New development on missing Andrew Gosden case.

[ClaraThePigeon]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-59952786

I hope that this latest development gives that poor boy's family answers, terrible as they may be. I can't imagine the hell they've had to live with every day since his disappearance.

There's something about that photo of Andrew leaving Kings Cross where he seems like he's looking out for someone, the way you do when you've arranged to meet someone at a certain place. He doesn't look like he's striding out of the station with purpose, more like slowing down to find someone.

Given the latest developments this might be what happened. Still can't work out how they initially made contact with him though.

Good call on Pizza Hut though, especially as one of the suspects would have been quite young at the time? So Andrew may have got chatting to and trusted a young friendly man who could have offered to show him around.

I thought the reason there were no further images of Andrew was because the police messed up, thought he was a run-away and failed to request CCTV footage from the roads nearby before it got deleted.

And I completely agree with the PP who said that humans are weird and often do things that simply no one could understand if they were to disappear that day.

^^ that’s what I’m wondering. Maybe asked directions/ lost his cash and asked for help/ was robbed - it’s the what ifs isn’t it.

Pizza hut was not confirmed to be him. BTP didn't find him coming out of the station, his local police force did some time later. BTP also didn't ask for bus cctv. I do feel he was extremely let down by the response.

No, but his family felt based on description and behaviour that it was - if it was him, that’s my theory on what happened.

We'll see. I remember when there was a fuss about Madeline McCann and they said that German guy was a promising suspect. I've been following this case for years. I would love there to be closure for the family. But I'm not getting my hopes too high.

Doesn't explain why he left, so out of character, for no known reason. Although I do agree with pp humans are weird. I've done things and gone places that wouldn't have made sense if I disappeared from there.

I remember reading about this case, it’s very strange, I have seen two what I think are the most likely theories 1. That went to London to do something he knew he wouldn’t get permission to do like attend a gig, there were some bands playing that day that he liked, he withdrew some of his money so he could buy tickets/food/drinks/merch etc and then would have gone to stay with his family in London afterwards as his dad suggested, but someone targeted him on the way there.

1. He was groomed and went there to meet someone. I know they found no evidence of him talking to anyone suspicious online or IRL, in fact his parents said he lost his mobile phone and they offered to replace it, but he declined their offer, which strikes me as bit strange for a 15 year old in 2007. So I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had a secret mobile phone. He had his own bank account and could withdraw money when he wanted to purchase it, he also had no issues planning and executing a secret trip to London by himself when he should have been at school. So I don’t think it’s too far fetched to believe he may have had a secret device no one knew about and was using that to communicate with people. Maybe his parents monitored his internet and phone usage at home and he didn’t like that? Maybe he was doing or looking at things online he knew they wouldn’t approve of?

I just think it was quite a ballsy move for a kid his age to go bunk off school and go to London on his own for the day, I see no evidence of him running away because he didn’t take much with him and left some money at home, so I think he planned on coming back. I also think it’s very odd for a teenage boy who has the confidence to do that to have zero interest in having a mobile phone, I was 17 in 2007 and I didn’t know a single person my age around that time who didn’t have a mobile phone, it would have been very unusual. Not impossible for sure if he used his computer a lot to talk to his friends, but quite strange. I also think chances of a 15 year old boy going to central London and almost immediately being abducted by a stranger without anyone seeing anything are quite slim. I think he purposely went to meet someone and was looking for them on the cctv outside the station.

Andrew had only just turned 14 so may not have been into mobile phones as much as a 17 year old would have been, and he did seem to show little interest in having a phone...no trace found of any internet activity on public or school computers also. it's all just so odd and inexplicable, there are plenty of possibilities but none of them have come to anything. If the original investigators had thought to request more CCTV from the local area/public transport, there might have been more answers. But they didn't.

I lived a few hundred yards away at the time, there was a huge amount of construction work happening just behind and adjacent to the station, in the daytime it was very busy and didn’t feel any more unsafe than any other major central London road. I walked through where he is last pictured every day with my toddler. There were always a lot of people around and at that time the prostitution had moved slightly away from the area very close to the station, and up towards Camden. There were areas locally that were empty after dark apart from cars, but the front of the concourse was bustling well into the evening.

Just because an area is busy, doesn't mean predators don't operate there.

