Andrew Gosden

On the morning of Friday, September 14, 2007, a fourteen-year-old boy in Doncaster, England put on his school uniform, told his family "see you later," and walked out the front door, but he never got on his school bus. Instead, he waited until everyone had left his house, then went back inside. He changed out of his school uniform, grabbed a few items, and headed to the Doncaster railway station where he bought a one-way ticket to London.

At 11:25 that morning, a CCTV camera watched him walk out of King's Cross station and into a city of eight million people. Now, nearly 19 years later, that eight seconds of footage is still the last confirmed sighting of Andrew Gosden.

If you have any information about the disappearance of Andrew Gosden, please contact South Yorkshire Police online or by calling 101, or submit information through the police's public portal for the case at mipp.police.uk. In the UK, you can also contact the charity Missing People, free and confidentially, on 116 000. Missing People's reference number for Andrew is 07-019198.

Gosden Family Website

Missing People UK Donation Page

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[SPEAKER_01]: dark cast network, indie pods with a dark side.

[SPEAKER_00]: On the morning of Friday, September 14, 2007, a 14-year-old boy in Donchester, England put on the school uniform, told his family see a later and walked out the front door, but he never got on his school bus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, he waited until everyone had left his house then went back inside.

[SPEAKER_00]: He changed shutters' school uniform, grabbed a few items, and headed to the railway station where he bought a one-way ticket to London.

[SPEAKER_00]: At 11.25 that morning, a CCTV camera watched a walk out of King's Cross Station and into a city of 8 million people.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, nearly 19 years later, that 8 seconds of footage is still the last confirmed sighting of Andrew Gosden.

[SPEAKER_00]: When a person goes missing, there's a special kind of pain and they're not knowing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to tell the stories of those who never came home.

[SPEAKER_00]: Today, I want to tell you the story of Andrew Gaston.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Kona Gallagher.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm Ethan Flick.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is, and then they were gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back, everyone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for joining us once again.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Kona.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm Ethan.

[SPEAKER_00]: And where the husband and wife team behind this podcast, each week, I tell you this story of an unsolved missing person's case.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ethan doesn't know anything about the case going into the episode and is here to provide his reactions to questions in real time, hopefully asking some of the same ones you have at home.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, so I do want to mention something that I don't mention in that intro that we do every week, which I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: We really only talk about it if it comes up naturally in conversation, but you know, not everybody who listens to every single episode.

[SPEAKER_00]: Remember last week where we had that person leave the comment like accusing me, I guess, of lying about you not knowing anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, somebody on our Patreon was like, well, you know, thought it was funny, which it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it was like, well, you know, Ethan's in law enforcement.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so like, a lot of people don't realize that and that's maybe why he's asking some of the questions that he's asking and why sometimes sounds like you like know what you're talking about.

[SPEAKER_01]: I like how you emphasize sometimes sounds like I know what I'm talking about.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, and so I didn't put it in that intro because like because you're not, you don't have an investigation background.

[SPEAKER_01]: Correct.

[SPEAKER_00]: So like I don't want to make that part of the show and give the people the wrong impression.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm not an investigator.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a trained investigator in any way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I am in law enforcement, but it's a different background.

[SPEAKER_00]: right and so yeah but but she brought that up and I was like yeah and and I have thought about that because like it's been a long time since I think it's even come up and yeah my social work experiences come up a lot more and you have very very little social work experience to be clear total of one year yeah you were a social worker for one year but you've been a

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so so yeah, so I don't know that was just I thought that they brought up a good point.

[SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, we can consider that are like semi-annual mentioned or whatever that that you're a police officer.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this case is I'm sure one that our British listeners are very familiar with because it's a very high profile case over there, but it's not super well known over here in the States.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was only familiar with Andrew's store and a very surface level before deciding to do this episode.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the biggest takeaway for me about this is really just how incredible Andrew's family is.

[SPEAKER_00]: They've never given up on finding him and they've spent the better part of two decades working really hard to keep his name out there and to get his case solved.

[SPEAKER_00]: They started a website after his disappearance, which a lot of families do.

[SPEAKER_00]: But in most cases, at least the ones that we've covered, after a number of years go by, a lot of times that website kind of goes by the way, it's wasted.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the family just finds it too difficult to maintain and, you know, whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there's still going, and like I said, Andrew's been gone for nearly

[SPEAKER_00]: The website, it's going to be in our show notes as well, but I encourage everybody to take a look at it, just to learn more about Andrew and more about his family and who these people are.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the address is help us to find Andrew.webly.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I'll put that in the show notes as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, before we get into it, we've had a few folks join us over on Patreon, so we want to take a moment to give them a shout out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you to KDM, Ariana, Kim B and Michelle A.

[SPEAKER_00]: We really appreciate your support.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you all so much.

[SPEAKER_00]: As a reminder, if you'd like to get our episodes out free and sometimes early, you can join us over on Patreon at any level starting at just $2 a month.

[SPEAKER_00]: So now, let's get into the story of Andrew Gosden.

[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew Paul Gosden was born on July 10, 1993, to Kevin and Gwenus Gosden.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's the youngest of two children, his older sister Charlotte is two-year-older.

[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew Gruppen, Balbee, a supper-run-the-south-west-edge of Doncaster, South Yorkshire.

[SPEAKER_00]: Doncaster's a working-class town about 170 miles north of London.

[SPEAKER_00]: As a toddler, Andrew was bright and playful and bouncy, so his family called him Rue or Andy Rue.

[SPEAKER_00]: As a grew up, it quickly became clear that Andrew was a little bit different, to put it plainly he was brilliant.

[SPEAKER_00]: He attended the McColley Catholic High School where he was known for being academically gifted, especially in math.

[SPEAKER_00]: His family called him the Human Calculator.

[SPEAKER_00]: In 2006, he was part of the government's young gifted and talented program, which was a scheme for roughly the top five percent of school children in the country.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he attended a summer camp through the program in 2006, and his parents say that he absolutely loved it.

[SPEAKER_00]: He came home electrified, which is very different from how he usually felt about school.

[SPEAKER_00]: Despite his obvious brilliance, Andrew's father Kevin has said that Andrew was fairly indifferent about school itself.

