Crime Junkie - MISSING: Damien Nettles

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

A 16-year-old vanishes from England’s Isle of Wight. And the quest for answers leads us deeper and deeper into an underbelly most didn’t even know existed on the island. If you have any information on the disappearance of Damien Nettles please contact Crime Stoppers (UK) at 0800-555-111 or phone Hampshire police on 101. To visit Damien’s website please click HERE. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-damien-nettles/

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is one that actually came to us by way of a listener named Jessica from the UK. And it's about a boy rapidly becoming a young man and starting to carve out a bright future for himself, until a night on the town with his best friend changed everything. That was 25 years ago, and the mystery of his disappearance still lingers even today. This is the story of Damien Nettles. November 3, 1996 is a typical Sunday morning for the Nettles family in their cozy home

on the Isle of Wight, just off the south coast of England. Now, if Sundays aren't slow, it's never slow at their house. There are three kids in the house with a fourth just off to university. So Valerie and her husband, Ed, are up making breakfast and starting to work their way through their weekend to-do list. Nine-year-old Melissa is in the living room watching cartoons, and their sons, 12-year-old James and 16-year-old Damien, are doing what teenagers everywhere are doing at 8.30 on a Sunday morning. Yeah, sleeping. Sleeping. You got it.

According to Valerie's book, The Boy Who Disappeared, she hears James start to stir upstairs, and so she figures it's as good a time as any to get Damien up and at him, too, before the day gets away from him. So she sends Melissa upstairs to wake him up, a job she's thrilled to do because, you know, little sisters. But not even a minute later, Melissa's back downstairs, saying that Damien's not in his bed. And Valerie's like, what do you mean he's not in his bed? Are you sure? Did you check the bathroom? But Melissa's like, yeah, mom, I checked the bathroom. I checked everywhere. He's not there. Valerie is puzzled more than anything because, honestly, Damien has to

be home. Where else would he be? So she walks up the stairs to look for herself, sure that Melissa must be mistaken. Only when she gets to his room, she realizes Melissa is right. Not only is Damien not there right now, it looks like he hasn't been there at all since he left the evening before to go out with some friends. The night before, Valerie hadn't heard him come home because she was asleep. They'd actually given Damien a few extra hours on his curfew, and Ed, you know, being a good dad, tried to stay up and wait for Damien, but he ended up dozing off, which is literally going to be my downfall when my kids are teens because I'm 86 at heart and love a 9pm bedtime.

But they're kind of starting to worry because this really isn't like Damien to miss curfew. I mean, you know, maybe five minutes, sure. But even if he decided to spend the night at a friend's house or somewhere else or whatever, he would always call to let them know. So something feels off to Valerie. But she tells herself, okay, don't panic. He's not a little kid anymore. He's 16. He's grown up just stay calm. She figures he had to have decided to stay at his best friend, Chris's place and just didn't call me because he didn't want to wake them, which he actually did all the time. Okay, well, that's easy enough to check, right? I mean, I assume she could just call Chris. Well, that's what

Valerie says. But Ed reminds her, hey, it's 8 30 in the morning and they know the boys had been out late the night before. So he says, let's just hold off for a little bit. They're both feeling like there's a really good chance that he's just going to shuffle through the door in the next hour with an apology anyway. So they wait. Valerie spends the next hour pacing in front of the window too distracted with worry to do much else. But in that hour, Damien doesn't show. Another hour goes by and still there's no Damien. So that's when Valerie picks up the phone and calls Chris. It rings and rings and rings for what feels like an eternity before finally a groggy voice on the other end picks up and

says hello. And it's Chris on the other end. And this wave of relief kind of washes over Valerie just hearing his voice. And so she asked, Hey, is Damien with you? But Chris says, no, he's not. Chris goes on to explain that they ended up bailing on the house party that they were going to go to. And then they went downtown to try and hit up the pubs for a bit before they ended up both just deciding to go home. Oh, wait, the pubs, isn't he 16? So yeah, they're both 16. But Damien actually looks older than that. He's already like six foot three. And so he had had some luck before getting into the pubs on high street. But he'd actually only have to pass for 18 to do that because I found on DrinkAware.co.uk that the

legal age for purchasing alcohol in the UK is 18. But kids as young as 16 are even able to legally drink in restaurants and bars as long as they're with an adult of legal drinking age who can buy it for them. You know, stuff I don't know here in the US. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So maybe it's not actually as brazen as it sounds for the 16 year old to try to sneak into a bar. I mean, still pretty brazen, but just maybe not as pointless as it would be to try like pulling that off here in the US. Well, and also me at 16 looked about 13 and a half. That's really true. Anyways, so that's what Chris says they were doing the night before pretty much going door to door trying to get into one of these pubs, but honestly

failing every single time. So essentially, they were just standing outside of bars for most of the night, if not the entire night. All of it. Yeah. And the weather was crappy that night too. It was cold and windy and raining. And Chris says that after an hour of striking out, they were pretty much over it and decided to head home. So they walked from High Street to Northwood Park, which is where Chris I guess went one way towards his house and Damien went another towards the Nettles house. And Chris says that's where he last saw Damien literally climbing the steps to the park on his way home. Valerie asked Chris if Damien was okay when he left him. Like she figures, you know, maybe he

