UK UK - Andrew Gosden, 14, Doncaster, South Yorks, 14 Sep 2007 #2

[BethAnn777]

In the US, we have online whitepages where you can enter a phone number and it shows names associated with that phone number. Sometimes you can even see email addresses associated with that number. A long shot I know, but for anyone that knew Andrew’s old cell phone/s number, have they ever searched to see if there were any email addresses associated with that number/s?

 

[lebvidox]

I wonder if investigators have an enhanced version that lead them to believe this is definitely Andrew?

I doubt it. They just assumed it was him, most likely.

 

[ekardh]

I'm even open to entertain that kid could not be Andrew at all.

That is 100% Andrew. Not even up for debate imo.

 

[RC80]

When looking at the footage of a neighbor's CCTV showing a boy that could be Andrew walking straight ahead in the opposite sidewalk that morning, I have the distinct impression of seeing a dark jacket tied around his waist.

Very visible when this boy is not hidden by a parked car, such as in this frame. All in all, considering the possibly different features of the boy spotted in the King's Cross footage, I'm even open to entertain that kid could not be Andrew at all.

It's not a jacket but his satchel, as seen in the King's Cross footage.

 

[ChatteringBirds]

I agree. They know which train he took and when it arrived at King's Cross. They knew which clothing he was wearing and bag he took.

That is 100% Andrew. Not even up for debate imo.

 

[Officer Dibble]

He wasn't local, so if it was him it's possible he got the wrong train.

IMO it is highly likely that he would have gotten lost or misdirected at some point, as a fourteen year old boy who wasn't familiar with London. I've lived in the city for most of my adult life and I still get lost in strange areas, and there are still train lines I have never been on.

But he was familiar with London. They had family there and they visited London regularly.

 

[Cardgame]

But he was familiar with London. They had family there and they visited London regularly.

Sure, if he was going to a part he was familiar with, then he could have been familiar with that part of London. But it's a huge city geographically, unless he was visiting family, which we are fairly sure he wasn't (I think?) then there's no reason to believe he would have been familiar. Like I said, I've lived here for many years and it is still easy and possible to get lost. You can't really be "familiar with London" just by occasionally visiting. Even if you got familiar once, it changes so fast, you can quickly lose that sense of ease getting around. JMO. And maybe AG was a great navigator. I'm just offering an explanation for why he could have been making an apparently illogical journey.

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

But he was familiar with London. They had family there and they visited London regularly.

No matter how well one knows it, Central London is a crazy place for veering off course or getting a bit lost as there's never a week goes by that the landscape and navigation of a street doesn't change for one reason or another, IMO

 

[lebvidox]

That is 100% Andrew. Not even up for debate imo.

Some say 'Jaz' is Amy Bradley too, 100%. I'm not saying it isn't Andrew, I'm saying there's no way to confirm this beyond reasonable doubt. The entire timeline of how those discoveries were made gives enough room for alternative avenues.

 

[lebvidox]

I agree. They know which train he took and when it arrived at King's Cross. They knew which clothing he was wearing and bag he took.

I disagree a bit.

The parents were the ones telling the police Andrew had left and came back from school to place the uniform in the washer. The parents located the CCTV footage from this neighbor’s cam and determined this was Andrew leaving the house (there’s no publicly available footage of Andrew coming back dressed in his uniform, we can’t know what’s a confirmed fact or an assumption). And the parents approached and talked to the ticket seller on Monday.

There’s no CCTV record of the Doncaster train station or the ATM where Andrew supposedly withdrew some money. There’s no independent witness of Andrew leaving the home in his uniform that morning apart from a church friend from the family. So, literally, without the King’s Cross footage, this would be the only possible recorded piece of evidence in this case (again, as far as we know). There’s no way to confirm this was indeed Andrew unless you had cameras in the other blocks as well to establish the path this boy took (i.e. if this camera is on block B, a camera on block A could capture this same boy walking around a minute before when ‘Andrew’ was supposed to be in the family home, also in block B).