[SPEAKER_00]: He basically just saw to something you got through in order to keep your options open later, like in terms of, you know, career, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: He cruised through it, and while he very well may have ended up going to Oxford or Cambridge as his parents and teachers believed he would, it seems as though Andrew just really saw school as a means to an end.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure a lot of that is because it was just not challenging for him, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, I think when you go to that gift-in-talented summer camp, and you come home really excited, it's because you're with people who are on your level and, you know, you're getting stimulated and challenged and I think- But then you go back to regular school and it's like, just, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, that's just the impression that I kind of got from this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew was small for his age, which I bring up because his physical abilities and appearance are important in terms of the story.

[SPEAKER_00]: Though Andrew was 14 in September 2007, he looked younger, so he really looked like he was about 12.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was about 5 foot 3, and he was skinny.

[SPEAKER_01]: Five-three, yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is short for a 14-year-old.

[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a giant by any means, but I was five-foot-eight when I was 14.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, so he definitely could have hit a growth spurtly.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, his parents aren't, like, I don't think particularly short or anything like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, at the time, you know, this is not a 14-year-old kid who looked like he was 18 or really even looked like he was 14.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he appeared to be a kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: He also wore very strong prescription glasses and was deaf in his left ear.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I bring this up because he's not somebody who could function in life without his glasses.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I feel like that's important when you're talking about a missing person.

[SPEAKER_00]: And his partial deafness also sometimes made it difficult for him to be able to tell what directions sounds were coming from.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that makes sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, he also has a distinctive double ridge at the top of his right ear.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that doesn't affect anything in his day-to-day life, but it's very identifiable.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a photo of it that has been circulated and

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like it's a ridge.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of hard to describe without seeing it, but it's not something I'd ever seen before.

[SPEAKER_00]: So like that would be something that would be very identifiable if you met a man with, you know, that on is here.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, then I want to see a picture.

[SPEAKER_01]: All right.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[SPEAKER_00]: All on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you can like describe it better than I can.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just showed you a picture.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, it almost looks like cauliflower here, but not exactly the same.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's it's on the top part on the inside portion of the year where it's normally smooth.

[SPEAKER_01]: It almost has like a wave.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like cramped.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's really interesting.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: When you said the way you described it before, I thought like it maybe was the top part of, yeah, like

[SPEAKER_01]: but it's on the inside portion of that top part of the lobe and it's yeah it's like it's like a crimped piece of paper.

[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah that is very unique.

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew was a quiet kid who mostly kept himself.

[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't overly sheltered or anything like that, but I mean he didn't have a ton of life experience either.

[SPEAKER_00]: His dad has described him as absent-minded, not street-wise and potentially vulnerable.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like most kids' age, Andrew loved playing video games, and had successfully lobbied for both an Xbox and a PSP, which was a portable gaming system.

[SPEAKER_00]: He also loved music, particularly metal, and what I would call Goth, type music, though are kids who definitely correct me on this because they're very snappy about music, and they're like, well, that's actually new metal.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Andrew listened to bands like Slip Not, Muse, Iron Maiden, Evan Essence, Marilyn Manson, and funeral for a friend.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so most of it is new metal,

[SPEAKER_00]: No, it is, but I don't know, like to me, like Marilyn Man, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're right.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't actually know what new metal is to be honest.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's all the metal from like the early 2000s.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's that's really.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't consider Marilyn Manson to be metal, though.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, some of his songs are.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it can get pretty heavy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, all right, whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not the point.

[SPEAKER_00]: Kevin says that one of his favorite memories was his 40th birthday when he took both of the kids to amuse concert.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they were all able to get official tour merch.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I thought that was really sweet that for his big 40th, like he wanted to take both of his kids to see a band that they loved.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, maybe Kevin's a huge music fan too, like I'm not trying to say he's not, but that was very, I just thought that was really nice.

[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew also loved to read and his copies of The Word of the Rings and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy were still on his bookshelf a decade later.

[SPEAKER_00]: He collected rocks and minerals and also enjoyed museums, science history and philosophy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew was also funny in a quiet way.

[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't the type who needed to be the center of attention.

[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't like a class clown or anything, but Kevin says that he talked fast and quietly and dropped a lot of comedy quotes into conversation.

[SPEAKER_00]: From a social perspective, Andrew was kind of in the middle.

[SPEAKER_00]: He had friends, but he didn't really like hang out with them a lot outside of school, but there's no indication that he faced bullying or anything like that either.

[SPEAKER_00]: His family describes him as a home bird who rarely went out and, if he did, he was responsible.

[SPEAKER_00]: He always left a note telling them where he was.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that note aspect is important because, at the time, Andrew had no digital or online presence.

[SPEAKER_00]: At the time of his disappearance, he didn't own a cell phone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now in 2007, cell phones were becoming pretty ubiquitous, but not really for kids and teens yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like some definitely had cell phones, but certainly not like they do now.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Andrew had actually had phones between the ages of 10 and 12, but he just never really used them.

[SPEAKER_00]: When you lost one, his parents asked if you wanted another, but Andrew told them that he'd rather have a new Xbox.

[SPEAKER_01]: priorities.

[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: As for the Xbox, he didn't play online or have any sort of online account at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think in 2007, you know, that was back when you're still buying the discs.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you didn't need to play online like you could be completely offline playing every game you wanted to play.

[SPEAKER_00]: Same thing with the PSP.

[SPEAKER_00]: After his disappearance, I mean his family, they took it all the way to Sony to see if he had any sort of account and he didn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew had no email address in no social media.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this is, again, before students were given email addresses at school.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And social media was still kind of in its infancy.

[SPEAKER_00]: We had a friendster, we had my space in 2007.

[SPEAKER_00]: Facebook, I think, had started, but was still only for college students at the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, obviously no TikTok Snapchat, anything like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: The only computer in the Ghazdin household was a laptop that Charlotte had gotten for her birthday about eight weeks before Andrew disappeared.

[SPEAKER_00]: So up until two months before his disappearance, they didn't even have a computer in the home.

[SPEAKER_00]: But after Andrew went missing, police of course seized that computer.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was going to ask because my first thought was two months before he went missing this computer together into the house what if he was using it for some sort of online presence that may not have been directly tied to him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but they didn't find anything like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And from what it sounds like, you know, it was Charlotte's computers, not computer, not to say that he couldn't have used it or whatever, but he apparently didn't, because they didn't find anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: They even went and seized computers from his school and from the local library thinking that maybe, you know, he was doing something that way, but again, they found nothing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew's parents were religious, but they didn't believe enforcing their beliefs onto their children.

