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Speaker 1: I don't you never know stories of things we simply
Speaker 1: don't know the answer too. Hey, guys, welcome to another
Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast. I am Devin, joined
Speaker 1: as always by Joe and Steve. We're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: a mystery today, I'm like most days. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the story of Andrew Gosden, who's missing teenager.
Speaker 1: Well he's not a teenager anymore. But um, and before
Speaker 1: we get too or into it, because I'm really good
Speaker 1: at forgetting uh, this was a suggestion from I think
Speaker 1: Katrina or Katerina. I'm sorry, I don't know which one
Speaker 1: it is, but thanks for suggesting it, both of them,
Speaker 1: both both of them. Yeah, And I know we've gotten
Speaker 1: suggestions for this in between the time that she suggested it,
Speaker 1: but I didn't write any other names down. Apparently. I know.
Speaker 1: Andrew Gosden was a normal fourteen year old guy. He
Speaker 1: was a very bright young man, described as quite the
Speaker 1: math genius or quiet math genius, whichever. Yeah, he had
Speaker 1: a hundred percent attendance record for school except for this
Speaker 1: one time. He had won a number of national math competitions.
Speaker 1: And he was the kind of kid who would leave
Speaker 1: a note um pretty much if he just like went
Speaker 1: around the corner. I don't worry either of you guys.
Speaker 1: Neither of you guys were kids like that, right, No.
Speaker 1: I was a kid like that for my parents. If
Speaker 1: I left for any reason, yeah, I had to, but
Speaker 1: I usually had somebody at home so it was easy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was also really into heavy metal. And that's the
Speaker 1: description you'll hear about him. That's it. Yeah, That's one
Speaker 1: of the frustrating things about this case is I don't
Speaker 1: really feel like I know much about Andrew. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's a very patent or patent what's the word.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say, very pat description of him that
Speaker 1: is out there, and it is almost verbatim, these four
Speaker 1: or five lines when um so in the development marketing world,
Speaker 1: we call that a broiler plate boiler a broiler. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're right where it's just you know, three lines about
Speaker 1: this thing. That's what this is. Yes, and it's the
Speaker 1: only information that I can really find about that. I
Speaker 1: know that I don't even know if he had friends,
Speaker 1: And then you think that would have no idea, it
Speaker 1: would assume so, but I don't know. Probably on the
Speaker 1: morning of Friday, September four, two thousand seven, Andrew woke
Speaker 1: up a bit late and was grumpy, and his mom
Speaker 1: thought that was kind of odd. He was usually kind
Speaker 1: of awake on time and ready for school. But he
Speaker 1: got dressed in his uniform anyway, put his backpack on,
Speaker 1: and left for school with his typical bice you later.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pause here to apologize. I am recovering from
Speaker 1: a coal So if I sound a bit stuffy or weird,
Speaker 1: that's why. Actually you sound all right, I wouldn't worry
Speaker 1: about it. Well to our listeners, I'm sorry, all right.
Speaker 1: Back to Andrew. After his parents left for work, Andrew
Speaker 1: actually returned home and changed out of his uniforms, so
Speaker 1: he skipped around the block and basically hid for Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what he did in that time. I
Speaker 1: probably that long I heard any one sat in the
Speaker 1: park for a little while. That what's really sad about
Speaker 1: this is that Andrew's perfect attendance record was kind of
Speaker 1: ruined by him doing this. It's true. Yeah, weird, Well,
Speaker 1: there's only so many years when a perfect attendance really matters.
Speaker 1: That's true. I had it as a kid. Oh totally,
Speaker 1: did you perfect? Totally had perfect attendance for years in
Speaker 1: a row. I well, you know, I don't get sick,
Speaker 1: and I never never played hoockey. And then one day
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't want to go, and I
Speaker 1: just I don't care anymore, and so then I would
Speaker 1: start to cut well, and then the rest was history. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that's why you're poor. Okay, So whether he went
Speaker 1: to a park or whether he just walked around the
Speaker 1: block a couple of times. I actually, frankly, I don't
Speaker 1: know how we would know really what he did. Um,
Speaker 1: But anyway, he left the house for a little while,
Speaker 1: and then he returned home and he changed out of
Speaker 1: his uniform. He put the shirt and pants in the
Speaker 1: washer like he normally did when he came home from school,
Speaker 1: put his blazer um hanging on the back of his
Speaker 1: chair in his room because school did. Yeah, almost everybody
Speaker 1: in Britain has a school uniform. I think, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a thing. I think that's a thing there. Sorry, I
Speaker 1: don't mean to offend anybody, but I think it is
Speaker 1: so this is he was following the typical thing that
Speaker 1: he would do when he was home from school, which
Speaker 1: leads people to believe that he was trying to make
Speaker 1: it look like he had come from home from school.
Speaker 1: Right at the end of school, he changed into a
Speaker 1: set of clothes that was kind of what I would
Speaker 1: say was his actual uniform. You know, there are people
Speaker 1: who have performs in this world. And it was a
Speaker 1: pair of jeans and a black T shirt. It was
Speaker 1: a Slipknot T shirt because he was the band. He
Speaker 1: was really really into Slipknot. He took his bag with
Speaker 1: him and left and never returned home. Yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: our mystery. Yeah where he went. Did to take his passport? No,
Speaker 1: not as far as I know. His parents reported that
Speaker 1: none of his clothes were missing, and other than the
Speaker 1: jeans and T shirt that he had worn as well
Speaker 1: as it looked like his charger. He took his PSP
Speaker 1: with him, his portable PlayStation with him, but it looked
Speaker 1: like he had left the charger there. So the that
Speaker 1: is meant, that's that bit of the storytelling us meant
Speaker 1: to infer that he didn't pack an overnight bag. Although,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about this a little more when we
Speaker 1: get into the theories, which I know is everyone's favorite
Speaker 1: thing to hear from us, But I don't know that
Speaker 1: parents would necessarily notice if you had grabbed a couple
Speaker 1: of extra slip NOTO shirts. I was going to say,
Speaker 1: another pair of jeans. There was a bag in the
Speaker 1: bag looked like it wasn't empty, it wasn't stuffed fault. No,
Speaker 1: it's not like he put all his possessions into one bag,
Speaker 1: but it did look like there was stuff in it,
Speaker 1: and mom and dad don't know what you Although although
Speaker 1: if I was taking a PSP with me, I would
Speaker 1: probably take the charger because those chargers are expensive. They're
Speaker 1: like iPhone chargers. So it's not as though fourteen year
Speaker 1: old boy is necessarily going to have backups of that.
Speaker 1: Although maybe he did and they just didn't know. Who knows.
Speaker 1: I don't think that he thought about it. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: could have just forgotten. So it wasn't until Andrew's mom
Speaker 1: asked his sister Charlotte, who's also often referred to as Charlie,
Speaker 1: to call him for dinner that they realized he was missing.
Speaker 1: You know, since I mentioned it seemed like he had
Speaker 1: just come home from school and you know, was in
Speaker 1: his room. I think he was the door that was
Speaker 1: going to happen. Never explicitly said, but yeah, we don't know.
Speaker 1: Is he the kid that just always went upstairs right
Speaker 1: after school, dropped his clothes and shut the door. Seems
Speaker 1: like it. So his mom and dad and sister started
Speaker 1: calling around to his friends. So he did have friends,
Speaker 1: never hear from them. Uh, And it sounds like they
Speaker 1: realized at that point that he hadn't actually been to
Speaker 1: school that day, which of course was very odd for him. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they called the police immediately and reported him missing,
Speaker 1: which I guess you can do in in the States.
Speaker 1: I don't think. I don't know what they actually for
Speaker 1: a minor. I don't think it's I don't know what.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the time limit is there. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until the following Tuesday that any leads emerged about
Speaker 1: where Andrew might have gone. An employee at the railway.
Speaker 1: Um unemployee of the railway came forward and said that
Speaker 1: she remembered selling a ticket to Andrew to King's Cross
Speaker 1: station and in London. Yeah, and she remembered him for
Speaker 1: two reasons. One was that she thought that he was
Speaker 1: maybe a bit young to be going to London alone,
Speaker 1: because he he actually looked like he was probably about twelve. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he looked young for his age. He was pretty short.
Speaker 1: He was five three. Yeah, yeah, so you've three right.