So, the King’s Cross is – objectively – the only piece to sustain the narrative Andrew went to London. Again, based on this (the neighbor's CCTV cam), there's no way the family could say Andrew was wearing a Slipknot T-shirt. There's no recorded testimony of the family saying so in those early days to the police. And if they did, I'd find it downright suspicious: ask any parent of a teenager to go over their wardrobe and tell you exactly what T-shirt is missing from there.

I'm not saying I don't think Andrew went to London. I'm saying that the narrative itself is only supported, independently, by this King's Cross footage. The police were working with the hypo he could have gone to London, but they couldn't know what train he took, or if he took a train at all in those early days. There's a version of these events that could simply be boiled down to a misidentification of the images. Like 'Jaz' being Amy Bradley.

 

[Inspector Evans]

He wasn't local, so if it was him it's possible he got the wrong train.

IMO it is highly likely that he would have gotten lost or misdirected at some point, as a fourteen year old boy who wasn't familiar with London. I've lived in the city for most of my adult life and I still get lost in strange areas, and there are still train lines I have never been on.

To get from Kings Cross to Marleybone is a good 50 minute walk. Not like it is St Pancras next to XC and so those two stations across the road would confuse you.

If it was really him that day then he'd have had some reason to go over to Buckinghamshire as it is half an hour out of London.

 

[Cardgame]

To get from Kings Cross to Marleybone is a good 50 minute walk. Not like it is St Pancras next to XC and so those two stations across the road would confuse you.

If it was really him that day then he'd have had some reason to go over to Buckinghamshire as it is half an hour out of London.

Yes good point..

I can imagine a scenario where you travel into London, arrive at kings cross, meet someone who picks you up in a car and drives you elsewhere and then later in the day you have to try and find your own way back into London and end up on a train to marylebone.

Kings cross is just his arrival station. I believe the timings don't work if the sighting really happened at 11am but if it was later in the day then it's not impossible.

You have to get into London whatever way you can if you're outside. So maybe he wasn't lost, he had simply been transported elsewhere by a means which wasn't public transport.

Again, not saying I think it's him. But when we have so little information it seems crazy to rule out a potential sighting just because it seems illogical. Everything about this case seems pretty illogical IMO!

 

[Inspector Evans]

Yes good point..

I can imagine a scenario where you travel into London, arrive at kings cross, meet someone who picks you up in a car and drives you elsewhere and then later in the day you have to try and find your own way back into London and end up on a train to marylebone.

Kings cross is just his arrival station. I believe the timings don't work if the sighting really happened at 11am but if it was later in the day then it's not impossible.

You have to get into London whatever way you can if you're outside. So maybe he wasn't lost, he had simply been transported elsewhere by a means which wasn't public transport.

Again, not saying I think it's him. But when we have so little information it seems crazy to rule out a potential sighting just because it seems illogical. Everything about this case seems pretty illogical IMO!

My actual hunch is perhaps this could've been a Saturday morning/lunchtime. He spent the night somewhere and then headed back into London. It also would be very business at a weekend at that time. Possibly with years passing the poster on Mumsnet has confused a Friday with a Saturday unless they reported the sighting a couple of weeks later?

However it makes him then disappearing far less likely imo as my gut is that happening in the evening of the Friday.

 

[Officer Dibble]

Sure, if he was going to a part he was familiar with, then he could have been familiar with that part of London. But it's a huge city geographically, unless he was visiting family, which we are fairly sure he wasn't (I think?) then there's no reason to believe he would have been familiar. Like I said, I've lived here for many years and it is still easy and possible to get lost. You can't really be "familiar with London" just by occasionally visiting. Even if you got familiar once, it changes so fast, you can quickly lose that sense of ease getting around. JMO. And maybe AG was a great navigator. I'm just offering an explanation for why he could have been making an apparently illogical journey.

but it wasn't said he visited london Occasionally - it was a regular thing that was reported.

 

[Cardgame]

but it wasn't said he visited london Occasionally - it was a regular thing that was reported.

Could you link to that?

I don't remember. Would be interesting to know which bit he was familiar with from visiting regularly as it could indicate where he would have headed that day.

 

[Sarahlou]

Could you link to that?

I don't remember. Would be interesting to know which bit he was familiar with from visiting regularly as it could indicate where he would have headed that day.

