Andrew Paul Gosden was born on July 10, 1993 to parents Kevin & Glenys Gosden. The family also included Andrew’s younger sister, Charlotte & they lived in Balby, a suburb of Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England. Both Kevin & Glenys were committed Anglican Christians but didn’t push religion on their children who weren’t baptized. They didn’t want to impose their views on Andrew or Charlotte & at the time of this story, Andrew hadn’t been to church in eighteen months. He’d previously been a member of the Club Scouts but by this time, he was no longer involved. Kevin described his son as a “home bird” who rarely left the house & always told his parents where he was going when he did.
Andrew’s family described him as quiet though clever, extremely intelligent & gentle. He attended The McAuley Catholic High School & took part in the Young Gifted & Talented Programme which was designed to enhance the educational development of students in the top 5% of their class. Being part of this group meant that straight-As were expected. Andrew was described as a prize-winning mathematician who seemed to be destined to attend Cambridge University. Despite Andrew’s intelligence & his 100% attendance record, he was described as having a neutral attitude toward school & hoped that his upcoming year would be more challenging since he’d previously just cruised through his education thus far.
During the summer of 2006, Andrew attended Lancaster University as part of a two-week program with the Young Gifted & Talented Programme. The program was for UK students aged 11-16 who were in the top 5% academically. When he came back from the program, his parents recalled that he was enthused about his experience. Kevin & Glenys indicated that Andrew was happy in his own company, but not a loner as he kept a small group of like-minded friends. However, outside of school, he did not socialize with these friends. According to his parents, Andrew didn’t exhibit any signs of depression & there was no indication he had been on the receiving end of any bullying.
Andrew’s teachers felt he was shy, quiet & mature beyond his years. He was a deep thinker who rarely got worked up or moody. Kevin felt his son was absent-minded, not streetwise & could potentially be vulnerable because of this. Andrew had owned several mobile phones over the years between ages ten & twelve though rarely used them & eventually lost them. He was given a new phone on his twelfth birthday & like his previous phones, he rarely used it. He lost it a couple of years later, shortly before this story took place & decided he wanted an Xbox instead of a new phone when his parents offered to replace it. Andrew loved video games, reading The Lord of the Rings & the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy & metal bands; Slipknot, Muse & Funeral for a Friend were amongst his favorites.
On the morning of Friday, September 14, 2007, Andrew woke up later than what was normal for him, having difficulty waking up & his mood seemed one of annoyance which was unlike him. He left the house at 8:05 am & a family friend, Reverend Alan Murray was sitting on a bench in the park & saw him cross Westfield Park for the bus stop he used each day for school.
Later that evening, the Gosden family were getting ready to sit down to dinner. Charlotte was in her room on her laptop & Kevin & Glenys were visiting with a family friend & believed Andrew to be in the converted cellar, playing video games like he typically did after school. When his parents called for him to come to dinner, there was no sign of Andrew. They went to his bedroom & found his McAuley Catholic High School blazer & tie hanging neatly over the back of his chair. They later found his school shirt & pants inside the washing machine. Kevin & Glenys went on to make several phone calls, frantically trying to figure out where their son was & they quickly realized, after speaking to some of his friends, that he hadn’t gone to school that day which only increased their worry. In talking to witnesses they were able to put the pieces together of what transpired earlier that day. Kevin & Glenys later discovered that his school was concerned by Andrew’s absence & believed they had left a message for his parents though it turned out they dialed the wrong number. They called the police at 7 pm to report Andrew missing & at the time, they believed that something must have happened to him on his way to school.
Family & friends came together to search for Andrew until it was dark. Kevin & Charlotte searched the neighborhood & followed the route he would have taken to school but there was absolutely no sign of him & to Kevin, it felt as if he had just disappeared from the face of the Earth. He described it as a feeling that was psychologically impossible to deal with. Within three hours of his disappearance, a missing person flier was created & distributed.
After heading to the bus stop that morning, Andrew didn’t get on the bus; instead, he walked to an ATM at a nearby garage. He took out about 200 pounds (equivalent to about $259) from his bank account which contained 214 pounds though it would only allow withdraws in 20 pound increments. He was then seen walking back home on a neighbor’s security camera. It was obvious that Andrew had waited for his family to leave until he returned home.
