350: Last Seen On CCTV Acting Bizarre & Then He Suspiciously Vanished: The Damien Nettles Mystery
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Deploy your career in IT today. Learn more at mycomputercareer.edu slash CWP. SkillBridge and other VA benefits are available to those who qualify. Hey, what is up, everybody? And welcome back to Mile Higher Podcast, episode 349. I am your host, Kendall. I'm Josh. And we are joined by Janelle and Ian. Hey, guys, the gang's finally back. I know. The gang's all here. Yeah. We made it. How are you guys doing today?

Doing all right. Doing all right. Ready to jump into this. That's good. Yeah. Yeah, we have a very mysterious disappearance today. Yeah, we do. It is. Yeah, it's it just is. It's one of those cases where it really seems like the police did nothing whatsoever. They when they should have been doing a whole lot. But yeah, I mean, it's it seems like this could have been.

We could know what happened to Damien Nettles, but unfortunately we have no answers whatsoever. It just seems like he vanished without a trace and just disappeared off the face of the earth. Yeah, their mistakes early on were really insanely frustrating. And I mean, they did acknowledge that and apologized to their family, but yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, this is in the 90s. We're talking about 1996. And the other I think the other component to this that's kind of weird is he disappeared from an island, the Isle of Wight off the coast of England. And you would think with him being last seen on an island, it might be easier to locate somebody who goes missing on an island because obviously they're on the island or they've they've left via.

the air or water. And this is, you know, big port is located here on, on the Isle of Wight. So seems likely he might've been taken off the Island potentially, or he's somewhere on the Island to this day. Obviously not alive anymore, but they've not been able to find any trace of him. There's been like virtually no, uh,

significant updates over the years. It's kind of crazy. It's like he just disappeared. But there are a few possibilities. I think one theory really stands out amongst the rest. I think we kind of all agree on what we think happened and seems like it's what everyone involved with the case for the most part believes as well. Yeah, but it's one it's a case where his loved ones are still, you know, at this point they just want to find him so that they can

you know, lay him to rest and, uh, you know, just know, know where he is to not know where he is, is just the absolute worst, worst case scenario. I think in any, any type of, of disappearance and just unfathomable try to deal with that over the years. So,

But yeah, so obviously you want to keep his story alive. Yeah, he seemed like a really great person. Funny. And was really young. Really young. Stood his whole life ahead of him. Yeah. I mean, he was so loved by so many people. And a lot of people have really been hurting since this happened. And I can't imagine what it would be like to just not know. You know? How can you ever seek any closure? And I think, yeah, getting at least...

Either some answers or being able to have his remains and lay him to rest would give them some closure. I mean, how can you ever get at least some closure? But it's just something for these poor people who all just seem so sweet. But with that being said, let's go ahead and jump in. I want to give you some background on Damien. So he was born on June 21st.

1980 at the Glen Eagles Hospital in Singapore. Damien's mother, Valerie Nettles, said he was beautiful with big brown eyes, scrumptious and loving, an endearing child full of character. And when he was a baby, Damien loved his older sister, Sarah, and would follow her everywhere. She said about her younger brother, he was warm and passionate as a person. Damien had a way about him that would just keep you entertained for hours on end.

I remember so much laughter. I also remember arguments and sibling rivalry, but that was normal, of course. I mean, where is there not sibling rivalry in a relationship? And she basically said the same thing I did, that what brother and sister doesn't fight with one another, but mainly I remember laughter. Valerie would also add about Damien, he was always a joker. He wanted to make people laugh. There wasn't a malicious bone in his body. He would help the underdog, sometimes even to his own

disadvantage. He was sensitive, caring, loving, and thoughtful. There was not a bad bone in his body. So four years after Damien was born, his parents, Valerie and Edward, had his little brother, James. And James would say this about his relationship with Damien. We were close and shared a room for most of our lives. But with most siblings, this closeness came in the form of punches, headlocks, and this made me laugh, borderline torture.

However, even with this friction between us, he was always my big brother, and I always wanted to be as funny, artistic, and as loved by others as well.

And the family would go on to welcome his younger sister, Melissa, in 1987 before Edward's work took them back to England to live on the Isle of Wight, just right off of the English mainland. Valerie had grown up on the Isle and only left to attend school where she met Edward, and his work soon took them across the globe, and she was excited to raise her growing family on this, you know, familiar ground, return back to her roots. And the village they moved to, Gunnard, was

near one of the main port cities of Cowes. And it's described as a tight-knit, safe area where they could raise their four children. And according to Metro UK, it was, quote, the type of place where you could leave your windows open if you popped out to the shops.

and where teenagers roamed freely between each other's homes. This is the first time I'd ever even heard of the Isle of Wight. It seems really lovely, doesn't it? It does. I just Googled some pictures of it, and it's stunning. I mean, there's some sheer cliff faces, blue water. It looks like in the summertime or when there's nice weather. It's extremely stunning. I mean, green everywhere.

Lots of little towns positioned around the island with the larger port there. Lots of greenery. The structures are obviously beautiful, classic. Yeah, this would be a cool place to visit, let alone to raise a family. Very idyllic.

Definitely. And it was here on the Isle of Wight that Damien really came into his own. Valerie said that Damien was a funny, happy boy, the life and soul of the party, and he liked to make his friends laugh. Arms and legs flailing, he was not always appreciated by his teachers, but he was not disliked at all.

Just a fun-loving guy. Everybody seemed to really get along with him. You know, maybe a bit goofy in school where teachers are, you know, slightly annoyed, but nobody had really anything bad to say about him. I love this picture of him. I don't know if he's in a bush or, like, climbing a tree, but he just looks so happy and free. Yeah, that's a great pic. By the time Damien was in his teenage years, he had grown to be 6'4".

That's pretty tall. Definitely. You know, how tall are you, Josh? I'm like 6'2". Yeah. Yeah, like 6'2". And I was always tall throughout school. In my teenage years, I was one of the taller kids. And then obviously by the time junior, senior year, there's a couple other kids that kind of catch up and then surpass me in height. But 6'4 is definitely up there. I mean, that's a tall teenager for sure. Surprised he didn't play basketball. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's I don't know how big basketball is out there. Probably football. Yeah. Football is. No, it's not called football. Football. Yeah. No, basketball is not called football. No, I'm saying the sport is football. No, that's soccer. Yeah, but they call it football. They call basketball football. No, soccer. Yeah.

We're talking about basketball. Where do we get to soccer? No, he's saying the popular sport there would be football, a.k.a. soccer. Yes, but I'm sure basketball also exists. I don't know that basketball is that big out there. Let's do a little research. I'm curious now. I don't think basketball is a huge, huge thing in the U.K. I'm sure there's people that play it for sure. Well, even more reason as a six-foot-four lad to get in on it. I'm curious. Pull up one of the parks in his neighborhood and see if there's a basketball hoop there. That's a good point.

