What do you think happened to Andrew Gosden?

[Cheffymcchef]

Andrew Gosden was a 14-year-old boy from Doncaster, England, who vanished on September 14, 2007. He left home for school as usual but instead withdrew £200 from his bank account, changed into casual clothes, and bought a one-way train ticket to London King's Cross on a Friday morning. CCTV captured him arriving at the station at 11:25 AM, and that was the last confirmed sighting of him. Despite numerous appeals, media coverage, and even arrests in 2021 related to potential human trafficking, Andrew has never been found, and his disappearance remains one of the UK’s most baffling missing person cases. Andrew was a high achiever at school with 100% attendance and had never gone missing before. The school misdialled his parents when he did not show up, and when his parents returned from work they did not realise Andrew was missing, until dinner time when he did not appear at the table. They presumed he was in the basement gaming.

andrrw had lost two mobile phones in succession and had no home internet access or computer until the gosdens got it 8 weeks before he vanished. his sisters computer- the only one in the house- was checked, and nothing untoward found.

It’s such a little known case compared to Madeline McCann that I thought it would be good to remind everyone on here.

I personally think Andrew had been groomed by someone local who arranged to meet him that day and offered him a lift back. I think this person knew of the family and had probably been grooming Andrew for a long time. I do have someone in mind although obviously will not name names on this sub.

I do have someone in mind although obviously will not name names on this sub

Presumably you've shared the results of your keyboard sleuthing to the police?

I grew up close by although I’m older, the consensus in Balby was as you say op, groomed and encouraged to leave home to meet this groomer.

I’ve always wondered about this case when missing people are mentioned.

I wonder if his missing phones would have held some answers as he had met people through a camp he attended.

His parents stated he had no email address but maybe he did and they just didn’t know. He would be close in age to me and in 2007 online messaging was huge for teens, talking to people we didn’t really know on AOL/MSN. We were also able to access it in school so you just never know if he was too.

How sad you don’t want there to be posts raising awareness. It’s almost like you don’t want them to be found, don’t want people to know there is still a missing child out there.

Raising awareness is fine, speculating and armchair sleuthing is the distasteful bit. But each to their own.

Do search out the Nicola Bulley threads on here and then come back to tell me how you're right

These were awful, some posters actually seemed to want a deranged murderer to be the culprit.

I wonder if he was interested in CB radio, and had been communicating with somebody that way?

thankyou. I'm not looking for praise, just trying to keep attention on a case that still matters. If raising awareness helps even a little, it's worth it. Sarcasm doesn't change the fact that Andrew is still missing and deserves to be remembered

That’s interesting.

That is quite an expensive hobby that is hard to hide in terms of equipment. The police searched his room thoroughly.

Interesting how 'distasteful' only applies when people actually care enough to talk. If respectful discussion brings attention to someone still missing, I’ll take that over silence any day.

The not knowing would be the worse I'd be scared to leave the house just incase he turned up one day. I hope for his families sake they find out one way or another what happened

Andrew took his keys that day and they haven’t changed the locks for that very reason.

His dad seems to be very sure/confident he would never have spoken to anyone online but I feel like this is somewhat a bit of denial on his part so he can attempt to rule out something in the huge list of possibilities that must be in his mind. It must be brutal not knowing. I remember learning Andrew had begun walking home by himself rather than getting the bus. Maybe he wanted to avoid the bus for some reason or maybe he was meeting up with someone.

I too wonder what happened to his phones. If I’d have lost not one but two phones at that age, my parents would’ve gone on about the wasted money and would’ve wanted to find them or know when I had them last.

Oh I always thought he didn’t have a mobile phone or tech to have any kind of meaningful contact with anybody outside of his friends/family.

That’s sad the police didn’t properly follow up on sightings. Given that he was in broad daylight in London they probably could have collected so much more evidence from surveillance if it had been taken seriously initially.

I do think his parents are in denial to a degree as they seemed to view him as fairly innocent minded and possibly quite naive but he was switched on enough to plan to skip school, withdraw money and head to London. There had also been times they had suggested he travels there alone which seems a little contradictory.

He was said to be mature beyond his years, set to achieve A* at GCSE and was destined for Cambridge University despite only being 14. Maybe it was all too much pressure or he didn’t like the path being chosen for him.

His behaviours and routines had changed slightly too. There’s lots of little things such as seeming quite isolated, quitting church and scouts which would make me worry that he’s taken himself away at his own will.

I remember that. I know his sister was also very clever, his parents allowed her to go to London alone to hand out CV’s to the big London banks which I must admit raised an eyebrow. But she did a podcast and she ended up not doing the path that was expected for her (which was similar to Andrew’s) and dropping out of uni and doing something different career wise. I wonder if they ever felt unintentional pressure.

This sort of thing is exactly why he wasn't found. They had fixed thinking from the outset. They were convinced it was related to the father for an extraordinary length of time.

I thought they had fixed thinking too in that they were too adamant that he didn’t use phones, didn’t use computers for chatting to people, he didn’t like social media.

How would a kid lose three phones if he didn’t use them in the first place? In 2007 phones were at the craze height of popularity amongst kids at my school. MSN would have still been around and Facebook was booming

Not having an email address seems bizarre too. I remember in Year 7 it was one of the very first things we did at school - to be shown and told to set one up. To have none of these things seems strange especially since he spent alot of time down in the basement, so much time down there they didn’t notice he was missing until dinner time. As a parent now the first thing I do when I get home is go say hello to my child so they must have been used to him being down there so often.

He could have been secretly chatting away to anyone as they didn’t see him beyond a bit of a recluse.

I agree with everything here, I will say while school had us set up an email address it was a school based one so most of us set up our own Hotmail ones elsewhere for MSN. I remember two of Andrew’s friends said during an interview that Andrew had changed when he started secondary school.

His dad has debunked the not taking the bus home thing, sort of. He says that Andrew chose to walk home just once because it was a nice day, and he felt like it. It was then blown out of proportion when he went missing.

I mean he has debunked it as far as he knows but the reality is his parents came back from work late. His dad only caught him once when he arrived back from work early. Andrew had his own keys so who’s to say he wasn’t doing it more than once.

I think his dad and sister (who went to the same school so would probably notice) know more about it than Random’s on the internet though. There’s no point in speculating.

Quite but remember his sister said in interviews she barely saw him in school since starting sixth form, they took completely different buses and left at different times. She said to the press that she originally thought something must have happened to Andrew on his way to school alone.

Andrew went to the park alone that morning and waited there until he knew everyone would’ve left. If they went to school together his sister would have known where he ended up that day.

I think you'd be surprised at what people can hide even people closest to you.