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

[warp3dwing]

Well, the picture Andrew's dad painted is much different from a naive, introverted, lonely child thats repeatedly painted in coverages of this story. Smart, witty, headstrong, open, chatty, sophisticated and well familiar with London, comfortable talking with adults.
Maybe his dad is tragically not wrong at all and Andrew just wanted to have a nice time away from school, check out the store (or whatever) and then went to someone he (or possibly even they knew) to do exactly what he predicted: went to someone he considered as friend and told them that he skipped school and needs a place to "hide" from angry parents for few hours till they get over that trip - letting that person know that nobody knows he got to London.

In that case all that lack of hints, lack of tracks, lack of leads would make sense as there wouldnt be any as nothing particularly important was supposed to happen, in Andrew's mind.

I absolutely agree that Mr. Gosden may rose-tint things retrospectively, either consciously or unconsciously. We’re all susceptible to that. But regarding electronics, he had devices at home. His parents kindly provided them. That’s one of the few facts we have!

Any clandestine meetings with someone in London is pure speculation and not based on what is known.

LE can - and often do - get things wrong, but their investigation found absolutely no digital communications from Andrew to anyone. There is no indication he was some kind of computer whiz, and as someone who studies digital forensics and writes digital forensics software, I really doubt he’d be able to cover his tracks and not slip up once.

I’m sorry but I don’t quite understand what you wrote about angry parents. Do you think he was just taking a shopping trip? Would you mind explaining that in more detail? Thank you.

 

[Ellymoo]

I looked up the situation and in 2007 it was posted about in the local newspaper. People were outraged that a boy could be expelled for calling another student a f--kwit once. There's even an inactive Facebook group from 2007 where boys were asking x if he was happy that his bully was now expelled and stuff. Some schools really do take bullying seriously. Obviously not every school in the country, but this one 100% stands by it's anti-bullying values.

That suggests more that the newspaper and the Facebook group do not have all the facts.

Indeed, the asking the victim if they were "happy" says a lot more went on than "calling another student a f**kwit once". It speaks for itself!

I meant to say about the single ticket thing as well: I made that mistake several times when I was young and wasn't sure what I was doing. So I don't read anything into that.

 

[ChatteringBirds]

They don’t. If you run this (and many other posts by this user) through an AI detector it’ll come back as being mostly AI generated. Maybe I’m just getting old but it’s very peculiar imo, and I’ve found the past few pages of this thread incredibly hard to read as a result.

You can block posts by a particular user if you really want to.

But IMO we should all just agree not to use AI on this thread, because Websleuths is meant to be fact-based.

as someone who studies digital forensics and writes digital forensics software, I really doubt he’d be able to cover his tracks and not slip up once

I guess this is why some people think he might have been lured to London by someone in Doncaster. And that he possibly met with this person after school, including the day he was known to walk home. However there is no evidence for that either.

 

[warp3dwing]

guess this is why some people think he might have been lured to London by someone in Doncaster. And that he possibly met with this person after school, including the day he was known to walk home. However there is no evidence for that either.

Yeah, absolutely. To me, this seems like a reach. Andrew wasn’t seen with anyone during these walks, which, AFAIK, only happened once or twice.

Grooming usually happens over months, but no evidence of anything like that has come to light. I’m sure that over the intervening years, LE has investigated everyone with local access to Andrew.

By all accounts, he seemed to have kept to himself and was a homebody. This would make in-person grooming very difficult, and digital grooming more likely. But the absence of evidence of digital comms makes grooming unlikely by any means.

I know people love the maxim, “absence of evidence doesn’t mean evidence of absence.” But I feel like in Andrew’s case, people apply this saying over and over, allowing for endless fantastical possibilities. Usually, things are exactly what they seem to be.

All known evidence points to Andrew choosing to leave home on his own terms and hiding his tracks, even though we don’t know his exact plans. All theories involving grooming are not based on evidence.

I think the recent Thomas Medlin case has a number of striking similarities to Andrew’s disappearance: smart 14-15 year old kids, high achievers, unfounded rumors of online grooming, traveling miles away to a big city before vanishing. The main difference is that in Thomas’s case, we have digital datapoints to help us reach the likeliest conclusion.

In Andrew’s case, we can’t eliminate random abduction. Sure. After all, it does sometimes happen. But I strongly feel that this theory holds more weight with people who aren’t from big cities. Those of us who do live in cities, understand that they’re not rife with endless pedophile abductors.

There are thousands of Thomas Medlins and Andrew Gosdens just freely going about their daily lives all around me here in NYC. And unless they’re doing something strange, neither I nor anyone else notice them. In fact, I haven’t even seen one public report saying someone saw Thomas, and yet we know he traveled many miles through the city, passing by hundreds or thousands of people.

Sorry for the ramble.