So in England, they do have they have a professional basketball league, but it's called the Super League. And I don't I don't think anyone's ever. You've never heard of it. Yeah. The Super League. All right. No, soccer is is everything there. No, I mean, yeah. OK. But yeah, six foot four. He would make a great basketball player for sure. Or you just be good at climbing trees, too. Yeah. Which looked like he was doing.

But in his teenage years, he really made a very close group of friends between school and other people that he had met throughout the towns. It seems like he was a very social person. He was kind of out and about, liked to have a lot of friends to hang out with. Damien's little brother, James, said, quote, I spent my youth getting close to his friends so that I could catch a glimpse of the Damien that they knew. I heard just how awesome my brother was. That's a really nice compliment for a brother to make. Yeah. You know, just wanting to

be around these people he was around just to hear how great his brother was. Yeah, well, I mean, that's how you can connect with him, never getting to know him at that older age, you know? Damien also had a great passion for music. He started first with the trombone in middle school, which, hell yeah. Dude, trombone is...

You don't hear a lot of people playing the trombone. I'm actually... Trombone? Okay, that's... Yeah, that's the big long one they have to like... I can't even like picture what that sounds like. It's like... Is it like that? It's kind of this deep sounding horn. Oh, like... Yeah, it's kind of in the background of like a brass band. Is that what they play like summer camps in the morning to wake everyone up? No, that's called a bugle. Oh. They don't really play trombone. No, it's like very... Is it like Schitt's Creek?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of a deeper sounding instrument. So he was into that, which is good for somebody with his height because it's a big instrument. That's a good point. Long arms to really like, you know, play that correctly.

It wasn't his favorite, though, because it's probably missing a little bit of the cool factor. You know what I mean? Like, no hate out to the band kids out there. What did you say? Oh, my God. It just came to my head. That sounded worse than it sounded in my head. What did you say? Shut up. I said the tromboners. That's fine. Get your head out of the gutter. Yeah. Come on. Okay. I haven't heard that one before, but we love it.

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So Damien eventually taught himself to play the guitar. I mean, that's a pretty cool, cool instrument to know how to play the guitar. Taught himself. And then from then on, he formed a small band with some friends and they played everything, including classical, the Beatles. Of course, the Beatles. Strawberry field.

Love the Beatles. Contemporary music and even some original songs. In high school, he began to take his studies a bit more seriously because he was talking about one day going into marine biology.

He even helped his older sister Sarah study for her A-level final before she went to university just across the Solent Strait in the city of Portsmouth. Although Damien had been a great student's son and brother, he still liked to party. What teenager doesn't? But him and his friends would often walk around Cowes trying to find a bar that would serve them even though they were very much underage, which the drinking age in the UK is

Is it 18 or is it 21 there? I believe at this point in time, in 1996, it was 18. 18, okay. But now it could have changed. No, it's still 18. Good for them. Yeah. 18 over there. Sick. Love that. So at 16 and 6'4", he's going to have no issues most of the time walking around, getting drinks, not getting carded.

So that's what they would do. They just walk around cows and go into different pubs and try to see who's going to give them drinks without carding them. And Damien would usually be the one to get the drinks because, of course, he's tall. You know, he looks a little bit older than some of his friends. And so he was kind of the hookup. His younger brother, James, remember one night when Damien returned home from the youth club, he had been out with friends and Damien entered his room to chat and smoke it up. James said, quote, As if it was the first time in my life I had become his friend.

as well as his brother. And this one memory hits me hardest for within a few months, Damien was gone. But unknown to Damien's family...

He had been hanging around some sketchy people and cows, and his friends had noticed there was definitely a change going on in his life and his behavior and his demeanor. It just seemed like whoever he was hanging out with was starting to rub off on him, and not in a good way. While the Isle of Wight, the largest single island in the United Kingdom with 147 square miles, is certainly a friendly area in most of the neighborhoods, its larger cities and ports have the potential to

for being very dangerous. In March of 2025, over 500 violent crimes were reported in that month alone. That's wild. A massive number considering the island only has a population of around 140,000 people. 500 violent crimes in March of 2025. Yeah, that's insane. Yeah, pretty sure that's like a higher number than New York. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, we should look that up. I wonder if it is.

And on top of that, its location along the English Channel makes it a prime location for drug couriers to ship illegal substances onto the island before dealers bring them to the English mainland. As of 2024, the Isle of Wight police force was reported as being inadequate at tackling serious and organized crime, as they did not have enough staff working on intelligence or surveillance. These are all recent numbers, and one can only imagine how much less

This police force would have been back in the 90s, almost 30 years ago. And especially when we're talking about organized crime here. It's kind of a whole other level of skills and investigation experience required to take care of a problem like that. So keep this all in mind when Damien was dropped off at his best friend Chris's house at around 730 p.m.

on November 2nd, 1996. I'm just like, it's, so, it's, from January 25 to May 2025, there were a recorded 264 shootings and 112 murders. Um,

But that's the entirety. That's all three months of January. No, five months from January to May. So that's considerably less than one month in just March of 2025. That's mind-blowing. Yeah. This isn't just murder, though. This could be...

Any sort of assault. Theft. Battery, whatever it may be, you know, on all levels. A fist fight at the pub. You know what I mean? Although I don't know if that would even be reported. Yeah, they might not tell the cops about that. On the Isle of Wight. Yeah. But if it's just like stabbings, because that's the thing is how much of it is actually shootings. You know what I mean? Because the shooting statistics over there are a lot different. Oh, yeah. Obviously than they are over here. It's a lot of stabbings and stuff. Mm-hmm.

But regardless, I mean, that's a serious violent crime issue and seems like the police force is inadequate in fighting that. So what's going on? Well, Damien had been through a lot of life changes leading up to that night in November. He and his girlfriend of nearly two years, Abby Scott, had just broken up in July of 1996. But they did remain pretty actually very close after the breakup.

