one has come forward to make any other allegations about this person. Nothing makes sense.
I also don't think the whole Andyroo user from 2017 is a real lead. I mean, I moved to the UK in that same year and evenly split rent with my husband. It was not £200 for my share. Rent back then was £795/mo for a shoebox size flat about an hour and a half from London. Then we bought a house in 2021 and our mortgage was £720/mo. Now we've sold our house and moved 30 mins outside London because my husband got a new job. Rent here is £1,823/mo. We are in the process of buying another house and our mortgage is expected to be £1,100/mo. Where in the world would someone be paying £200 for their share of rent? I know it's the Amount Andrew took out from the ATM, but it sounds so fake given real rent prices in the country. Look at Tumblr. People disgustingly roleplay as the Columbine killers or they gush over how cute x killer is. It's gross. I wouldn't be surprised if it's someone like that who did made the chat up.
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I did mine at School when I had just turned 15. School could organise it or you could organise it yourself if parents had good contacts. However this was during the summer holidays rather than in September right at the start of the new term.
His Sister went down to London a few years before so clearly the parents wanted their kids to get independence going into their teenage years and were o.k with them travelling to other town/cities looking for opportunities.
As said before it genuinely wouldn't surprise me if Andrew had gone down a few times to London during summer 2007 without anyone knowing but he always returned so parents were none the wiser until he didn't come back.
What was he doing during the summer holidays when his parents were going to work as would you just leave a 14 year old at home all day to mind the house?
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Daughter was 16 when he went missing so possibly could've been round a boyfriend's or meeting friends? Not sure I've ever read any interview saying her whereabouts on the day.
This interview with Kevin Gosden says she married in 2016:
The Disappearance of Andrew Gosden. Interview with Kevin Gosden. - ForenSeek - Mysteries, Crimes, Curiosities
In 2007 then 14-year-old Andrew Gosden disappeared from London, England. Andrew lived in Doncaster, and had purchased a one-way ticket … More
forenseek.app
"We discovered he was missing around 6pm when we called him for dinner and then found he was not in the house."
So 6pm rather than 7pm as I thought. Probably as innocent as Kevin was at work, got back half 5 or after and just went to change clothes/shower and then see what Andrew was up to and then he realised he was missing.
Actually he does mention Charlotte (daughter) as she came on drive that evening to retrace his route to school and seen if he'd had an "incident" anywhere.
£200. That's a decent amount of money to take for a potential day trip in 2007. If he's just buying a one way ticket that would probably be 25% of the budget or less so what was he planning to do with the other 75%?
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If you were just going down to London for a few hours to walk around and/or go to a museum or other attaction would you really withdraw £200?
Suggests more a weekend than day outing to me really unless he thought the train ticket down there would be over £100.
Checked all the single tickets from Doncaster to London XC for next Friday morning and no ticket is priced over £40 so can guess 2007 prices plenty would be £20-25.
He had over £150 in play, what was he going to spend that on?
If people think someone had promised him a ride back to Doncaster that would potentially cost far more than the train so makes little sense to me unless he was easily manipulated.
My parents left me home alone from age 8 onwards. At that time I was also babysitting children from the area. I was allowed to stay home alone that young because I told my mom my classmates were being allowed to stay home alone and so my mom called the parents of different classmates to confirm. I was always seen as a mature child or someone mature for my age. I devoured War & Peace when kids were sitting reading picture books. I mostly just hung out on the family computer illegally downloading music off Napster/Kazaa, playing Habbo Hotel, updating my online journal (LiveJournal was really popular at the time), MySpace, Bebo, etc. It never occured to me that I could walk out of the house and just go somewhere. I didn't have the cash to do so though like Andrew. My parents didn't give me an allowance and the children I babysat had parents who paid me in Blockbuster gift cards. My MIL grew up in Surrey and she used to go to London all by herself when she was 14. She said she used to admire the workers in the Harrod's/Liberty windows setting up the displays because they had funky colored hair and looked punk.
I think it falls in to the ‘could be a clue but could be nothing’ category, sadly. I suppose the question is, how many 14 year olds could accurately budget for a day in London? Perhaps £100 would’ve been sufficient for Andrew in 2007, but if you’ve only got around £200 in your bank account anyway maybe you think ‘let’s withdraw the lot, just to be on the safe side’? Or maybe he typed £200 in to the machine by mistake?
