Damien Nettles

In 1996, Damien Nettles was just 16. On 2 November, he was on a night out in Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, with his friend Chris. The two teens had been at a party when they got bored, bought some cider, then decided to try their luck getting served in pubs. It didn’t go well, and they called it a night. Chris went home, while Damien headed to the high street and bought some chips. He was seen stumbling around until a few minutes past midnight. Then he simply vanished.

His mother, Valerie, his father, sisters and brother still don’t know what happened. Nor do his friends. Nor – it seems – does anyone in the town. For almost 20 years, despite police investigations, arrests, private detectives and media reports, there have been no sightings of him. No one has been charged with any crime, and his body has never been found.

“The police investigation was mishandled from day one,” she says, citing delays, the fact that the police lost vital CCTV footage of her son’s last moments, and that arrests and house searches did not take place until almost 14 years after he went missing. The police seemed to assume he had fallen into the sea, but the harbour master says that if that were the case, the body would have washed up long ago. Munro says the police did spend time and money on the investigation, making arrests and excavating possible burial sites.