drank a couple of ciders that night at the house party or whatever, but she doesn't think he was wasted. I mean, he only had a couple of bucks on him anyway. But Chris says Damien was totally fine. And he tells Valerie, you know what, I'm going to make a few calls to some of our other friends just to see if they've heard from him. And so he goes and does that. And the minute Valerie hangs up the phone, she and Ed start making calls too. But one by one, they're told by friends and acquaintances and neighbors that no one had seen or heard from Damien. And this is when the what ifs Valerie had been trying to ignore for the last several hours, start to really take root in her brain. What if something

happened to Damien on his way home? What if he hurt himself? What if after a few drinks and in the wind and the rain, he slipped and fell into the sea? What if he's out there alone hurt scared calling out for help, but no one can hear him. So Valerie and Ed head out to look for Damien themselves. They travel the route Damien would have taken home, expecting it any second to see him lumbering down the street. They check downtown, they check the street his friend lives on, they check nearby neighborhoods, his old work, but they don't find him anywhere. By mid afternoon, they're both so consumed with worry that they decide it's time to report Damien missing to police. Valerie and her daughter Melissa make the

trip to the police station together. And honestly, just finally getting everything out of her head and into someone else's is just a huge relief. She's thinking, they're gonna know what to do, they deal with this stuff all the time, they're gonna find him. Except, they don't spring into action like she expected them to. In fact, they don't even seem concerned at all that her child is missing. They essentially say like, okay, well, we'll be sure to keep an eye out for him. And in this moment, I picture Valerie doing like a slow blink and like several beats of silence and then just saying like, okay, and but the cop is like, and you should go home and wait for him. He basically tells her that this happens all

the time with teenagers and chances are he's just gonna be back for dinner. You know, we'll call you if we hear anything. Valerie of course pushes back on that. She says, you don't understand he was supposed to be home. This is completely out of character. Something is wrong. But ultimately, what can she really do in that situation? She can't compel them to act. And frankly, there's still a nagging doubt in the back of her mind that they kind of fed into like maybe they're right, right? These are the professionals, maybe he will come home. And maybe I'm just jaded because in all the cases we've covered on the show that start

with the missing person, especially, you know, a 1617 18 year old, or the police think they ran away, you know, I'm not sure we have ever actually had a runaway. No, because I think that would be a very short episode with a happy ending. And we don't get many of those. Right. So is there anything in particular giving Valerie doubts like, I don't know, were there conflicts at home or with his friends, like a breakup, maybe, or struggling in school, depressed, anything? Anything like that? No. Honestly, Damien is a good kid. I mean, yeah, he drank some cider underage from time to time. I was sneaking sips of raspberry vodka in my parents' basement

when I was a teenager. Yeah, disgusting. But Valerie and Ed had never had issues with his behavior or anything like that. There was nothing going on at home. Everything at school was fine. He had a solid group of friends. He was actually seeing someone new was quite smitten with her. If he was depressed at all, there was no mention of it in the source material. If anything, his older sister, Sarah, leaving home for university had driven him to really start thinking about his own future. According to reporting by Valentine Low in the evening standard, Damien was studying for his A-levels, which are essentially university qualifying exams you take in certain subject areas. I guess Damien really wanted to pursue marine

biology after high school, so he needed a few of those A-levels under his belt to get him into post-secondary. So yeah, all in all, Valerie had no concerns about Damien in that regard, but he is a teenager after all. And so who knows, there's little she can do at this point. So she and Melissa head home to do as the police suggested to wait by the time seven PM rolls around. It's been 24 hours since she last seen her son, and she's desperate for an update from police, but they just don't have one. That's when she asks about a search like where are the tracker dogs? Maybe we should think about airplanes, helicopters, maybe, but they tell her that the dogs won't be helpful in this wet and windy weather,

and that there aren't any planes available. Oh, and they tell her, frankly, your phone calls are kind of irritating to us. Like, can you just please stop calling? And Valerie has taken a back, just as she had been that afternoon, but she still doesn't press too much. Because again, who knows, maybe they're right. Maybe she is being irritating and she's overreacting. Maybe it's just a matter of time before he just appears on the doorstep. But the next morning comes and he doesn't appear on the doorstep and police still aren't doing anything to help find him. So according to an article Valerie herself wrote for the BBC, Ed and James head out on foot, along with Valerie's dad to start looking. And police are legit zero help still. But thankfully, the

community starts to come together for the Nettles family in a big way. They make posters, they get on the phone, they're going door to door doing whatever they can to help find Damien. At the same time, Valerie starts to plot out Damien's movements on the Friday night that he went missing. Chris gives her even more detail, telling her that the two of them, along with Chris's younger brother, Davey, left their house around 730 for this house party, which wasn't so much a party as like seven people hanging out. It was three couples and Damien. Chris says that, you know, it was kind of boring and the group skewed a little young. So he and Damien left shortly before 930 to go into town. He says they stopped along the way to buy a few bottles of cider and

then they took a ferry to West cows. Hang on. So they left the island? So no, not really. If you actually look at a map of Isle of White, you'll see that the top third, maybe half of the island is actually split in two. So to get from Chris's place in East cows to downtown, which is in West cows, they need to take a ferry, but it is not a big deal at all. And we're talking like a two to three minute ride. Okay. Anyway, we ultimately know they couldn't get in anywhere. And they left splitting up near that park entrance. Now, Chris hadn't actually seen Damien go any further than the entrance of the park. He just assumed Damien had gone home because that was the plan. And also it was so crappy out weather wise, like why do anything else? But Valerie ends up learning that

