“Murd3red on a pub crawl? The dark secret surrounding Damien Nettles – 29 years without a trace”
November 2nd, 1996 is a special day for Damian Nettles. He is 16 years old and this evening he will be allowed to stay out a little longer for the first time. His mother usually insists that he be home by 10 pm at the latest, but on this day he finally managed to convince her that he could stay out for a few hours longer. “Until midnight. That’s the agreement.” A small party is taking place at a friend’s house. There aren’t even ten people there, so it’s all very relaxing. But Damian Nettles will not be going to this party that evening. His route will take him across a ferry, a busy shopping street, and several pickups.
He won’t be home at midnight. Instead, there will be a final sign of life at 00:06 before Damian Nettles disappears forever on the Isle of Wight, his favorite British holiday destination, a place actually known for its idyllic landscapes and tranquility. But apparently, there are secrets on this island. Secrets that remain hidden even 30 years later.
It’s finally gotten warm here in the last few months. That way you at least have a bit of a holiday vibe during your lunch break or after work. After all, it’s still a while until the holidays, if we even go away at all. As is well known, you can certainly make it beautiful at home too, e.g. by playing with the Summer Cocktails from Holy. Naturally alcohol-free and, as always, super easy to mix at home. This year again there are four cocktail flavors with a dose of energy. If Energy isn’t really your thing, you’re not alone. But you’re still in good hands at Holy, because with my code Insolito you still get a 10% discount on your order, not just on cocktails, but on the entire range. As always, the Deluxe Starter Set is particularly worthwhile, as it includes a shaker and 57 servings of Holy to try out. Currently, every Deluxe Starter Set also includes a free mixed box of cocktail flavors. This would be the perfect opportunity to save yourself the hassle of lugging bottles and crates around in the heat and simply have your summer drinks delivered to your home. As always, you can find a link to Holy below in the provided comment and in the info box. And as I said, with my code Insolito you get a 10% discount on your order. So treat yourselves and many thanks to Holy for your support. Now, let’s get started with today’s video. Before Damian heads off to the party, he makes a quick call to his girlfriend.
She lives on the English mainland in Seaford. That makes it all the more important for Damian to at least get in touch briefly and tell her over the phone how much he misses him. The Nettles family settled on the Isle of Wight. It lies off the south coast of Great Britain, pretty much opposite the port city of Southampton. The island is about 35 km long and up to 20 km wide. In the mid-1990s, approximately 120,000 people lived here. For many Britons, the Isle of Wight is a popular tourist destination, although more so in the summer. During the autumn and winter months, the locals largely have the island to themselves. After the phone call with his girlfriend, Damian doesn’t need long to get ready for the party. He simply puts on comfortable jeans and a black fleece jacket. He is not taking a bag or anything else with him. Damian’s father drives him to the East Cowes area around 7 pm. Damian’s friend Chris Boon lives there. From there, the boys set off together for the party at around 7:10 pm. Davy, Chris’s younger brother, is also there.
Like I said, the party is rather cozy. There are three couples there that evening. Only Damian is competing solo. Sometime during the evening, Damian gets a small black camera in his hands. He carries it with him all evening, even when he and Chris leave the party at about 9:15 pm. Damian has probably become a bit bored as the third or in this case seventh wheel on the wagon, so Chris persuaded him to wander around with him a little longer. They set off for Aldis, a small shop very close by. Damian buys a few bottles of cider there. The boys aren’t going back to the party. Instead, they take a ferry from East Cowes to West Cowes, which departs at 9:45 pm. The ferries are practically an integral part of the public transport system on the Isle of Wight. Witnesses who saw the two boys on the ferry later described them as talkative, but the teenagers didn’t seem really drunk. Just like two teenagers spending a fun evening together. You’re probably wondering why Damian and Chris chose to go to the West Cowes area in the first place. That’s a good question, especially considering what Damian will be up to later that evening.