Abby would later say about Damien, he was a big, gentle giant. I can't imagine why anyone would want to hurt him. However, around this time in the summer of 1996, Damien and his friends had become close with a new crowd in the port city of Cowes, just across from the Solent from the English mainland. And while Damien had always enjoyed partying, he mainly just kept to smoking, weed, and drinking. But this group that he was recently kind of hanging around with

was known for, I mean, actually had several known hard drug dealers in it. And for a while, Damien's best friend Chris wouldn't admit that he and Damien had gotten into hard drugs around this time, but eventually he did tell Damien's brother James that they had been taking speed and other drugs from the dealers and cows. Now, for Abby, she couldn't take this personal shift in Damien. She said,

I saw flickers of someone else. He was hanging around with a different group of people who were a little bit older than him. There were obviously some things he was keeping to himself. It could have been drugs. I don't know. However, like we said, Damien and Abby did remain close even after he became romantically involved with another girl named Gemma. And he called Gemma on November 2nd to tell her

that he was missing her. Damien had spent the day negotiating with his mom to let him stay out until midnight, which was a few hours past his usual curfew, and eventually she did agree, and he left home wearing blue jeans and a black fleece, and he didn't take a bag or any other belongings beside from a black camera. Around 7.30, Damien's father dropped him off at Chris's house before they went to a low-key house party on East Cows. However,

However, Chris noticed that Damien was pretty bored, and the house party consisted of three couples, and Damien was the only one there on his own, which obviously isn't always the greatest setup and can be a little awkward. So while Chris believed that Damien was bored, his brother Davey said that Damien wanted to head out and buy some weed since his usual dealer hadn't been available or out of stock for most of the summer.

And at around 9.30 p.m., Damien and Chris left the party, and they bought some cider at a store that didn't ID Damien because, you know, he's super, super tall. And then they took a short ferry ride from East Cowes to West Cowes. Which you guys can see in this photo here just, like, how short that ferry ride is. If you zoom in between the cow's floating bridge and, like, to the other side, it's just that little blue dotted line right there. Do we know how long that would be?

No, I think if I remember correctly, it's around like 15 minutes tops, like from boarding to getting off on the other side. But it is, it's just a strange, I don't feel like there's, at least for us in Colorado, you know, we don't have a lot of geography like this where it's like the city is split in two by this straight and you have to like take a ferry to get to the other side. Seems fun. I'm jealous of people that take ferries all the time. I know, dude. It looks cool. It seems really fun. I'm sure some of them would be like, uh,

It's kind of a pain. Yeah, we fucking hate it. I wish I could just drive across the other side of town. Yeah. Did you ever take the ferry when you were living in New York? No, I never took the Staten Island ferry, not once. I'm surprised. I know. It's free, if you didn't know that. But I know. I wish I did. We did, like, whenever we go to the East Coast and Martha's Vineyard, we'll take, I mean, you have to take a ferry to get to Martha's Vineyard, but we'll take the little ferry to get to Chappaquiddick.

Oh, okay. Yeah. That's a fun little Chappaquiddick. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You weren't there when we covered the Chappaquiddick story. Really? You guys covered it? Yeah. I think for actually from TCKR. I'm not sure. But maybe here too. I don't know. Maybe we did both. Maybe we did both. Yeah. I can't remember. Janelle, remember we took the ferry as kids to Block Island from Oda Island? Yeah.

I do remember that. That was a good time. It was. It was fun. I love a good ferry. I took the Ellis Island ferry. Whoa. Oh, yeah. You did do that. Went to Ellis Island. And you have to take a ferry to go over to see Statue of Liberty. Yep.

We took a lot of ferries when we were in Australia. Yeah, Australia has a lot of ferries too. Sydney Harbor. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. Good times. I love Colorado, but it sometimes sucks being landlocked. It is kind of nice to get out on the water. Yeah. On a boat. Just any boat. Free. Hey, man, we got Chatfield Reservoir. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah, get on your little canoe. And hope we don't contract a disease from the water. A brain-eating amoeba in the water. Yeah.

But anyways, for the next several hours, Damien and Chris went from pub to pub on Cowes High Street, which has many security cameras trying to find a pub that would serve them even though they were underage. Chris also recalled that Damien was asking people in those pubs if they had seen his older sister Sarah, even though he obviously knew where Sarah was. She was across the soul in Portsmouth at university.

But Valerie would later try to explain this by saying that perhaps Damien was using his sister's name to see if anyone at the pub maybe knew who she was, which would kind of give him an in with them and be like, oh, yeah, I know your sister. Oh, yeah. You know, it's just kind of that connection. You know, oh, yeah, we're basically friends. So, yeah, let me let me hook you up with a drink.

And she thinks that's kind of what was happening, which to me makes a lot of sense. I mean, yeah, that's same. I definitely like at high school parties would try to drop my sister's name just to with older, older kids and stuff to kind of get in with them. Totally. At 10 p.m., Damien was first captured walking into Yorkie's chip shop. At this time, the chip shop was fairly busy and all Damien did was pick up a salt shaker, set it down, and then he walked out of the restaurant.

At around 10.30, Chris was cold and wet and was trying to persuade Damien it's time to go home, saying that there is no way they would get served at this point, and it was just stupid and a waste of time to stay out any later. Which, according to Chris, Damien agreed, and the two then walked out of town before they parted ways at the steps of Northwood Park. Chris said, quote, I went straight home and I was 100% sure that Damien had headed up through the park towards his house.

But for Damien, the night was far from over. Instead of making a 20-minute walk back to his family's home, he headed back over to Cowes High Street. Multiple witnesses there saw Damien wandering around High Street that night, and they reported that he seemed to be heavily intoxicated and, quote, spaced out, much more under the influence than he was when he parted ways with Chris. Damien then walked into Yorkie's chip shop for a second time, and his interaction with the employee there

was much stranger. But let's go ahead and play this clip of the security camera footage of that second trip into Yorkie's chip shop. Damien starts behaving oddly. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,

Yeah, certainly out of it.

Yeah. Just kind of, one, one. He's like, one, one. And he just seems like he's bugging out. And he's like looking over his shoulder. Kind of tell his eyes are kind of all big. And even the way he's like, when he says like, can you say I can't hear you? He says, one, please. Like even Damien's getting frustrated that he's not understanding him. It definitely does not seem like he's in his right mind, you know? Yeah, no, he thinks he's being very clear. Right. Yeah. But is he just...

Was he inebriated from drinking or did he take something else? We have no idea. Or could he possibly, and this is just a thought I've had, and I don't know how much water this holds, but the idea of him getting GHB in his system or something like that, just because of how fast it seemed to happen, where he went from zero to 60. I mean, his friend said, you know, I don't know. It's just a thought I've had, but it doesn't seem like it's been floated by any...

Yeah. Investigators much. But you never know. You never know. I mean, nobody knows what it was that kind of flipped the switch there. I think the only like confirmed drugs just in the scene is like Chris said specifically that they had done speed. And then we know that other people did heroin. And we also know that they were dealing coke and other stuff like that. Like speed and coke.