I'm not the person you asked but here's a link

BBC NEWS | UK | England | Mother searches for missing son

news.bbc.co.uk

 

[Cardgame]

I'm not the person you asked but here's a link

BBC NEWS | UK | England | Mother searches for missing son

news.bbc.co.uk

Ah yes thank you. I remember now the family believed early on that he was headed to the museums as he might have started to find school boring.

It doesn't mention where their relatives live though, to provide any connection to that mumsnet sighting. Surely if there *was* a connection to that train line the family would be all over it?

My original point was merely that I thought it plausible that Andrew got lost at some stage during his adventure. I stand by this, although it's interesting to remember that he was considered super bright, and had mathematical skills, so he may have felt extremely confident navigating.

 

[RandyMcDonald]

Ah yes thank you. I remember now the family believed early on that he was headed to the museums as he might have started to find school boring.

It doesn't mention where their relatives live though, to provide any connection to that mumsnet sighting. Surely if there *was* a connection to that train line the family would be all over it?

My original point was merely that I thought it plausible that Andrew got lost at some stage during his adventure. I stand by this, although it's interesting to remember that he was considered super bright, and had mathematical skills, so he may have felt extremely confident navigating.

Different sources suggest his family was in the areas of Chislehurst and Sidcup, in the southeast of London. It seems to be well outside of the city proper.

Gosden finding himself lost, though, would not explain why he was lost permanently. What are the odds he could go so lost that he would meet a deal accident, or companion, and never be found? At most it might explain how he met an unlikely fate.

 

[RandyMcDonald]

The reason people keep coming back to the idea of an unknown online life no one knew about is that Andrew's behaviour makes no sense unless something was going on with him that other people either knew nothing about or did not recognize.

The other option is that Andrew spontaneously decided to skip school and go to London for no particular reason and then somehow end up so completely lost that no one has ever found him. I suppose that might be possible, but it would be something that would be essentially beyond explanation. Even if his body was found somewhere, there would still be the almost surely unanswerable questions of how and why and what.

On reflection, this actually reminds me of Asha Degree's disappearance.

I think the consensus about her had been that Asha's departure from her normal routines (disappearing from her home at night to walk in the rain) was engineered by the person who did something to her, that the person had got her to leave her home of her own free will so she could be alone and vulnerable. Press reports of the recent investigations seem to suggest that there was no link, that Asha left her home for reasons unknown to her and just happened to have an unfortunate encounter with someone she had no prior contact with.

Continuing my line of thought in my earlier post, maybe Andrew Gosden went to London that day simply because he was tired of being a model student and just wanted a day free. Something unlikely then happened to him, unconnected to his decision to leave for London.

The problem with this line of thought is that it is utterly unprovable. We had only an idea that Asha's nighttime departure from her home and her disappearance were not part of someone plan because of someone's drunken confession. Without a similar statement from a person in a similar relationship to Andrew, we would have no idea that this was the case here, too.

 

[Cardgame]

Different sources suggest his family was in the areas of Chislehurst and Sidcup, in the southeast of London. It seems to be well outside of the city proper.

Gosden finding himself lost, though, would not explain why he was lost permanently. What are the odds he could go so lost that he would meet a deal accident, or companion, and never be found? At most it might explain how he met an unlikely fate.

Thanks for that info. no obvious link to marylebone train lines then.

I think the 'getting lost' thought for me originated less with whether or not he did get lost, but more to do with what plans he had in place to avoid getting lost. Did he have an A-Z or was someone meeting him at the train station to help him continue his onward journey, etc. ?

It was more to do with the idea that a groomer had lured him down to the city, and what that person could have put in place to STOP him from getting lost, given how totally easy that is when going anywhere in London.

Then the mumsnet sighting made me think well perhaps he had been transported outside of London by said person, whether or not that sighting was him or not, it raises that possibility. Someone living outside of London who picked him up at kings cross in a car?

To me, in a way, that makes more sense than someone who was based in London luring him down to see a gig etc. Unless of course, that groomer was someone local to Andrews family relations, or known to them, who could feel confident that Andrew would know his way to the area as he had been there lots before.