[SPEAKER_00]: Though they attended the Anglican Church, neither Charlotte nor Andrew had been baptized.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when Charlotte decided she wanted to stop going, she was allowed to.

[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew followed her lead and stopped attending a few months later about 18 months prior to his disappearance.

[SPEAKER_00]: And from what I've read though, he still kind of stayed involved in the church like he still did activities and like helped out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think there was some sort of camp thing that he was helping with, but he just at that time wasn't interested in going to services every Sunday.

[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew's parents like most parents tried to get him into different activities.

[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew was a cup scout, but he quit just a few months before he disappeared saying that he was bored.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the summer of 2007, it sounds like his parents were trying to motivate Andrew to get out of the house and do something.

[SPEAKER_00]: They suggested that he travel by himself to London to go stay with his grandmother for a while, but he declined.

[SPEAKER_00]: Kevin says that he thinks Andrew just couldn't be bothered to organize the trip, which sounds very familiar like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, totally.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is

[SPEAKER_00]: in over the summer so like a couple months before he disappeared because he disappeared at the beginning of the school year.

[SPEAKER_01]: So a couple of months prior to him disappearing his parents are encouraging him to go to London and then he hides from them and goes to London.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: His parents say that Andrew is going through a quiet phase which really doesn't seem terribly out of the ordinary for a kid that age.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, not at all.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean 14.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's the beginning of the really hard teenage years.

[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we've talked about some changes with Andrew and the months leading up to his disappearance, but again, nothing too crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing that was really throwing up red flags at the time, you know?

[SPEAKER_00]: The only thing I was able to see discussed that seems potentially more worrisome.

[SPEAKER_00]: It happened very close to the time of his disappearance.

[SPEAKER_00]: The new school year had just started at the beginning of September, and in the two weeks that he had been back, Andrew's parents noticed that at least twice, he had broken his routine and walked home instead of taking the bus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, that in and of itself wasn't where he's some, but they didn't live that close to the school.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like a four-mile walk, and that, you know, Andrew wasn't the type of kid who would just decide to walk four miles, you know?

[SPEAKER_01]: So was there something going on on the bus like was there actually a bully on the bus that had just started getting into him?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that was I think everybody's kind of first thought, but again, they weren't worried enough about it at the time that they really looked into it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it was obviously after his disappearance and they're like, okay, you know, of course, racking their brains.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and so then they did start asking questions and like nobody said that anything had happened all the bus like, right, there was the bus or at school.

[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't seem that Andrew really had any issues with anyone.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it could be nothing, but this is the type of case where everything even slightly out of the ordinary needs to be looked at.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because like I said, you know, it wasn't something that his parents worried about at the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And to this day, no one knows why he decided to walk home those days.

[SPEAKER_00]: The night of Thursday, September 13th was in Kevin's words entirely unremarkable.

[SPEAKER_00]: The family eat dinner together and did the dishes.

[SPEAKER_00]: After dinner, Andrew and his dad spent an hour doing a jigsaw puzzle.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then Andrew watched a few shows with his mom, mock the week, and that Mitchell and Webb look before going to bed.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was the last normal evening the Ghazden family ever had.

[SPEAKER_00]: On the morning of Friday, September 14, 2007, Andrew woke up for school as normal, but he seemed irritable, which was that of character for him.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a Friday morning and he was 14, so again, it was just one of those things that nobody thought much about the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: A day to five, he left the house, dressed in his school uniform, and said sealator.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was the normal time he would leave for the bus.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was seen walking toward the park, which is one of the ways he could get to the bus stop.

[SPEAKER_00]: His dad Kevin was like, yeah, it was as good a route as any.

[SPEAKER_00]: So again, that part seemed normal as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: but Andrew didn't make it all the way to the bus stop.

[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, he was seen by Vicker, who was a family friend, sitting alone on a bench in Westfield Park.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was one of those things too, where the Vicker at the time, maybe thought it was slightly odd, but like, wasn't concerned or didn't think Andrew was gonna be skipping school, because Andrew had a perfect attendance record up to that point.

[SPEAKER_00]: He had never missed a day of school for any reason, which was skipping.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm sure that they could just, you know, was passing by, saw Andrew on the benches.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh, hmm, and just went on his way.

[SPEAKER_00]: What no one knew at the time though, is that Andrew was waiting.

[SPEAKER_00]: He sat on that bench and waited until he knew everyone else in the house would be gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then, a neighbor's CCTV camera on Little More Lane caught him walking back home.

[SPEAKER_00]: Once inside, Andrew made it look as though he was following his normal after school routine.

[SPEAKER_00]: He put his uniform pants and shirt into the washing machine and hung his blazer and tie on the back of a chair and his bedroom.

[SPEAKER_00]: He then changed into a black slipknot T-shirt, black jeans, and a pair of vans, and packed a black canvas messenger bag covered in band patches.

[SPEAKER_00]: But he didn't pack much.

[SPEAKER_00]: He only included his wallet, keys, and his PSP.

[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't pack any clothes, not even a sweatshirt or a jacket for a chilly evening.

[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't even take his PSB charger.

[SPEAKER_00]: At 8.30am, he left his house for the last time, and the neighbors camera caught him again heading down a little more lane toward the park and the train station.

[SPEAKER_00]: At 9 a.m. he stopped at an ATM and withdrew 200 pounds.

[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew only had 214 pounds in his account, so 200 was the maximum he could get because the machine only dispense 20s.

[SPEAKER_00]: But interestingly, he had another 100 pounds of cash in his bedroom at home, but he left it behind.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that is weird.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: At 9.22 he arrived at the Donkaster railway station and bought a ticket to London.

[SPEAKER_00]: But here's an interesting detail about that purchase.

[SPEAKER_00]: He paid a like around 35 pounds for the train ticket and adding a return ticket would have only cost him 50 pence.

[SPEAKER_01]: But he didn't add a ditty.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, and the person who sold on the ticket was like, it's 50 pence, like, one you just get the return ticket, because it's not like he had to choose a time for the ticket.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was an off-peak ticket, so he could use that for any off-peak hours, but he still refused and only bought the one way ticket.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's interesting.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, all signs indicate that he was planning a short trip, right, except for not purchasing the return ticket.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So people have wondered, you know, was he meeting somebody?