I feel like would make you do the opposite of what he was doing. That's what I'm saying. Like, it almost seemed like it was something different. And I don't know if, like, maybe he was being watched and, you know, because sometimes people out there will use that, will use the date rape drug just to jump you or, you know, mug you. Yeah. Could he have been given that?

slightly earlier in the night that's kind of what i was thinking but yeah it doesn't seem to be a popular theory i haven't seen anyone else say that so i don't know maybe there's a reason why yeah was that even being circulated in this area i don't know we don't know again like the only confirmed ones are our speed heroin and cocaine but i mean ghb is everywhere yeah true right true

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And according to Valerie, this was, quote, completely out of character. So when she heard about this, she's like, yeah, he wouldn't be just like trying to get into some random car. Yeah. Damien was next seen at a bus stop near the food co-op in West Cowes. He got on the bus, spoke to the driver about an unknown subject, tried to take a photo of the driver, and then thanked the driver before he got off again. It's strange that it says unknown subject. Like, we...

Did the driver not understand or did they never get a full statement? Did they not explain? So that's sourced from the BBC long-form article on the case. And so that's their exact wording of it is unknown subject. My suspicion is that, as we'll get to later on, a lot of people were not spoken to. A lot of the people who he was suspected of seeing that night were not spoken to by investigators. And so I believe the subject was unknown because...

They just never identified him. They never identified the bus driver or they spoke to him years down the line and the bus driver couldn't remember what the subject was. Yeah, that's what it seems like. Their initial investigation was so poor. But it seems like he's having another sort of bizarre interaction with the bus driver similar to what you just saw in the chip shop. It's kind of out of it. He's kind of getting on. He's

you know, maybe incoherently talking to the bus driver about something or other, which could also be why he doesn't remember. He's like, I don't know. It was just kind of a bunch of random gibberish or whatever. And then he tried to take a photo of him

which is very odd. But then only a few minutes later at 11.59 p.m. at the same bus stop of foster care waiting to pick up a child from the bus, washed Damien sitting nearby. And he described Damien as, quote, a miserable figure huddled eating chips. Such a strange description, but miserable. What made him seem miserable to him? Did he look sad or depressed or

Or he was just kind of sitting there mumbling to himself or something. Who knows? But then Damien, he got up and walked towards the foster care sitting in his car. His description of Damien's height, clothes and camera matched descriptions from both Chris and Damien's family. And according to the foster care, he, quote, looked drugged and seemed to bank heavily into the car. Then Damien said twice to this man, quote, they are watching us. Mm hmm.

Damien then wiped rain off of the man's car windshield and then walked off towards the Peerview Public House on High Street. So is he paranoid because somebody's actually watching him or is he just not in, he's hallucinating? Yeah, and what could he have been on to make him hallucinate to that degree? Right, right. That's not giving speed and...

What was the other one? Cocaine. Cocaine, yeah. That doesn't really align with those two, I don't think. Yeah.

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Domestic data roaming at 2G speeds. Price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate. Additional terms and conditions apply. Heroin? I mean, I don't know that much. Yeah, I don't know either. But yeah, something. But yeah, so I also think he's been drinking alcohol as well. So if you mix alcohol with any of these substances, it could have an altered effect that could be something maybe he wasn't used to. To make you that paranoid. Yeah. Or was someone really watching him?

But even if that was the case and he was more in a right mind than it appeared, why would he go and say this to some random person? You know, I also think this is like, again, just something I've been tossing around in my head is that like this portion of the night is very well surveyed. Like almost all of his movements were caught on a surveillance somewhere, surveillance camera somewhere on Cow's High Street. And so.

It's interesting that he says they are watching us when he is literally being watched by all these different security cameras. Again, who knows if he was aware of that, but it still is interesting that those cameras were certainly watching him. Yeah, it is interesting. It's very confusing. Yeah, yeah, it's just bizarre. And it's just like, why didn't he go home? He was out with his friend Chris and then...

He was like, all right, have a good night. Thinking they're both going home for the night. And then he goes back to Cal High Street. Yeah. I think it was due to a confused state of mind.

I don't know. Intoxicated state of mind, most likely. But then only minutes later, he was caught on CCTV for the last time before he vanished. Even though all of his movements for the past three hours had been captured all across High Street, he was not caught on any of the remaining cameras for the rest of the night. And from here, Damien would have had two possible routes back home. He could have either walked through the park or along the beach and seafront.

as these were the only routes without CCTV cameras that would have captured him. Valerie was convinced that he would not have taken the coastal path because it was a nasty night and dark and unfriendly along the seafront, and that walk would have not appealed to him. But, you know, we've all been chatting about that, and she obviously knows him better and knows the area better, but if he was really heavily under the influence of something, I don't know if those thoughts would have really...

come up at all or if he would have even considered that, you know? Yeah. I mean, in this state of mind, anything is possible, I think.

But again, is this an isolated incident the way that this night went down? Is there other reported nights like this where he would, you know, go out, get messed up and then try to make his way home? I mean, it's hard to say exactly. So is it? It seems out again, the family saying this is out of character for him. So they're indicating that this is a very.

Something seemed to be very odd.

teenage boy is going to hide a lot of things from his parents. So maybe he was telling them one thing, but in reality, he was doing a bunch of other things when they weren't around. So it's really hard to say. But we also don't know if he had at some point completed this walk when say he was like a little more sober, you know, and if, you know, if he would have done it on the seafront, totally fine.

That one time, even in your messed up state, like there's a potential there. He comes across. He's like, oh, I've done this before. Yeah. And I'm not going to really consider the conditions that are currently happening now. So aside from the park and the seafront, Sun Hill would be the only road that he could have taken away from High Street and the cameras.

However, the streets were very quiet even on Friday and Saturday nights. And according to BBC reporter Bronig Munro, who actually retraced this same route the same time of the year that Damien did, she said, quote, Which I do think is a fair point, but...

even in a situation where you can hear he could have been seen and heard and people just didn't think anything of it at the time um that is a good point i mean like even though it's quiet on a friday and saturday night it still is one of those nights and yeah you know there's maybe they have heard other things because they're close enough to high street to where they're like oh whatever you know yeah they hear it all the time right you know um

Plus, yeah, it's very possible that he just happened to not be seen or heard. Just no one, either people weren't home or they weren't paying attention or they're sleeping or whatever it is. So I don't think that necessarily proves anything, but it is an interesting point. And of course, I've never been there myself and I am not a BBC reporter.

I don't really know shit about shit, I guess. But the next morning, Damien's little sister, Melissa, heard someone stirring in one of the upstairs bedrooms and walked up to wake her brothers. So she found James as he was just waking up, but to her surprise, Damien was nowhere in sight. And according to Melissa, she said, I ran to tell my mother about this, and I remember seeing panic set in almost immediately. She contacted anyone she thought might know where Damien was,

but they were all as unaware of us. And I think that quote is very telling that this was so shocking to his whole family, but especially to his mother. I think that says a lot about

How consistent he was about coming home, and this was so out of the norm. And the final straw here is when they called Chris Boone's house, asking if Damien had maybe spent the night there. And Chris returned home shortly after he and Damien had parted ways in the park, but Chris hadn't heard anything from his best friend since.

