Abbie
The first interview excerpt that I want to examine is from
episode 1 between Bronagh Munro (BM), one of the Unsolved reporters,
and Abbie, Damien’s ex-girlfriend. Damien and Abbie separated in the July of
1996. Here's the link to episode 1 on YouTube so that you can watch the interview that accompanies my analyses should you wish to. The numbers mark the minutes:seconds start of each exchange:
BM 8:22 Just
before you come to the point of separating, how was Damien? Was he still the
same boy you'd met 18 months previous?
Abbie 8:31
Erm... no. He was still Damien, but there was flickers of... somebody else who
I didn't quite... um... understand. He was hanging around with a different
group of people who were a little bit older than him. There obviously were some
things he was keeping to himself. It could have been the fact that he was using
drugs. I don't know.
Analysis: The ‘different group of people who were a little bit older’ than Damien aren’t referenced anywhere else in the documentary, which raises the question, who were they? Particularly as Abbie goes on to say ‘there obviously were some things that he was keeping to himself’ followed by ‘it could have been the fact that he was using drugs’. Whether or not she realises it, her choice of words indicates truth-telling, with ‘obviously’ being a word that people use when sure of something and sure that it's plainly clear to others, and ‘the fact’ being an idiom used to stress that a statement is true and that its truth is not affected or changed by a previous statement. We can take from this that Damien was keeping some things to himself and he was using drugs.
Chris Boon’s episode 3 interviews
In the first of Chris Boon’s episode 3 interview
excerpts, Unsolved reporter Alys Harte (AH), talks about when they first
spoke to Chris – that Chris was clear Damien didn’t have any connections to nor
did he buy drugs from Nicky McNamara, the man rumoured to have killed him, or any
of his associates. To support this, the footage cuts to Chris speaking to
camera during a previously unaired section of his first Unsolved interview. Here's the link to episode 3 on Youtube so that you can watch the interview that accompanies my analyses should you wish to:
CB 7:27 I knew
some of the people by name, the bad guys in town, you know their names but... y-you
don’t… you don’t, and I'm not saying they are bad guys, I'm just saying they
were the guys that you knew er… where you could get drugs from and stuff like
that so they were kind of notorious in-in town. Um… But... Not… I-I would never
to speak to, erm, and I know Damien would never… have known them to speak to,
really. Erm… there’s nothing to link Damien, as far as I see it, to link Damien
to those people before he had gone missing.
Analysis: In a roundabout way, Chris says that he knew the local drug dealers by name and where they lived. He’s not trying to hide the truth, he’s just not naming them, which is fair enough. However, the next sentence: ‘Um… But… Not… I-I would never to speak to, erm, and I know Damien would never… have known them to speak to, really’ stands out as being potentially deceitful, with the apparent cognitive load involved in what ends up being an unnecessarily lengthy and awkwardly constructed sentence, together with the use of ‘really’ casting doubt on the already twice used ‘never’. He then says: ‘Erm… there’s nothing to link Damien, as far as I see it, to link Damien to those people before he had gone missing’. His interjection mid-sentence with the phrase ‘as far as I see it’ is interesting because as a phrase used to indicate personal perspective, judgement or opinion, it could be viewed as self-handicapping – that the actual truth may be different. Additionally, the use of ‘he had gone’ instead of ‘he went’ stands out as being awkward. If Chris was telling the truth, he wouldn’t have had to think so hard about what words he needed to say in order to support the lie.
JN 9:23 But… it…
I mean it… when it-when it comes to like the… you know the buying part and
stuff like that, I don't remember him buying it but I remember him having it
all the time.
Analysis: Although the implication is that
‘it’ is drugs, ‘it’ remains unspecified.
However, Chris and James both use the phrase ‘stuff like that’ (CB: ‘getting served and stuff like that’; JN:
‘buying part and stuff
like that’). ‘Stuff like that’ is used to indicate nonspecific things
that are either similar or somehow related to that which is being discussed,
and therefore it is reasonable to conclude that drugs are the topic of
conversation, particularly as the camera then cuts to Chris saying:
CB 9:34 We used to do speed if we got hold of it, erm… you know, there's a good chance we probably maybe we had taken some trips. If someone gave him a little baggie of something and said, "Here, have this, this is great stuff" um… yeah… yeah… he could have done it.