Speaker 1: I'm smaller than five three, but not by much. So
Speaker 1: he was about my size, which you know for thirteen
Speaker 1: year old boy. Boys get tall at different ages, so
Speaker 1: it's not as though he would have maybe been short
Speaker 1: his whole life. But but he wasn't. He wasn't a
Speaker 1: big kid, and he did look very young. Yes, he
Speaker 1: was baby face. He did have a baby face. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other reason that the railway worker remembered Andrew was
Speaker 1: because she had mentioned that a round trip ticket back
Speaker 1: from London would actually just be fifties pence more um.
Speaker 1: But he said that he just wanted the one way
Speaker 1: ticket only. Does I mean the one way ticket was
Speaker 1: something ridiculous like right, like sixty pounds pounds? You know. Actually,
Speaker 1: we don't have a number on that. We have some
Speaker 1: inferences on how much it might have called, but I
Speaker 1: don't know that I've ever seen anywhere explicitly said because
Speaker 1: the rates changed. Yeah, and we'll talk at all and
Speaker 1: then actually it's nine years now, yeah, so we'll talk
Speaker 1: about all of this in the in the theories as well,
Speaker 1: and as to also as to why maybe he would
Speaker 1: have declined that offer. His path to the train station
Speaker 1: became pretty clear. Actually he had walked from his home
Speaker 1: in UM Doncaster UM to the railway station, also in Doncaster,
Speaker 1: and it's about a twenty minute walk, which figures pretty
Speaker 1: solidly into the timeline of the events in the morning UM.
Speaker 1: And he actually stopped on the way at an a
Speaker 1: t M and took out two hundred pounds of his
Speaker 1: out of his savings account, and that there's obviously a
Speaker 1: transaction receipt for that transaction, so they were able to
Speaker 1: find that out through the bank that he did in
Speaker 1: fact do that, And reports differ on this if that
Speaker 1: actually drained his savings account or if it was just
Speaker 1: two hundred pounds out of his savings account. On the
Speaker 1: website that his parents run, it says that he drained
Speaker 1: his account, but in other fairly credible retellings of the
Speaker 1: story that I would say it said that he just
Speaker 1: took two hundred pounds out of his account it was
Speaker 1: yearly drawing. Well, I mean he did withdraw two hundred pounds,
Speaker 1: whether he drained it or not, and that maybe why
Speaker 1: it's standing that way. I don't know. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: guess for me, it's just a small clarification that I
Speaker 1: wish we had. There's a lot of them. I guess.
Speaker 1: I'm willing to say that if his parents website says
Speaker 1: it drained his account, then I drained his account. But
Speaker 1: then that brings up more questions to me about some
Speaker 1: other stuff we found out later. Either way, there was
Speaker 1: a woman on the train who came forward much later,
Speaker 1: I think, like a month later, and said that she
Speaker 1: recalled him being on the train quietly playing his PlayStation
Speaker 1: two around am on the train from Doncaster to London
Speaker 1: that morning. But Doncaster is what about from London something
Speaker 1: like that. That's about an hour and a half long
Speaker 1: train ride. It's about three hour drive. Okay, So all
Speaker 1: of the times I should I should just stop to
Speaker 1: say that, up until we lose track of Andrew, all
Speaker 1: of the times of what happened up until then totally
Speaker 1: match up. There's not a question in anyone's mind that
Speaker 1: this isn't what happened because it's all exactly the times
Speaker 1: are always its stitches together. Yeah, it's seamless. So twenty
Speaker 1: seven days later, investigators were finally able to find three
Speaker 1: frames of Andrew at King's Cross at a m which
Speaker 1: is when that train arrived in London on September Um,
Speaker 1: and he was leaving the station. All of the other
Speaker 1: CCTV from the area had been wiped by that point. Um,
Speaker 1: And it's the last confirmed sighting of Andrew like ever
Speaker 1: and it was white because nobody maintains that kind of record,
Speaker 1: and definitely they have to cycle. It was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm actually was just going to talk about a
Speaker 1: few of the things before that, but we can just
Speaker 1: talk about that right now. Um. The CCTV in London
Speaker 1: has an automatic thirty day data override, and they obviously
Speaker 1: don't publicize when this happens. Um, well, I don't think
Speaker 1: I think that happens every day, right so, but it's
Speaker 1: not clear to me. I believe that's the case, but
Speaker 1: some of the tellings people seem to be under the
Speaker 1: impression that every thirty days it just wipes the last
Speaker 1: thirty days. That's the dumbest thing, thank you guys, know,
Speaker 1: there are people out there. There are people out there
Speaker 1: who say stuff on the Internet's like, how did how
Speaker 1: did Andrew know that they were right? Yeah, people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: he timed it. That was what I was going to
Speaker 1: bring up, is that you'll see in in a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff on the Internet that that somebody says, um, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he timed it perfectly so that the he knew that
Speaker 1: the tapes were gonna be deleted just that day, so
Speaker 1: after somebody that doesn't understand how data is recorded and stored. Well, So,
Speaker 1: the only thing I guess that's a little frustrating is
Speaker 1: that they did discover those three frames thirty or twenty
Speaker 1: seven days later, which would have given them three days
Speaker 1: to say, hey, everybody was CCTV footage from around this area,
Speaker 1: we need to see it now. Well, they might not
Speaker 1: have discovered the footage. They may have gotten the footage
Speaker 1: and then had to comb through it, and by the
Speaker 1: time they combed through it and found him, it had
Speaker 1: already passed seven day they pull they got all the footage,
Speaker 1: and then when they've gotten the chance to finally go
Speaker 1: through it all and figured out he was there several days,
Speaker 1: he passed and it was too late. Yeah. The the
Speaker 1: way that I always read it is that on the
Speaker 1: seven day they found these three frames. So you know,
Speaker 1: to me, again, it's one of the tiny, little frustrating
Speaker 1: things about this case that it's like, well, come on, guys,
Speaker 1: just would have been nice that it would have been
Speaker 1: It would have probably solved a lot of this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they at least preserve something for say, or even a
Speaker 1: couple hundred yards around the station, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: that would be that would have been nice. Well, I guess,
Speaker 1: I guess The question really for me is that it
Speaker 1: always took them three days to find out that Andrew
Speaker 1: was headed to King's Cross, So why weren't they immediately saying, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of CCTV around there, we should probably
Speaker 1: look at it three days later when there's definitely no
Speaker 1: chance of it ever having been wiped. Well, now when
Speaker 1: did the when did the rail employee come forward? Three
Speaker 1: days later? The tuesdays? Yeah, yeah, so that would have
Speaker 1: been probably would have been there. Yeah, But I don't
Speaker 1: what I Okay, I know that London is one of
Speaker 1: the most surveiled cities out there, but I don't know
Speaker 1: that all of the CCTV systems are operated by the
Speaker 1: same organizations, they may have different time frames for how
Speaker 1: long they keep their data, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like one group may say we only keep a week's
Speaker 1: worth and then we start recycling. Real station might have
Speaker 1: been the one who said, well, we keep it long term,
Speaker 1: and that's the only way they dug it up, although
Speaker 1: I don't know for me. Again, it's the three days.
Speaker 1: Why why three days did they not just say, hey, everyone,
Speaker 1: this might be helpful. There's a guy on one web
Speaker 1: page that I suspect he was British. He said said,
Speaker 1: with all these all these orwelly and cameras all over
Speaker 1: the place, and they still can't get any useful information,
Speaker 1: why do we have this crap? Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: that's such a good point up. Yeah. Uh. Most people say,
Speaker 1: and I've never been to King's Cross station, and I
Speaker 1: don't have a good sense of where these three frames
Speaker 1: are taking place or anything like that, but they say
Speaker 1: that it vaguely looks like Andrew's headed to the area
Speaker 1: where you would pick up a taxi out of King's Cross,
Speaker 1: But also taxis go on the streets, so it's also
Speaker 1: possible he was just exiting to the street well, as
Speaker 1: you say, tube stations always just spill right out onto
Speaker 1: the streets, So it's hard to draw a much from absolutely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you'll see that around and it does kind of
Speaker 1: pertain to some of the theories that are out there.