It’s similar to the train ticket, I think. Maybe he meant to ask for a return but said a single, when asked if he’d prefer a return he didn’t want to appear confused (which might’ve raised the ticket seller’s suspicions), so he stuck with the single? Maybe he wasn’t sure if he’d be restricted as to what trains he could catch coming back if he bought a return? Maybe he intended on coming back via a different route, or even on another day?
As always I think the difficulty here is trying to make sense of the things a 14 year old boy did. At that age we’re still learning about the world, how things work, how to use logic and reason in environments we’re not familiar with. So a lot of this stuff could be pointers, definitely, but I also fear many of these things are red herrings.
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It was apparently a typical routine for Andrew to come home before his parents (who both worked) and put his uniform in the wash and then go and start gaming. i know people have speculated as to whether this might not have been the first time he went to London in this way, only on the previous occasions he’d made it back in time.
I still think it would be risky/down to the wire, timings wise, especially given the potential for delays on British trains
so the more I think about it the less convinced I am that he’d pulled it off before, especially since he was believed to have had a perfect school attendance record (at least I feel like I’ve read that somewhere). but based on what little we know I guess it cannot be ruled out entirely.
I still wonder if Andrew had got into a situation where he risked more trouble if he didn’t go to London. I wonder about him potentially being extorted for imagery and trying to go to London to pay someone off in cash or to convince them not to go through with it.
I still think it would be risky/down to the wire, timings wise, especially given the potential for delays on British trains
so the more I think about it the less convinced I am that he’d pulled it off before, especially since he was believed to have had a perfect school attendance record (at least I feel like I’ve read that somewhere). but based on what little we know I guess it cannot be ruled out entirely. I still wonder if Andrew had got into a situation where he risked more trouble if he didn’t go to London. I wonder about him potentially being extorted for imagery and trying to go to London to pay someone off in cash or to convince them not to go through with it.
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Just want to point out that in 2007 there was a study done by researchers at a British university where they interviewed teenagers who were a part of the NAGTY program (the gifted education program that Andrew was a part of) about their taste in music. It focused specifically on kids who liked metal music.
School of rock . . . gifted teens use heavy metal to cope with stress
According to the research paper itself, which is also available online, researchers conducted the interviews using “NAGTY’s internet chat forums, a virtual space where registered members of NAGTY are able to discuss a variety of academic and social topics. Only registered NAGTY members can log-in and leave messages in the forum…”
The thread on the forums had an intro from the researcher who invited participants to ‘chat to me and among yourselves on this thread’.
Participants were aged between 11-19.
It’s an interesting coincidence that the topic of this study was metal music. I’m not however implying that Andrew was a participant in this study or even in the NAGTY forums, but just pointing out that members of the program had access to the forums and they were a place to chat and socialise with others in the program (and that some adults associated with the program had access too).
School of rock . . . gifted teens use heavy metal to cope with stress
According to the research paper itself, which is also available online, researchers conducted the interviews using “NAGTY’s internet chat forums, a virtual space where registered members of NAGTY are able to discuss a variety of academic and social topics. Only registered NAGTY members can log-in and leave messages in the forum…”
The thread on the forums had an intro from the researcher who invited participants to ‘chat to me and among yourselves on this thread’.
Participants were aged between 11-19.
It’s an interesting coincidence that the topic of this study was metal music. I’m not however implying that Andrew was a participant in this study or even in the NAGTY forums, but just pointing out that members of the program had access to the forums and they were a place to chat and socialise with others in the program (and that some adults associated with the program had access too).
A few thoughts, though a lot of what is being discussed now has already been covered previously in the threads.
Leaving his stuff in the washing machine - would possibly delay the point a little in the late afternoon when they noticed him missing, before dinner (or "tea" as it's often called in the north), but it also indicates he was possibly planning to return before the Monday
Refusing the return ticket implies probably not planning to come back the same day
Taking the PSP but not the charger - that seems strange to me and possibly implies he was actually planning to come back the same day?
The work experience thing - that would surely be something you'd do towards the end of the summer term or in of the summer holidays, not just after the start of an academic year
Not using the bus last few days - that makes me immediately suspect bullying, and possibly a catalyst
MOO
Leaving his stuff in the washing machine - would possibly delay the point a little in the late afternoon when they noticed him missing, before dinner (or "tea" as it's often called in the north), but it also indicates he was possibly planning to return before the Monday
Refusing the return ticket implies probably not planning to come back the same day
Taking the PSP but not the charger - that seems strange to me and possibly implies he was actually planning to come back the same day?
