Episode 56: Missing and Unsolved: Damien Nettles

Today we are heading out to the Isle of Wight where a 16 year old boy disappears after a night out under strange circumstances. After leaving a party and pursuing some late night snacks with a friend, he is spotted by various witnesses before vanishing completely into the night. 27 years later, several arrests, and still no answers, his family are still left wondering what happened to their son who was walking down a busy street one minute and gone the next. Today on The Odder, we are talking about the disappearance of Damien Nettles. Let’s go. 

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Music Credit
"Double Drift" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Main Theme:
"Dream Catcher" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcript

1. Hello and welcome to The Odder Podcast. I’m your host Madison Paige and today we are heading out to the Isle of Wight where a 16 year old boy disappears after a night out under strange circumstances. After leaving a party and pursuing some late night snacks with a friend, he is spotted by various witnesses before vanishing completely into the night. 27 years later, several arrests, and still no answers, his family are still left wondering what happened to their son who was walking down a busy street one minute and gone the next. Today on The Odder, we are talking about the disappearance of Damien Nettles. Let’s go. 
2. Well, well, well, if it isn’t my lovely Odders how is everyone doing today? Did we all enjoy the last episode on Shergar and the kidnap, ransome, and most likely murder of the famous racehorse? Are we all a lot more versed in horse gambling etiology? Excellent! If you really enjoyed it or if you didn’t, please leave a rating and review, they really do help! For the returning listeners, welcome back, for the new listeners, welcome welcome to The Odder podcast where we are a trail mix of all things unknown, unsolved, and just plain odd. If you have an idea for an episode you think would be fun, good news! I do listener requests so if you want your own personalized episode, you can send me an email at theodderpod@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you and know what you want to hear from me! Small little note, it was brought to my attention that there was some odd cracking and popping in the last episode over some of the audio. That is coming from my end, not your tech so I apologize if that dampened any of your listening experience and if you yelled at your earphone over it give it an apology and a little kiss from me. We have been working to resolve the issue but if you do notice some strangeness in future recordings, don’t hesitate to let me know. Today, we are delving back into our missing and unsolved case for another requested missing case, Damien Nettles. This case is especially fascinating for the number of arrests involved but not actual charges relating to his disappearance. So settle in and get comfortable as we talk about what happened on the night of November 2nd, 1996. 
3. Damien Nettles was 16 years old when he and a friend, named Chris Boon, went to a party on the saturday night of november 2nd, 1996. He had been given permission to stay out until midnight and was given a ride to the party by his father Ed. Damien was known for being a fun loving guy and making his friends laugh. He was often regarded as the life of the party and was noted for always wearing a pair of Doc Martins and enjoying the band Nirvana in particular. Music was such a passion of his that he had taught himself to play guitar and joined a band where he wrote his own lyrics and played covers of a wide range of bands. 
4. While normally this love of music may have inspired him to stay all night at a party in the company of good music and friends, he and a buddy decided to leave early and head over to West Cowes via the ferry after buying some cider. Damien was dressed in blue jeans and a black fleece and was seen leaving the party carrying a black camera although no one is sure where this camera came from as he did not bring it to the party with him and it has never been recovered. Chris and Damien entered an establishment called Yorkies which is a high end fish and chip shop but left before they could order anything. The pair then attempted to get into a few pubs but failed. Chris decided to call it a night and parted ways with Damien at Northwood Park to head home. Damien then returned to High Street, bought some chips at Yorkis, and was later seen walking about with them until just after midnight. 
5. Now all of our reports of Damien during this time come from various eyewitness sources who claim that Damien appeared heavily drunk and somewhat confused. One witness claimed to see Damien attempting to open the doors of a blue Ford Fiesta possibly around 11:15 PM in the Harbour Lights pub car park. Someone else claims to have possibly seen him at a bus stop near one of the Co-Operative Group Supermarkets where he entered a bus but left after talking to the driver. This witness claimed to have seen Damien with the camera and that he had tried to take a picture of the driver before thanking them as they exited the bus. Someone else stated they were waiting in their car for their kid to be dropped off by a different bus when they saw someone who could have been Damien waiting chips, crouched down with his legs and arms tucked in close to his body. They then claimed that a figure approached them and said “They are watching us” before clearing raing off their car window and walking off towards the High Street. 
6. When Damien did not return home, his family attempted to locate him but remember this was before cell phones were a common carry around so after their own search turned up nothing, they reported him missing on the afternoon of November 3rd. His disappearance was not taken seriously by the police who mistakenly listed him as 19 years of age and refused the families request for land or air searches or the help of search dogs. In fact the family would complain that the police would not only lose critical evidence but fail to implement vital missing persons procedures that would result in them taking the case into their own hands.
7. The family went to local businesses to ask about any CCTV that might have featured Damien. This footage was collected by the police but some key shots featured Damien walking along the high street and another inside the chip shop that showed him surrounded by strangers that were later identified as Army men. These tapes would later be lost or edited by police who would splice off or edit the footage including a section of the chip shop tape in which a police car can be seen passing the glass which was later removed. When Valerie Nettles, Damien’s mother, called the station a few days later to ask for any updates, she was told she was hampering the investigation and to stop calling them.
8. The case would be shuffled around for many years with many changes in officers but the continued mishandling by police caused the family to lose hope in the system doing them any justice in the case. 
9. In regards to the theories about what happened to Damien, there have been a few. 
10. One emerged stating that he may have fallen into the sea during his night out but his mother has dismissed this. 