Damien had done something else. Because as word of Damien's disappearance works its way around the community, people start coming forward and saying they'd seen him back in West cows after he and Chris had parted ways. So Damien went to all the trouble to leave the downtown area with Chris, even ferry back across again, and then turned around to come back. So no, actually only Chris would have had to cross using the ferry to get home. And Damien wouldn't have needed the ferry to get to his house. And Chris only used the ferry after he and Damien had parted ways. Okay. But either way, it's still strange that Damien would even divert if the plan was to go home and to turn around and go exactly where they were before. So using witness statements and some surveillance

footage that Valerie is able to track down from some local businesses on High Street, she starts to piece together the second half of Damien's night. And at least at first, it sounds like he just sort of did a 180 at the park and basically picked up where he and Chris had left off going bar to bar trying to get in. And without Chris, who actually looked his age, Damien probably had an even better shot than earlier in the night. I mean, not to mention Damien's got this extended curfew basically burning a hole in his pocket. Like, I remember what that was like to have like that extra hour or two. So why would he want to blow all that by giving up at 1030, especially if he's more likely to get in without Chris? Well, I get that. But

even if that's the case, what I don't understand is why bother even walking all the way back to the park with Chris? Why not just be like, okay, you want to go home, safe travels, man, I'm going to stay here and I'm going to like keep trying to get into bars. Yeah, but I wonder if he was like going through the motions of them both giving up. So he wasn't being the bad friend to be like, well, you can't get in, you go home, I'm going to stay here and still have a good time. Like, it's like a show of solidarity to say like, yeah, let's just give up. Maybe or, you know, maybe he was even walking back with him with every intention of going home and then by the time he got to the park, he's like, again, to your point of his curfew,

burning a hole in his pocket, like, I'm here, I might as well at least like try again. I don't know. Either way, we know he turned around because Damien was seen just outside Harbor Lights bar at around 11pm. Another witness put him outside the same bar at around 10 after 11. And then a third says that he saw a young man matching Damien's description in the pub's parking lot, interestingly, trying to get into a car, like trying the door handles, which again, we know he didn't have a car. And so when I hear that, it makes me kind of think of like, what the evil kids in my neighborhood do. You know how, I don't know if they do this near you, but they'll like blow through parking lots and neighborhoods trying all the handles and cars

to see. Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah, which one's unlocked, what can they take from it, whatever. But would Damien have done that? Like, tried to steal from a parked car, it seems. I don't know, like a real leap from the person you described earlier. Valerie says it's super out of character for Damien. But after trying and failing to get into one more bar, the rest of Damien's night is pretty out of character too. You see, after being turned away at the latest bar, Damien hit up a late night food place called Yorkie's Chip Shop. And a pit stop at Yorkie's isn't the thing that's out of character for Damien, but it's what Valerie sees when she watches the surveillance video from the shop that seems a little bizarre. And here I'm actually going to play it for you.

Okay, so the best place to start this video is at the minute 15 seconds mark. And there's a bunch of people in this tiny little chip shop when the video starts. And Damien actually isn't one of them. And then at 128, that that's Damien walking in the door right there. And does he know these people? Like, it seems like he does, like they're chatting and stuff. Apparently he doesn't. I think it's just kind of like a friendly, stranger, small talk. Okay, so one of the guys left just as Damien walked in, but he actually comes back in around the 140 mark. And it looks like he and Damien might be having a conversation. And honestly, if I didn't know better, I'd say they were on their phones. They're like looking down. But this is

1996. That's not happening. So maybe they're just getting cash on their wallets or whatever, so they can pay for their food. I mean, to me, I thought for a second, they were almost exchanging something, but like, you can't see anything below the counter. So I don't know. Right, right. And Damien starts talking to another one of the guys from that group. This guy has to almost put his ear to Damien's face to hear him, which I mean, this video is incredibly loud. So I can imagine it's super loud in the shop. And this guy sort of walks around everyone to get closer and stands right next to Damien as they keep talking. Okay, so I'm going to speed it up here for a minute, basically to like the 455 mark. And this whole time, it's just people shouting their orders,

the Yorkie people taking payments, handing people their fries. Damien is essentially waiting for his turn for like several minutes. But he does keep chatting with others in the shop. And once you hit play, it does at one point look like he's like really intently watching this one guy shake salt or vinegar or something onto his fries. Okay, and so now the place is like cleared out. And it's Damien's turn. And if you can't, it's so hard to hear this audio, our listeners won't be able to hear it. But Brett, if you could listen and kind of give everyone a clip of what he's saying. Yeah, I mean, it is incredibly difficult to hear, but it kind of sounds like he's trying to order a number one. But the guy behind the counter can't really hear him.