I’m only talking about Damian, not his buddy Chris, but not because the two of them would split up in West Cowes, at least not really. Looking at the police report on the disappearance of Damian Nettles, it states that between his arrival in West Cowes and 00:06, he was allegedly spending his time visiting various pubs on the high street. Damian and Chris are 16. So they really have no business being around the pubs. While those under 16 are allowed to enter accompanied by adults to eat, sit around or drink alcohol, entry is generally only permitted from the age of 18. Chris, who still looks quite young, has absolutely no chance of getting in anywhere. With Damian, it’s a bit different. At 1.95 m, he is quite tall and could pass for an adult if you don’t look too closely. Chris usually stays outside, while Damian goes from one pub to the next. However, not to have a drink, but to ask the staff about his sister Sarah. Chris later reported this, and someone from one of the pubs also clearly remembers that this tall teenager came in and asked for Sarah.
The thing is, Damian actually knows perfectly well that Sarah isn’t in West Cowes this weekend. She’s not even on the Isle of Wight. Sarah is on the mainland in Portsmouth. To this day, no one can explain for sure why Damian would have asked the pub staff about Sarah. Perhaps it was simply an excuse to get in. If Damian had been kicked out again because of his age, it might have been less unpleasant if he had simply pretended to be looking for someone. But then the question remains how things should work with Chris. Would Damian simply have wanted to buy drinks and take them outside to drink with Chris? If so, why? Damian was able to buy cider in a shop without any stress. He could have simply done that again without risking being kicked out of a pub. Nevertheless, according to witnesses, he went from restaurant to restaurant without ordering anything or sitting down. At 10 p.m., someone is sitting in the Duke of York pub. Just a few minutes later, a surveillance camera films Damian entering Yorkie’s. He goes inside, picks up a salt shaker that’s lying around, puts it down again, and leaves again. Ten minutes later, a witness sees Damian opposite this snack bar, in front of a restaurant called The Arcade. Ten minutes later, another witness sees Damian in front of a pub nearby. However, explicitly alone without Chris.
According to the witness, Damian sits down in front of the pub and eats a portion of fries. This ties in with what a female employee noticed there 10 minutes later. At this point, it is now 10:30 PM. The employee informs Damian that he has to leave. He should set off immediately after he has finished his fries. As Chris later stated, he no longer felt like continuing the tour through West Cowes at around this time. He is cold, so Damian suggests they head home. The boys leave the city center together. Their paths diverge shortly before Northwood Park on Granville Road. Chris goes straight home. He assumes that Damian will cross the park and thus also return directly home. But he doesn’t. He walks in the exact opposite direction from which he and Chris just came, back towards Cowes High Street. And there he continued his strange tour, as we know from further witness statements. We are in an enclosed space. At that time, the Isle of Wight was home to a maximum of 120,000 people. In the evenings, there’s a lot going on on Cowes High Street, but not so much that you could simply disappear into a crowd of people.
Damian, with his height of almost 2 meters, inevitably attracts attention, and on this evening not only his stature is noticed, but above all his strange behavior. Reconstructions based on witness statements should always be treated with caution, but I think it’s worthwhile here to fill in the timeline directly with the sightings, because several witness reports later stated that Damian seemed intoxicated, spaced out, as a BBC article even put it. Damian is seen by an acquaintance at 10:45 PM. He’s hanging around on the high street and eating another portion of fries. The acquaintance and Damian go together to Pub Fawcett, but Damian is sent away again. The acquaintance does not see him again that evening. But he has another acquaintance. She sees the 16-year-old at about 11 p.m., when she herself is on her way to the Harbour Lights pub. Damian is seen at this exact pub at 11:10 PM. There, Damian asks a witness for a cigarette. The witness observes Damian walking to a blue Ford Fiesta in the Harbour Lights parking lot at around 11:15 pm. The car obviously doesn’t belong to Damian. He reportedly tried to open the car doors. Unsuccessful, of course.
Five minutes later, Damian appears at the Crown pub. He tries to get in through the side entrance, claiming he is looking for his sister. Then he goes back to Yorkie’s, the snack bar. There he buys another portion of fries. Remember this visit to the snack bar in particular. We’ll come back to that later. He was seen at 11:40 pm on the bench on the High Street.