11. She and several others are of the belief that Damien’s disappearance has something to do with local drug gangs. While Cowes has an upscale reputation, this does not mean that there are not underhanded dealings going on. This is plausible as, at the time of his disappearance, Damien’s ex-girlfriend, a girl named Abbie Scott, reported that she believed that he was keeping some secrets from everyone and did believe this could be drug use. An allegation arose that a drug dealer by the name of Bunny Iles had possibly sold drugs to Damien on the night he disappeared. 
12. In 2002, a possible deathbed confession reignited this theory. A man by the name of Nicky McNamara, who was a local drug dealer in the area at the time of Damien’s death, was rumored to have made a confession shortly before his death of a heroin overdose that he played a part in the disappearance of Damien Nettles. This was further bolstered by an informant who came forward the same year to the Hampshire Constabulary major crime department who took over the case from the local jurisdiction and entered the details into the Holmes computer system. This informant had a connection to McNamara in the 1990’s and reported he had told them what happened to Nettles then. According to this informant, who has remained unnamed, McNamara was angered by Damien in an argument over drugs and he accidentally struck him in a fatal blow. McNamara then hid Damien’s body in a drug den for three weeks before burying it in Cowes. The informant grew frustrated when nothing was done with this information and took it to Valerie Nettles in 2010. Valerie took the information to the police and they finally arranged investigations, searches, and made several arrests but eventually concluded that the informant could not be trusted. 
13. So far in the Damien Nettles case, eight arrests for conspiracy to murder have been made but all were released with no charges. In May of 2011, five arrests were made including a 48 year old man from Sandown, a 45 year old person from Cowes, a 50 year old person from Newport, a 37 year old person from Ryde, and a 40 year old person from Kent but all were released on Bail. In July 2011, a 38 year old man was arrested in connection from East Cowes but was also shortly released. On November 1st, 2011, a 44 year old man and a 35 year old woman were both arrested on suspicion of conspiracy for murder and were linked to an address in MArsh Road on the Isle of Wight. The police searched the address hoping to find either Damien or evidence to his location but turned up nothing. 
14. In October of 2012, the Hampshire Police offered a 20,000 pound reward for information that could potentially lead to the discovery of Damien’s body or the conviction of the perpetrator. This reward was held up for a year and even though they received several tips, nothing concrete held up. The media got involved and interviewed the family but after a year the reward was removed by the police even after requests from the family to keep it up. 
15. In August 2013, a local business man posted his own 10,000 pound reward for further information but asked to remain anonymous. Unfortunately, his reward also failed to gather any further evidence in the locating of Damien.
16. Many stories have emerged about where Damien’s body may be located and his family has endeavored to investigate as many as they can. A site in the Parkhurst Forest that was divulged by the informant was of particular interest but the Hampshire Constabulary and the Forestry Commission both refused to provide permission for the family to dig. This led to many members of the public protesting and participating in a march to convince the police to investigate both this site and an area in Gurnard. However, the police continue to decline, stating untrustworthy sources. 
17. Friends and family began digging in an area where they were told that he might have been buried on their own time and with their own resources and these attempts were filmed and published on Youtube. However, they did not find Damien. 
18. Damien Nettles remains missing. The McNamara rumor is the one that persists with the most strength as to what happened to him. His family and friends have fought valiantly to get his story told, not just against the media but also against a police system that has not been working with them. Valerie Nettles has been disheartened by the police's management of the case. Evidence was lost, records were misplaced, the call logs made to the police on the night of the disappearance no longer exist, and the ones who had those on duty that night have also been erased. Their is also their error in listing Damien as a lost adult originally instead of a lost child. Valerie has filed a list of 30 key complaints about the mishandling of the case which was placed under investigation by the very place she reported so there is not much hope for corrected behavior. The family engaged the help of a private investigator pro bono in 2007. 
19. Damien Nettles Disappearance has been made into a BBC Three eight part documentary called Unsolved- The Boy Who Disappeared where it was revealed not only that key suspects were able to obtain copies of the witness statements but have been known to intimidate those witnesses. Valerie Nettles also wrote a book about her son’s disappearance under the same name. She has also organized several events over the years to bring awareness to her son’s case and incorporated his love of music into it in the form of concerts, carols, and marches. 
20. Damien’s family has not given up hope to find out what happened to him and are still working to keep his name in the media. Damien Richard Nettles went missing on November 2nd, 1996. He was 16 years old at the time of his disappearance and would be 44 years old today. He is 6’3, slim build, had short brown hair that was shaved at the back with brown eyes. He was last seen wearing black fleece jacket, dark blue jeans, and black boots. He disappeared from the Cowes area, Isle of Wight. If you have any information about his disappearance you can contact the Hampshire Constabulary by phoning 101 or emailing operation.ridgewood@hampshire.pnn.police.uk, or anonymously by phoning the Crimestoppers charity at 0800-555-111 or you could contact Valerie Nettles at valnettles@damiennettles.uk.
21. You can find any and all information about Damien and his case by visiting the page set up by his family at damiennettles.uk 
22. Well, that’s all for this episode. So what do you think? So what do you think happened to Damien? What was going on with the police in this episode? What do you think was up with the guy in the car? Let us know what you think on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and leave a review. The Odder Pod is also on TikTok. Come follow us there! Have a suggestion for a show? Send me an email at theodderpod@gmail.com with your request and whether you’d like me to mention your name, your alias, or nothing at all. Remember this is The Odder Side so give me something cool, creepy, or confusing to deep dive for you. If you liked the show, leave us a review! They really help! Give the documentary a watch, it's really very good. The Odder Podcast posts every other Thursday. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time on The Odder side.