Andrew Gosden: nineteen years on

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I wonder what actually did happen.

It is one of the most baffling cases I can think of.

He came from my town and the area I worked in. I remember the story,its so strange.

AndyRoo isn't so totally out of the realms of normal language that it couldn't be someone else's nickname either

Yes. Many moons ago I knew an Andrew who was often called Andyroo or Roo.

Cash in hand was very much still a thing in 2007 and in the right places, still is today.

I totally agree. There were ways. I used to use that awful random chat site where you could end up talking to anyone. I’d do it as a friend’s house. I even gave my (throwaway) email address out to a couple of them and I’d answer the emails on the library computer or the little Internet cafe in town. It’s unlikely anyone would be able to trace that. I do think he went to London with the intention of meeting someone for the day and then met with harm.

I know technology has moved on incredibly in the meantime but I think it’s naive to think that in 2007, teenagers weren’t finding ways to use the internet in a way that wasn’t necessarily safe.

@DancingonmyOwn88 absolutely. Even if Andrew had no device of his own (hidden or otherwise) he could have signed in elsewhere: a library - school library? - or internet cafe.

It needn’t have been internet… he could have been in contact with someone via text on a phone he’d been given.

Exactly.I went round the pubs in the 90s with a Roo (Andrew)

Thats what I think, there are ways. I think he was in contact with someone online and sadly the worst happened when he met up with them.

I feel so sorry for families of missing people. Their lives are stuck in a nightmarish limbo of never having answers. It’s so sad.

A while back the bbc had a series about the Met. Maybe 3 episodes. They focused on 1-2 crimes each episode. They were nearly all solved by cctv. And they said they just likely wouldn’t have solved them without it.
One man was for example spotted going to a local tip to get rid of evidence. No one would have likely seen that before. They followed where people walked, their cars, times of leaving and entering places. And it all was evidence for court too.

I think maybe he was groomed at the gifted and talented summer school he attended. I think he was likely in touch with this person - could be by mobile or even pay phone. I think maybe he was meeting this person in London and they were driving him home which is why he never bought a return ticket.

The person on reddit I think is a red herring. I really feel with everyone looking for him all these years he would have gotten in touch somehow.

There have been a few theories over the lack of return ticket over the years. A single was £30 ish and a return only 50p more but only if it was off peak, meaning he’d have to get on the train to leave again a few hours after arriving, or after 7 and then be back late, so whoever he was meeting may have said they’d give him the money to get a train back at a more convenient time. He left £100 in his room and had £200 cash on him before buying the ticket. Although it’s possible he may just not have realised what the ticket officer was telling him in regards to the return ticket and just insisted on buying a single as that was what he’d been told to do.

But I think he planned to return after having an adventure in London with this person he’d somehow met. The fact that he didn’t take his psp charger or all the money he had access to really only points to the fact that he didn’t plan to be in London for long.

This haunted me terribly back then, it continues to haunt me now. Andrew and myself are exactly the same age - I remember what it was like being a teenager in 2007, secretly exploring dark places and talking to strangers on the internet (pre-smartphones and social media as we know it), taking reckless train journeys to risky locations with friends without telling parents etc etc.

Revisiting this case has thrown me into a total obsession with it and all the possibilities of what happened... (if you also get obsessed with unsolved true crime, there is a very active Reddit page dedicated to Andrew Gosden, but beware getting stuck deep, deep, deep in a worm hole for several days haha)

I'm inclined to believe that he had every intention of returning home to Doncaster, and was either:

1. abducted for the purposes of sexual exploitation or trafficking, coming into contact with some opportunistic, nefarious person(s) shortly after arriving in London
2. lured to London by someone that he had somehow met and been groomed by, either in-person or online (they claim that no digital evidence of this was found, but I'm convinced that it was much easier to leave no digital trace in 2007.)

Each these explanations and their likely circumstances and outcomes are horrific to consider - but they seem more plausible than the 'runs away to start a new life' or suicide theories. Someone else wanted him gone, and they wanted him gone without a trace.

In any case, my heart breaks for this poor little fella - he seemed such a gentle, innocent, typical teenager striking out for some independent adventure. Unfortunately, the adventure went disastrously wrong. I like to think, if anything, that he did make it through the day in London and had the best time of his life - buying his new PSP console, eating pizza, browsing alternative band merch, maybe attending an event he'd had his eye on, doing all the fun things that a teenage boy would want to do playing truant in the Big Smoke.

(One other interesting speculation is that somehow he did make it back to Doncaster and in fact was abducted by a local, who he may well have met in-person before. Someone on the Reddit raised an imprisoned Doncaster-based paedophile called N. Powers, who targeted vulnerable boys to abuse. He's serving a 14 year prison sentence now, but was active during the time that Andrew disappeared.)

It just reminds me of this disturbing story that my dad told me years ago, from when he was working as a teacher in the late 1970s. A 16yr old girl at the school, without informing anyone, ran away to London and after one single confirmed sighting of her leaving the railway station, she too went missing without a trace.

It was pretty sad, because technologies like CCTV and digital footprints were obviously even more scarce back then. But mainly, nobody cared - it was assumed that she had just run away to meet or live with some guy, or perhaps to try her luck making a living in the sex trade, as she was dismissed as a bit of a 'slut' from a troubled background. She wasn't viewed as vulnerable or innocent. Who knows, maybe she too just wanted an exciting day trip out in the capital.

But guess what - she turned up years later - in SAUDI ARABIA

She had been sex trafficked by a gang operating on the London streets and was living as a sex slave in Riyadh. By some miracle, she managed to escape and found her way to the British Embassy where they were able to identify her and return her home.

Terrifying.

This is the most upsetting 'missing person' case I have ever read about. I always watch and read the family's appeals each year.

My own personal opinion is that he travelled to London to meet up with someone (possibly another 'Slipknot' fan). That person wasn't the person Andrew expected to meet and the situation escalated from the station.

I find it bizarre that there is no CCTV footage after leaving Kings Cross.

I also think the Police know what has happened but they cannot prove it and that is why people are arrested and questioned.

There have been many theories on Reddit over the years.

Heartbreaking case. I hope he’s found alive and well one day.

😥I know. I feel very emotional thinking about this possibility. He was apparently a quiet, introverted kid who was somewhat an outsider. He reminded me a lot of my younger brother and other boys I knew then, unsure about who they were and what they were, and sometimes quite gullible (I think that's why it makes me extra emotional).

If he was lured and/or catfished, he was probably so excited to be meeting up with someone likeminded, be that a fellow music fan, or maybe a 'teenage girl' interest (if he ever did have access to forums etc).

With regard to the CCTV footage, it does seem odd - especially for 2026 - but I heard CCTV genuinely was nowhere near as prolific or efficient as it is today. And apparently, the police kinda messed up because it took them approx. 6 weeks to attempt a rigorous search on relevant London CCTV footage. By which time, in 2007, most systems had overwritten their data after 7-31 days - they were still transitioning between analog tapes and early hard drive storage systems.

Technology wise, I also wonder about the claims that they found no digital footprint of Andrew on multiple devices and in multiple locations i.e. his sister's laptop, his PSP device, school computers, local library computers, internet cafes. It seems plausible to me that he could still have been using one or another, because digital servers in 2007 were WAY less efficient at storing data than contemporary servers. Obtaining browser histories was way more fallible back then due to various loopholes in (now outdated) technologies.

So, I believe he still could have met someone online.

In these circumstances on the day, he must have been so frightened. I wish I could just reach into that final CCTV snapshot and drag him out to safety, poor kid.