Valerie went to the police station to report Damien missing at 3 p.m. on November 3rd, a little over 12 hours since he had disappeared. However, the Nettles family said that in the beginning, the police were...

Basically, uninterested in investigating Damien's disappearance, seems like they truly did not give a fuck. According to Melissa, who went with Valerie to the police station, she said, She said,

This sort of behavior is absolutely not the norm. And of course, we hear this all the time. It makes you want to beat your head.

on a table yeah why is the why are the police telling a parent like what you know how their child is acting you know yeah oh that's just a normal thing for your child to be gone for 12 hours and it's like i'd love to be able to say well this was a long time ago and this is how and it was more common back then but we still see this today we still see it today with teenagers uh it's insanely frustrating

But Melissa remembered going home and sitting there with a knot in her stomach as her dad and grandfather went out and searched for Damien. So again, it's super important to note here that the police did extremely little in the beginning. Their story, almost entirely unchanged for many years, was that Damien had walked into the Solent trying to get to Portsmouth to visit his sister since he had been asking about her.

all night over town that night before he disappeared. And that seems like just a very lazy way to explain his disappearance. Well, he just went in the water. Uh-huh. Okay. And I feel like we've seen this like a ton of times whenever there's a disappearance case near water. It's just the cops immediately jump to like, that's where he is. He must have been in the water. Yep.

And it's like, I think it's just easier for them. Well, there could be a million other things that could have happened. There could have been a crime that happened here. He could have been kidnapped. He could have been sexually assaulted. He could have been, there's a million other things that could have happened. But to just go off of like, well. Nope, he fell or jumped into the water. He was talking about his sister the night before. And she's across the water. So maybe he went in the water. Come on. It's just like offensive. It's so stupid and ridiculous. Yeah.

Well, it doesn't even make a whole lot of sense because according to numerous people familiar with the Strait, the tidal formations force anything that goes into the water between Cowes and Portsmouth to wash up somewhere along the Isle of Wight. He would have washed up. Yeah, 100%. He would have found his body almost, you know, immediately within within the couple of days.

Some searches were done specifically in the water between East and West Cowes, but police did not search various areas of interest, such as the park where Damien had left Chris and the park that he could have walked through on his way home. The two places that have been known for a fact, something could have happened. He could have come into contact with somebody trying to harm him in these parks that he, A, one was 100% and the other one he was in as well. It's like, why wouldn't you go look?

where he could have possibly been abducted. Lazy. Lack of care. Or he could have just hurt himself, fell into a hole. I mean, there's a lot of things that could have happened and they don't even search those. They're just like, nope. Out in the street. Pisses me off so much. Okay.

Town counselor in front of the Nettles family, Dr. Corinne Lawrence, described an instance where she talked to Hampshire police about Damien's case, quote, The whole time the police insisted that he must have gone into the water, but I never believed that. The police were awful, and at one stage, they called Valerie and I hysterical women. That's so offensive. That says everything you need to know. Mm-hmm.

You guys are just being hysterical women. I would have been like, fuck you. Yeah, terrible. Dr. Lawrence said, quote, the police wouldn't do anything. So I took it upon myself to walk down the street asking left and right to see if anyone had seen him. The man in the chip shot just told me that he had this little camera above the door and that I was welcome to have a look. So she's finding this out before the police have even bothered to go and check where he had been that night. Because they didn't do anything.

Which Dr. Lauren's own investigation is why we have the footage from the Yorkies chip shop that we showed you earlier. And one of the key pieces of evidence in understanding Damien's state that night. It's how we even know he was acting very, very odd definitively is from that video.

If we go back, five men appeared on the footage with Damien and they were engaging in friendly conversation. In the early investigation, police completely ruled out just speaking to them altogether. It would take nearly a decade before an internal investigation for the police to identify and attempt to talk to them. And when they did, they learned that the men were in the military and were not on the aisle long after Damien's disappearance. And at this point, they did not have a complete memory of their quick interaction. However, if they had been interviewed in 1996,

They could have potentially remembered important information about Damien's plan that night, overheard him say something, maybe even said something directly to them. But no, they waited a decade before actually talking to them. And at that point, it's just too late.

Through interviews and CCTV footage, Dr. Lawrence and the Nettles family were able to piece together the rough timeline of Damien's whereabouts that night. This includes many instances of Damien asking people for cigarettes, and even a moment where he spoke to someone sitting inside a Ford Fiesta, which again, if you remember, that was the same kind of car he had tried to open earlier in the night. But police never talked to that person, and it's unclear if it was the same Fiesta from earlier in the evening, which seems like a very important thing to figure out

in this type of investigation. He was trying to get into a Ford Fiesta. Whose Fiesta was it? Is it the same one? Maybe that could explain where he went. But no, none of that happens. In reference to the police's horrible investigation, Dr. Lawrence went on to say, we pushed and pulled with them. It was almost as though it wasn't good for cows for this to happen. They kept trying to justify their actions or inactions to Valerie, but really they did nothing.

At one point after the police had been given the CCTV footage, Valerie was brought in to confirm Damien's identity, only to learn that the police had been tracking the wrong person on the footage. It's like, oh my lord. After Valerie corrected their mistake, she said, it was the last time I ever saw my son alive. God.

It's so embarrassing for them. Bring her in and they're like, all right, so this we've been following this person's whereabouts. She's like, that's not even my son. Yeah. Did you even look at the report that I filed? It's like idiots. Good God. So then somehow the police lost that footage. Okay. This is just sketch. I know. What the hell? I know. Oopsie. We lost it. Yeah.

I always question when they try to say that. How do you lose something like that? I don't know. And it happens all the time. All the time. Like almost, I feel like most cases. Because a lot of. There's like some lost evidence. It's because there are a lot of these departments are still operating in like the 1950s. Yeah. They haven't, they're record keeping. Especially back then. But even then, it's like, how hard is it to put it into a lockbox? Right. Right.

Right. Something vital like that. Or a filing cabinet with a label. There's no excuse for it. Which that's why sometimes I don't even believe that that's the case. I feel like it's purposely lost. But I don't know. I don't know if that's the case here. But sometimes I do wonder. Yeah. Are people just throwing... Like it's not getting up and walking away. Right. If it's lost, someone did something with it. Yeah. Or someone like cleaning up. They're like, I don't need this. Yeah, maybe. That's not lost. Right. Or what I was saying more is like...

I think they possibly are. I don't know if that's the case in this case. No. Yeah. Do you think that that happens? What if the police are involved? They could be. I mean, I think there is a potential because the Isle of Wight is somewhat of a tourist destination. It is like this beautiful island. People from the English mainland go and visit, especially not necessarily this time of year, but they want to go see it. It's historic. It's beautiful.