Yeah. So actually, what he's saying is one, please, like, I'll have one, please. And the guy behind the counter is like one, what? And they keep, they do this back and forth. And eventually, the guy's like, you want chips? And Damien's like, yeah, I mean, he is in a chip shop. I'll have one doesn't seem that ambiguous to me yet. But that's fair. But something about this interaction strikes the staff at Yorkies as odd. In a BBC documentary called Unsolved, the reporters actually go talk to the owner who was there that night. And he says he remembers Damien being pretty out of it. He says it wasn't like drunk. This guy told the BBC that Damien's behavior seemed more like, quote, a drug effect. And even Valerie agrees that there's something odd about Damien's behavior,

like he doesn't, again, seem drunk enough to be forgetting words. But then like, there he is on video for getting words. Was he using drugs that night? I mean, did he use drugs ever? Did Chris mention anything about that? I'm not sure how like upfront he'd be to Damien's mom about it or to anybody really at that age, I guess. Well, Chris says, no, we definitely, he didn't use drugs. We didn't use drugs. He says drinking. Yes. But drugs absolutely not. And listen, like Valerie knew Damien used cannabis from time to time. They'd found some in his room once. But nothing harder than that, especially nothing that would make him act like he's acting now. Nothing that would make him forget how to order French fries. Right. But he walks into

the chip shop at 1234 AM on November 3rd, which means even if he and Chris hadn't used drugs, even if he and Chris had just been drinking, Damien had an hour, which is more than enough time for a 16 year old to go from tipsy to incoherent, even just drinking. So this is actually an important point. I'm glad you brought up the timestamp on that footage is actually showing an hour fast, because the owner of Yorkies hadn't shifted the clocks back for daylight savings time, which was less than like a week before this. So it's actually 1134 when he walks in. Oh, so not enough time to binge drink after all. I wouldn't think so. Now, one thing I noticed is while he was waiting for his fries, he like walks out the door and looks around from side to side

on the street before coming back in. And then he gets his fries and pays. And when he gets his fries, it's weird. He like salts them, he gets his change. Then he just kind of stands there strangely. And then he salts them again, like he forgot that he did it the first time. And then he leaves and he walks out of the little shop. Now that sighting wasn't the last. And when he leaves the chip shop, things only get stranger. Later, a bus driver comes forward and says a boy matching Damien's description climbed onto his bus around midnight carrying fries and holding a camera. He asked to go to cows and the driver said, uh, you're already in cows. And he says the kid tried to take a picture, which didn't work. And then just banked the driver and left almost

like he thought he made it to his stop, even though the bus hadn't moved at all. There was another witness who says they saw Damien getting off that bus. And this guy was sitting in his car waiting to pick someone up at the bus stop. And he says that Damien looked really, really out of it, kind of drugged or something. He says that Damien came up to his car and said, they're watching us. And the guy's like, what? And Damien said it again, they're watching us. And when the guy still didn't understand what Damien was talking about, he says the teenager walked around his car wiping rain off the windows and then just left. Well, that's unsettling, right? Now from there, no one seems to have seen Damien. But Valerie knows there must be more

CCTV footage out there. And she's hoping maybe this is something that the police can actually help with since they've done literally zero things so far. And in fact, this time they do help. Police review the footage from the city's cameras on High Street. And wouldn't you know it, Damien is on the tapes. Police ask Valerie and Ed to come down to see the tapes. And there's just a few seconds into the first one when the officer points and he says, okay, there he is. There is Damien. Valerie watches looking at the green footage. But it's not Damien. She's seen him almost every day for 16 years. She knows her son better than anyone the way he walks his movements. And this is not her son. She tells the officer this and

he's like, are you sure? And like, at this point, he's already been reviewing the tapes for hours writing down all the places this guy had been and what time and who he was with. But he'd been tracking the wrong guy. I mean, does this person just look like Damien? Not even that to Valerie. The man on the tapes was shorter, stockier, not to mention she had provided a description of what Damien had been wearing that night to police. He'd been wearing a black fleece jacket with a gray collar. And this guy on the tape, the guy that the police had tracked all over town, was wearing a brown jacket and a hat. Oh, so shorter, stockier and in completely different clothing. I mean, were they even using any of the description or information that she had given of him?