When he got home, he took off his school uniform & placed it into the washing machine & then draped his blazer & tie on the chair in his bedroom. He changed into a black Slipknot t-shirt which was one of his favorites & black jeans & gathered his Playstation Portable system, his wallet, keys & a backpack that was covered in patches of rock & metal bands. At the time, he was slim built & stood at 5’3” with light brown hair, brown eyes & required strong prescription glasses. No other possessions were identified as missing & he had left his passport & Playstation charger behind & didn’t seem to have taken a sweatshirt or coat with him. Temperatures in mid-day at that time were as high as 70 degrees fahrenheit or 21 degrees celsius.
Despite taking the time to go to the ATM to withdraw money, Andrew left 100 pounds ($130) that he had saved up from birthdays behind when he headed out of his house at 8:30 am. From here, he could be seen on his neighbor’s security camera walking on Littlemoor Lane toward Westfield Park, heading to Doncaster train station.
Andrew purchased a 31.40 pound (about $40) one-way train ticket to London. The clerk told him he could purchase a return ticket for as little as 1 pound ($1.30) though he declined, indicating he would not be returning. At 9:35 am, Andrew boarded the train to London & two hours later, he arrived at King’s Cross station. A woman who sat next to him on the train, indicated that Andrew was quiet & just played a game on his PSP. A boy resembling Andrew was seen later that day in a Pizza Hut on Oxford Street & his parents believe this was Andrew.
Kevin & Glenys could not wrap their heads around why Andrew would have wanted to leave or where he was going. They were unaware of any problems or struggles he may have been dealing with & hadn’t felt he was dealing with depression. Charlotte felt that as his sister, she would have hoped Andrew would have at least opened up to her about anything he was going through. She continues to struggle with this idea, feeling as if she had let him down as a sister.
Three days after Andrew went missing, police spoke with the ticket agent who sold him the train ticket to London; Kevin didn’t find it odd that Andrew had only purchased a one-way ticket since his grandparents & family live in London. It was possible that he was going to stay with them though all relatives were spoken with & cleared of any involvement. Andrew had been given the opportunity to travel alone to London to stay with his grandmother during the school summer holiday which is typically between July to September, though he chose not to go. At the time that Andrew vanished, he was only eight days into the new school year. Kevin & Glenys had noticed changes in his normal routine when on two occasions in the days leading up to his disappearance, he walked home rather than taking the school bus, walking the 4 mile or 6.4km distance which would have taken him about an hour & twenty minutes. Kevin & Glenys indicated that Andrew did enjoy London; he liked visiting the museums & exhibitions & according to Kevin, he was comfortable & knowledgeable in navigating the public transport system around the city.
When police spoke with Kevin, he indicated that nothing seemed amiss & the evening before he’d gone missing was uneventful; they ate together as usual & they all washed dishes after. Andrew & Kevin worked on a puzzle together for about an hour & then he watched some comedy shows on TV with his mom.
CCTV footage of Andrew arriving at King’s Cross wasn’t located until twenty-seven days after he had gone missing & he was seen at 11:25 am leaving the front entrance which ended up being the last confirmed sighting of Andrew. It is unknown why Andrew went to London. He had been there before & enjoyed it but had never gone by himself. One idea was that the band, Thirty Seconds to Mars, was performing that night at Brixton Academy & he may have gone to see them. The band SikTh was also set to perform that night for their rescheduled farewell show the Carling Academy; it had originally been scheduled for July 7th & was a unique event since it was the last show with the original vocalist.
Retired head of Metropolitan Police’s Central Images Unit believed that this idea was very possible & asked that anyone with photos or videos taken at the concert, please come forward in order for “super recognisers” to scan the images. This is a term coined in 2009 by Harvard & University College London researchers for people who have significantly better than average face recognition ability (coined two years after Andrew went missing). The band HIM was holding a promotional signing at the HMV music store on Monday, September 17, three days after his disappearance. That same evening, they were performing at an invitation-only show & the only way to get in was by completing various contests & giveaways. This idea was investigated but didn’t come up with any leads. Kevin suspected he could have gone to London with the “easier to seek forgiveness than ask permission” mentality.