And so there might be an element of like we can't have a kidnapping, a murder on our hands similar to last week. Ellie Warren's case last week. Yeah. Within Mozambique. But yeah, according to the business association member who had collected the footage, Hampshire police said they had an evidence sheet that they stated they had given back to him, even though.

He never received it. Valerie later complained about the loss to the Independent Police Complaints Commission in 2005. However, she was told the offending officer had already been dealt with. Dealt with, I'm sure. But was never told what measure exactly was taken against him, so...

highly doubt he was dealt with that that sternly henry wrigley then harbor master of the port and cows said we got the charts out and i calculated for them the title movements title sets and rate as well as possibilities in case he slipped into the water i am certain that had he gone into the water that night he would have returned to land which would make sense right

Wrigley said that a thorough search warrant was issued for the waters surrounding the isle, but still, nothing was found. Then there's another theory presented by police, that Damien had just run away, and it doesn't make sense. The ferries to the mainland had stopped running before midnight, and if he had gone somewhere else on the isle,

It's more than likely that somebody would have spotted him in the days, months, and years following his disappearance, right? Just makes no sense. Plus, also, why? He had no signs of wanting to run away in his life, and it's always strange when something like this is brought up for someone where it just is completely, would be completely out of pocket, make no sense.

Um, so what about the third most likely theory? That Damien had met up with the new crowd that he had been hanging out with to buy hard drugs, which is why he was so intoxicated at Yorkies and somebody from that crowd did something to him. Damien's girlfriend at the time, Gemma Nunn, said that at no stage did they ask me any questions about Damien taking drugs or Damien getting into trouble or talking about something bad happening to Damien. Police wouldn't even consider Damien

the possibility of foul play until nearly a decade after his disappearance. Just let that sink in.

Makes zero sense. It's bullshit. And Valerie obviously was bitter about how the police handled the investigation as anyone would be. She said they were very brusque, which I had never heard that word. What is brusque exactly mean? In an offhand or like abrupt way. So it's just like they're like shooing her off basically. Okay. Brusque. Dismissive. That sounds like that's what that would mean. But yeah, she said.

Now they have apologized to us and admitted that something sinister had happened, which I'm sure was pretty validating for them to at least get that.

But a little too late. Yeah, way too fucking late. But I mean, I'm sure. Yeah, I mean, to some degree to get better than never admitting that they were wrong. But still. But Operation Ridgewood, which is the police name for the investigation, was carried out immediately. However, police did not retain most of the evidence collected during the investigation. And that includes call logs to the police station that night.

that Damien disappeared, police notebooks, and details about which officers were initially working the case. The investigation was not handed to the Major Crimes Unit until March of 2002.

And around this time, a new suspect entered the picture. An unnamed informant told police that local drug dealer, Nicky McNamara, killed Damien. This is all so weird to me because it seems like they have informants, right? They have informants. They're dealing with organized crime here. Why did they not use these connections initially? I don't know. I was thinking the same. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Is the incompetence so high that they just...

Oh, we think he went into the water. But after a couple searches of the water, not finding... I mean, how dumb are they? They know the way that these tides work and they would have found... It just... Something seems off to me as almost if they're trying to cover up something or they don't want something to be known about maybe a larger investigation that they knew he was involved in. Could be. I don't know. It's just something is weird about this. It doesn't make sense. I think to me...

It's more just laziness and incompetence. I know. I just feel like we say that all the time. And I'm like, really? They're all incompetent and lazy? Not all law enforcement. There's not a single officer? But in most of the cases that we cover where they need coverage and they have fucked up, like, yeah, I think it's laziness and incompetence a lot of the time and understaffing. I think that's...

You think it's more something sinister, like they're purposely... Which does happen, of course. You've covered cases where it's an obvious police cover-up. Yeah, but I think they're covering up for their own benefit versus... I don't think it's necessarily they're covering up because they're criminally involved with it. They're embarrassed for their mistakes? No, they're covering up because maybe they're doing... They have...

Undercovers or something like that that could be involved. There could be like some type of larger organized crime investigation going on where... You're getting deep with it. Yeah, there could be multiple layers to this. Sometimes I have to think it can't just all be this dumb, like this cut and dry and dumb. I think in this case, I don't know. I think I'm leaning towards...

Dumb and lazy. I don't know. I'm curious if anybody from this area has any experience with the authorities out there, knows like what's the, you know, and I haven't, obviously I don't know anybody personally here or been to this location even, so I can't really make any definitive judgment. But I'm just like, could there be, because of the organized crime, there's a lot of crime going on here, has been for a very long time. Is there very complicated webs of

Of maybe even, you know, maybe there's corrupt law enforcement, maybe there's law enforcement that's infiltrated into the crime, but they can't yet reveal because of X, Y, Z. So they unfortunately they have to kind of overlook something that maybe happened to Damien in an effort to protect the rest of their investigation, something like that. That's just the thought. I hope.

I hope that's not like genuinely like I think like that would speak to to them actually knowing there's at least an issue going on in the area, specifically surrounding like an actual crazy drugs scene. You know, I like I think for a lot of, you know, especially this kind of town in England, they love not they love. They have this kind of idea of themselves being very quaint and.

That's why I do kind of lean more towards you, Kendall, because I think that's, you know, in even these police minds who have seen some shit go down here, I think they still might have this opinion of their area as being like a very quaint, quiet area. Yeah. And they...

Not that they don't want that to change, but that to them, they're like, no, that stuff doesn't happen in cows. That stuff. Yeah. So we're going to turn a blind eye to it. Right. Situation. Yeah. And I mean, before you make a decision, you got to hear more about what we know about Nikki. So Nikki had been a known entity around the time that Damien disappeared. And Damien had not only purchased drugs from him, but had been seen at parties with him.

and other associates of his operation. However, eight years after the informant told the police, he felt they hadn't acted on anything. In addition, Nikki had died in 2002 of a drug overdose.

In 2010, the informant went to Valerie directly, and he told her that Nikki had gone into an argument with Damien that night surrounding weed, which Damien owed money for. And according to this informant, Nikki threw a punch in anger. However, the blow had accidentally killed Damien, which I really do think this theory is quite possible. Then his body was hidden in a well-known drug den in cows for up to three weeks before he was buried alive.

near a cycle path in a sail bag. And Valerie immediately took this information to police, along with a new senior investigating officer. Searches and arrests were finally made concerning Damien's disappearance. And all of the arrests made were associates and links to Nikki McNamara. And a cycle path was searched that connected cows to the nearby town of Newport, but unfortunately nothing was found.