The work experience thing - that would surely be something you'd do towards the end of the summer term or in of the summer holidays, not just after the start of an academic year
Not using the bus last few days - that makes me immediately suspect bullying, and possibly a catalyst
MOO
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I don’t have the receipt for this to hand, but I’m absolutely certain that people have posted here before confirmation from Andrew’s dad that him walking home and not taking the bus was only known to have happened once. Not multiple times in the days prior to disappearing. (Again I guess that doesn’t mean it hadn’t happened more often, but the quote was to the effect that his dad was home earlier than expected, and got home before Andrew did, so encountered him coming in from The walk not the bus. And Andrew said he had walked home because it was a nice day. I still think this is suss and that it wasn’t the full story, but just wanted to correct the belief that it had happened multiple times (that we know of) because it’s one of those things that is often misquoted.
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Yes, that summer before school started is really important, I think. What did he do the whole time?
His family offered him the opportunity to go to London to stay with family during this period, but he turned it down. I wonder what / who changed in the intervening time. Someone else who was on school holidays? Someone who was abroad at the time until school started?
One note to add is that he was deaf in one ear. Maybe he didn't hear the ticket lady?
I think this is a really interesting find, but I’m struggling to see it as anything more than contextual unless there’s something else to anchor it.
A couple of points that make me cautious:
First, those NAGTY forums were closed, public-to-members spaces, not open chat rooms. The study you’re referencing involved researchers posting a thread and teenagers replying publicly. There’s no indication private messaging or DMs were part of the study, and even in 2007, one-to-one private contact between adult researchers and minors would have been a serious safeguarding breach. It’s hard to imagine that happening openly or routinely without someone noticing.
Second, when it’s said that “adults associated with the programme had access,” that usually means moderators, staff, or researchers in an observational capacity. Grooming relies on secrecy; those forums were archived, visible, and shared by thousands of academically bright teens. That’s a difficult environment for sustained inappropriate behaviour to go unnoticed.
And this is where my own experience really shapes how I see this. At my former high school, a 27-year-old man was hired as a girls’ football (soccer) coach. He was eventually ousted and fired after accusations of inappropriate contact with a female student. Media involving the student was found on him. After that, other students came forward to say he was creepy, crossed boundaries, and made them uncomfortable. Parents were already uneasy—some even texted him directly, and yes, he received serious threats.
The point is: when an adult is behaving inappropriately around young people, people talk. Students notice. Other students compare notes. Rumours circulate. Someone eventually says, “that guy is weird.”
Which brings me back to NAGTY. It had thousands of members, many of whom are now adults and have spoken publicly about their experiences in the programme. Despite the intense scrutiny around Andrew’s case, literally no one from NAGTY has come forward to say “there was an odd adult,” “someone made me uncomfortable,” or even “it was probably X.” That absence is significant.
Finally, the metal-music overlap feels interesting but very weak as connective tissue. Gifted teens gravitating toward metal as an emotional outlet is common enough that it warranted academic study in the first place—it doesn’t meaningfully narrow anything down.
So I agree it’s an intriguing detail, but without reports, complaints, or even retrospective concerns from NAGTY members themselves, it doesn’t feel like a viable lead. If something inappropriate had been happening in that space, I’d strongly expect someone to have said so by now.
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I don’t think there’s a direct link either, I just think it’s interesting that these forums existed.
I described the metal music link as a coincidence for a reason, I assume it was nothing but that.
Some of the NAGTY participants in this study were 18/19 and therefore already adults.
I don’t think there’s anything in this but context. the research was an eye-opener for me into the lives of these gifted students and the ways they communicated and the way the fledgling internet was a part of (some of) their lives.
I’ve been working in education for close to 20 years and have seen many groomers and child abusers charged and successfully prosecuted. Some are discussed/talked about exactly as you described - kids talk, they warn others off, someone says something, etc. Others are completely well-hidden and take one completely by surprise when the news comes out. Some of these people have been red flags from the beginning and I have reported them myself. Others have been people that I have trusted and liked. It’s very skilled and insidious behaviour and there is no one way of being an offender or a victim-survivor. IMO
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