[SPEAKER_00]: Did he think he didn't need the ticket because he was getting a ride back home?

[SPEAKER_00]: whether that was somebody unknown who he was planning to meet or he had a lot of like family family friends in London.

[SPEAKER_00]: Was he planning on contacting one of them and seeing if, you know, they could bring it back or just stay with them for the weekend because you remember this was a Friday.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, did he have clothes that his grandmother's?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't think so, just because she wasn't local, but now I don't have never seen that mentioned one way or the other.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the only reason why I bring that up is getting to the root of his intentions.

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, it was odd because, you know, why be so insistent on not getting the return ticket.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the oneness of it is part of the reason why the agent remembered the transaction.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's the main reason that Andrew's family was even able to confirm where he went that morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: After buying his ticket and reported the 935 GNER service to King's Cross.

[SPEAKER_00]: Another passenger later recalled him sitting alone quietly playing his PSP the entire way.

[SPEAKER_00]: A man who said opposite him as far as Peter's burrow was trucked down and he said basically the same thing that Andrew was quiet and just played his game.

[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't seem just stressed or in a hurry or anything like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm I'm formulating a thought here on what his intentions were again.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm curious what the price was back then for like either an Xbox or a PSP game.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm wondering if he if it was like 150 pounds.

[SPEAKER_01]: that's why he pulled out the 200 because it was cost of the the train ticket plus the cost of whatever game he was going to buy that maybe wasn't available in his town but might have been at store in London.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like I'm wondering if there was something some game that came out that day that he really really wanted or something like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I get it.

[SPEAKER_00]: a game.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know my problem with that is that a game doesn't seem worth skipping school over.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not for somebody that has perfect attempts.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I mean for him.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean sure, some kids would absolutely do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But he doesn't seem like the type and you know, it's his parents seem like the type where if he's like, oh my god, I really, really want to get this game.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's coming out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm really excited about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: They would have made it happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know?

[SPEAKER_01]: So, just a theory.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, yeah, but, but I think it's important just to talk through more of like the type of person Andrew was and the type of people his parents were and like I just don't, I just don't think that that fits with their personalities, you know?

[SPEAKER_00]: The dream pulled into King's Cross at 1120, at 1125, a CCTV camera recorded Andrew walking out of the main entrance of the station and out of the frame.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is the last confirmed sighting of Andrew Gosden.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we'll get into the reasons why that's the last confirmed sighting a little bit later.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, uh, confirmed sighting.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, back in Doncaster, Andrew was marked as absent at school.

[SPEAKER_00]: Her policy, the school called his parents.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like I said, this is not as a call.

[SPEAKER_00]: The school's ever had to make before because up to that point had perfect attendance.

[SPEAKER_00]: But his luck would have it, or as bad look would have it, who never did make the call that morning called the wrong number.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they left a message on some other random family's answering machine telling them that Andrew wasn't in school.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Andrew's parents had no idea that he didn't make it in that morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_01]: Can you imagine?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're right.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just completely unlucky.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the Gonstans went through their entire day thinking that nothing was a mess.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I said earlier, Andrew kept to himself, so when his parents got home, he was usually either in his room or in the basement playing Xbox.

[SPEAKER_00]: So because of this, it wasn't until like an hour or so after they got home when they sat down for tea that they realized he wasn't even there.

[SPEAKER_00]: But everything else seemed normal, his blazer and tyrant on the back of his chair and his pants and shirt were in the washing machine like they always were.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, it looked as though Andrew had gone to school, come home, and then gone somewhere else.

[SPEAKER_00]: Which, you know, was odd, but not something that immediately made his parents panic.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like he planned it that way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, they of course, so they're not panicking.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're not like, oh my god, he's missing, but they were also like, where is he?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because he didn't leave a note, like he usually did.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Kevin started calling.

[SPEAKER_00]: He called friends, neighbors, anyone Andrew Mike can see hopefully be with.

[SPEAKER_00]: And somewhere in those calls, he found out that not only was Andrew not with somebody at that moment, but he hadn't been at school that day either.

[SPEAKER_00]: Charlotte later described it, saying quote, it was just a complete panic.

[SPEAKER_00]: We initially thought something must have happened on the way to school, when we found that he hadn't even been to school even tried to go to school, that was even more worrying, and quote.

[SPEAKER_00]: At around 7pm, Andrew's parents called the police to report a missing.

[SPEAKER_00]: By that time, Andrew had been gone for nearly 11 hours, and had been in London for about 8.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really big window.

[SPEAKER_00]: a huge window.

[SPEAKER_00]: Though Andrew's parents called the police they had no intention of just sitting back in waiting for news, within three hours of realizing he was gone, the family had produced a missing person's leaflet.

[SPEAKER_00]: They searched Andrew's route to school, and they searched the neighborhood until dark, which, at that time of the year, was probably like after 10pm.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Gaston's really just spearheaded their own investigation because, unfortunately, police not taking cases of missing teenagers and adults seriously isn't just an American problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was the Gaston's who went to the local train station and tracked down the ticket agent who had sold Andrew the ticket to London.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there are also apparently the ones who found the people who are on the train with him.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because of this, they were able to find out by Monday that Andrew had bought that train ticket and gone to London and the only reason why it even took him that long is because the ticket agent who sold Andrew the ticket didn't work on the weekends So they just had to wait till Monday when they were back But like I mean at that point, the police still weren't interested in doing anything

[SPEAKER_00]: I think they were doing things but not that and Andrew's family because Andrew really liked London and they had been there a bunch, you know, as a family and so when it was clear that he wasn't around town, they're like, he went to London.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the family was immediately thinking that and they told the police that they said, we think he's in London and the police are like, oh no, probably not, he's probably like nearby.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, after they found out that Andrew bought the ticket, the family immediately went to London themselves and handed out flyers at museums, stations, and pizza restaurants, basically like the places that Andrew liked to go, and to every refuge in shelter that they could find.

[SPEAKER_00]: Kevin and Glennis took turns going down to London after that to look for him.

[SPEAKER_00]: The community rallied around the family and Andrew's head teacher eventually took staff and students to London and distributed 15,000 flyers.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what were the police doing during us?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: South Yorkshire police said that they asked British transport police to search the King's Cross CCTV within two days.

[SPEAKER_00]: but that BTP couldn't pick Andrew out of the crowds.

