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

[Professor Moriarty]

I also wanted to add some perspective about Andrew being on the train that I think gets overlooked. I’ve spent time in Germany, and I had serious culture shock when I saw four-year-olds taking themselves to kindergarten on public transport. This video explains what I mean really well:

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So the fact that people think it’s “weird” for Andrew to have been on a train doesn’t seem odd to me at all. Even here in the UK, I’ll be going to the dentist during school or work hours and then go to the bus stop, and I see kids who are fifteen waiting with me. I always instinctively text my husband about it, and he always reassures me that it’s normal for England. I’m American, and I’ve been living in the UK for a decade, so it still surprises me—but to locals, it’s completely ordinary. That’s probably why no one thought to question Andrew being on a train by himself.
I also don’t think he was “looking for someone” at the station. I think he was simply taking in his surroundings. Personally, I’ve never been taught to read maps—born in the late ’80s, no proper geography classes—and I rely on MapQuest and Google Maps. Even now, navigating London without a maps app would leave me completely lost, despite having been there many times. I use it all the time just to make sense of my surroundings.

I think Andrew was probably doing the same—just trying to orient himself, not actively searching for anyone or anything.

Although young kids use buses, people from outside of London tend not to use London buses so much because they don't know the bus route. There are maps for the underground all over,in the back of diaries etc, as you pull into a station you can see the name of the station and you would know that your station is the next one. It's not the same with buses. A youngster from Yorkshire would not know which bus to catch and when to get off.

 

[vagab0nd]

I've followed this case off and on and this (sadly) seems the most plausible explanation. I've always thought he'd have likely got into a cab after leaving the train station. And whilst I haven't read this particular article before now, it fits. And I don't think it's confirmation bias, I think logically it does seem to fit like a glove.

But why go to London in the first place without informing anyone? Was there someone posing as a teenage boy (or girl) online and he arranged to meet them? It seems quite unlikely (at least to me) that he'd go down to spend time in London alone.

I wonder if police ever followed up on any of this? The only thing that doesn't make sense to me, is that Worboys' victims were female. Why the change of MO? Why target a teenage boy?

A lot about this case makes no sense. I often wonder if there's a significant amount more information that police have but haven't made public.

The police checked his digital history and found nothing. Even his PSP had never been online according to Sony. How else could he have been chatting to someone? Snail mail? The parents would've noticed that. Maybe his missing phones hold a clue but we will never know.

 

[ChatteringBirds]

How else could he have been chatting to someone?

If he was chatting with someone, I speculate in an online chatroom or message board website using a computer, perhaps at school or a library. My speculation is based on my own experiences in the 90s and early 2000s, chatting online (not from the UK, though).

Teenagers want to make friends, and they can be naive. I just don't think LE's investigations would necessarily have discovered it, if he was chatting online.
MOO.

 

[vagab0nd]

If he wasn't going back to Doncaster that night where was he going? And how was he getting there as not like every single part of London has a tube spot (South of the Thames).

I think that could be key. He's looking around for a vehicle to get him somewhere else and it pulls up and he gets in with the money he has which was clearly withdrawn to pay for something that day.

Are we sure he's not just looking around to figure out where he needs to go? Like trying to look at his surroundings or read signs? That was my first thought because I grew up in the era where my parents always printed out Map Quest directions and then eventually relied on Google Maps when smartphones came around. I would be lost without my phone. I go to London every Monday for work and even though I've done it for years I still have to check routes. Sometimes you just forget.

 

[rvlvr]

I'm not from the UK and not familiar with these SKs, but could it have been Worboys' friend? What was his profile/MO?
And Worboys just claimed to the inmate to also be involved, as a "fantasy" or "bragging rights? (I hate to put it that way.)

Did either man come across as charming/ trustworthy as part of being psychopaths? (I picture creepy-looking guys, but maybe they weren't and were very good at tricking people?)

The thing about Worboys is - as far as anyone knows, anyway - he never killed anyone. He was a serial sex offender who’d kid on to women that he’d picked up in his cab late at night that he’d won some money, and he’d ask them to share champagne with him to celebrate. The champagne would be drugged with sedatives, and lot of his victims were already worse for wear after a night out anyway. Then he’d sexually assault them.

I’ve no idea who Dave is meant to be, as far as I know Worboys committed all of his offences solo, so the idea of him abducting and killing a teenage boy along with an accomplice just seems a bit off to me, but you never know.