Speaker 1: There are some oddities in this case, and we're just
Speaker 1: gonna bullet point them out because they think that's the
Speaker 1: easiest way to approach them. One of them was the
Speaker 1: CCTV that we've already covered. Another one is that Andrew
Speaker 1: had about a hundred pounds in cash that he'd been
Speaker 1: given for various holidays that was found left in his room.
Speaker 1: So for me, that's kind of a big question mark,
Speaker 1: especially if he withdrew all of the money from his
Speaker 1: savings account. Why wouldn't you take that extra hundred pounds. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that it did all of the money you
Speaker 1: could possibly get your hands on. Yeah, it does kind
Speaker 1: of shoot a hole in the theory that he left
Speaker 1: to start a new life theory. Yeah, that would that
Speaker 1: would be silly that you would only do it with
Speaker 1: two hundred pounds. If you could have three hundred pounds,
Speaker 1: why not. I don't and I don't mean to give
Speaker 1: away our secret theories, but as everybody knows by now.
Speaker 1: Anytime somebody disappears, that's a theory from age two upward. It's, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he crawled out to start a new life two years old. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know that things would be. The next kind
Speaker 1: of oddity I guess is that Andrew might have had
Speaker 1: a cell phone. I was never really clear on if
Speaker 1: he had a cell phone or not, because I did
Speaker 1: see something saying that he never really used his phone.
Speaker 1: But I also saw a lot of stuff saying that
Speaker 1: he didn't have a cell phone. So I was looking
Speaker 1: at the stuff from the family site this morning and
Speaker 1: it said he didn't. Okay, great, that that makes things
Speaker 1: a little easier. Um, But he he did have access
Speaker 1: to a computer again, and not clear. I think there
Speaker 1: was a computer in his room. That was the sense
Speaker 1: that I had, But again I don't know that for sure.
Speaker 1: I guess I just assumed that because I don't know's
Speaker 1: it was two thousand seven, that's about when kids started
Speaker 1: kind of locking themselves in their rooms and chatting to
Speaker 1: people online and things like that. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I got the impression it was a shared family computer.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's also possible. Again, he just definitely had
Speaker 1: access to a computer. For sure. The investigators did search
Speaker 1: that computer and they found nothing. By the way, why
Speaker 1: their computers at school and a school that you want
Speaker 1: to Yes, but they also searched those, but also leave
Speaker 1: and now I know, I know the public libraries here,
Speaker 1: at least here in the States all have lots of computers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's tricky because in two thousand seven, I mean,
Speaker 1: computers were pretty prevalent, but still not. They were still everywhere.
Speaker 1: I mean they were boxes, they were yeah, and it
Speaker 1: was all like everywhere. Yeah, that's true. I have a
Speaker 1: hard time remembering two thousand seven. Now there there would
Speaker 1: have been computers everywhere, computers everywhere. I was in college
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven. Yes, yes, But to answer your question, Joe,
Speaker 1: I would imagine that there would be computers in their library,
Speaker 1: But I don't. I don't know to what degree. I mean,
Speaker 1: like now I go to the library here and there
Speaker 1: everything almost ten years ago there was three to a
Speaker 1: floor or something like that got a lot cheaper for
Speaker 1: one time. Yeah, they have well, and so they the
Speaker 1: investigators said they didn't find anything, and they did have
Speaker 1: their computer forensic guys whatever you want to call that.
Speaker 1: I know they went through, so it wasn't just some
Speaker 1: cop clicking through the back button on the browser. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean, okay, so private browsing was around as
Speaker 1: early as two thousand five. Tour networks have been around forever.
Speaker 1: Andrew was a really bright kid, and he was a
Speaker 1: teenage boy, so it's super likely that he knew how
Speaker 1: to keep his browsing history private. Well, you probably want
Speaker 1: to do that, even if you have your own computer,
Speaker 1: I would say, yes. Yeah, Steve looks like he's concerned
Speaker 1: about this. Well, I I am. There's some things about
Speaker 1: the descriptions of Andrew in general that I think twist
Speaker 1: this story, and so I'm really concerned. When you say
Speaker 1: it's super likely that he knew how to do that,
Speaker 1: he may have, he may not have. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's a fifty split me. I guess I'm saying that, like,
Speaker 1: in the scope of fourteen year olds in this world,
Speaker 1: he is on the much more likely spectrum of knowing
Speaker 1: how to do things like that than say, I don't know,
Speaker 1: a fourteen year old girl in suburban Midwest. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's true. Actually, that is dumb. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, he wouldn't have it. But I don't want
Speaker 1: I don't want to cast it as he was a
Speaker 1: computer genius. No, I don't. I don't want to cast
Speaker 1: it that way either, But I just he he was
Speaker 1: a smart young man. Yes, we actually that we actually
Speaker 1: really know nothing about. Yeah, that's where I'm always like,
Speaker 1: I feel like we're walking this weird edge with the
Speaker 1: descriptions of him because we've got so little. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: I he was just a smart young man. And my
Speaker 1: understanding of fourteen year old boys and they're they're browsing habits.
Speaker 1: Are that something that you might want to keep from
Speaker 1: your parents? You would like how to hide that pretty quick? Probably? Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when I was fourteen, I didn't have any browsing habits.
Speaker 1: You did, Actually it was like called free hbo or
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, like hit him under the mattress. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the Victoria's Secret ads you get, Yeah, Dad's playboys anyway.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I will agree with you that it may
Speaker 1: be overstating, but I will also say that he was
Speaker 1: a smart for funeral boye, so he probably knew whether
Speaker 1: it was to the extent that it could be hit
Speaker 1: in front, you know, because private browsing there's still a
Speaker 1: record of that. You can still find stuff like that
Speaker 1: if you're a computer forensic scientist. So can we do
Speaker 1: you mind if at this point we go into something else,
Speaker 1: which is some of the descriptions of Andrew that I'm
Speaker 1: I really have been concerned about everywhere I've read it,
Speaker 1: which is that he's a math genius. Again, everything says
Speaker 1: he was good at math. I'm not. I'm not questioning
Speaker 1: his aptitude. He competed in competitions, and I think he
Speaker 1: was in the intermediate level, which is for kids between
Speaker 1: the ages of twelve to fifteen, and he did well.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that he was a genius. He
Speaker 1: was good at math. But that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that I keep reading online. It's almost like, well was
Speaker 1: it Dorothy Arnold where you were reading Joe and in
Speaker 1: the forums her family was mean tour and then it
Speaker 1: just progressively group to pure rulty to the point that
Speaker 1: I just can't blame that. It's totally convinced. And as
Speaker 1: I've read stuff from the beginning and then moving towards now,
Speaker 1: his genius level math skills have grown that very same way.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've read stuff from his teachers who say
Speaker 1: he could do stuff. He could do certain equations in
Speaker 1: his head and other kids couldn't do it. So he
Speaker 1: obviously had a math aptitude. But again, that doesn't make
Speaker 1: him some kind of genius. I guess. For I guess
Speaker 1: I would say that he may have been a genius,
Speaker 1: but he certainly was a de savant. You know, he
Speaker 1: wasn't like a prodigy. He but he may have been
Speaker 1: really really good. I think from the genius means like
Speaker 1: much better than children of his age. Correct, he was
Speaker 1: a genius and he was taking college level you know,
Speaker 1: it's not good will hunting. I think that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think he was particularly advanced, right, he wasn't taking No,
Speaker 1: I think he was just much better than the kids
Speaker 1: around here. So so I again, that's another thing I
Speaker 1: want to bring in because the descriptions have have evolved
Speaker 1: over time I've watched. Yeah, I'll buy it. Uh. One
Speaker 1: of the other things you'll see a lot is that
Speaker 1: he definitely wasn't being bullied. But that comes from his parents.
Speaker 1: And I'm not a hundred percent sure that I that
Speaker 1: you can trust what parents say, not because I think
Speaker 1: that they are maliciously saying no. He definitely wasn't being bullied,
Speaker 1: but because I think that parents probably just might not know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he probably wouldn't go home and tell his parents and stuff.