It was also speculated that Andrew may have traveled to see someone he’d met online though this was ruled out as there was no evidence to support this idea. The only computer in the Gosden home was Charlotte’s laptop which she’d only had for eight weeks & his family confirmed that he hadn’t used it. He also didn’t have an email address & hadn’t set up an online account on either his Xbox or PSP. The computer was removed from Andrew’s school & the Doncaster Library but an investigation found no trace of activity from him. Charlotte confirmed that Andrew didn’t connect with others socially via the internet.
London is a city that is saturated with security cameras so it would be likely that Andrew could have been tracked around London, though because police didn’t review any CCTV footage for twenty-seven days, much of it had already been deleted. Kevin feels that the South Yorkshire Police handled the case in a slow, chaotic & disorganized way. It was the family, not the police who obtained the video footage from their neighbor’s house of Andrew walking to the train station. It was also the family who spoke with the train station employee at Doncaster station who sold the ticket to Andrew as well as a man who sat opposite him on the train as far as Peterborough.
The South Yorkshire force indicated that they asked British Transport Police (BTB) to search the CCTV footage within two days of Andrew disappearing though they were unable to find him amongst the crowds. An officer was then sent to London to review the footage & that’s how Andrew was spotted. Images of Andrew were circulated to the media including a close up of his right ear which had a distinctive double ridge. The reported sightings of Andrew at Pizza Hut & Covent Garden were never followed up & the woman who reported this information was not spoken with for six weeks. Kevin feels that the police spent too much time trying to put the cause of Andrew’s disappearance on him, suggesting abuse or even murder. Kevin said he even tried to commit suicide so that police would finally start to take his son’s case seriously & better investigate his disappearance. Up to three years after Andrew left, police nationwide routinely pulled the family over to search their car.
Within a year following Andrew’s disappearance, 122 potential sightings were reported across the UK which all turned out to be false leads. In November of 2008, more than a year after Andrew vanished, a man came to the Leominster police station after business hours & claimed to have information about the case; he spoke over the intercom but before someone could attend to him, he had left. A man claiming to be this same person wrote an anonymous letter to the BBC after Andrew’s case was featured on the One show. In his letter, he claimed to have seen Andrew in Shrewsbury in November 2008. It hasn’t been confirmed if this man is the same person that came to the police station.
It was the second anniversary of Andrew’s disappearance in September 2009 when the Gosden family released age-progressed photos of what he could potentially look like at age 16. Kevin questioned if his son had been potentially struggling with his sexual orientation & in November of 2009, he asked for help from the gay community in finding Andrew. Kevin said that they are a pretty open family but wondered if Andrew found it too awkward to openly speak with his parents. He says they love their son unconditionally & wouldn’t have had any issue with it. Kevin felt in his heart that Andrew’s decision to leave was a spur-of-the-moment decision.
In 2011, four years had passed without any information or leads so the family hired specialists to conduct sonar scans over the River Thames (tems) which flows through London. Within the search a body was found though it did not belong to Andrew. In 2016, Andrew’s parents asked that anyone come forward with information they might have during an episode of BBC’s Panorama. The following year, in 2017, the charity, Missing People UK made Andrew the face of their campaign “Find Every Child” & he was featured on billboards nationwide.
On September 12, 2017, police made a fresh appeal for information & asked that anyone come forward for information. The South Yorkshire Police Facebook page indicated they were or had been investigating requests for similar optical prescriptions to Andrew, requesting documents from the Passport Office or National Insurance & circulating his DNA, fingerprints & dental & health records which suggested that it’s their belief that Andrew may still be alive. Police also do annual checks on John Does in hospitals.
In June 2018, Andrew’s parents indicated that a person reported an online communication with an individual with the user name “Andy Roo” who stated that their boyfriend broke up with them & they needed about 200 pounds (about $259) to pay their rent. When someone offered to send them money, this person said that they didn’t have a bank account due to the fact that they left home when they were 14. When police looked into this lead, they were unable to locate this person.