Unfortunately, police eventually decided that this informant was untrustworthy, and according to them, he had changed his story numerous times including details about how and where Damien was buried. However, when BBC reporter Bronwyn Monroe tracked down the informant, he told the story exactly as he had told Valerie, stating, quote,

McNamara never meant to kill Damien, it was a beating went wrong. The reporters even searched the areas the informant had told them about with cadaver dogs, however, they found nothing. And unfortunately, over the years, many people have come to the family with completely false stories and rumors.

and they felt that have just wasted their time and police resources. There was even a rumor dating back to 1999 that a notorious pedophile had kidnapped Damien. This theory still gets discussed despite the fact that police learned that he had left the island months before Damien disappeared. But more rumors kept coming. Another convicted pedophile made a false confession to killing Damien, rumors that he was a victim of a sexual assault within the drug scene, and another that he was beaten up and accidentally killed

after he tried to protect his friend from abuse. However, all of these series have been disproven in the years since Damien's disappearance. While the motive and location of Damien's body changes between different stories, Nicky remains the most consistent suspect. Police investigated his involvement between 2002 and 2005, however they couldn't find anything substantial. Which is interesting to me that he is the prime suspect yet they can't really find any link

Yeah. I think part of that is because he did die in 2002. You know, I think they couldn't, you know, directly question him. And a lot of the people he was associating with were, you know, drug addicts. So it's like they don't necessarily have...

anything of substance to say. Maybe they just discredit whatever they're saying, you know. Right. And it's too late to review CCTV footage. Exactly. That's long gone. Wonderful. Yeah, it's a little too late for a lot of things here. Counselor Lynn Hammond was told the same story as the unnamed informant and another informant claimed that they had seen Nikki burning body parts and clothing the day after Damien's disappearance.

The Golden Hills Fort, near where Damien disappeared, was a notorious open-air party venue with random raves and events constantly. By 1996, heroin was becoming very popular within the scene, and Damien had been seen partying at the venue with members of the hard drug scene. There's also this guy named Bunny Isles. Never heard that name before. Maybe if we have a boy one day, we should name him Bunny. Bunny.

I kind of like it. Maybe. Is that his real name or is that a nickname? I think it's got to be a name. It could be. I know of like girls that have been named Bunny. I've heard that before.

I will say across every article I read about this guy, it was always Bunny. There was no birth name associated with him. So maybe it was his, I don't know. I'm going to look it up. Bunny as a name. One of the dealing houses was above a butcher shop that a witness claimed he saw Damien shouting up to the night of his disappearance. However, Bunny told Valerie himself that he never sold Damien drugs and had nothing to do with his investigation. He admitted that he was arrested and his house was searched.

concerning Damien's case, but that he completely maintained that he and Nikki had nothing to do with it. So there's that. And I mean, do we really believe him? Yeah, that's probably not. We can't really believe him. I will say the one thing in his favor is he said that directly to Valerie, like to her face. And I don't know, people can lie, of course, but there's something to that.

Yeah. It is a real name, Bunny. It's an English name. Checks out. That's crazy. Yeah. All right. However, there's one more rumor to the Nicky McNamara theory. Nicky died in the home of his girlfriend, Shirley Barrett. He had overdosed on heroin and wasn't checked on in the bathroom where he had laid dead for three days. God, that is crazy to think about. Shirley's house was nicknamed the house of death for the number of people who died there due to drug overdoses.

It's just scary. My God. Yeah, and after Nikki died, a rumor began circulating that he had made a deathbed confession to killing Damien, and only one other person would have been around to hear it, and that would be Shirley Barrett. However, Shirley denied that he confessed to her, and on top of that, she was also using heroin to such an extent that she actually didn't notice that Nikki had died until three days after his overdose, if you were wondering how that happened.

So, yeah, lots, lots of heroin in that home. Private investigator Ivor Edwards took up the case in 2007 and explicitly stated that the local police did not want him to investigate the disappearance. But Ivor did spend five years investigating the Nikki theory and was able to find a man who claimed to have seen Nikki beating Damien against a wall on Bars Hill around the time that he disappeared. And another man was with him, Daniel Spencer.

So that man spoke to police in 2005 and Daniel was arrested in 2011 in connection with the case. However, he was eventually set free. He would later deny having anything to do with this case. The Hampshire Constabulary has apologized for the loss of evidence in Damien's case, as you should.

and that 1,134 people have been involved in the case, investigators, witnesses, and people of interest. They also said this to the BBC, quote, Hampshire Constabulary continues to take action to keep the case open for any new leads. A decision was made in 2013 for the files on Damian Nettles to remain with the force's major crime team for ongoing regular checks.

This move followed an extensive review of all information gathered by police during inquiries into Damien's disappearance in November of 1996. So Damien's parents, Valerie and Edward, did later move to Dallas, Texas, but still returned to the Isle of Wight to meet with people or to find new information regarding Damien's disappearance. They certainly haven't given up on him.

Valerie supported new legislation called Damien's Law, which focused on creating new protocols regarding missing young people, especially after they have spent the night drinking. And despite receiving 7,000 signatures, very impressive, the law was never passed. However, a missing persons information hub was passed in 2022, so pretty recently, and that was an element of the legislation. So that's, you know, got to take the small victories.

Valerie is still searching for anything that could help find Damien. Speaking to the BBC, she said, quote, finding his body or what's left of it would be a gift. And it might not end, you know, the distress. But if I could place him somewhere instead of thinking of every awful thing that might have happened to him and wondering if he cried for us. God, that is heartbreaking.

So anyone with new facts or information about Damien Nettles' disappearance can call the Hampshire Constabulary on 101 and quote Operation Fridgewood. Information can also be given anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800-55111. Do we all agree the most likely crime?

scenario is is that likely Mr. McNamara it went down the way that these uh witnesses said it did or these informants said I definitely lean mostly towards that although I do think there is a chance that he came I mean there's not a whole lot of evidence for this but I always think about situations like this with younger people could he have been given some type of drug

been slipped something and then just was followed and stalked and the wrong person ended up with him at the end of the night. I don't know. Could have been, yeah. But that's definitely, there's not a whole lot of

evidence for that theory. I think Nikki's theory makes the most sense. It's hard to imagine a punch hard enough to kill someone, but certainly can't happen. We talked about that recently. What case recently did we talk about? Blair Adams. Blair Adams. Yeah. Yep. That was a punch to the stomach, but still. Was he really that involved though? And like, why would he've, what would have been that scenario? Yeah.

Well, like, do you really like take money from them? And then like he owed him money. And so they were going to beat him up. And then the beating went bad.

sideways and turn into kill is it possible sure but yeah i don't know i mean i think i think it honestly is quite possible i remember in the in the bbc documentary multiple people described nikki as a very violent person now certain people like shirley pushed back on that yeah but there were many others who said like he was violent and he would turn on just anything um

However, they were all like, he would have never have killed Damien on purpose. They made sure to say that. Yeah, and...