Analysis: Chris confirms that he and Damien used to take speed. He then says: ‘there’s a good chance we probably maybe we had taken some trips’. The use of words such as ‘possibly’, ‘probably’ and ‘maybe’ is known as linguistic hedging – not committing to what has been or is about to be said – and therefore his use of ‘good chance’ then ‘probably’ then ‘maybe’ moves the certainty of his commitment to ‘we had taken some trips’ from more to less. However, as anyone who has taken hallucinogenic drugs (all of which may be referred as trips) knows, there is no uncertainty about the effects of hallucinogenic drugs, which are distinct from alcohol and other drugs and give a user experience that is unambiguous and highly memorable. Either you have taken a trip or you haven’t – there is no ‘maybe’. If 16-year-old Chris had said this, he could be forgiven for lying about having ‘probably’ ‘maybe’ ‘taken some trips’ to try and sound cool and edgy in front of a younger friend. But this is adult Chris talking about his memories of drug-taking with Damien, which raises the question, when did Chris and Damien take ‘some trips’?
CB 10:00 Yeah…
it-I-I-I-n-I can imagine that um… that maybe-maybe Damien had met… met her…
I've never actually… I’ve never made that link. So... yeah… Hm… I don't know
what to say about that. I-d… I-d… it I mean now-now that you say it, it you
know then-then if-if… if she had been involved with... erm… erm… with Vicky's
ex-partner then... then yeah then Damien definitely er… may-have may-have come
in contact with her. Um… I-I wouldn't know um... So, yes, so in mm… the house
on the corner of Newport Road, Mill Hall Road… yeah, n we used to go n-n visit
erm… er… with Vicky and stuff, there was lots of other people living there, I
mean I-I didn't really know them. I er I obviously I knew some of them,
otherwise I wasn't going there, but I did-didn't know I didn’t everyone there
and er Damien may have known other people that I didn't. It was a long time
ago, could-could have been. Erm… it-it does… does is actually it does make me
think… you know that… maybe there could be something in that.
Analysis: The award for the most longwinded way of saying that Damien may have met the unnamed heroin dealer definitely goes to Chris Boon. Multiple buffer words and vocal fill indicate that Chris is experiencing immense cognitive load, but is this because he’s lying, or just thinking really hard about whether Damien could have met the unnamed dealer? His use of ‘I wouldn’t know’, ‘I didn’t really know them’, ‘I didn’t know everyone there’ and ‘it was a long time ago’ alludes to him justifying being unable to confirm that Damien had met the dealer, but is this justification valid, or is it self-handicapping? In an earlier conversation with James, Vicky says: “If Damien knew any of these people then Chris would know. It was Chris and Damien, it was always Chris and Damien. I don’t… I can't... It was one word”. Therefore Chris’ use of ‘I wouldn't know’ as opposed to ‘I don’t know’ may either mean that he is not in a position to know the answer (truth-telling), or that he doesn’t want James to think that he is in a position to know the answer (lying).
Whilst the entire 1 minute and 49 seconds excerpt of Chris’ episode 3 interview contains numerous indicators of deceit, none are unambiguous enough to be able to conclude that Chris is lying about knowing that Damien had come into contact with the unnamed heroin dealer. Certainly when Chris is interviewed again in episode 8, he talks about another address in Cowes from where Damien would buy drugs – a house on Fellows Road, the same road that Chris lived on at the time – and confirms that Damien would have come into contact with Jon ‘Bunny’ Isles there, a close associate of Nicky McNamara and one of the suspects questioned in connection with Damien’s disappearance. This in turn confirms what Vicky says about Chris knowing that Damien knew some of the notorious drug dealers in Cowes, but it doesn't confirm that he knew the unnamed heroin dealer.
Davey Boon
The next piece of interview worthy of analysis is from
episode 7 (link to YouTube video), with Chris’ younger brother, Davey Boon (DB). Davey confirms to
Bronagh that their group of friends relied on Damien to buy cannabis for them,
and then Bronagh asks him why Damien left the party that they were at in East
Cowes on the evening of 2 November 1996:
DB 1:58 Well I
don't know. Um... I really can't say, I-w... I mean... The obvious thing is to
lead it to say that he was going to try and look for some drugs, l-l-look for
some weed to buy. Um... He could easily have gone to
find something like that, but... Uh... I can't...can't be sure.
Analysis: After saying what on the face of
it appears to be a strong, confident, almost defiant ‘Well I don’t know’, Davey sustains
deliberate eye contact with Bronagh for a full four seconds. He then looks sharply
away, staring downwards for two seconds, then releases a laugh, smiles to
himself, and still smiling looks back up at Bronagh for a second, before
looking down again as he says ‘Um…’. A confident ‘I don’t know’ accompanied by deliberate,
sustained eye contact that is intentionally broken off, followed by two full
seconds of silence broken with a laugh, suggests that Davey may be lying about
not knowing why Damien left the party. As discussed in the previous language analysis post, deliberate eye contact is a strong indicator of lying. Laughs
and other noises such as coughs that are either random or out of context can
indicate deceit due to the need to ‘clear’ the voice of emotional load. His use
of ‘I really can’t say’
is interesting because unlike ‘don’t know’, ‘can’t say’ may either mean that he
is not in a position to know the answer, or that he can’t say for some other
reason, for example, because he has been told not to.