Speaker 1: He walked up to his locker and the bully walks
Speaker 1: by and shoves him in every class period there, he's
Speaker 1: not going to tell him that it's embarrassing. I saw
Speaker 1: that one one bulletin board out there, whe people were
Speaker 1: discussing that there was a guy who claimed that he
Speaker 1: went to the same school and remember it was like
Speaker 1: a year a year ahead or behind, he said, and
Speaker 1: he said he was not aware of actually any any
Speaker 1: any bullying. He said that he said that Andrew was
Speaker 1: not one of the cool kids, so he did catch
Speaker 1: a little bit of crap, but not but he said
Speaker 1: it wasn't really bad. Well, but you never know how
Speaker 1: kids are gonna react to stuff like that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's really easy as a teenager too, as a preteen
Speaker 1: or a teenager to build things like that really out
Speaker 1: of proportion. All then, and you know, that's not to
Speaker 1: say that that's what was happening. It's not to say
Speaker 1: that he was absolutely being bullied. But also it's to
Speaker 1: say that take it with a grain of salt. When
Speaker 1: his parents say absolutely, there's no chance that he was
Speaker 1: even remotely being bullied, because I don't know. He probably
Speaker 1: was a little bit every Yeah, Andrew had a very
Speaker 1: very heavy prescription in his glasses as though, like like
Speaker 1: he was almost blind without his glasses. Yeah, so he
Speaker 1: needed his glasses or at least contacts, but he would
Speaker 1: have had to have gotten contacts because he never had
Speaker 1: contacts in his life. He also had a very unique ear,
Speaker 1: did you guys, You guys looked to pick. It's very interesting.
Speaker 1: They describe it as a double ridge on his right ear,
Speaker 1: and I can't really describe it. I don't know how
Speaker 1: to describe it either. I just look it up. Literally,
Speaker 1: if you google double ridge ear, pictures of his ear
Speaker 1: will come up first, the first one. How often does
Speaker 1: that happen? It's incredibly rare. Yeah, it's really really really rare,
Speaker 1: And a lot of people seem to leave that out
Speaker 1: in the tellings and descriptions of him. So people think, well,
Speaker 1: he was a fourteen year old boy, he could disappear
Speaker 1: to anywhere, not mentioning that there's there's very distinct feature
Speaker 1: on him. Ears are also really hard to identify by
Speaker 1: so like you can see that on somebody twenty yards away.
Speaker 1: Well he didn't he wear his hair kind of long. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just mean it'd be hard for him to be
Speaker 1: carrying on a totally new life with nobody having noticed.
Speaker 1: Oh hey, this guy has a weird ear. Oh I've
Speaker 1: heard there was a boy that was missing that has
Speaker 1: a weird ear too. It's worth mentioning. Yeah, it's definitely unique. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you have a spot a guy,
Speaker 1: how old would he be? An idea about you would
Speaker 1: be three. Yeah. If you spot a guy with a
Speaker 1: funny air anywhere in the world, because you knows, you
Speaker 1: could be anywhere if he's still alive, let us know,
Speaker 1: don't tell the police, don't tell us, tell us not
Speaker 1: the place. Yeah. Next up in the weirdness category, a
Speaker 1: ticket from Doncaster to London isn't cheap right now. It's
Speaker 1: anywhere from sixty to a hundred pounds from what I
Speaker 1: could gather is likely about ten cheaper. I think that's
Speaker 1: what the kind of inflation has been calculated at. But
Speaker 1: still that's a lot of money. And uh, because of
Speaker 1: the time that Andrew was on the train, it would
Speaker 1: have been considered peak hours. So they actually they call
Speaker 1: it super peak hours or super off peak hours. That's
Speaker 1: the thing. I went to the train website and I
Speaker 1: like really thought that there was a troll thing happening
Speaker 1: because that's super off peak, and I was like, what
Speaker 1: do you mean super off peak? Got it cool? But
Speaker 1: so they it would have been the most expensive tickets basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: which means that he would have not had a whole
Speaker 1: lot of money laughed over or when he hit London.
Speaker 1: If it was a ninety pound ticket, then pounds which
Speaker 1: doesn't go far in London. And one last thing in
Speaker 1: the weirdness category worth a quick mention is that I've
Speaker 1: read vague things that suggest Andrew might have had family
Speaker 1: living in London, maybe a grandmother, maybe someone else. The
Speaker 1: family has made vague mention of some family. The actual
Speaker 1: close family has made some vague mention of maybe some
Speaker 1: family that lives in London, but never explicitly said anything.
Speaker 1: Why haven't they said anything. It's a good question. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: one would assume that they have ruled out their involvement
Speaker 1: at all, so they just don't think it's worth dragging
Speaker 1: these people in to the whole mass. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's a good question, and one that I don't really
Speaker 1: have a good answer for so, Yeah, Andrews still gone, Andrew,
Speaker 1: if you're listening, Yeah, yeah, what's that phone number again? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Sign us an email? Yeah. Uh. Want to get into theories,
Speaker 1: I think let's do so. To start off with the theories,
Speaker 1: along with the seamless timeline of Andrew getting to London,
Speaker 1: everyone agrees that Andrew went willingly or semi willingly to
Speaker 1: want London. No, yeah, there was. He didn't look like
Speaker 1: he was unaddressed, there's no Yeah, and there's no sense
Speaker 1: of that being suspicious at all. The reasons why he
Speaker 1: went to London maybe maybe suspicious, but that seems to
Speaker 1: be a thing that everyone agrees on. I mentioned that
Speaker 1: Andrew was into metal, right, is one of those things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his parents describe him as goth. I don't. I don't.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't consider from what I've seen, I wouldn't consider
Speaker 1: him goth. I would just consider him to be a
Speaker 1: fan of heavy metal. But his parents were super Christians,
Speaker 1: so they may be a little confused. I mean, he
Speaker 1: seemed like a metal head to me. Not Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would agree with that. So I've only seen like one
Speaker 1: or two picks. A couple of pictures of him and
Speaker 1: he yeah, it doesn't look like a yeah not to
Speaker 1: me either, but hey, there you go. We can't discriminate
Speaker 1: against goths. It's true, yeah, I as I understand it.
Speaker 1: The metal slash goth community in London is pretty close knit.
Speaker 1: So I've seen a lot of stuff online with people
Speaker 1: saying that, um, you could probably ask pretty much anyone
Speaker 1: in that community if they had ever heard of a
Speaker 1: youngish boy trying to join that community. But again, I
Speaker 1: don't think that's I don't think that's probably the case.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably an overexaggeration of how close knit
Speaker 1: any group of people are. And we actually, um looked
Speaker 1: into a lot of the bands that we're playing. We
Speaker 1: did our research. Surprise, um yeah, talk about boring clicking
Speaker 1: through the show listings. I know for real, even on
Speaker 1: the way back Machine, it was like, oh, these websites
Speaker 1: didn't exist, okay, fine, got to go back all the
Speaker 1: way fine. Actually, and some of this came from the
Speaker 1: suggest of one of our listeners named Anthony, so um
Speaker 1: I want to thank him for his help in this matter.
Speaker 1: There's this band that's called six six. It's not sixth
Speaker 1: it's six Like how Yeah, it's um S I K
Speaker 1: capital t H. I'm gonna call him six They are
Speaker 1: a progressive metal rock band that's often called a math
Speaker 1: core group, and math core is a particular kind of
Speaker 1: hardcore metal that is also part of the math rock genre,
Speaker 1: both math core, math core, and math rock. I'm having
Speaker 1: a hard time with my th h S right now.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Uh as math rock. Yeah, they make use
Speaker 1: of unusual time signatures in their song composition. I have
Speaker 1: a pretty cool quote here. One critic who I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote describes the style of music as quote dynamic, violent, discordant, technical, brutal,
Speaker 1: off kilter, no rules, mixture of hardcore metal, prague, math rock, grind,
Speaker 1: and jazz. Unquote. Well so take all music, throw it
Speaker 1: in a blender and turn on with a fork. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's it. Um. I Actually I listened to some of
Speaker 1: sixth six music and I did not care for it,
Speaker 1: maybe because I'm sick. It's it's definitely it's a very distinct,
Speaker 1: silent music. I've never been a real metal I think
Speaker 1: I probably would have liked it when I was a teenager.