Damian returns to the Harbour Lights pub at 11:45 PM. There he asks for cigarettes. Five minutes later, a member of the pub’s staff sees him in front of the store. Damian is supposed to be talking to someone sitting in a Ford Fiesta. It is unclear whether it is the same car that Damian had previously tried to get into. At approximately 11:50 PM, someone sees Damian at a bus stop near the barrier. A bus arrives and the 16-year-old even gets on. However, only to briefly speak to the driver, or rather, to try and take a picture of him with the camera he had brought from the party. Then Damian says thank you and gets off the bus again. A short time later, just before midnight, Damian is noticed by another witness at the exact same location. He’s sitting hunched over a portion of fries and looks pretty exhausted. This witness observed Damian for a moment longer than other witnesses. He is sitting in his car himself, waiting for his foster son. It is quite likely that he really did see Damian. His description matches Damian’s, and he even notices a camera the boy has with him. Damian also seems to notice that the witness is watching him, because he walks directly towards the car. He leans against it and speaks to the driver through the lowered window. The teenager seems quite dazed, and the witness will later remember exactly what he says. “They are watching us. They are watching us.” Then Damian wipes the rain-soaked car window and turns around. He heads towards Peerview on the High Street. At 00:06 a.m., a surveillance camera on the High Street records him. Then Damian Nettels disappeared and was never seen again.
If Damian had tried to go home from the High Street, he would have had two possible routes. One through the park, where he had previously said goodbye to Chris and then made his way back to the High Street. He could have walked along the coast, though. However, it is questionable whether he would have taken this route on the night of November 2nd. It was quite unpleasant, stormy, and rainy. Along the coast, that would have been pretty much the opposite of a relaxing stroll, especially since Damian was only wearing a fleece jacket.
Wherever Damian ended up after his foray down the High Street, he never arrived home. Damian’s sister was the first to notice this on the morning of November 3rd. Not Sarah, who is on the mainland in Portsmouth, but Damian’s younger sister, 9-year-old Melissa. She is the one who discovers in the morning that Damian’s bed is not only empty, but that he apparently didn’t sleep in it at all. After this discovery, Damian’s mother Valerie first calls Chris. Her son had been out with him the previous evening. But when she hears that Damian didn’t stay overnight, she starts to worry a lot. She tries to remain calm for now and calls Damian’s friends. But the 16-year-old cannot be found. The family is also searching outside in the neighborhood. When all of that proves fruitless, Valerie Nettels goes to the local police around 3 p.m. to file a missing person report. But action won’t be taken there immediately. Damian’s mother would later make serious accusations against the police, because in her opinion, her son’s disappearance was not taken seriously at first. She and the rest of the family were the ones who went from door to door asking if anyone had seen Damian, not the police.
We cannot independently verify this allegation, of course. However, this fits with the fact that it is not the police who find the camera footage from the night of Damian’s disappearance, but a friend of Damian’s mother. She is active in local politics and therefore well-connected on the island. When she learns that, according to Valerie, the police are doing little, she turns directly to the shop owners along the high street to get hold of the camera footage, and she succeeds. What’s particularly interesting here is his longest visit to the snack bar at around 11:40 pm, about half an hour before he finally disappears. And the video even has sound, so you can not only see but also hear that something seems to be wrong with Damian. After the 16-year-old leaves the snack bar with his fries, the employee who served him talks to a colleague about him. “The guy just now wasn’t drunk, but on drugs.” And the fact that he came to this decision is not entirely incomprehensible.
Damian seems completely out of sorts in the video. He can’t string a coherent sentence together, even though he briefly chatted with the four customers standing in front of his shop before placing his order. However, this does not appear to be typical English small talk. The encounter looks quite friendly. Only when it is Damian’s turn to order does he seem to experience obvious word-finding difficulties, and half an hour after these recordings, his trail is completely lost. However, this is another point where the police do not act immediately. Nettels’ girlfriend, who discovered the recording, naturally passes it on to the police. But when they see the video, they seem satisfied that the encounter between Damian and the other customers looks harmless. It was only years later that the five men were questioned, when an internal review revealed that they had never been spoken to. Sure, better late than never, but when a minor disappears, it’s definitely better to be early than late. Not because the men from the snack bar were suspicious, but because they could certainly have said at the beginning of November 1996 whether anything had caught their attention that evening, even if it was just other people behaving strangely on the high street or something like that. But that didn’t happen, and the witnesses were only questioned later, when their memories may have long since faded. About half an hour after his visit to the snack bar, a public camera recorded Damian on the High Street. That was at 00:06. This last video has since disappeared from police custody. This is likely to be particularly painful for the family. At least those were the last pictures of Damian alive. Now they are lost, as the official word is. Just like the 16-year-old himself.