Davey then adds the disclaimer ‘the obvious thing is to lead it to say that’ to ‘he was going to try and look for some drugs’. This could mean that he is making it clear to Bronagh that he knows that it was a leading question, or it could be a way of him dissociating himself from what he says next. Either way, it may suggest that Davey is lying about not knowing the reason why Damien left the party, and that the truth is that he did leave the party to look for drugs. He then changes ‘drugs’ to ‘weed’ but with some vocal fill as he says ‘l-l-look’. This could indicate truth-telling – the giving of specific information – or it could indicate deceit by way of minimising ‘drugs’ from hard to soft. He then says that Damien could ‘easily have gone to find something like that’, which may indicate that scoring drugs in Cowes was easy or something that Damien had done before, but more importantly, 'something like that' shifts ‘weed’ back to ‘drugs’, suggesting that Damien may have gone looking for something other than cannabis. Davey is probably telling the truth when he says ‘I can't... can't be sure’ because he wasn’t there to witness Damien finding or buying drugs, and so whilst he may be lying about not knowing why Damien left the party, he is probably telling the truth about not knowing if Damien actually bought drugs. It’s also important to remember that it is well-documented that Damien was going from pub to pub looking for his sister. If the truth of why Damien left the party was to look for his sister, then Davey would have had no reason not to say this. Even if it wasn't the truth, he could have still said ‘he went to look for his sister’ instead of 'I don't know' because this is documented to have happened. He could even have said it instead of 'he was going to try and look for some drugs', but he chose not to. This may have been because saying something (he went to look for his sister) would have felt more like lying than saying nothing (I don't know). In terms of lies and lying behaviour, around 89% of lies are minor (untrue statements used to avoid causing trouble or hurting people's feelings) and 11% are major (statements that attempt to trick a person into believing something other than the truth). In terms of lying prevalence, around three quarters of people are low-frequency liars, with the most lies being told by a few prolific liars. Essentially, the majority of people don't tell 'big lies', and so when forced into a position of lying to protect oneself or others, 'I don't know' is a commonly used smokescreen.
Summary: The linguistic analyses of these
interviews together have revealed that in the months leading up to his
disappearance, Damien was being secretive about some things, was spending some
of his time with a different group of slightly older friends, was drinking
alcohol and taking drugs, and, due to how tall he was and therefore appearing
to be older than his age, was buying alcohol and drugs for his friends – Chris
and Davey Boon included. The drugs that Damien is known to have taken with
Chris are cannabis, speed and (given the unambiguity of hallucinogenic drug experience) ‘trips’. Damien bought drugs from two addresses
in Cowes – a residence associated with Nicky McNamara, and a residence associated
with Jon ‘Bunny’ Isles. The reason Damien left the party on the evening of
2 November 1996 was to look for drugs in Cowes.
However, three questions remain unanswered:
- Who were the different group of people who were a little bit older than Damien?
- When did Chris and Damien take ‘some trips’?
- Could Damien have obtained drugs from the unnamed heroin dealer?
On balance of probabilities, Damien is more likely to
have known these younger-but-slightly-older-than-him drug users, than a much
older dealer who visited Vicky’s boyfriend to sell him heroin. This is because although
illicit drug markets and distribution systems are complex and varied and the
drug scene in Cowes in the mid-1990s was no exception, drug using and buying tends
to occur in age-related circles. A source who was a Cowes Youth
Club helper during the time of Damien’s disappearance has told me that there
were drug pushers who sold their drugs on Cowes Esplanade .
This is known as an ‘open market’ – open to any buyer, with no requirement for
prior introduction to the seller, and few barriers to access. There is no
recourse for sellers or buyers, and drugs are often of poor quality. Systematic
violence is a dominant mechanism for conflict resolution in open markets, and there is also the risk of opportunistic violence, for
example, where buyers or sellers are selected as targets for robbery because
they are thought unlikely to call in the police. There is an eyewitness account that Valerie mentions in her book, 'The Boy Who Disappeared', that was given by one of the staff at the Harbour Lights bar who recalled seeing Damien heading off along the seafront. The timing of this sighting is not clear, but it would appear that it happened at some point after he had parted ways with Chris and before 11:38 when he was captured on CCTV buying chips in Yorkies.