Speaker 1: I you know again, my part of it is maybe
Speaker 1: because like my head hurts really bad, so I grindy
Speaker 1: loud music is maybe not the best in my brain
Speaker 1: right now, but I definitely can see the appeal of it,
Speaker 1: particularly to somebody who was into metal. And then I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm not into math like at all, So
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's a thing that factors into
Speaker 1: people who like math core or math rock, if that
Speaker 1: if if having an understanding of math gives you a
Speaker 1: heightened appreciation for that music. I don't know. I've never
Speaker 1: had a math or musical aptitude, so I can't say,
Speaker 1: and I don't know I think that. I don't know
Speaker 1: either way, but it's it's an interesting extra facet to this.
Speaker 1: I'll listen to it. I've got pretty good math appitude actually,
Speaker 1: so listen to it and see anyway. Uh. Sixth is
Speaker 1: from Warford Thank you in Hertfordshire. They formed in May
Speaker 1: of two thousand seven. They announced that two of the
Speaker 1: vocalists would be leaving the group after the conclusion of
Speaker 1: their summer two thousand seven tour, and conveniently, the final
Speaker 1: show of this tour was at the Carling Academy in London,
Speaker 1: which is a two club. Yeah, it's an O two club.
Speaker 1: One of the like twenty in London, um and it
Speaker 1: was on you guessed it September fourteen, two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: The Carling Academy is less than a mile from King's
Speaker 1: Cross station, which means it would have been a twenty
Speaker 1: minute or less walk. Uh so, pretty walkable. Really. The
Speaker 1: tickets for this venue range, but it's it's pretty cheap actually,
Speaker 1: uh even now, yeah, even now, tickets for a similar
Speaker 1: sixth show, because they actually reunited in two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: so they had a show there in two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: and and the tickets for that were less than twenty pounds,
Speaker 1: so even and then you know, I looked at a
Speaker 1: lot of the other ones, and it seems like there
Speaker 1: wasn't a single ticket that went for more than twenty
Speaker 1: pounds there, even with the service charging charge and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. So I'm willing to say that it was
Speaker 1: it was really cheap. So he would have certainly had
Speaker 1: money for this ticket if if some were available, and
Speaker 1: then a bunch of money left over for beer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as a twelve year old, the fourteen year old boy
Speaker 1: who looks like he's twelve, Yeah, he's work out. Uh so,
Speaker 1: And actually that's the thing that I run into the
Speaker 1: most here is that concert venues like this typically have
Speaker 1: age restrictions on them, so that you know, maybe it's
Speaker 1: an eighteen and over, maybe it's twenty one and over,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's an all ages, but they certainly don't
Speaker 1: admit all ages just no matter what, it's all ages
Speaker 1: with an adult. Eight is the youngest that can go
Speaker 1: into that venue. But they have to have and it's
Speaker 1: from I think it was eight to fourteen, has to
Speaker 1: be has to have a an adult with interesting because
Speaker 1: they looked up their policies on it. So he couldn't
Speaker 1: have just gotten in by showing up with twenty pounds
Speaker 1: at the door. Yeah. Well, and particularly because like so
Speaker 1: the and then there are there are other extra age
Speaker 1: restrictions on certain shows. So every show I've ever seen,
Speaker 1: because I looked at a lot of different venues for
Speaker 1: six concerts and it's all eighteen and over or fourteen
Speaker 1: and over, fourteen to eighteen with an adult. Well, of
Speaker 1: course you might have actually not a adult in London.
Speaker 1: Well so yeah, well we have just befriended somebody in line.
Speaker 1: So the other thing that I run into here is
Speaker 1: that this show is actually a rescheduled show. I don't
Speaker 1: know when it was originally scheduled for, but they had
Speaker 1: not originally intended to play on that night at that venue.
Speaker 1: How far in advance, I don't know. I never saw that.
Speaker 1: I didn't either, Yeah, but I think that's an interesting
Speaker 1: little thing to throw in there as well. But it
Speaker 1: is reasonable to assume that anybody at that time would
Speaker 1: have thought that this was sixth last show. Ever after
Speaker 1: that you presume that's their last, even though musicians always
Speaker 1: say that's it, I quit until next year. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can see the motivation there, if you really like these
Speaker 1: guys a lot. Yeah. Well, and there were there were
Speaker 1: a number of other concerts that have been suggested in
Speaker 1: London on that night. I mean, it's not as though
Speaker 1: the music scene is lacking in London. All of the
Speaker 1: other I would say that this concert in particular is
Speaker 1: the best if he was going to a concert. All
Speaker 1: the other ones that I saw were like all rock
Speaker 1: that we're also twenty minute car right away from King's
Speaker 1: Cross station or But bear in mind he wasn't completely
Speaker 1: and wholly dedicated to metal. I mean, his dad talks
Speaker 1: about the fact that he took him to a Muse concert,
Speaker 1: not to this pretty metal. You. I don't consider Muse
Speaker 1: that metal at all. Really. Yeah, They're they're very tame
Speaker 1: compared to like Slipknot and some of those guys. So
Speaker 1: I wouldn't I wouldn't say that he was only into
Speaker 1: the hardcore stuff. He was a boy who liked what
Speaker 1: he liked. Yeah, But I also guess I wouldn't. I
Speaker 1: would say that Muses solidly like a rock band. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But there's also most of the other stuff that was
Speaker 1: found was like alternative rock, which is like adult soft
Speaker 1: you know, like cold Play is alternative rock, right, So
Speaker 1: that's not that didn't seem like it was his scene
Speaker 1: as much. Anywhere hearner to get to this I listened
Speaker 1: to this music, it seemed like it was totally the
Speaker 1: kind of music that he was into. He thought it
Speaker 1: was their last show. It was really really convenient from
Speaker 1: King's Cross. Because that's the other thing too, write is
Speaker 1: that maybe, like there are train stations that are closer
Speaker 1: to the other venues that he could have gotten tickets to,
Speaker 1: he could have stayed on the train longer to get
Speaker 1: off more conveniently, whereas this one King's Cross was the
Speaker 1: most convenient station to that particular venue. Yeah, although he
Speaker 1: also had hours like half a day, yeah, because yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until seven or something like that, maybe even nine.
Speaker 1: I don't have the actual time, but that's when those
Speaker 1: shows usually start, which is what boggles me when it
Speaker 1: comes to the he was going to a show theory,
Speaker 1: because obviously he traveled at what was it, super high
Speaker 1: peaked time. Okay, well, if you know the show is
Speaker 1: not going to be until seven o'clock at night and
Speaker 1: it's yeah, I go dink around in town for a
Speaker 1: couple of hours, well you might have had something to
Speaker 1: do in London before. That's true. He also I don't
Speaker 1: know if I don't know what his parents jobs entailed,
Speaker 1: or his sister for instance, or if he thought. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're a kid who is literally never bumpd off school, right,
Speaker 1: you don't know your first day skipping class, you're going
Speaker 1: to think I Am going to get caught. You don't know.
Speaker 1: You might run in your parents, you might run into
Speaker 1: your parents friends, you might run into another kid who's
Speaker 1: going to tell. So it would make sense to me
Speaker 1: that he would be trying to get out of town
Speaker 1: as fast as possible because it's way less likely that
Speaker 1: somebody in London is going to say, oh, hey, aren't
Speaker 1: you supposed to be in school? So I remember the
Speaker 1: first time. I mean I remember the first time I
Speaker 1: skipped school, and I was terrified. I really thought I
Speaker 1: was going to get caught. And then you know, it
Speaker 1: gets easier as you do it more, and then you
Speaker 1: just keep doing it more and more and more. Not
Speaker 1: that we're advocating so that that would make sense to me?
Speaker 1: Is that maybe he because he don't seem like the
Speaker 1: kind of kid who might have been a little nervous
Speaker 1: about something like that. Um, so I guess that would
Speaker 1: be a reason why he would try to leave as
Speaker 1: early as possible. Yeah, I think that The thing I
Speaker 1: like about this series that explains a lot. I think
Speaker 1: what happened is he was befriended by the band. They
Speaker 1: went back to their room later and party, and they
Speaker 1: were doing huge lines of blow and then it's and
Speaker 1: they'd never done that before. His heart gave out, and
Speaker 1: so the band had the body. Probably wrote a song
Speaker 1: about it. If you listen to this, there's probably one
Speaker 1: song that's got some coded messages about how they disposed
Speaker 1: of the body. Probably Okay, I'm just kid, that's Joe's
Speaker 1: Scooby Doos theory. So it's possible that Andrew was on
Speaker 1: a chat and met somebody online. It's possible that he
Speaker 1: was a part of a forum that was a fan
Speaker 1: club for six or some other band, or just you know,
Speaker 1: metal enthusiasts in general, and you know, maybe he planned
Speaker 1: a meeting from there. Maybe he met some guys online
Speaker 1: or some people online and they said, yeah, man, this
Speaker 1: show is happening. I had tickets for you. Want to
Speaker 1: come meet me in London? And he was like, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I'll come meet you guys in London, even though that's
Speaker 1: like super nerve wracking and totally out of character. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna come meet you guys. So he came early, he
Speaker 1: met them, they all went to the concert venue together.