[SPEAKER_00]: An officer was later sent down from South Yorkshire to review it in person, and that's when that officer was able to find Andrew.

[SPEAKER_00]: But according to Kevin,

[SPEAKER_00]: The footage of Andrew arriving in London at King's Cross wasn't located until 27 days after he went missing.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's how long it took them to coordinate with BTP, and to send an officer 170 miles to London.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's insane.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that awful?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Gostons knew on day three that Andrew had taken a train to London, but it took an additional 24 days for police to actually find him on surveillance video.

[SPEAKER_00]: London is one of the most revealed cities in the world, even back in 2007, but they didn't keep the footage indefinitely.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Most of it was erased within days or at best within a couple weeks, so while police didn't manage to get that CCTV footage like one day before it was going to be erased basically.

[SPEAKER_01]: how many other CCTV videos was he on that got erased?

[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like they could.

[SPEAKER_00]: If they had gotten down there and made these requests sooner, there's a chance that they could have literally like tracked his roots through London.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's love their CCTV.

[SPEAKER_01]: They always have.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like it is, you can't do anything without being on on on film there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and, and, but by the time they actually started looking like everything was gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: So buses, the underground station next door, shops, CCTV cameras just that are in the streets, it was all gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, Kevin has said that footage from buses and the adjacent tube station was never even requested at all.

[SPEAKER_01]: this is so frustrating.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I did read in one place that at the time kids could ride the buses for free.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they think that it's pretty likely that he could have taken a bus at some point.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we have no idea.

[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew arrived at the single most surveilled square mile in Britain and we have eight seconds of video footage.

[SPEAKER_00]: And after that, it didn't get better.

[SPEAKER_00]: After Andrew's case began to gain publicity, the sightings started rolling in.

[SPEAKER_00]: But according to the goblins, they weren't all properly followed up on.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are two in particular that the family considers to be plausible.

[SPEAKER_00]: One was a sighting at a pizza hut on Oxford Street, the day he disappeared.

[SPEAKER_00]: A waitress remembers serving a boy who matched Andrew's description around lunchtime on September 14th.

[SPEAKER_00]: He stuck out to her because he was a kid on his own in the middle of a school day.

[SPEAKER_00]: That pizza hut is about a 40-minute walk or a 10-minute tube ride from King's Cross.

[SPEAKER_00]: The recent Andrew's family believes it was him was because the boy ordered Andrew's favorite pizza, him and pineapple.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, God, that first gross.

[SPEAKER_01]: But secondly, that is a very, very unique thing for a kid to order.

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that stuck out in her mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, you're not going to have a ton of kids randomly going into a pizza hut by themselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ordering that pizza.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the family had even apparently bent to that particular pizza hut before when they were all in London.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's enough for me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, 100% confirmed that that was him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but any CCTV footage in or around the pizza was of course long gone by the time they found out any of this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: The second sighting occurred on October 17th just over a month after Andrew disappeared.

[SPEAKER_00]: A woman approached a teenage boy who she thought looked like Andrew based on the media coverage that she had seen.

[SPEAKER_00]: The boy denied being Andrew, and I guess the woman just kind of wasn't sure so she didn't really push it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that woman wasn't interviewed by police for six weeks.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, what the hell were they doing?

[SPEAKER_00]: They were mainly investigating Kevin.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why?

[SPEAKER_00]: To be fair, statistically, if something happens to a kid, it's because... No, yeah, I get that, but...

[SPEAKER_00]: But he also clearly ran away.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let, they're putting the car before the horse.

[SPEAKER_01]: He has something happened to him.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's no body.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's no indication that anything happened to him in like sure.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, interview Kevin, but also treated as a missing person.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, investigate where he went.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think a lot of this was before they got the CCTV footage from London.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, like, I think, you know, because again, that was like a month later, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So, I think their thinking will, you know, maybe they're just making this whole story up about him going to London.

[SPEAKER_01]: But.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: The family found the ticket agent that sold him the ticket within days.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but you know, that could have been he could have been thinking of a different kid like that wasn't necessarily Andrew.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yes, I agree.

[SPEAKER_00]: In a 2020 interview with the website Foreign Seek, Kevin described his perspective of the early investigation, saying, quote, whilst failing to request relevant CCTV footage and to follow up possible sightings of Andrew within an effective time frame, they preferred to carry out unlawfully recorded interviews aimed at pressuring me into revealing murder, abuse, anything to explain his disappearance.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a narrow focus, narrowly focused investigation.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: The suspicion and the questioning was so relentless that Kevin actually attempted to take his own life.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said that he thought that if he was out of the way, it would help the investigation because police would stop focusing on him and focus on actually finding his son.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said I genuinely believed that I was doing the right thing for my family by ending my own life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, as wrong as that is, and depressing as that is, it probably wouldn't have helped.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: They wouldn't have said, oh, that's going to be conscious.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: The way that that whole thing went down was also just crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Kevin attempted to hang himself inside of his home.

[SPEAKER_00]: and it was an act of chance or divine intervention depending on what you believe in that saved his life.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, a family friend who was actually the same vicar who saw Andrew on the park bench that morning had just stopped by the ghost in house to like check in on them and see how they were holding up.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he was outside and like knocking on the door and heard a crash come from inside and that crash was Kevin knocking over the chair or you know whatever he had been on and the bigger had a spare key to the house, so he was able to get into the house, find Kevin immediately, cut him down and get him to the hospital.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_00]: Isn't that incredible?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, though Kevin made a full physical recovery.

[SPEAKER_00]: He never completely recovered mentally.

[SPEAKER_00]: He had to leave his career as a speech therapist and was unable to ever fully work again.

[SPEAKER_00]: Kevin and the rest of the family were all eventually cleared by police.

[SPEAKER_00]: By the first anniversary, the Times reported 122 possible sightings had come in from all overburden.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then, in November 2008, a man walked up to Liuminster Police Station in her future.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was the evening so the front desk was on staffed.

[SPEAKER_00]: The man then used the intercom to say he had information about Andrew Gosden.

[SPEAKER_00]: But by the time an officer got to the door, the man was gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Police appealed for him to come back, but he never did.

[SPEAKER_00]: Later, after the BBC's The One Show covered the case, someone wrote anonymously to the BBC, claiming to be that man who was at the police station, and he gave details of a possible sighting of Andrew in Shrewsbury.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's never been established whether it was the same person or why he left that night.