According to the police, a standard investigation has been launched to quickly solve Damian’s disappearance. However, some oversights are clear, as important police documents are also missing, such as the log of calls received by the island police on the night of Damian’s disappearance. As well as various police reports and self-reported information about which officers were on duty that night. Even though the police do little at first, it is clear to Damian’s family that something terrible must have happened to him. His family considers it impossible that Damian simply ran away from home. He didn’t have anything with him aside from the camera that he took to the house party. Incidentally, this camera never resurfaced. Damian could not have left the Isle of Wight on the evening of his disappearance. The ferry to the mainland was no longer in operation at that late hour. Something must have happened on the island. And now we’ll take a look at what that might have been.
First of all, according to Damian’s relatives, the police have a very clear idea of what happened to the 16-year-old. It is a plausible assumption that could partially explain why the search efforts are said to have had so many gaps. It is said that Damian Nettles probably chose to take the route home along the water for some reason, and that he fell and drowned. It’s fitting that the High Street and the coast are located right next to each other. It would only take a few seconds to stagger from the road to the edge of the water and possibly fall in. To further examine this theory, a short geography lesson is worthwhile. Off the coast of the town of Cowes lies one of the busiest waterways on the British coast. The tidal movements are complex. Cowes is located directly on the Solent, the strait between the Isle of Wight and the British mainland. But despite all the complexity, the local conditions are also well documented. Damian’s family contacted the harbor master so that he could give his expert opinion. So he set about studying the nautical charts and tables and pulling out his calculator. The harbor master has calculated the tidal movements, the tidal currents, and their speed. He comes to a clear conclusion. If Damian Nettles had really fallen into the water on the night of November 2nd to 3rd, 1996, the current would have washed his body back to shore. The water was naturally freezing cold in November, so it can take a few days longer for a body to wash ashore again, because cold water slows down many processes that cause a body to float again. The most important point here is the so-called gas formation. However, throughout November and beyond, Damian’s body was never found. A search along the island’s coast also yielded no results. The harbor master considers it virtually impossible that Damian could have been washed directly from the strait into the English Channel.
But what else could have happened to Damian? In 1999, one of the rumors surrounding the disappearance of Damian Nettles reached the police. It is said that someone lived on the island in 1996. It is speculated that Damian may have fallen victim to him. The investigators are following this lead. However, it turns out that the man left the Isle of Wight a few months before Damian’s disappearance. This theory is therefore ruled out. A similar lead emerged in 2002. A criminal man himself admitted to the police that he had been involved in a murder on the Isle of Wight in the 1990s. He apparently also provided specific details, because the police subsequently searched a field on the island. However, nothing was found there. It was later determined that the man had most likely lied. It is quite curious that the speculation and rumors surrounding foul play as a motive for the crime do not end here. A friend of Damian’s later claimed that Damian had been the victim of a sexual assault that turned out to be fatal. He was then buried near Northwood House. However, at the time of this claim, this friend had fallen into drug addiction. He is said to have made this statement to medical personnel. He later denied ever having said that. Yet another rumor from the island claims that Damian intervened when a friend was about to be assaulted. He may then have been beaten up and died as a result. It was impossible to even find out where this rumor came from and how and when it spread. There is essentially only one theory that provides substantial evidence, and that is the following.
