The Gosden family lived in Balby, a suburb of Doncaster (South Yorkshire, England). Andrew Gosden's parents were practicing Anglicans. However, they did not baptize their children (apart from their son, they also had an older daughter, Charlotte). They did not want to impose their religious views on them. The teenager, however, began to go to church over time, although he quit about a year and a half before his disappearance. It wasn't the only big change in his life. A few months before his disappearance, Andrew, called by his relatives "Roo", also ended his adventure by scouting.
Andrew was described as a person who liked his own company. However, he was not a complete loner as he had a small group of like-minded friends. The boy's family claims, however, that he did not socialize with his friends outside of school. The teenager showed no signs of depression and showed no signs of being bullied by his peers.
A father said about his son that he was distracted, slow-witted, and sensitive. He wasn't nervous or moody. He liked to spend time at home, which he rarely left. Teachers described Andrew as a shy, quiet young man who was mature over his years. Even though Gosden was 14 at the time of his disappearance, he looked several years younger as he was small for his age. The teenager wore corrective glasses and could not hear in his left ear. A characteristic feature of its appearance was the unusual shape of the right ear pinch. Andrew had light brown hair but planned to dye it black before disappearing.
At the age of 10-12, the boy owned several cell phones. But he rarely used them and often lost them. He was given a new cell phone for his twelfth birthday, but he also used it sporadically. The teenager finally lost that phone a few months before it went missing. When his parents offered to buy another one, he stated that he would prefer a new Xbox console instead.
The teenager attended McAuley Catholic High School. He was a very talented student, and additionally extremely conscientious - he could boast a hundred percent attendance. He was included in the "Young, gifted and talented" program aimed at supporting the development of five percent of the best students of the school. Gosden was especially gifted in science and was a laureate of mathematics competitions. He was promised graduation from the prestigious Cambridge and a bright career. However, the 14-year-old usually didn't tell his parents much about the time he spent at school.
During his summer vacation in 2006, Gosden attended a two-week class at Lancaster University as part of the aforementioned gifted learner program. The summer school was dedicated to 5% of the most talented 11-16 year olds across the UK. Andrew's parents recalled coming home extremely excited.
During the summer vacation in 2007 (which normally lasts from July to September in England), Andrew's parents suggested that Andrew go to London and stay with his grandmother. The 14-year-old did not finally decide to go there. At the time of his disappearance, Gosden was fresh from his vacation (only a few days had passed since the beginning of the new school year). In that short period of time, Andrew had acted quite unusual twice. He was returning from school on foot, instead of on the school bus, which he had not done before. The road was about 6.4 km long and it took him about an hour and twenty minutes to cover it.
The evening before the day of his disappearance was described by Father Gosden as uneventful. The family ate a meal together as usual, and then they all washed the dishes. Andrew spent about an hour doing puzzles with his father. Then he and his mother watched several comedy programs on television.
On the morning of the disappearance, Andrew had trouble getting out of bed and seemed very irritable. The boy's mother later admitted that this was unusual for him, as usually waking up to school in the morning was not a problem for him. At 8:05 AM, Gosden left home and walked through the local Westfield Park, heading to the bus stop. He was then noticed by a family friend, Father Alan Murray, who was sitting on a park bench.
Instead of taking the school bus, however, Andrew deviated from his daily route and went to an ATM next to the car repair shop. There he paid out £ 200, which was almost all of the money he raised. The teenager's account was 214 pounds, but the ATM allowed him to withdraw banknotes with a face value of at least 20 pounds. Gosden was then captured monitoring a neighbor on his way home.
Upon his return, Andrew put his school uniform into the washing machine and hung his jacket over the back of the chair. He then changed into what he liked to wear. It was a black T-shirt with the name of the metal band Slipknot and black jeans. The boy took a black canvas bag decorated with badges from various rock and metal bands, a wallet, keys and a PlayStation Portable and left the house around 8:30.
We know this because he was spotted again by a neighbor's camera as he walked down Littlemoor Lane towards Westfield Park. It was later established that he did not take his passport with him. He probably didn't pack any sweatshirt or coat and charger for his PSP. The teenager then went to the Doncaster train station. At the box office he bought a ticket to London for which he paid £ 31 40p. The saleswoman later recalled to the police that she had informed the boy that a return ticket was only 50p more. Andrew, however, insisted on buying a one-way ticket.
At 9:35, Gosden boarded the terminating train at King's Cross station. One of the women later reported to the police that she was sitting next to a 14-year-old, whom she described as calm and engrossed in playing on his game console. When Andrew did not show up for morning lessons, teachers tried to contact his parents. In the course of subsequent findings, it turned out, however, that the number of the parents of the pupil whose name was in the journal just above or below Gosden was selected by mistake. At 11:20 am Andrew disembarked at London's King's Cross station and was captured on video surveillance at 11:25 am as he exited the building through the main entrance.