[SPEAKER_00]: The next big lead didn't come until about 10 years after Andrew's disappearance.

[SPEAKER_00]: Around 2017, someone contacted the family to say they'd been talking online to a user called Andy Rue.

[SPEAKER_00]: This person said that they were living in Lincoln and his partner had walked out.

[SPEAKER_00]: He went on to say that he needed 200 pounds to make rent.

[SPEAKER_00]: When the contact offered to help him out and transfer him the money, Andy Ruse said that he didn't have a bank account because he'd left home when he was 14.

[SPEAKER_00]: When the contact asked Andrew why he left home, he said he'd quote,

[SPEAKER_01]: So obviously, like a lot of this information was out there already because we're talking about 10 years and it was a highly publicized case was the nickname Andy Rue.

[SPEAKER_00]: I ever put out think it was and from what I understand from just various like forum people commenting is that that's actually like a fairly common nickname to in Lake England.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I go a lot of people named Andrew have the nickname Andy Rue, or had been called that at some point.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I know, which yeah, that's definitely I've never heard that before, but yes, so some people theorize that it was just another guy who was just kind of using that name, you know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or could have been a scammer.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but it doesn't seem like that because he never ended up meeting up with them to get money or or anything like that, you know, we do run into that a lot in these cases like people going online pretending to be a missing person or pretending to know information about a missing person like, you know, a lot of people were saying that even this guy who

[SPEAKER_00]: gave the tip might have been a scammer, you know, that he was making it up.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was whatever, but Kevin actually ended up talking to him and says that he completely believes him in terms of having that interaction.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he obviously doesn't know if he was talking to his son or not, but he does believe the guy and says that he's actually become really good friends with him since then.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now they did investigate this, of course, and they went to the website and they tried to get into the back end to see what kind of user information they could find.

[SPEAKER_00]: But unfortunately, the site had recently changed systems and lost a large amount of user data, so nothing could be recovered.

[SPEAKER_00]: They said insane.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they keep on getting so close and just having these unlucky events happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: After the tip came in, the family drove around Lincoln searching for Andrew and volunteers helped them distribute 5,000 flyers in the area.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Andrew was in found.

[SPEAKER_00]: Though they had been hit with disappointment after disappointment, the ghost interview used to give up on Andrew.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were and still are determined to find answers.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever those answers may be.

[SPEAKER_00]: In May 2011, the family paid a private company to run a sonar scan of the River Thames, but they found no trace of Andrew, although I did see a report that they found another body.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that wouldn't surprise me at all, I'd almost be shocked if they didn't find another body or a whole lot of other stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure they found a ton of other stuff, too.

[SPEAKER_00]: The family decided to undertake that search in part because after over three years, their beliefs had changed as to what happened to Andrew.

[SPEAKER_00]: Initially, they believed he was a voluntary runaway because I mean, that's what the evidence pointed to.

[SPEAKER_00]: In an interview seven months after Andrew's disappearance, Kevin told the telegraph quote, are only thought as the Reggie Parenthiri, that like one of his favorite comic characters, he just wanted to step out of a conventional life.

[SPEAKER_00]: He just seen his sister get a star's energy CSEs, and even though he's just as bright, he's very gifted mathematically, maybe he wanted to step off the treadmill, and quote,

[SPEAKER_00]: But as more time passed, the less the family seemed to believe that theory.

[SPEAKER_00]: Around the time of the Ten Search, Kevin told the BBC, quote, None of us in our family can imagine that Andrew can be about for this long, without making contact of any kind, because he was always quite a caring, thoughtful personality.

[SPEAKER_00]: We just find it impossible to concede that he would allow us to go through all this for so long, without even some kind of message to let us know he's okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I guess we start thinking more about could he have been suicidal and hidden it well, or could he have been abducted, and quote.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if Andrew was abducted, it had to have happened after he got to London.

[SPEAKER_00]: Over the years, many people have speculated that Andrew could have been groomed prior to his disappearance and had plans to meet someone in London that day.

[SPEAKER_01]: right, but we've already kind of gone down that rabbit hole with the whole no internet presence, no seeming access to a computer until a couple of months before his disappearance, and it was the sisters, but then they took that and scoured it for information and didn't find anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think online grooming is definitely far fetched to say the least.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if not, you know, you can't, you obviously can't completely roll it out, but like, it does not seem likely.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that doesn't mean that he couldn't have been groomed by somebody who was already in his life.

[SPEAKER_00]: There could have been in-person grooming from someone related to church, school, cubscouts, or any other place that Andrew May have frequented.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was this theory that led to the first arrests in this case in 2022.

[SPEAKER_00]: The theory of grooming not that it was necessarily somebody that was already in Andrew's life.

[SPEAKER_00]: On January 11th of that year, South Yorkshire police announced that the previous month on December 8th, 2021, detectives assisted by the Metropolitan Police had arrested two men in London.

[SPEAKER_00]: A 45-year-old unsuspicious of kidnapping, human trafficking, a possession of indecent images of children, and a 38-year-old unsuspicious of kidnapping and human trafficking.

[SPEAKER_00]: Police later confirmed the arrests came from an anonymous tip-off.

[SPEAKER_00]: numerous electronic devices were seized and officers said that the analysis could take six to 12 months.

[SPEAKER_00]: A year later, in January 2023, the men were still under investigation and the devices were still under examination.

[SPEAKER_00]: then on September 20th, 2023, 21 months after the arrests and six days after the 16th anniversary, South Yorkshire police announced that both men had been released from the investigation entirely.

[SPEAKER_01]: What?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, released entirely.

[SPEAKER_01]: What?

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I can get like,

[SPEAKER_01]: being relatively cleared from Andrew's case if they didn't find any images of him.

[SPEAKER_01]: But like there were there had to have been images of other kids that they got them on.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, DCI Andy Knowles said the counts the men gave had been confirmed and they'd been eliminated, saying he was, quote, confident the two men arrested by no part in Andrew's disappearance and quote.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, in terms of like any images or anything, I mean, I guess they must not have found anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then, Kevin and Glenis Gosden released a statement that I think tells you everything about who these people are.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's part of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, are hurts go out to the men who have been exonerated of any involvement in Andrew's disappearance.