A 2017 article indicated that even after ten years had passed, the family still clung to hope that someday, Andrew might just walk through the door. His bedroom has since been repainted & the band posters have been taken down though the drawers still contain his t-shirts & part of his rock & gem collection sit on a shelf. A friend of Andrew’s since age six, 24-year-old Sandy Murray, splits his time between Yorkshire & London & still keeps an eye out for his friend when he’s in London.
On January 11, 2022, South Yorkshire Police announced that they had arrested two men, aged 38 & 45 on December 8, 2021 on suspicion of kidnapping & human trafficking. The 45-year-old was also arrested on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children. At the time of their arrests in London, police said electronics taken from the men could take “six to twelve months” to analyze. They have since been released though it is their belief that these men have something to do with Andrew’s disappearance. These men remain suspects in Andrew’s case & are still under investigation.
Andrew’s family go over & over in their heads what could have happened to their son once he arrived in London. Kevin now suffers from anxiety, depression, PTSD & suicidal thoughts. Charlotte continues to speak of Andrew in the present tense because until she knows otherwise, that’s the assumption, but it becomes more & more difficult with each passing year. She wonders what he would be like if they met today & even questions if she could potentially walk right past him on the street & not realize it. Because they continue to hold out hope that he may come home one day, they refuse to leave the family home. Kevin feels a fresh start & a new location could be a good thing, but in the same sense, he knows that if Andrew is still alive & decides to come home, he knows where to find them. Kevin writes in his blog that he suffers from crippling anxiety & depression to the point that it’s barely possible to function.
Andrew’s family wasn’t able to celebrate his 30th birthday with him on July 10, 2023 & Kevin spoke out saying that no matter how much time has gone by without him, the feelings never change & are often intensified by seemingly small things that wouldn’t have been a problem before he vanished. Despite the passing time, Andrew is still missed intensely, every single day & it never seems to become easier. When Andrew was ten he read that if an oak tree were planted in a tub it would become a fully mature tree in a miniature form since the roots weren’t allowed to grow fully. At the time, he tested his theory & planted a few acorns in a tub; half a dozen grew & Kevin gradually replanted them over the years, keeping one for their back garden. Last year it produced its first acorns which proved Andrew’s theory; while still only six feet tall, it matured just as he expected. That oak tree is now kept in memory of Andrew & he writes in his blog, “Help Us To Find Andrew”, “As Andrew’s oak tree bears the fruit of the acorn, we hope that awareness of his case bears the fruit that others are helped to find positive solutions in their lives & that other families are spared the pain that too many of us live with every day.” This year will be sixteen years that Andrew has been missing.
There is a message to Andrew on the family’s blog:
Dear Andrew…
We have all missed you so much since the day you left. Not a day goes by that you are not in our minds constantly. You were always so witty, polite, caring & intelligent that we desperately miss your company. The same is true for all your friends & the thousands of people who have prayed for you & helped search for you.
If you should ever read this, forget about any water under the bridge & please have no fear about making contact with us. We do not care where you have been or what lifestyle you choose for yourself. We only want to know that you are safe & well & to help support you if we can.
We remain as proud of you as we have always been & love you deeply,
All our love,
Dad, Mum & Charlie xxx
Kevin & Glenys ask that to help in finding Andrew, you can keep your eyes open & report any potential sightings of Andrew to police, display a poster of Andrew to raise awareness of his case, put a link this website (Andrew’s family’s blog) on a social media networking site & consider supporting missing child organizations/charities.
References:
- Criminal: The disappearance of Andrew Gosden
- BBC News: Andrew Gosden: The boy who disappeared
- Wikipedia: Disappearance of Andrew Gosden
- Doncaster Free Press: Andrew Gosden: Men arrested over teen’s disappearance still under investigation 18 months on
- BBC New: Andrew Gosden: Father of missing boy marks son’s 30th birthday
- Help Us To Find Andrew: The disappearance of Andrew Gosden