No of course not, I didn’t mean that. Predators operate everywhere, even in chocolate box villages. I lived in Kings Cross when it really was a scary place, and I saw some horrible things, ( there was a particularly nasty murder close to where I lived that I still think of occasionally). However by 2007 it had changed a lot and wasn’t a scary place to be in the daytime, in the place where Andrew was last seen.
My post was in relation to people commenting on the area at the time when Andrew went missing.

i was reading today about the 'Babes in the wood' case, there was originally a number of errors made in the investigation, that resulted in the original not guilty verdict. (and then allowed him to further try to murder another child) Like the case of AG with so much going wrong at the early stages, I wonder if lessons are ever truly learnt from cases like these.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/crime/4460248-Strange-disappearances-and-crimes

Started a new thread (more general) as this is mainly Andrew.

@Elsiebear90

I remember reading about this case, it’s very strange, I have seen two what I think are the most likely theories 1. That went to London to do something he knew he wouldn’t get permission to do like attend a gig, there were some bands playing that day that he liked, he withdrew some of his money so he could buy tickets/food/drinks/merch etc and then would have gone to stay with his family in London afterwards as his dad suggested, but someone targeted him on the way there.

1. He was groomed and went there to meet someone. I know they found no evidence of him talking to anyone suspicious online or IRL, in fact his parents said he lost his mobile phone and they offered to replace it, but he declined their offer, which strikes me as bit strange for a 15 year old in 2007. So I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had a secret mobile phone. He had his own bank account and could withdraw money when he wanted to purchase it, he also had no issues planning and executing a secret trip to London by himself when he should have been at school. So I don’t think it’s too far fetched to believe he may have had a secret device no one knew about and was using that to communicate with people. Maybe his parents monitored his internet and phone usage at home and he didn’t like that? Maybe he was doing or looking at things online he knew they wouldn’t approve of?

I just think it was quite a ballsy move for a kid his age to go bunk off school and go to London on his own for the day, I see no evidence of him running away because he didn’t take much with him and left some money at home, so I think he planned on coming back. I also think it’s very odd for a teenage boy who has the confidence to do that to have zero interest in having a mobile phone, I was 17 in 2007 and I didn’t know a single person my age around that time who didn’t have a mobile phone, it would have been very unusual. Not impossible for sure if he used his computer a lot to talk to his friends, but quite strange. I also think chances of a 15 year old boy going to central London and almost immediately being abducted by a stranger without anyone seeing anything are quite slim. I think he purposely went to meet someone and was looking for them on the cctv outside the station.

I was 18 in 2007 and everyone did have phones (although just turned 14 year old is very different to 18 year olds). However, the phones people had did not have the internet or data, or, if you did have a phone which claimed to have the internet, they were glacially slow and would only connect to specific things - ie. you could text in your Facebook status but not actually access Facebook.

My point being that Andrew having a secret phone would unlikely give him internet access back in 2007.

I've always thought he knew his abductors. Maybe from Donny or his family in London. Why travel down to meet someone you'd never met ? Although not streetwise he wasn't stupid either. No known interest in SM, no access to the internet. Also the fact that he bought a single train ticket makes me think he had a lift back promised.

Maybe he was meeting a girl? A good reason to skip school and run off to London for the day at that age.

Isn't by far the most likely explanation that he committed suicide? Hence single ticket.

@ConnectFortyFour Why would he need to withdraw money and go to London for that?

@ConnectFortyFour

Isn't by far the most likely explanation that he committed suicide? Hence single ticket.

Why withdraw all the money though? And go all the way to London to do it? Unless he was aware of an incredibly good hiding place, a body would’ve been found - after committing suicide you can’t exactly hide it or cover it up.

Did someone he trust tell him that the arrangements had been made and his parents were ok with it?

Just get to London.......

He had his Playstation with him but did not take the recharging cable. Was he expecting to be taken home that evening. Was he going to a music concert.

I think he was groomed somehow. There's something behind it. I don't think it was just his idea.

He went back & changed out of his uniform so I doubt he thought the parents were ok with it, he was clearly giving them the false impression he was going to school.

I absolutely think it was suicide. He was a clever, quiet kid who probably had a lot going on in his mind that others didn't know about.

His parents paid for a sonar scan of the Thames.

£100 is not a lot of money really. Food and possibly an onward ticket somewhere else. He did not take a charge or a return ticket as it was illogical for him to do so.

Who knows why he went to london to do it. It's very strange, but suicide is more common than abduction, especially in young males. Its absolutely tragic and even more so as there is no closure for his family.

Funny because in the summer hols a few weeks earlier he was given the opportunity to travel down on his own to stay with his gran and declined.
Also he commented on the Maddy Mccann case to his dad a few nights before he disappeared and how terrible it must be for his parents. Wonder if he was testing the water ?

I also think the investigation failed him badly as so much time and evidence was lost, esp CCTV