[SPEAKER_00]: They have no connection to our missing son and we feel profoundly sorry for the inevitable distrust that's such allegations full of cause and quote.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like I can't imagine the amount of strength that takes to spend almost two years believing that you're about to find out what happened to your son, who at this point has been missing longer than he was with you, only to find out that it's another dead end, then for your statement to be directed at the people who are wrongfully accused, it's just an amount of grace that I can't even understand personally.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't think a lot of people in America would respond that way.

[SPEAKER_00]: The gostons went on to say, quote, the past months of this investigation have been a period of additional difficulty for our family intensifying our sense of living in limbo.

[SPEAKER_00]: After so much effort over the past 16 years, we remain no closer to discovering what has happened to Andrew and quote,

[SPEAKER_00]: Then, just last year in September 2025, South Yorkshire Police put out a statement that there were a lot of people for a loop.

[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, we are aware of recent disinformation, which has been circulating online about this case, such disinformation is distressing for Andrew's family and unhelpful to the investigation and quote.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, like, nobody knew what they were talking about, so it was really confusing there for

[SPEAKER_00]: Then in December it came out, and a piece on families and missing people being targeted online, Kevin Goston said that he has had to wake up to AI-generated deep fake videos.

[SPEAKER_00]: These videos were of Andrew and Andrew and Kevin together.

[SPEAKER_00]: He described it as a quote, feeling of absolute powerlessness and helplessness, and quote, in what he called quote, a hugely dystopian world, and quote, like basically we are living in hell.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I just, I thought the people calling and trying to scam parents and missing people over text or whatever was bad, but I mean creating a generated deep fake videos of your missing child.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, like at least the scammers had a point.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: What was, what's the point of creating that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Other than cruelty, yeah, I have no idea.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what happened to Andrew Gaston?

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk theories.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've talked about a few already, but let's get into it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, a little bit more.

[SPEAKER_00]: One theory that's really big online is kind of along the lines of where you are going with the video game theory.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a concert theory.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are good chunk of people on forums in elsewhere who think Andrew went to London that day to see a show.

[SPEAKER_00]: The band's sixth was playing a rescheduled farewell show at the Carling Academy in Islington.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was originally scheduled for 4pm but was moved to 7.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was also a 30 seconds tomorrow show at Berkston Academy that night.

[SPEAKER_00]: Mick Neville, the retired head of the Met's Central Images Unit, has called the sixth theory possible in appeal for anyone with photos or videos from that gig to come forward so that they could be scanned with facial recognition software.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like in afternoon or early evening gig, you know, what kind of fit with Andrew not really bringing much with him and not even bringing a jacket because like bringing a jacket to a show is always such a pain in the ass, even though it would have been cold in the evening.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I can absolutely see a kid just like not wanting to bother with it because it was perfectly

[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, again, sneaking out to see concert doesn't really fit with his personality, but you know, maybe he was starting a rebellious phase.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, maybe, but again, then you get back into the lack of a return ticket and the fact that he hadn't spoken to any of his family or friends about staying with them for the weekend or getting a ride or anything like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So then you kind of get to what was he meeting somebody and to rethink the person he was meeting was going to be able to take him home.

[SPEAKER_01]: Mm, maybe, but then who's he meeting?

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the other problem is that there's no evidence that Andrew liked any of these bands.

[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't known to be a fan of sixth or 30 seconds to Mars or whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: So like they were kind of in the genre that he liked, but it wasn't like mues, you know, which is one of his favorite bands was playing a show or slipknot.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, or slipknot, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So like you sure he was wearing exactly like so it seems a little weird that he would skip school and like do this crazy clandestine trip for a band that like he wasn't even known to like.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, unless he was going to meet someone, to me, that's only way that that really makes sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: But him meeting somebody and meeting the wrong person would obviously explain why he never made it home.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Kevin seemed to think that something along these lines was plausible, at least like in the beginning, saying that he wondered if Andrew went to London to do something he thought would be easier to apologize for afterward than to ask permission for beforehand.

[SPEAKER_01]: I can see that, but again, I mean, like the, it still just doesn't fit with his personality.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mean, and it also seems like it doesn't fit with the parenting aspect of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like if his parents were were into giving him video games that he wants and things like that, and going to concerts.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like you would think that if he asked, they would have just taken him to a concert or gone with him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, it's not like he brought this up and they said, no, it's a school day.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can't do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then he just defied them and did it anyway.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: He never brought it up to them.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the theory that Kevin seemed to fully believe at least a first was the runaway theory that Andrew chose to leave and reinvent himself.

[SPEAKER_00]: He thought that it may have just been a spur of the moment thing, a decision to literally just walk away from his life.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then why not take that extra a hundred pounds?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, or a jacket, you know?

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like I can see, leaving all of your clothes, just tell with it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll start over somewhere else, but the money.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the cash.

[SPEAKER_01]: Leaving the cash there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, just not even taking a hoodie or like anything, you know, just seems so strange.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in your PSB charger.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you're just going to play until it dies and then just give it up to, like, that just seems so weird.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, he had this, the, the bag, he had a bag with a little bit of fit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: In 2009, Kevin publicly appealed to the gay community on the reasoning that LGBTQ kids run away at far higher rates.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, to be clear, like, there's no evidence that Andrew's gay or struggling with the sexuality in some way, but it's obviously a possibility.

[SPEAKER_00]: Kevin said, quote, we are a pretty open family.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if wondered if he was gay or struggling with his sexual identity and found a two awkward to raise and quote, and that has been, you know, a theory over the years.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that fits in with the 2017 and Eru conversation.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, because that they said my partner is exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that that's kind of the vibe.

[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't say what the website was ever or anything like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the vibe I got.

[SPEAKER_00]: was that like the guy who gave the tip was probably gay and like, you know, that's kind of what this was.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I mean, that's definitely a possibility.

[SPEAKER_00]: But again, it's like, yes, Andrew's family was religious, but they weren't intolerant.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they would have been fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: But when you're 14 year old kid and you're struggling and you're scared, you might not believe that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or maybe it had nothing to do with it at all, and he did just decide to walk out and start a new life, but maybe he was also gay.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And because, you know, in Kevin kind of alluded to this, um, in that interview seven months after his disappearance, but he said it other times too and other people have kind of thought this, it's like that the idea of pressure of, you know, the pressure of his intelligence and of school and like being expected to make something of himself like do something great, you know,

[SPEAKER_00]: And Charlotte was also really smart and, you know, has kind of made comments not that like her parents were overbearing or anything like that, but I just some of the things she said over the years just kind of feels like there was this like internal pressure and even though her parents were very

[SPEAKER_00]: loving and well-meaning that there was kind of an expectation there and that, you know, there's a theory that just maybe even though ultimately Andrew's parents would not have cared what he did as long as he was happy, that maybe he just felt this expectation and just kind of felt suffocated by it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And also, if he ran away, it's been nearly 19 years.

