The Boy Who Disappeared

On 2 November 1996, sixteen-year-old Damien Nettles went out for the evening with friends in his home town of Cowes, Isle of Wight. CCTV recorded him in a chip shop at approximately 23:40 and then again on the High Street just after midnight. He hasn’t been seen since. His mother Valerie has spent twenty-two years in anguish, trying to find out what happened to her son. An initial botched police investigation, the untimely death of a key suspect from a drug overdose and rumour and speculation about the island’s drug culture have added to the difficulty in ascertaining the truth.

Five men and a woman were arrested in 2011, and kept on bail over an eighteen-month period, but were released without charge. In 2016 BBC3 broadcast a documentary profiling the case, which helped put Damien’s disappearance back in the spotlight but, despite years of research by journalists and a private investigator, Damien’s vanishing remains a mystery. Now, for the first time in book form, Valerie Nettles tells the full, perplexing story of her son’s disappearance. Someone must know what happened to Damien. Will the truth ever emerge from the shadows?