I think there is no doubt that Damian behaved rather strangely on the evening of his disappearance. So, people are asking around in his circle to see if anyone noticed anything unusual about Damian in the months prior. And his ex-girlfriend Abby actually had something to report. She was with Damian for a year and a half until they separated in July 1996. That’s a full four to five months before the 16-year-old disappeared. Nevertheless, Abby says that towards the end of the relationship she noticed that Damian had somehow changed. She reports that she saw traits of someone else in him. He met up with another group of people who were a little older than him. There were obviously things he kept to himself. It could have been about drugs. I don’t know. A few weeks after splitting up with Abby, Damian got together with Gemma, his girlfriend from the mainland. She, in turn, told the BBC that they hadn’t even investigated Abby’s suspicion that it might have involved drugs. At least that’s not how it seemed when Gemma was questioned, because none of the investigators asked her about possible drug use by Damian. This will probably only really come to light in 2002, six years after Damian’s disappearance. At that time, the case was handed over to another police department, and around the same time an informant contacted the investigators. This informant claims to have had good contact in the 1990s with a man named Nicki McNamara, a local drug dealer on the Isle of Wight. The man apparently suggests that this McNamara might have something to do with Damian’s disappearance. McNamara is said to have dealt primarily on Cowes High Street, focusing on the pubs. That fits Damian’s movement pattern that night almost eerily well. A witness claims to have even seen Nicki McNamara on the high street of Cowes late in the evening of Damian’s disappearance. Right where the boy was last seen. The same witness claims to have seen McNamara light a large fire in an old oil drum on the afternoon of the following day. He saw McNamara adding more wood, but also something else that he dragged behind him and then picked up from the ground. Something that looked like a sleeve or an arm. Years later, the informant even contacted Damian’s mother, Valerie, personally. He felt that the police did not take him seriously. What he told us was quite shocking. The man claims to know that Damian is no longer alive. Nicki McNamara accidentally killed him during an argument. The two had an argument about cannabis. According to reports, Damian apparently owed McNamara money for marijuana, and a confrontation occurred on November 2nd. Fists were also thrown, and McNamara fatally struck Damian. Furthermore, the informant states that Damian’s body was stored in a drug stash in Cowes for about three weeks. After that, they put him in a sail bag and buried him by a bicycle path. Valerie Nettels and the rest of the family are naturally deeply shaken by this information. So they went to the police themselves to find out if the matter had been investigated. A cycle path on the island is actually being searched. It leads from Cowes to Newport. However, the police warn Damian’s family not to place too much faith in the informant. The man is simply not reliable. It is said that they have already made preliminary decisions based on the information. When nothing was found, the informant changed his statements. He would now claim that Damian was buried elsewhere. The lead around McNamara is, in principle, being pursued quite seriously. A friend of McNamara’s, Bunny E., is even briefly taken into custody and his apartment is searched. McNamara himself died of an overdose in 2002. It was only after his death that his name was even linked to Damian’s disappearance. He was therefore unable to comment on the allegations against him. Bunny E., on the other hand, met with Damian’s mother in the mid-2010s for a conversation that was also filmed. Bunny promises Damian’s mother that he has 101% nothing to do with her son’s disappearance and that he is 99.99% sure that Nicki McNamara is not involved either.
Following McNamara’s death, there were rumors that he had made a confession before his death. A deathbed confession, as it is called, that is, a confession made on one’s immediate deathbed. The problem with this rumor is that McNamara never had a deathbed. He died in the bathroom of a house known on the island as the House of Death. Besides McNamara, two other people are also said to have died there. The house belonged at that time to a woman named Shirley, who has something of an ominous legendary status on the island. She is known to the police and everyone on the island knows that it’s best not to mess with her. Just like McNamara himself, she probably belonged to the local drug scene in the 90s and consumed drugs regularly. She denies that McNamara told her anything about Damian Nettles before his death. She herself was so drugged up that she reportedly only noticed McNamara was dead after three days. It is therefore quite plausible that the alleged deathbed confession is probably just an island rumor. When reporters ask Shirley about the night of McNamara’s death, she doesn’t feel like talking about it. But it also implies that besides her and McNamara, there were other people present, and therefore more people to whom he could theoretically have confessed something. Shirley refuses to reveal any names or further details. Nevertheless, their position is perfectly clear. She knows nothing about Damian Nettles. Nevertheless, the evidence pointing towards McNamara continues to mount. A local resident stated that he saw Nicki McNamara pushing a boy against a wall at the Bars Hillen area, around the time Damian disappeared. However, this local resident only spoke to the police in 2005, 9 years after Damian’s disappearance and 3 years after McNamara’s death. The witness said that after such a long time, he could no longer say for sure exactly when he had made this