Doesn't seem like it. Valerie and Ed spent two hours with the officer painstakingly, reviewing this footage, looking for the real Damien. And finally, they do spot him at 11.50 pm, fries in hand, walking up the street toward the bus station. 12 minutes later, at 12.02, he comes back into frame, still carrying his fries. And Valerie watches him walk across the screen and out of frame. Now, that's the only four-shore sighting of Damien on the footage that they'd had time to review. But there was still a stack of tapes to go through from other cameras on the street. And police were going to have to go through that. They tell Valerie and Ed that they're going to send the tapes out to have them enhanced. And with any luck, it's going to

help them map his movements after 12.02 am. So Valerie and Ed go back home. And slowly, for everyone but the Nettles family, things start to go back to normal. But within a couple of weeks, they too are forced to get back to the business of life, even though nothing is normal without Damien. Their kids go back to school, Ed goes back to work, and life just continues on. The police investigation, though, if you can even call it that, does not. Though at this point, they are considering an alternative to their runaway theory. They're now thinking that maybe Damien fell into the sea and drowned. What? Would he have any reason to even go near the water in the middle of the night? No, I mean, he could have gone along the shore to walk home that night if in fact he had

tried to do that. But remember, this is November. It's not like he'd be inspired after a few drinks to go for like a late night swim or something. But that doesn't mean he couldn't have unintentionally gone in. Brannum and Rowe, one of the journalists who made that BBC documentary, actually wrote a piece that I found published in the mirror, which is not a source that I'd normally use, but in this case, it actually is attached to an extremely credible author. But anyways, Brett, I'm going to get you to read a paragraph from that story. It says, quote, the town of cows sits right on the edge of the Soland. At points, the high street where Damien was last seen is less than 10 seconds walk from the water's edge. It's one of

the busiest waterways in the UK with a complex tidal system. It was easy to assume at the time that Damien had simply fallen into the sea, end quote. But this is no weeks after his disappearance, right? Wouldn't his body have washed up if that was the case? Yeah, or at least that's what the harbour master captain told Ed when he went down to talk to him. Brannum and Rowe's article actually quotes the harbour master to saying, quote, we got the charts out and I calculated for them the title movements, the title sets and rates, as well as the possibilities in case he had slipped into the water. The Soland is complicated, but it is also well charted. I am certain that had he gone into the water that night, he would have been returned to the land, end quote. But despite this,

police are like, nope, Damien went into the sea, we're sure of it, the end. Okay, they've looked at this case for like two seconds. I'm sorry, what? Yeah, and they're so sure that basically every time any little scrap of clothing even washes ashore, an officer comes by the nettle's house to see if it belongs to Damien. But it never does. And as the weeks turn into months, it feels more and more like Damien just walked out of that frame and vanished into thin air. Not a trace of him turns up anywhere on that island. No clothing, no camera, definitely no body. So at this point, does the focus shift to foul play then? Nope, police pretty much have their two main theories about what happened to Damien, either he fell into the sea and drowned, which is their primary

theory, as far as I can tell, or you know, they think there's maybe a possibility that he ran away and is living somewhere on the mainland. So basically an accident or an intentional disappearance, but foul play, absolutely not. But to be fair, no one was really considering foul play at this point, not even Valerie. You see, the Isle of Wight is just not that kind of place. It's safe, it's friendly, it's traditional. Everyone knows everyone for better or worse. In her book, Valerie says that you can't even sneeze on the island without someone saying bless you. So the idea that Damien could have met with foul play and moreover that somehow no one saw anything or would say anything just seems impossible. Valerie is certain that if there had been foul play involved,

something would have come out by now. And within the first year of Damien's disappearance, things do start to come out. Valerie starts to hear whispers about what may have happened to her son. There's a rumor that he had been beaten up by a shady character after standing up for a friend, another that he'd been targeted, maybe even groomed by pedophiles and killed, rumors that Damien had been dumped in the sea, buried in the foundation of buildings, fed to pigs, even rumors that he had been chopped up and used as fishing bait. Okay, there's a huge difference between no foul play and his body was fed to the pigs. What changed? Besides the passage of time, I don't think anything. But the more these rumors

circulated and bubbled up, the more Valerie thinks that actually there must be foul play involved in Damien's disappearance. As horrifying as that thought is, it's the only one that explains why he still hasn't turned up one way or another. So every time one of these stories makes its way to Valerie, she passes it along to police who have not budged from their theory that Damien either went into the sea or ran away. And it takes over a year for police to even really consider other options. And it takes them a full 14 months for them to do anything about it. Finally, in January of 1998, that's when they do their first official police search. They take two days, dozens of officers tracking dogs the whole nine yards.

Okay, but what are tracking dogs and dozens of officers supposed to do 14 months later? That's almost insulting. Yeah, I don't think they're necessarily like tracking his movements that night. I think they're more looking for where his scent had been at any point. Like they basically searched all these sheds and outbuildings of every house in the nettles neighborhood and through the woods and bushes around what would have been Damien's path home that night. But still, like, would have been nice to do this a little sooner. Uh, yeah. So why now?

Well, they tell Valerie that the impetus is new information, but they won't tell her what that information is or how they even got it where it came from like nothing. And ultimately, I don't know if it matters because this search ends up turning up nothing. But it sounds like based on that search, the police feel like he made it at least out of the downtown area and got pretty close to home. Had they been able to map him on that surveillance footage you mentioned? Oh, right. That. Were you wondering about it after 14 months? Cool. So is his family. And in late 1998, after like two years of radio silence on the subject, Valerie decided to follow