When did Chris and Damien take ‘some trips’? Could it have been in the few hours prior to Damien’s disappearance? Damien’s conversation with his older sister Sarah a couple of days before his disappearance about wanting to know what it felt like to 'take drugs' may suggest that up until that point, he hadn’t taken anything other than cannabis and (as confirmed by Chris) speed. On the evening of 2 November 1996, Damien was reported by several eyewitnesses (and Chris) to have been going from pub to pub, looking for his sister. As discussed in Damien Nettles: Murder, Manslaughter or Misadventure, the reason why Damien was looking for his sister could have been because she had told him that she wanted to be there with him to make sure that he was okay if he did 'take drugs', and that she would come and visit him that weekend. Telling a friend or loved one that you want to be with them when they 'take drugs' for the first time would certainly apply to LSD, but not to heroin – you would simply tell them not to do it because everyone knows that heroin addiction is the poster child for the slogan 'don't do drugs'. As discussed in the previous language analysis post, Chris was probably telling the truth when he said that Damien couldn’t have taken something when he was with him without his knowledge, but could Damien have taken something with Chris’ knowledge?
Could Damien have obtained drugs from the unnamed heroin dealer? According to various sources, Chris and Damien were best friends, and Vicky’s words “it was always Chris and Damien […] it was one word” certainly suggest that they were very much joined at the hip. However, Damien had been doing some things without Chris, like working at Gurnard Pines, and the trip to Suffolk with Jon to visit Gemma. Damien had also changed schools from Cowes High to Carisbrooke High in the September of 1996 because Cowes didn’t offer Psychology A Level, and so school had become another aspect of Damien’s life that didn’t include Chris. Vicky says that the unnamed dealer used to 'come and deal' her boyfriend cannabis and heroin. The fact that Vicky doesn’t know whether Damien came into contact with this dealer suggests that Damien was never present with Vicky and her boyfriend when the dealer came to deal him heroin, and the dealer was never present when Vicky, Chris and Damien visited the house on the corner of Newport Road and Mill Hill Road in Cowes. Damien could only have come into contact with this dealer outside of these situations, which lessens the likelihood in a way simply because according to Vicky the dealer was 'so much older' and is therefore unlikely to have been socialising with Damien’s group of friends who were only ‘a little bit older’. Vicky also says that the dealer asked her once what she thought had happened to Damien, which she felt was a weird question because how did the dealer, being ‘so much older’, know who Damien was. However, in the weeks and months after Damien went missing, there was unlikely to have been anyone on the Isle of Wight who hadn’t become aware of his disappearance, and so the question really wasn’t that weird at all. There is nothing to suggest that Damien was buying cannabis from this dealer. There is nothing to suggest that he was taking heroin. He is confirmed to have bought drugs from addresses associated with Nicky McNamara and Jon ‘Bunny’ Iles, and therefore all things considered, Unsolved may have been barking up the wrong tree trying to link Damien to Nicky McNamara via the unnamed heroin dealer. If nothing else, it’s a superfluous link.
In the next post I will be analysing some of the Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared interviews with the sources and suspects that have been associated with Damien’s disappearance.
Damien's disappearance remains an active missing person case. If you have any information that could help find Damien, please contact Hampshire Police on 101, quoting 'Operation Ridgewood', or if you would prefer to remain anonymous, Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Sources
BBC 3 (2016) Unsolved: Interactive map.
BBC News (2 November 2011) Damien Nettles'
disappearance: Search called off.
Frank (2024) Honest information about drugs.
Google maps.
Haven House Recovery (2024) Addiction Info: What Are
the Side Effects of Smoking Weed Laced with PCP?
May, T. & Hough, M. (2004) Drug Markets and
Distribution Systems. Addiction Research and Theory, 12 (6): 549-563.
Murphy, F., Sales, P., Murphy, S., Averill, S., Lau,
N. & Sato, S. (2015) Baby Boomers and Cannabis Delivery Systems. Journal
of Drug Issues, 45 (3): 293-313.
Nettles, V. (2017) Damien Nettles: Missing since 1996.
Nettles, V. (2019) The Boy Who
Disappeared. London: John Blake Publishing.
Nettles, V. (2024) Email to Elizabeth Angel, 29
April.
Serota, K., Levine, T. & Docan-Morgan, T. (2021) Unpacking variation in lie prevalence: Prolific liars, bad lie days, or both? Communication Monographs, 89 (3): 307-331.
Unsolved – The Boy Who Disappeared: 1.
The Night (2016) BBC3, 25 July.
Unsolved – The Boy Who Disappeared: 3.
The Suspect (2016) BBC3, 27 July.
Unsolved – The Boy Who Disappeared: 7.
The Search (2016) BBC3, 31 July.
Unsolved – The Boy Who Disappeared: 8. The Dig (2016) BBC3, 1 August.
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