That evening, the Gosden family sat down to dinner as usual. However, the 14-year-old was not at the table. At first, everyone thought Andrew was playing the console or doing homework in his room. When family members discovered that he was not at home, they initially assumed that he was probably hanging out with a friend from school. Gosden's parents then began calling his friends. It was discovered that the boy was not with any of his friends, and what's more, he did not show up at school that day. So around 7 p.m. the police were called.
Kevin Gosden (the boy's father) and Charlotte (his sister) searched the teenager's daily route to school in hopes of finding some clues. However, nothing was discovered. Within three hours of the discovery of the disappearance, a leaflet with the image of the boy was prepared. The family and friends of the missing 14-year-old searched the area until dark. The police checked the bushes near the Gosden home in Doncaster, but found nothing.
Three days later, after talking to the woman who sold Andrew a train ticket, police confirmed that he was traveling to London. The ticket saleswoman at Doncaster station remembered Gosden because of the unusual cancellation of the return ticket. The father of the missing person, however, stated that the choice of a single ticket instead of a return ticket did not seem strange to him. For his son knew at least a few people in London with whom he could stay.
Initial searches in the capitals of England focused on the districts of Chislehurst and Sidcup, where the relatives of the Gosden lived. A few days after the disappearance, the family moved to London. There, she handed out leaflets and placed posters near places such as museums and exhibitions that they thought the boy might want to visit.
South Yorkshire Police (SYP) asked the British Transport Police (BTP) to check CCTV footage. It happened two days after Andrew Gosden went missing. BTP failed to pick him up from the crowd. Three weeks later, BTP and SYP re-examined the footage from CCTV cameras at King's Cross and identified the 14-year-old. A CCTV image of the missing person exiting the main railway station on King's Cross was broadcast in the media along with a close-up of his distinctive right ear.
Family and police investigated the possibility that Andrew had traveled to London to meet someone he had met online. However, there was no evidence of this. The teenager did not use a computer at home, and his father claimed that the son did not even have an e-mail address. He also didn't set up an online account on his Xbox or PSP. Police took computers from the missing person's school and library in Doncaster, but a forensic investigation revealed no signs of activity. Investigators also sent the boy's unique PSP serial number to Sony's headquarters. Company employees checked and confirmed that no account was created or connected to the Internet on this device.
The only computer in the house was his sister's laptop, which Charlotte had gotten only eight weeks earlier. The girl admitted that her brother did not seem interested in social media or contacting other people via the Internet because he was not a social person.
A year after the disappearance of McAuley Catholic High School Principal Mary Lawrence traveled to London with staff and students who handed out 15,000 leaflets with an image of Andrew. Unfortunately, it did not bring any breakthrough in the investigation.
The investigation began with an attempt to establish why Andrew chose to go to London. According to the family, the boy might want to visit the city and its monuments. It is known that the teenager liked London and visited the capital with his family to meet the grandparents, aunts, uncles and family friends who lived there. He also enjoyed visiting London museums and exhibitions. According to his father, he knew the rules of public transport well and was confident in moving around the city. It is also worth adding that at the time of Gosden's disappearance, bus travel was free for children and adolescents. So he didn't have to buy tickets.
One of the events cited by Kevin Gosden as a possible reason for his son's trip to London was YouTube Gathering 2007. However, there is no evidence that the 14-year-old attended the event. It is not even certain if he even knew this website, founded only two years earlier.
The family also checked music concerts for which Andrew was allowed to go to London. On the night of his disappearance, Thirty Seconds to Mars performed at the Brixton Academy, and SikTh played a postponed farewell concert at the Carling Academy. This second music club (now known as Academy Brixton) is a short drive from King's Cross. The SikTh concert was originally scheduled for July 7th and was later postponed. It was supposed to be the last performance featuring the original singer, which made it a very special event. Mick Neville, a retired police chief, found the theory plausible. He called on everyone who had photos or videos taken during the concert to report them to the police for analysis. Although Gosden was a fan of rock and metal music, no evidence was found that he would appear at any of these concerts. Moreover, it is uncertain whether he knew or liked these bands at all.
The boy's family thought that he might have gone to London to attend a concert by a band he was a fan of. On Monday, September 17, 2007, the Finnish HIM team signed a promotional contract at the HMV store on Oxford Street. The same evening, the musicians played a concert at Borderline in Soho. The only way to get into the event was to win tickets in special competitions. This clue was investigated by the family with the help of the team themselves. However, no evidence supporting this hypothesis could be found. The boy's father also suspected that Andrew might have gone to London to do something he thought was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Gosden's family had accusations against the activities of the police. The criticism was that the investigators focused too much on the boy's relatives in the early stages of the investigation. Kevin Gosden alleged that the police treated him as a suspect and carried out unlawfully taped interviews. Their goal was to pressure him to admit that he was linked to his son's disappearance. The man was finally cleared of all the charges.