up with police to see what they were able to see, if anything, you know, once they enhanced the tapes. But when she asked for an update, the officer says, oh, those tapes. Yeah, those tapes are lost. Like they got lost in the mail when we sent them to be enhanced, right? No, no, no. Not lost in the mail. He tells her that the footage was lost, that apparently they left the tapes in that player that day when they were all watching them and they got reused, just like taped over. Oh my God. So they'd never been enhanced. And the family had never been notified that this just didn't exist anymore. The footage was gone. Not only were they not enhanced, I'm not sure that they were ever even watched, to be honest. Right. I mean, they're

still in the VCR. Yeah. So if there was anything relevant on those tapes, no one may ever know. Even more infuriating, though, is even that footage from Yorkies police still haven't even done anything with that. It takes them months to even start trying to identify the other men in the video, the one that Damien was speaking to, let alone actually talk to those guys. All in all, as time goes by, all those little bits and pieces of swirling rumors about drugs and confrontations and murder, they all start to kind of converge and align. And the theory, for lack of a better word, that comes together as a result paints a surprising picture, not just about what might have happened to Damien, but about Damien himself.

In 2007, a private investigator named Ivor starts working on Damien's case. And as he digs and digs, he keeps hearing the same names over and over. Names that belong to the island's most notorious drug dealers and rumors that Damien had gotten tangled up with them the night of November 2, 1996. The PI gets a tip from an anonymous source saying that Damien was outside a known drug house that night shouting, I want some fucking drugs, sell me some fucking drugs. This angered one of the guys in particular, and it led to a confrontation and somehow that confrontation ended in Damien's death. It's variations on this basic story that keep looping back to the PI in Valerie and to police, always with the same series of names, the same handful of people.

And they're all part of this seedy underbelly of drug dealers many didn't even know existed on the island. And one name in particular is always at the center of it, Nikki McNamara. Now when you say drug dealer, do you mean these guys sold pot or are we talking some harder stuff? Well, they sold everything, including the harder stuff, meth, heroin, pills, you name it. And like I said, Valerie knew her son at least dabbled in cannabis, but there was no indication of any other drug use. And his parents are under no illusions that they knew every single thing Damien did, which is why back when he first went missing, Valerie kept asking Chris, like, were you guys using drugs that night? Was Damien using drugs? Is there any way he could have used

drugs? Maybe you didn't know about it. Right, like, I don't care at this point, I just want my kid back. Exactly. She was pleading with him for information. Like, again, you're not going to get in trouble. Like this has nothing to do with it. Just help us like get to the answers. But he remained adamant all the time that they weren't using drugs that night. And he said that they never did for that matter. And listen, they didn't just press Chris when Damien went missing. They kept going back to him over the years because again, they're 16. You can be terrified. Someone says you're not going to get in trouble. You can think you're going to get in trouble. But they're hoping, you know, okay, if he's older, maybe he'll be more

level headed. Maybe it'll inspire him to open up more. But his story never changed. But neither did this rumor about Damien and the drug dealer. Okay, so clearly if this guy is a notorious drug dealer, then he must be on the police's radar. Did they at least look into him? Well, not when he was alive, as far as I know. You see, Nikki McNamara died back in 2002 of an accidental drug overdose. At least that's how the coroner ruled it, despite the fact the fatal dose had been injected into his back and he was dead in a bathtub for like two or three days in a house, at least one other person in it before he was found. Well, okay, so he clearly isn't going to confess to anything. But just because he's dead doesn't mean he can't be investigated.

Oh, totally. I can't say for sure whether or not police investigated Nikki specifically. But they were certainly doing something because nearly 15 years after Damien's disappearance on an otherwise quiet Tuesday morning in May, police make an incredible announcement. And here, Britt, I'm going to get you to read it from the police news release published on The White. Quote, police investigating the disappearance of a teenager on the Isle of White are taking action in response to information about the case. Damien Nettles, aged 16, of Woodvale Road, Guernard Isle of White, went missing on Saturday, November 2, 1996, after a night out with friends. Hampshire Constable Larry's major crime department is following leads established

over the past year about what could have happened to Damien. Five people were arrested on Tuesday, May 10, 2011, on suspicion of murdering Damien Nettles in 1996. These five suspects are being questioned by detectives at a number of different police stations across the island in Hampshire. End quote. What? I mean, are these the guys from the chip shop video? No, they aren't. No. And actually, it comes out around this same time that police had finally identified those guys on the video as soldiers in town for some kind of training exercise. They weren't actually from the island. So no one would have known them, might have been why Damien struck up a conversation with them, stuff like that. Sure, sure. And they say that, listen,

they were able to talk to him and they had nothing to do with Damien's disappearance. The guys that they're talking about in this press release, they're locals and they range in age from 37 to 50, but they don't name the suspects. And they ask that the media and the public not to name them either, even though I'm sure everyone on the island knows exactly who these guys are, where they live, who their parents are. I mean, again, this is a teeny tiny town. Right. So police held these guys overnight for questioning, but all five are ultimately released on bail the next day. But as part of this, police do another search. And this time they're clearly saying that they're looking for remains, though they do temper everyone's expectations by saying,

we really don't know if we're going to find anything. And that's because still, even to this point, all the information out there about Damien's whereabouts that night is still just rumor, which so far has meant a lot of dead ends. And I want you to read one more paragraph from that release. Quote, there have been false and malicious allegations about possible burial sites for Damien's body over the past 14 years. Such unfounded speculation has upset the Nettles family and wasted police time and resources. Therefore, careful consideration has been given to our decision to examine this marshland. It is important for the community to keep expectations for the search in perspective. We cannot guarantee that anything will be found