Speaker 1: Maybe it turns out that the people he was supposed
Speaker 1: to meet, or the person he was supposed to meet
Speaker 1: were actually not who how they represented themselves, which is
Speaker 1: in a different theory, but you know, it would also
Speaker 1: explain why he didn't buy a return ticket, and that
Speaker 1: they're the two questions for me on the return ticket
Speaker 1: are the fifty pence ticket? Was it open ended or
Speaker 1: did you have to pick a time? Right? Right? But
Speaker 1: did you have to pick a time because they have
Speaker 1: they have both of those as the turn. So if
Speaker 1: you if you get the super peak, is that what
Speaker 1: it is? Super peak is not and you get your
Speaker 1: return ticket. The return ticket is fifty p if it's
Speaker 1: not an open ended time, right, such more expensive when
Speaker 1: you just say I'm going to get on a train
Speaker 1: and they're they're that same day, right, And so that
Speaker 1: to me makes me think that he didn't really know
Speaker 1: when he was going to be coming home, which would
Speaker 1: corroborate going to a concert. You don't know, last train
Speaker 1: left London at eleven, yeah, so but you don't maybe
Speaker 1: you don't really know when you're gonna want to go home,
Speaker 1: or maybe since you're meeting some friends there, maybe they say,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, and my my friend can. He's got a car,
Speaker 1: so he can. He's going to be headed your way,
Speaker 1: so he'll drive you back your way, And so you think,
Speaker 1: why why waste crazy amount of money for the later ticket,
Speaker 1: or you know, maybe the fifty pence one was yeah,
Speaker 1: if you return at five o'clock, it's fifty pence, and
Speaker 1: he was like, all the concert won't have even started
Speaker 1: by then. So to me, that helps to corroborate that
Speaker 1: story a little bit as an idea that specific that
Speaker 1: really just addresses why he would have gone to London.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really address why he never came back from London.
Speaker 1: But I think it's a strong possibility of why he
Speaker 1: wanted to London. I can see the I was going
Speaker 1: to get a ride from somebody, but it's such a
Speaker 1: long drive. It's just I mean, if if he left
Speaker 1: late enough that he couldn't catch the last train, well,
Speaker 1: but he it's possible that he could have. But I'm
Speaker 1: just That's what I'm saying, is that so he would
Speaker 1: have had to have buy an open ended ticket as
Speaker 1: a return ticket, which would have been really really expensive,
Speaker 1: probably more expensive than just going and buying the ticket
Speaker 1: when you're trying to return, because then it's an at
Speaker 1: time ticket. And then that the or that the fifty
Speaker 1: pence return ticket was for a specific time That wasn't,
Speaker 1: but it would, but it could have been that that
Speaker 1: didn't apply to the eleven thirty train. It only applied
Speaker 1: to the five o'clock train, so it would have been
Speaker 1: way more expensive anyway to get that later train. No,
Speaker 1: I can see how it could have been another he
Speaker 1: could have taken the other half of his money, so
Speaker 1: that helps to explain why he would have not gone
Speaker 1: the return ticket as well, because it may have just
Speaker 1: been cheaper and in the end to walk up to
Speaker 1: the kiosk and say, okay, I'm ready to go instead
Speaker 1: of buying it pre buying it. So I guess we
Speaker 1: should talk about maybe why he didn't back. I have
Speaker 1: some ideas. One of the theories is that he was
Speaker 1: lurned to London by a stranger. Yeah, it's possible that
Speaker 1: while Andrew seemed to have been a smart kid, at
Speaker 1: least at math, he could have just been pretty naive,
Speaker 1: like most fourteen year olds are, especially in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily think I mean, it was still a
Speaker 1: thing like there were bad people online, but that wasn't
Speaker 1: a thing that you really thought about as much. I didn't,
Speaker 1: and I was much older. I'm I am much older
Speaker 1: than Andrew, and you know, even in two thousands and seven,
Speaker 1: I wasn't necessarily thinking, oh, they are bad people online
Speaker 1: and I don't want to meet them, you know. So
Speaker 1: that's part of it. Although I never like met anybody
Speaker 1: that I met online in real life because I'm not dumb,
Speaker 1: But even as an adult at that time, I didn't
Speaker 1: believe anything that people said online because it was smart.
Speaker 1: You knew it was bored, right, But when you're fourteen,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem as bull Oh and it might you know,
Speaker 1: it might be too that you know, Andre was smart
Speaker 1: enough to like, you know, want to meet this guy
Speaker 1: in a public place. Or maybe he didn't even know
Speaker 1: it was a guy. Maybe he thought it was a
Speaker 1: woman girl, gender bending, somebody torturing themselves as actually that's
Speaker 1: super comment. Yeah, and then and then and he gets
Speaker 1: the appointed place and there's no girl. That's some guy.
Speaker 1: He says, oh, yeah, you know, I'm a I'm a
Speaker 1: older brother. I'm not supposed to take you to meet her,
Speaker 1: you know. And then yeah, yeah, yeah, so I would
Speaker 1: I would classify this as the predator theory that some
Speaker 1: online predator of some kind misrepresented who they were and
Speaker 1: learned him to London for any reason. It could have
Speaker 1: been to come to a concert, it could have been
Speaker 1: just hey, come visit me in London, or you know,
Speaker 1: people think, oh, he wanted a new life, so maybe
Speaker 1: somebody said, okay, I can help you with a new life.
Speaker 1: The one I don't think we'll talk about new life
Speaker 1: in a minute. Yeah, I was going to say, is
Speaker 1: this whole? So I I kept trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how he could have been if somebody did indeed lure
Speaker 1: him away. Okay, well they looked at the computer and
Speaker 1: there was nothing on there. I know that. You you know,
Speaker 1: you you kind of believe that he may have been
Speaker 1: able to private brows, but it would be possible, but
Speaker 1: I also don't think it would have it's likely, but
Speaker 1: you know what, But you know what I really wonder
Speaker 1: about because I've never heard any mention of it being
Speaker 1: looked into. You know, he had an Xbox at home, right.
Speaker 1: They do talk about the Xbox Live chatting, and I
Speaker 1: wonder if he was talking to somebody because Xbox Live
Speaker 1: now has the actual text chat function, but that didn't
Speaker 1: come into effect till two thousand and eight, so it
Speaker 1: would have all been voice. But I just wonder if
Speaker 1: anybody looked at what games was he playing? Hey, can
Speaker 1: you tell us who was in the game at that time?
Speaker 1: Because he could have had an extend built an extended
Speaker 1: relationship with somebody in that in that world and got
Speaker 1: talked to you that way and then got the same
Speaker 1: is true for like if he I don't know if
Speaker 1: he was like a Wow kid, like a World of
Speaker 1: Warcraft kid. I don't know if he liked online games
Speaker 1: like that, but those all existed too, and you chat
Speaker 1: with people at that point as well, and that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily logged. So I think that's a really good suggestion
Speaker 1: as well, although I don't. I just think that it's
Speaker 1: probably not possible to look up that it's too late now. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, i'd think even at the time, it probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been possible, just because of the huge volume
Speaker 1: of people that you know what, big data loves data.
Speaker 1: I bet you that Microsoft is logging the crap out
Speaker 1: of that stuff and probably had the records for a while,
Speaker 1: you know what. I would say, Let's just you know,
Speaker 1: they would have had it for months, if not years.
Speaker 1: It could have been pulled. I bet you if somebody said,
Speaker 1: I have went to gone to the judge and I
Speaker 1: have this order that says Microsoft give me this data,
Speaker 1: Microsoft would went here. It is similarly, Similarly, one would
Speaker 1: assume that, you know, the CCTV would have been able
Speaker 1: to be pulled. But hey, yeah, I know, I think
Speaker 1: it might very well be that his parents and the police,
Speaker 1: you know, didn't really, you know, we're involved in that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff, and it's a game, it's a video game.