I think what's interesting, too, is in the documentary, it's a BBC documentary. It's on YouTube if any of you guys want to go check it out. I think it's nine parts. Nine parts. They're short. They're all like 15 minutes long. Yeah, they're very short. But when they interview Shirley, I mean, she's just so defensive. She's like pissed off that they're even talking to her and like doesn't she's so defensive of him that I don't really believe anything that she's saying. And I think she was just protecting him in a lot of ways. Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, there were plenty of people who just said that he was very, very violent and the type of drugs that he was using and selling can make that even worse. So I think in a situation like that, especially when you're trying to assert dominance over someone and like teach them a lesson.

Someone younger that it certainly could have been that bad that a beating could have led to his death. And obviously they would have covered it up. I don't know. It just seems like why would the police not have figured that out sooner? Babe.

It's like, come on. No, come on to you. You're shocked by that? I mean, look at how they've handled this. No, I know. You think they would have been able to figure it out sooner? They didn't care. They were like, he ran away. He's young and he'll come back. Yeah, if that's what really happened. But I tend to lean more towards there's some other reason they just chose not to investigate this per se. That this wasn't just as simple. Maybe there was something else involved. Somebody else involved with the department or investigation. I don't know. It just seems like so dumb.

Like, come on. I think it was just dumb. Another scenario that could have happened is just far less, is just as tragic, is that he took, he just wanted to continue his night out on Cow Street. He took something. Maybe he didn't have experience with this particular substance, and he ended up falling off one of the cliffs out there.

Into the water. It's possible. It's just the chances of him not turning up are so slim. Bodies sometimes don't always come back up to the surface though. I know, but with the way that this area is set up.

Well, he could just be at the bottom of the water. He could just be at the bottom of the ocean. It just seems very unlikely. I don't know. It's possible. They say like the tides bring everything, eventually everything comes up. Right. But if he sank to the bottom, he's not going to come back up. And there's a possibility his body may not resurface. And they didn't search at all, right? No, no. Well, they did. They did many water searches specifically in that channel between east and west cows and then in

in the water and other areas. So there were water searches that... Did they dive, though? That's the thing. They didn't do it. I doubt it. I don't think they actually dived. They just searched the top of the water, so it's possible he's under the water. As far as we know, they may have done dive searches. We don't know. Yeah, I didn't see anything of them doing any diving. I don't believe... And I also think the searches, if I remember correctly, were carried out by...

The harbormaster, really. Like, the cops were involved, but it was using surface vessels to search. Right, right. So I'd go out and do this. Right, yeah. So it is possible that he sunk to the bottom. It just seems very unlikely. I don't know. Of course it's possible. Because, I mean, that's just based on so many different factors. I think it's interesting that so many people have spoken out about Nikki's violence and...

I don't know just how defensive Shirley was in those interviews that kind of got to me I don't know so maybe she's defensive because he was gender gender genuinely sorry innocent I don't know it's just such a so did they where did they put his remains did they scatter his remains that they

throw his remains in the water. Well, they believe that he could have been buried outside somewhere in the forest. And there was also someone, I don't know if we already went over it, but... Yeah, there was that one witness who said that he saw Nikki burning body parts. So he could have just burned it all up. And he seemed, that witness was also highly disturbed by the whole thing. And I don't think he just made it up. He could have, I don't know. I think I lean like 90% towards Nikki and maybe 10% towards...

Something else.

Which sucks because he's dead. So now we'll never know. Yeah, I know. It's always so frustrating. You know, that's why I do, I think a more hopeful version is at least of the police investigation. Like the way they treated Valerie was unacceptable regardless. But like you said, like perhaps they did have a working investigation case against Nikki. And they were like, well, we can't, you know, ruin this because it's going to lead us to a larger operation.

And then he just died in 2002. So they couldn't continue with that investigation and they had lost all this shit in Damien's case. Yeah. I think that's a far more hopeful version. I hope that's like what happened instead of just complete incompetence. It wasn't just like, we ignored this kid's disappearance completely. I hope you guys are right. I'm probably so cynical and annoying at this point with police, but especially when it comes to, you know, cases with minors when they have that initial...

runaway you know fuck you attitude it makes me so angry that I pretty much write them off for the rest of the investigation but I don't know that's just me it's just infuriating happens way too much

Constantly. Constantly. And it happens less and less now, but still happens in 2025. So there's that. When parents who know their child best are being like, this is out of character for my kid for them to be gone this long. No, no, no, no. It's a teenage boy. You don't know what you're talking about. They're crazy teenagers. They'll come back. The hormones. Yeah, it's just so offensive. It's like, why not go look? Why not just go start the investigation now? Yep.

But no, it doesn't. And so often when they start on that note and they don't take it seriously in the beginning, that just continues on as the investigation goes. But yeah, I don't know. It's really unfortunate. I'm also cynical from all the years of covering bad police work. But yeah, clear. It's not all bad.

No, it's not all bad. The cases that we cover, obviously. Well, the ones that are unsolved, there's usually a reason they're unsolved. Right. One way or another. There are some great officers and great investigations. Well, we don't cover the ones that are being solved. Not often. Sometimes we do. And that's always refreshing. Where the police are falling through. Yeah. Well, the Rachel Morin case is a great example of a case where they did do a lot of work. Right. And they ended up finding the guy. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So there are...

I recently covered some pretty good police work on a couple of episodes on my show, too. Well, the thing that's hard about it is there is usually in a lot of cases, there's a lot of things that just aren't released to the public. So to us, it seems like nothing is happening. But behind the scenes, there could be a lot of things happening. We just don't know about it. But in this case, no.

Maybe there was stuff behind the scenes and they just they couldn't jump full in on his case because of another investigation going on that led to a larger network of crimes and other murders and assaults. Maybe. I mean, it does happen, but I think it's probably unlikely. I think they want to protect the quaintness of this community that they didn't want a 16 year old was murdered here by a drug lord.

That's going to scare people. Yeah, just add to the already growing conversation about crime in this area anyway. Right, right. And it sounds like it has gotten much better. Yeah. After all these years, still crime-ridden. I don't know. I'm curious to hear anybody out there from the UK who's been here, personal and firsthand experience with the Isle of Wight, what your thoughts are. Because obviously, you know, we only have so much perspective here on this area. So let us know. Also let us know what you think happened to Damien Nettles.

Of course, all the information regarding his case, if you have any information, is down below in the show notes description. Anything helps in any of these investigations. But we're going to go on and wrap up today's episode there. We appreciate you so much for joining us. We do. And we'll be with the crew and I. The crew and I. We'll be your crew and I. The crew and I. Yeah.

I'm the captain of the ship today. I am the captain. But we'll be back next week. We got some great episodes coming up. Yeah, we do. Very interesting ones. I'm really looking forward to next week's episode. Excited to dive in on. But we'll see you guys next time.

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