at this stage. End quote. And I assume when they say false and malicious allegations and unfounded speculation, they're referring to all these rumors that have been swirling around that you mentioned earlier that he was thrown out to sea or buried in a foundation or fed to pigs or whatever. Yeah, I mean, that's what I think. And the other thing I think is that they're trying to signal here like, hey, unless you actually know something like saw it with your own eyes, heard it with your own ears, don't bother spreading it around in a place like Isle of Wight, it takes no time at all for one person's drunken whisper to snowball into like a full on chorus. So they're saying like, again, it might seem cool to share something you heard from a friend of a friend of a friend and

pass it off as fact, but not cool. It's like not helping us in any way. Yeah, and not just not cool, like actively keeping the investigation from actually making progress. Totally right. So do they find anything in the search? They do find stuff. They find car parts, bricks, handbags, cell phones, bottles, but nobody. And even all that stuff that they found, none of it is relevant to Damien's disappearance. The upside, though, is that they are confident based on how detailed the search was, that he is not in that location. So we don't know where he is, but we know he's not here. Exactly. Now, just before the 15th anniversary of Damien's disappearance, two more people are arrested. This time, a 44 year old man and a 35 year old woman and police execute

yet another search. And this time on a residential property, the BBC's unsolved documentary describes this as the chalet of a dealer. And police go through every inch of it inside and out. They dig up the backyard, they bring in cadaver dogs. But again, they find no evidence of human remains. And again, the people who were arrested are released. Friends of the Nettles family spent years, literally years, doing their own private search of a wooded area Damien was rumored to have been buried in. Now, police refuse to get involved in that one due to a lack of credible information to point them there. And as far as I know, it hasn't turned up anything. There have been a few tips and stories that have come forward over the years that seem to corroborate the theory

that Damien got tangled up with Nikki McNamara that night. But everyone who knew Nikki back then insists that they know nothing. Interestingly to me, only one of Nikki's friends ever really says he thinks Nikki didn't do it. The rest are like, Nikki was a bad dude, but I don't know anything. Glowing review. Yeah, right? Now, despite the sizable rewards that brought some people forward, police have not received anything they can substantiate. There have been no more arrests since those in 2011. There have been no more police searches, nothing. Which means Valerie and Ed and their three remaining children are still just waiting in limbo. I can't help but wonder how this case might have been different. If police had just investigated Damien's disappearance as

soon as he was reported missing, like if they had spoken to people right away before they had a chance to, you know, put their heads together to refine a story. If they hadn't erased the tapes. Yeah, or threatened each other or hold each other hostage with information and stuff like that. It's just so frustrating to know that they basically sat on any chance to help for 14 months before they even like did a thing. Yeah, I think so much was lost by not treating this how it should have been treated from the get go. Seriously, like treated it seriously. Yeah. And one of the tips slash rumors that has gone around about that guy, Nikki McNamara was that he was burning something in his backyard the day after Damien disappeared. Now, I don't think it was substantiated

at all. But to be honest, the idea of someone burning a body in broad daylight right after a kid went missing, it seems to me too risky for a seasoned criminal. But it could be true. Stranger things have definitely happened. I also think of like, I don't know the weather patterns of the UK at all. But like, November here in broad daylight isn't always broad daylight. You know, it's cloudy, it's dreary. They live on this little island. We know the weather had been bad the day before. Maybe it wouldn't have been that odd to see someone, you know, burning their trash that day in the broad daylight or whatever. I mean, at the end of the day, I think what's frustrating is that we would have to like have this conversation. Like that would have been really easy to check out,

you know, the week Damien went missing the day after Damien, you know, when his mom showed up. Right. Exactly. Ultimately, the police didn't even do the bare minimum in this case. Back in 2016, Valerie actually submitted an official complaint against local law enforcement for all the ways they dropped the ball in Damien's case. And listen, I know we talked about a couple of those things today, the failure to act, the lost video evidence, there is so much more. This case was balanced from officer to officer. Notebooks and logbooks were destroyed without information being logged in their system. I mean, not to mention the way they treated Valerie, like telling a worried mother to stop calling because she's irritating them.