Speaker 1: Was just playing the Nintendo thing exactly. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's one way you could have, like, you know, like
Speaker 1: it's been lured to London by a purv, you know.
Speaker 1: And that's just a question of theories. Are is what
Speaker 1: happened to him afterwards? You know? Of course everybody everybody
Speaker 1: thinks that well, he was the PERV, did his pervy
Speaker 1: stuff and then murdered him. Although my for alternative theories,
Speaker 1: I would say that maybe he's just locked in a
Speaker 1: basement somewhere and maybe well maybe will be discovered a
Speaker 1: live someday, although I kind of doubt. I hate to
Speaker 1: say that. That is like one of the most optimistic theory.
Speaker 1: In a basement, it happens, and then these people sometimes
Speaker 1: people escape and find out about it. Yeah, yeah, with
Speaker 1: the women in l A. Is that the one last
Speaker 1: year or the year before? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it happens.
Speaker 1: Not so, but it does. Yeah, and he'll have one
Speaker 1: he does escape. If he does, he'll have a very
Speaker 1: really interesting story to tell, I'm sure. But in another
Speaker 1: possibility that occurred to me again is this outlandish, that's possible.
Speaker 1: As he met he meets this guy, Uh, they go
Speaker 1: for to go to Starbucks for a type of coffee.
Speaker 1: The guy rufi's him and not to have sex with them,
Speaker 1: but just to just to like smuggle them out of
Speaker 1: the country and sell him into slavery. So that's another
Speaker 1: very optimistic theory possible. And one of the questions I
Speaker 1: have for this is, uh, and I asked you already
Speaker 1: about this, and but I don't. I don't know if
Speaker 1: the police, when they are looking at missing children and
Speaker 1: looking for them, if they checked the child pornography sites
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. I don't want that job. No,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't need it. Well, know what I was thinking
Speaker 1: that you kind of hope somebody is checking him, right, Well,
Speaker 1: it would seem like the thing to do at least
Speaker 1: send pictures of these missing kids to the sites and
Speaker 1: just say, hey, you know, would you post these pictures
Speaker 1: and tell your users if they see any any porn
Speaker 1: with these children? And I don't I don't know if
Speaker 1: there's that much oversight in the those kind of ye
Speaker 1: kind of if the police know who runs it, to
Speaker 1: send that information to them, they're busting down. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's that's kind of the the obvious thing there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they could still crowdsource that. They can say, hey,
Speaker 1: pervs so for this stuff and let us know. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: just as a point of interest, I guess they did
Speaker 1: search the Thames Thames thank you. I can't say that
Speaker 1: word because it's not spelled the right way. Everything they do.
Speaker 1: They did search the reference. You're welcome, We're just kidding.
Speaker 1: They did search the river and they didn't never find
Speaker 1: any remains of Andrew. So he's probably in there, probably not,
Speaker 1: but there's lots of other places to put a body.
Speaker 1: Next theory is that um Andrew wanted to start any life. Now,
Speaker 1: why would Andrew, fourteen year old, relatively seeming relatively happy,
Speaker 1: want to start a new life. Well, you know, one
Speaker 1: theory that I was thinking about, I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I was and I was wondering if maybe he was gay.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel like his parents would understand. They are
Speaker 1: strongly religious. Yeah, you know, my I think he probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have a reason to want to run away at
Speaker 1: start new life. But as as we stated, his parents
Speaker 1: were very heavily Christian, and you know, they described him
Speaker 1: as goth. That doesn't mean that they were going to
Speaker 1: be intolerant, certainly does I don't want to I don't
Speaker 1: want to come across the yeah, exactly. I think that
Speaker 1: it sounds to me like his parents were kind of tolerant.
Speaker 1: Like the sound like they do seem to be genuine
Speaker 1: They do seem to really genuinely love and miss him
Speaker 1: on the website that they run. They run a website
Speaker 1: and they have a letter to him, and it's, you know,
Speaker 1: very moving. But you know, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: really want to say this or not. But as cynical
Speaker 1: as it sounds, it's easy to say things like that
Speaker 1: to your kid after they're gone and I and that
Speaker 1: isn't to make a presumption that they weren't loving and
Speaker 1: open and caring, but it is to say that as
Speaker 1: a teenager, it's very often easy to interpret what your
Speaker 1: parents are saying and doing as intolerant, or even if
Speaker 1: they aren't intolerant, just to assume, you know, if your
Speaker 1: parents are constantly saying, oh, you know, I can't believe
Speaker 1: that this person is gay, I don't know how I
Speaker 1: would deal with that. You're gonna say, oh, my god,
Speaker 1: I could never be gay, regardless of the fact of
Speaker 1: if you came out to them and they would actually say,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, we love you so much. Of course
Speaker 1: you know we'll accept you. And again, this is not
Speaker 1: too I've never seen anything that has said that his
Speaker 1: parents were intolerant in any way. But I also know
Speaker 1: that most of the information we have comes from his parents.
Speaker 1: Um And again, you know, I just I hesitate to
Speaker 1: say that it's easy because that sounds really horrible and
Speaker 1: cynical and off And I understand that, and please don't
Speaker 1: write me letters because I already know how horrible and
Speaker 1: off colcle sounds. But I just want to point out
Speaker 1: that very curated information, it is very curate information, and
Speaker 1: it is it is that's when you say those things,
Speaker 1: is oh my gosh, we never meant to hurt you.
Speaker 1: Come back. But again, that's not to disperse the family,
Speaker 1: because as far as I can tell, they are a wonderful,
Speaker 1: loving the indication that what we're guessing about is even real, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: very genuine and amazing and really just had something horrible
Speaker 1: happen in their family, And I don't want to cause
Speaker 1: them any extra pain. But I also do want to
Speaker 1: mention that on the other hand, about the gay running
Speaker 1: away because he's gay thing, But would argue against that
Speaker 1: is he's only fourteen, he doesn't really uh and and
Speaker 1: one place I heard he was actually thirteen. His birthday
Speaker 1: was coming up. Oh no, wait, hang on, I'm getting
Speaker 1: my unsolved mysteries mixed up. That's the murdering in India. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: that he was fourteen, he didn't really need to decide
Speaker 1: the whole gay thing. I mean, he may have totally
Speaker 1: know when he was gay, if he was gay, but
Speaker 1: you know, he could wait till he was eighteen and
Speaker 1: they go after college and I don't know it's self
Speaker 1: to not I mean, that's that seems like a thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, like a lot I know a lot of
Speaker 1: gay people who say, like, I've known my whole life
Speaker 1: and like, have you know, been actively gay for as
Speaker 1: long as they've been alive basically, so you know, again,
Speaker 1: that's kind of like asking somebody to repress part of
Speaker 1: themselves just to stay in their house, which I guess
Speaker 1: some people do, but some people don't want to do.
Speaker 1: But again, it's it's hard to tell with him. Another
Speaker 1: fact you'll see, um that's turn around is I guess
Speaker 1: mildly interesting I don't know how valid is, but we're
Speaker 1: going to just throw it out there anyway. It's reported
Speaker 1: that Andrew's favorite TV show was The Fall and Rise
Speaker 1: of Reginald Parent, which is a series. It's a TV
Speaker 1: series that follows the middle aged man who fakes his
Speaker 1: own death to start a new life. Um, but I've
Speaker 1: read a lot of synopsis of this series and I
Speaker 1: actually don't think it pertains to this case, like at all.