observation. He refers to another man named Daniel Spencer, who is also said to have witnessed the incident. He in turn is an acquaintance of Nicki McNamara. For a BBC documentary, journalists track down ten acquaintances of Daniel Spencer. They all suspect that he knows something about the supposed death of Daniel Nettles. Apparently, Daniel Spencer often talks about Damian when he’s drunk. He is said to have once remarked in this context that “where there is no corpse, there is no crime.” One of the acquaintances claims that Daniel Spencer gained access to confidential police documents. How it happened could not be reconstructed. But Spencer is said to have gotten his hands on the transcript of the statement, which says he was present when McNamara pushed Damian against a wall. When journalists began to question how someone like Spencer could gain access to such confidential investigative documents, the police department declined to comment. So he’s not denying the whole thing either. Daniel Spencer himself, however, denies having any information about Damian’s disappearance or knowing anything about the alleged incident. It should also be noted that Nicki McNamara is no stranger to Damian’s family. Damian also has a younger brother named James. Years after Damian’s disappearance, James, then a young teenager, went to a party. McNamara suddenly appeared there. He had asked someone else who James was. When he was told he was James Nettels, McNamara suddenly became nervous and demanded that the host throw James and his friends out. Damian’s friend Chris, with whom he was out that night, says he is quite certain that Damian did not know Nicki McNamara and therefore never bought drugs from him. But he believes he knows where he always bought it, namely from none other than Bunny, who in turn had business dealings with Nicki McNamara. So, in principle, it’s possible that Bunny might have referred Damian to McNamara when he himself had nothing to sell. Isn’t there the fact that Bunny denies ever having met Damian or sold him drugs? It seems that Bunny once lived for a while in a house where Chris believes Damian got his marijuana. However, Bunny did have a roommate for a while, namely Nicki McNamara. So perhaps Damian was indeed his dealer. Bunny E., Nicki McNamara, and Daniel Spencer were apparently all part of a drug clique. The only question is whether these grown adults could really have had such a violent argument with a 16-year-old that he died as a result.
However, what I’m wondering, even assuming the rumors are true that McNamara allegedly killed Damian in an argument on November 2nd, is what about Damian’s behavior earlier? Why did he go from pub to pub in West Cowes? If there’s any truth to the McNamara theory, perhaps Damian even looked for McNamara in the pubs to get more weed or maybe other drugs? But why does he suddenly seem so withdrawn during his visit to Yorkie’s snack bar? What happened between his friend Chris’s farewell and these snack bar sightings? Did he get his hands on any substances? And if so, by whom? Unfortunately, I have my doubts as to whether we will ever find out. There were several arrests in the case at the beginning of 2010. The names and reasons for the suspicion were never revealed. Only the following key data is known. In May 2011, five men were taken into custody on suspicion of murder. Four of the men come from the Isle of Wight, one from the mainland from the county of Kent. At the time of Damian’s disappearance, the youngest of them was 22 years old, the oldest 35. In July, another man from the island, who was 23 at the time, was arrested. In November 2011, a man and a woman were taken into custody for conspiracy to commit murder. The man was 29 at the time of Damian’s disappearance, the woman 20. As mentioned, their identities are unfortunately unknown. However, the woman is definitely not Shirley, Nicki McNamara’s girlfriend. The age doesn’t match. We are in 2011, so suddenly there are eight arrests in the Damian Nettles case, but unfortunately not a single one of these arrests led to an indictment and therefore it is still unclear what happened to Damian.
Five years after Damian’s disappearance without a trace, his family has left the Isle of Wight. The Nettles now live in Dallas. But even across the distance, 30 years later, Damian’s mother is still tirelessly trying to solve her son’s case. Despite the move, she kept Damian’s things, his stuffed animals, and his Christmas stocking, which still hangs next to his siblings’ by the fireplace every year. Although Damian has been missing for almost 30 years, he still determines every single day of her life, as Valerie describes it. She just always thinks about him. As she reports, the police have since apologized for the investigative failures and admitted that Damian most likely fell victim to a crime. For Valerie and Damian’s father and his sisters, this is likely to be little consolation, as the fate of the then 16-year-old remains completely unclear. Many clues certainly point to Nicki McNamara. On the other hand, much of it is hearsay, and it came out years after Damian’s disappearance, when McNamara was already dead. If so many people supposedly knew something, it is astonishing that they only spoke up after McNamara’s death. Were they so afraid of him, or were there more people involved than the arrest suggests? I’m really curious to hear your theories about this case. Feel free to write your opinion in the comments, because any interaction increases the likelihood that the video will be suggested to people who are not yet subscribed to Solito. And if you would like to support me further, please subscribe to my Patreon channel, where you will receive the videos 24 hours earlier, uncensored and without advertising. Otherwise, there’s not much more to say. I wish you a good morning, noon, or evening, or whenever you watch the video, and hope to see you again in the next video. Until then, bye everyone. Da.