[SPEAKER_00]: His bank account has never been touched since I know 8am, and his parents actually kept on putting money into it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just in case he was out there and he didn't need it.

[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't have his passport or I didn't know if he even had a passport in the first place, but he definitely didn't have one with them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's also been no national insurance activity and no benefits used.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, he was 14, looked 12, had 200 pounds and no coat.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not impossible, but it seems as though just like walking off and starting a new life on his own without help would have been very difficult.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but he was also brilliant.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe he did already have it figured out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe he did have help.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, and that leads into the groomer slash predator theory.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is the one that Kevin of course has been the most openly afraid of, and the one that those 2021 arrests were pointing to.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those arrests suggest that police at some point had information pointing this direction, but obviously those arrests didn't hold up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, that doesn't tell us that the entire theory is wrong, it just says that those two men were not involved.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know, at this point, like, what do you think is most likely?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm leaning more towards, he just walked off.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever the reasoning behind it, whether it was his fear of coming out as parents, or if it was the internalized pressure, whatever it was.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think he did.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think he just walked off.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, 200 pounds isn't a whole lot of money to start a new life, but I mean, we've seen cases where people do with less.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, he was 14, but again, he was brilliant.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he probably could have figured it out.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe at this point.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's been 19 years, but maybe at this point, he's moved on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is it is hard to imagine for me that that somebody who was described is like thoughtful and empathetic just letting his parents be tortured for decades.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, I also understand that idea of like completely moving on and just like severing your past.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So do you think you still out there?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like living life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, flying under the radar Completely, you know like if if if the pressure Was that he was supposed to or the assumed Expectation was that he was supposed to do something great with his life and all he wanted to do was like Chill out and play video games like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean he could do that for fairly little money.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah

[SPEAKER_01]: bumping around the streets of London, you know, working under the table.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a big city.

[SPEAKER_01]: People can disappear.

[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, I mean, maybe he doesn't need the glasses anymore.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe he's had corrective surgery.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe, you know, he wears long hair to cover up his the folds in his ear.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, who knows at this point?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And nobody knows.

[SPEAKER_00]: 19 years of almost no new facts has created a vacuum.

[SPEAKER_00]: This case has been theorized to death on forums and in comment sections and in videos with dramatic thumbnails, but somewhere in there is a real family who still lives in the same house and never changed the locks because Andrew left with his key.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you look on the forums, there are full of people making bold statements like there's a 0% chance he's still alive.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's no evidence indicating that any type of foul play ever happened.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I mean, I don't know, and neither does Andrew's family, whether he was Andy Rue on that forum years ago or not, like you said, he could still be out there somewhere, and if he is out there somewhere, certain things wouldn't have changed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that his particular vision problem was one that could have been corrected with surgery.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: So he's

[SPEAKER_01]: and have the folds on his right hand.

[SPEAKER_00]: And have the folds on his right hand.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: In a public appeal, DCI knows asked, quote, does someone you know have gaps in their life history?

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you know someone with this distinctive double ridge on his right ear?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is there someone in your life your street or your community that might be Andrew and quote?

[SPEAKER_00]: Kevin and Glenis still live in the same home in Doncaster where the lock still waits for Andrew's key.

[SPEAKER_00]: While they did redecorate his bedroom eventually, they painted a blue because blue was the color that Andrew picked when he was little, and anything else felt wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: Downstairs in the cellar where Andrew used to play his Xbox, Kevin built open shelving out of old wardrobes to display Andrew's rock and mineral collection.

[SPEAKER_00]: Part of that shelving is a set of shelves that Andrew made with him when he was about 10.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the same post on his website where he talks about the shelving, Kevin wrote, quote, It is an irony, I think, that we have nothing but good memories of Andrew.

[SPEAKER_00]: But still wake each day feeling the panic of his disappearance.

[SPEAKER_00]: Kevin and the rest of Andrew's family has had nearly 19 years of waking up like that, and he still spent his time sharing appeals for other people's missing children, and asking people to donate to the charity that helps other families, because he says even if you can't fix all of it, you can help one.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've made a donation to the charity that Kevin says has offered his family support over the years, missing people.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you'd like to join us in making a donation and Andrew Zoner, you can donate at missingpeople.org.uk.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've also provided the link in the show notes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew Gaston has been missing from London England since September 14, 2007.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's a white male with light brown hair and brown eyes.

[SPEAKER_00]: At the time of his disappearance, he was of slim build and approximately five foot three inches tall.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was very strong prescription glasses or contact lenses, his death and his left ear and has a distinctive double ridge at the top of his right ear.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was last seen wearing a black slipknot T-shirt, black jeans, and vans tennis shoes with a watch on his left wrist, and a black canvas messenger bag covered in rock and metal band patches.

[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew was 14 years old when he went missing.

[SPEAKER_00]: He would be 33 today.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you have any information about the disappearance of Andrew Gosden, please contact South Yorkshire Police Online or by calling 101, or submit through the Police's Public Portal for the case at MIPP.police.uk.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can also contact the charity missing people free and confidentially on 11600.

[SPEAKER_00]: Missing people's reference number for Andrew is 07-01-91-98.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can see all the sources for this episode, all with photos and videos at our website, and then they were gone.com.

[SPEAKER_01]: and be sure to follow us on social and then we're gone pod on Facebook and at ATTWG pod on Instagram and TikTok.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you like what we're doing, please subscribe and consider leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

[SPEAKER_01]: It will help new listeners find us, and the more people that listen, more chances we have of bringing someone home.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we'll see you here next week for Brando Episode.

[SPEAKER_01]: See you next week.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then they were gone as hosted by Kona Gallagher and Ethan Flick, on research running and editing is done by me, Kona Gallagher.

[SPEAKER_00]: The music is the stork by Katza.

[SPEAKER_00]: Additional music is provided by Kai Engel.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then they were gone as a little monster production.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, you good boy!