Speaker 1: Do you know when when does this show will come out? Well,
Speaker 1: the show originally aired in like the seventies, six to
Speaker 1: seventy nine is when it ran, But then it was
Speaker 1: released on DVD actually like in two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: But that is so weird for his favorite TV show
Speaker 1: that he identifies with to be this random TV show
Speaker 1: from thirty years prior suddenly re released that happens to
Speaker 1: be about somebody who fixed their own death and goes
Speaker 1: to start new life. Yeah, it is weird. It's weird.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, maybe his dad liked it,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that I think that's where this
Speaker 1: comes from his He and his dad and he said
Speaker 1: this is great, son, And he said, yeah, Dad, I
Speaker 1: really like it. This is my favorite, whether he was
Speaker 1: honestly saying that or looking at his dad rolling his
Speaker 1: eyes going it's my favorite. Yeah. Here's the here's the
Speaker 1: thing about running away to start a new life. Is
Speaker 1: that pretty quick? You're fourteen? I don't I don't even
Speaker 1: know what the labor laws are like in Britain. What
Speaker 1: if he goes to London try to get a job
Speaker 1: and he can't be because yeah, and so you know,
Speaker 1: pretty soon you're going to run out of money and
Speaker 1: it's gonna be you're gonna be calling your folks and say, hey,
Speaker 1: can you come to London and get me? Yeah. Well
Speaker 1: that's that's why there's this vague mention of him. Somebody said,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, his grandma. I don't know where this information
Speaker 1: came from, so I don't know if I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's probably totally made up. But somebody said, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: his grandma lived in London and he ran away to
Speaker 1: live with her, or he went to visit her and
Speaker 1: she was ill. Or I don't know why that gets
Speaker 1: brought up because it's just in forums, and I don't
Speaker 1: know where people are getting that information from, but people
Speaker 1: are going to get it from somewhere. It's also suggested that,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe his parents just didn't know he was
Speaker 1: being bullied, so he ran away to start in your
Speaker 1: life because he was being bullied, which is dumb. And
Speaker 1: then you know, some other people said, well, he was
Speaker 1: really bored at school, so he didn't want to go
Speaker 1: to school anymore, so he ran away to start a
Speaker 1: new life because he didn't want to go to school.
Speaker 1: But I think that's silly because if you're smart enough
Speaker 1: to not to be bored in school, you say to
Speaker 1: your parents, I'm bored in school. Bumped me up a grade.
Speaker 1: You don't say, oh, I'm bored in school, So I
Speaker 1: think I better go start a new life so I
Speaker 1: can prove to everyone that I'm smarter than them. And
Speaker 1: this is where this, this part of not knowing anything
Speaker 1: about him comes becomes very frustrating to me because I
Speaker 1: don't know anything about his demeanor. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: wish I knew, Like, did you have an ego with that?
Speaker 1: Well not even was he created enough to come up
Speaker 1: with that? Like did he just think he was smarter
Speaker 1: than everyone else? Did he think he could pull the
Speaker 1: wool over everyone's eyes? Or did was he just you know,
Speaker 1: a normal smart teenager who was kind of bored or
Speaker 1: was he just rebellious or you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: anything about him other than that boilerplate of information, and
Speaker 1: I just that's so frustrating to me because I feel
Speaker 1: like I could more solidly throw my weight behind one
Speaker 1: of these theories if I understood more about him, but
Speaker 1: there's nothing. Yeah. Yeah, I think that if he was
Speaker 1: bored at school and then he won a way to
Speaker 1: start a new life, he probably would have very shortly
Speaker 1: found himself really bored at his new job a star
Speaker 1: Bucks and gone home. Yeah, I think so too, or
Speaker 1: at least contacted his parents at some point, because there,
Speaker 1: you know, every every time they do anything, they say, oh,
Speaker 1: and Andrew, if you're hearing this, we love you. Just
Speaker 1: just let us know you're okay. You don't even have
Speaker 1: to come home, And they do a ton a lot,
Speaker 1: they really do. They are they are still very actively
Speaker 1: like they're very committed to the year. Really. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I hope they get him back some day, So I
Speaker 1: I guess for me, my strongest theory would be that
Speaker 1: he went to London for a concert and an accident happened.
Speaker 1: Something happened, like he met some friends or met some
Speaker 1: people he had met online and something happened and he
Speaker 1: died and they tried to cover it up. And the
Speaker 1: only reason that I say that is because it's the
Speaker 1: added little bit. Then in two thousand eight, in November
Speaker 1: of two thousand eight, UM, a guy showed up at
Speaker 1: a police station and said he had information about Andrew
Speaker 1: and the person who was there said, oh, we're not
Speaker 1: open yet. Come back now. I heard that, and he
Speaker 1: never came. Bagine, what is it? What is the police
Speaker 1: station not open? Well, apparently this one wasn't everything. They
Speaker 1: roll up the sidewalks in Britain at eight o'clock at night,
Speaker 1: kid you not, It's amazing. We're so we're very spoiled
Speaker 1: in this country. I mean, I think set free things
Speaker 1: are probably open, like they're probably always police on duty,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that every single office is open
Speaker 1: at all times. Maybe the people at the counter that
Speaker 1: are there to take your information. I heard. Another version
Speaker 1: of this was that he showed up saying he had
Speaker 1: information and then by the time they found some policemen
Speaker 1: to come down and talk to him that he would
Speaker 1: he had left. That's another version that's similar, very similar versions.
Speaker 1: But he could have been a crank. Yeah, he could
Speaker 1: have been a crank. But also he could have been
Speaker 1: somebody who knew something and felt guilty and was coming
Speaker 1: forward and then lost his nerve because he thought I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get blamed for this. But again, that's all. That's
Speaker 1: that's the likeliest thing I can come up with, because
Speaker 1: there's just no information about this thing. Do you guys
Speaker 1: have anything else you want to add? I would just
Speaker 1: say is that if you are the you know, I suspect.
Speaker 1: My strongest belief is that he did meet a perv
Speaker 1: online and you know, you know, did his thing and
Speaker 1: then murdered him. And so if you happen to be
Speaker 1: one of our listeners and you're that perv, stop listening now,
Speaker 1: please ye never actually actually you can, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: listen anymore after this episode. But send us an email.
Speaker 1: I mean you can do it an honestly, get a
Speaker 1: trash mail account and send us an email and let
Speaker 1: us know what happened. And just so just so we
Speaker 1: could tell his parents and they could have a little closure, okay,
Speaker 1: or just tell his parents. Oh yes, send us, send
Speaker 1: the parents. Yeah, don't do that us. That's a good
Speaker 1: that's a good plan actually, now that think about it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I personally think that he used his remaining money, he
Speaker 1: bought another ticket, he rode through the chunnel, he went
Speaker 1: to France, and he's now working at euro Disney. You know,
Speaker 1: they probably would have hired him. Act, they would have
Speaker 1: hired him. He could have been one of the munchkins
Speaker 1: a number of the ride as a fourteen year old boy.
Speaker 1: And that is the happiest ending that I could come
Speaker 1: up with for this freaking stant That's a good end.
Speaker 1: Although the Channel tickets are really expensive that they are,
Speaker 1: they are really really expensive. I don't care. He works
Speaker 1: at euro Disney and he's okay, filled it happy and
Speaker 1: he has lots of little mice around him, all right,
Speaker 1: So he's basically just Cinderella. But yeah, I am pro
Speaker 1: what's that? What do you think is that? You're thinking
Speaker 1: that too? Yes, now I'm thinking that too. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't think that's it. I think that's the best
Speaker 1: case scenarios. He's he's chained up in a basement somewhere
Speaker 1: and he's going to escape next week or so. I
Speaker 1: don't think Disney is the best Well that's yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: the best theory Disney Disney. Oh maybe he just he
Speaker 1: just wants to live on a farm somewhere like Lassie.
Speaker 1: Ye apply. Well, if you have theories about this, about this,
Speaker 1: or any other story or suggestions, or you want to
Speaker 1: tell us stuff about things or whatever, you can do
Speaker 1: that in the comments section of our website, which is
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Leave a comment on the
Speaker 1: on the actual episode, not in like the about the
Speaker 1: show or anything, because that's really hard to figure out
Speaker 1: what you're talking about if it's just there. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really hard to figure out where I have them? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: uh see. There's also links to some of our research
Speaker 1: and past episodes there as well. Uh, you're probably listening
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Speaker 1: Sideways no application, but we do love that support. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of people have done that and it's great.
Speaker 1: And if you haven't done that, that's fine. Don't feel guilty.
Speaker 1: I read, I read tons of websites and I don't
Speaker 1: have I don't have to. Tip ure is literally the
Speaker 1: thing that Joe says every week. Yeah. Yeah, all of
Speaker 1: that having been said, I think we're going to get
Speaker 1: out of here. I guess. So another mystery solved soon.
Speaker 1: Guys trained a cat chow