That too. You know, at one point, you're not even believe this, they actually called her a hysterical woman. No. No. And in her complaint, Valerie said that the way the case was handled destroyed the family's confidence in police. And even the police themselves, at least now, we're like, yeah, we get that. And they apologize to the Nettles family, but apologies, can't wind back the clock. What was lost is now lost forever because of the people who were there before. I want you to read just one last thing for us, Brett. This is something Valerie said to reporter Sally Perry from on the white in 2019. She said, quote, with every passing years since we last saw you, we have never forgotten you. Sweet boy, you have been in our hearts and minds

always. Your time with us was short 16 years. But we were so lucky to have had you with us that long. In that time, you touched so many people's hearts who have reached out to us over the years. You were liked a lot. You were and are still loved and you're missed by so many. Nobody can take that away from us. You're going missing and the ensuing years have been so tough. But because of you, we have become stronger than I believe we could have ever imagined. Nobody can take that away. We are still a family and made stronger. We mourn you every day, each in their own way. But you are sorely missed. One day, we will get the answer to where you are so we can bring you back home to our arms. End quote. Valerie believes that the answers to her son's

disappearance are somewhere on the Isle of Wight, even if the opportunity for truth and truly meaningful justice died in that bathtub with Nikki McNamara. But it is not too late to bring an end to this nightmare for them. It has been over 25 years since Damien walked off high street and disappeared into the night. At this point, Valerie and Ed just want to know where Damien's body is so they can lay their son to rest once and for all. If you have any information on the disappearance of Damien Nettles, check our show notes and the blog on our website for where you can send that information. For a list of our source material, you can visit our website crimejunkiepodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at

crimejunkiepodcast. We are actually off next week for the holiday. We'll be back the following week, but stick around for profit of the month. Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production. So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve? Okay everybody, it's the last profit of the year, so it is not sad. That's good news. And this is the sweet profit story of Zia. But one reason I wanted to highlight the story was not because of just Zia, but because of how awesome her mom is and also just like our listeners because they're so cool. So Katie was in college. She lived with a whole bunch of roommates who had cats and dogs and she loved it. But she was younger than them and when they graduated she

didn't have all those pets anymore. Now she knew she wasn't ready to take on a dog in her little college apartment. So she adopted a kitten named Izzy who was a tiny bean when she came to Katie. For the first month she only ate liquid kitten milk and had worms and was super sick. But nursing her back to health became Katie's like mission in life and she did it. Izzy is fine now and amazing. And a few years later Katie met the guy who is now her husband who was allergic to cats. And I say was because pretty sure he still is, but he fell in love with Izzy and they are besties now. And the three of them moved from Philadelphia to New Mexico for a while and they still weren't quite ready for a dog yet. But they went on tons of camping trips and hikes all throughout New

Mexico and they always helped the skittish dogs they'd come across on these trails near reservations. You know making sure they had food and water and which is just like oh just breaks my heart. And the family goes through another move this time to Colorado and they're finally ready to settle down with a puppet. But of course her husband says only one that's good for Izzy. So they go to the rescue with this long list of requests not expecting to get a dog that day because you know they want the perfect dog for the cat they want the perfect dog for their family etc etc. And then they meet a sweet little pup named Sue. Well they went to the shelter and thought they were going to get a dog and ended up with a dog. I didn't see that coming. I know I

guess my stories are kind of predictable but you guys it just you guys are predictable you guys love them. You all lied to yourselves all the time it's not my problem. That's what it is. So they they check out Sue. She's about a year and a half old. She had just given birth to a litter of puppies but she was you know cleared to be adopted and they go and take her into the little room and Katie turns into a total puppet cuddle puddle. She's like it's over we're done. But the shelter can't really give them any information about how she'll do with cats. They actually got her from another state that had rescued her from a reservation in New Mexico. So Katie and her husband are doing the math and they're wondering this could have been a dog

or related to one of the dogs that we helped on all of our camps and all of our hikes where we lived last. No way. And that just sold them on Sue who they have now named Zia. She is an Australian Kelpie which fun fact the oldest dog in the world was a Kelpie so congratulations guys. She's gonna live forever forever and they get her home. She and Izzy are absolutely inseparable like they are besties and again great story adorable story super excited for this little family. But you guys these people are heroes so they have this dog they have this cat they're living their life and all of a sudden Katie sees this dog walking down the sidewalk who's limping and she goes into hero mode brings the dog home with her and you know starts posting on Facebook calling

shelters and it's like I'll just keep this dog for as long as it takes or maybe just forever even though I can't really maintain another 65 pound dog I will. But they end up finding the dog's family and reuniting them then one day in her house she hears this whimpering like all day and she cannot find where it's coming from it's not Izzy it's not Zia but it just keeps whimpering all the time so she reached out to her neighborhood group and is like I can't find where this is coming from anywhere and they all are chiming in with thoughts and ideas some of them have heard it some of them haven't and finally she and her husband go outside and they narrow it down to a sewer grate and her husband pulls off the manhole cover goes down into the sewer system

and rescues an elderly Chihuahua who had fallen down there through the grate like on the sidewalk how teeny tiny is he was hungry was whimpering and was hurt they like bring him home take care of him they eventually like hand him over to the shelter who finds him a perfect home in the neighborhood group that Katie originally reached out to so this little guy is still in neighborhood being loved on and taken care of amazing and like I'm just like how have you rescued this many animals I am floored I am just amazed by these people and Katie said I hope that it can serve as a good reminder that we all need to stay vigilant just like with our own safety to keep all the profits and kittens safe if you see or hear an animal in need go investigate call your local

animal shelter and spread the word a small act of kindness can save a life and hold your baby's tight they count on us to protect them and oh guys happy holidays cuddle pop and Katie also wanted to highlight the Humane Society of Pikes Peak region which is where they got Zia and will have their information as well as pictures of Zia on our website happy holidays