Andrew's loved ones also couldn't understand why the police had taken so long to find the London CCTV footage. King's Cross monitoring was only checked after two days. In addition, the authorities did not ask at all to send the recordings from the cameras on the buses and at the adjacent metro station.
On the occasion of the first anniversary of the teenager's disappearance, The Times published an article. It said that 122 cases of probable sightings had been reported across the UK since Andrew's disappearance, 45 of which were in London and 11 in Brighton. The boy's father stated that there were two or three observations within the first week of his disappearance that seemed plausible. This was presumed because of the way in which witnesses claimed that Gosden had spoken to them.
The missing person's family believed the most credible sighting was the one indicating that Gosden was at a Pizza Hut restaurant on Oxford Street (about an hour's walk from King's Cross) on the day of the disappearance.
A person who allegedly saw the 14-year-old on Oxford Street on Monday 17 September (three days after her disappearance) also reported. Someone else noticed a sleeping Andrew-like boy in a park in Southwark on Tuesday, September 18. There were also reports that a person matching Gosden's description got off the local train from Waterloo at Mortlake station on September 19, 2007 (five days after his disappearance).
One woman reported a potential sighting of a teenager on October 17 (one month after his disappearance) in Covent Garden. She was talking to a boy who, in her opinion, resembled the boy she had seen on TV. However, he denied that he was a missing 14-year-old. Two more cases were reported in 2009 - one outside the Natural History Museum and one at a pub in Southend. However, none of these observations could be verified. According to Kevin Gosden, the police have not taken any action on the reports.
In November 2008, a man visited the Leominster Police Station in Herefordshire. Using the intercom, he spoke to a police officer, claiming he had information about Gosden. It was in the evening and there was no one at the reception at the time. By the time the officer arrived to find out the details, the man had already left. The police later called on him to contact him again.
Subsequently, a person claiming to be a man from a police station wrote anonymously to the BBC after it presented the disappearance on "The One Show". The witness described in a letter the alleged meeting with Andrew Gosden in Shrewsbury in November 2008. However, it has not been possible to confirm or deny whether such a situation actually happened. It is also unknown if it was the same man in both cases, and if so, why he left the police station.
In September 2009, the Andrew family published photos of the boy's likely current appearance. It coincided with the second anniversary of his disappearance. In November 2009, Kevin Gosden called on the gay community to help find his son. The relatives of the missing person considered the possibility that he might be struggling with his sexual orientation. Children who discover that they are gay or lesbian are far more likely to run away from home than their heterosexual peers. The family also declared that for them Andrew's orientation did not matter.
In May 2011, the family paid a private company to conduct a sonar search of the River Thames. This method is used, among others for locating victims at sea. During the search, however, no trace of Andrew was found, although another body was found. It is not known, however, whether the identity of this person was established. In any case, such information was not available to the missing person's father, who told about it in an interview.
In 2016, Gosden's parents appealed for reports from people who had some information on the BBC TV program Panorama. The following year, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his disappearance, the charity Missing People made the boy the face of its campaign "Find Every Child," which saw his image appear on billboards and advertisements throughout the UK.
On September 12, 2017, a statement was published on the South Yorkshire Police Facebook page. Some methods of searching for a missing person are described. These methods included examining prescriptions from ophthalmologists, screening unidentified patients in hospitals, and disseminating Andrew's fingerprints, dental and health records. According to the information, police appeared to believe that Gosden might still be alive.
In June 2018, the Gosden family revealed that someone had reported to them that they had spoken online with the user "Andy Roo". He claimed that his boyfriend left him and that he needs £ 200 to pay the rent. Andy Roo also wrote that he did not have a bank account as he left home when he was 14. The police investigated this report but could not identify the user. Personally, I think someone was impersonating Andrew and it was supposed to be a stupid joke.
In July 2018, on the occasion of Andrew's 25th birthday, his family published two photos of what the missing person might have looked like at the time. It was also announced that the Muse team would help publicize the campaign to find Gosden. In October 2019, another photo in the age progression was released.
In January 2022, South Yorkshire Police announced that they had arrested two men, aged 38 and 45, on suspicion of kidnapping and trafficking a month earlier. Additionally, one of the men heard the allegation of possession of child pornography. Both men were released pending the investigation. It is believed that these are the first arrests made in connection with the disappearance. Investigators also revealed that the suspects had confiscated several electronic devices, the contents of which were to be checked by forensic experts. It has been estimated that specialized data analysis can take anywhere from six months to a year. Kevin Gosden thanked the public for their support on this occasion. He added that the family did not have any information other than what was disclosed in the police statement.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that the missing person's family has kept his room as Andrew left it. She didn't change the locks either, as it is known that the teenager took his key. Gosden's bank account has not been used since he had withdrawn almost all available funds on the morning of September 14, 2007. Despite the passage of several years, unfortunately, the solution to this puzzle has not been found until today.
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