If you have arrived here without having read the previous posts in the series, below are the links in order. For this post to make sense, you might want to read Who was Nicky McNamara? first.
Damien Nettles – Murder, manslaughter or misadventure?
Damien Nettles – Language analysis of Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared interviews – Part 1: Chris Boon
Damien Nettles – Language analysis of Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared interviews – Part 2: Abbie Scott, Chris Boon and Davey Boon
Damien Nettles – Language analysis of Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared interviews – Part 3: The Weatherman
Damien Nettles – Language analysis of Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared interviews – Part 4: Shirley Barrett
Damien Nettles – Who was Nicky McNamara?
He also had
only two known violence offences to his name. Both involved individuals who he
had long-standing personal relationships with. He admitted to both offences and
was punished for them. He also pleaded guilty to three criminal damage offences
for which he received fines, and one instance in June 1996 of cracking a
security screen at the DSS when he hit it in anger at receiving a £9.86 benefit
cheque to last him the week, for which he received a conditional discharge. He
claimed that he didn’t think he had hit the screen hard enough for it to break.
Having got caught in the criminal justice system’s net at an early age, he was
well-known to the police throughout his life to the point of claiming police
harassment in 1993. Nicky was a tall man, and his height, familiarity to the
police, and the two occasions that he threw a punch in anger (at his girlfriend
and the DSS security screen) may have some bearing on how plausible he is as a
suspect in Damien’s disappearance, and also how particular rumours may have
come about.
When did Nicky McNamara’s name become linked with Damien’s?
The book The
Boy Who Disappeared by Damien’s mother, Valerie, provides a chronology of information
and events surrounding Damien’s disappearance from November 1996 through to the
filming of Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared in 2015 that is as close to
the source of information as anyone outside of the Nettles family and the
police investigation can get. Using this chronology along with additional
details from newspaper articles, I created ‘Timeline 1’ of when Nicky’s name
was mentioned, implied or assumed, and from this, ‘Timeline 2’, which begins on
the evening of Damien’s disappearance. The two timelines (particularly Timeline
2) contain A LOT of information, and so rather than include them here in the
main body of the post, I have put them at the end before my sources list
because I want the information to be available to anyone who has the time and
interest to read it, and transparency is crucial if the questions that arose
from my analysis are to be taken seriously. I also want to keep the main post at
a readable length!
The first time
that Nicky McNamara’s name is mentioned is towards the end of October 2003.
Valerie called DCI Williams on 23 October 2003 for an update on the DNA
analysis of some bones that had washed up near Warsash in the summer. There was
no update, but she writes that not long after this, she made a follow-up call.
This time she spoke to DI Murphy, and pressed him for a wider update on
Damien’s case:
- DI Murphy told Valerie that they thought they had identified one of the unknown men in the Yorkies CCTV footage – ‘a well-known drug dealer from the area’ (Valerie’s words) who had died the previous year.
- DI Murphy did not tell Valerie the person’s name, and the police did not release it to the press nor make it public in any way.
- Valerie asked the Isle of Wight County Press who the person could be. A reporter told her that she thought it would be Nicky McNamara.
- The police came back to Valerie and told her that it wasn’t who they thought it was in the Yorkies footage.
- Valerie shared Nicky McNamara’s name with her family and friends.
After Valerie
had shared Nicky’s name with her family and friends, Damien’s younger brother,
James, spoke of Nicky’s sons having taunted him at school about Damien being ‘fish
bait’. James also spoke of going to Nicky’s house with
a friend from school who knew Nicky’s sons. James repeats this incident in
episode 3 of Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared, that it was a few years
after Damien disappeared and that Nicky ‘was talking to everybody, and then he
looked at me and asked who I was, and when they told him... he got jumpy and…
told them that we all had to leave.’ Damien’s younger sister, Melissa, spoke of
a time when Nicky’s daughter, who was a year above her at school, suddenly started
asking her questions about what the police were saying about Damien.
Is the anonymous witness who took Bronagh to the wall on Bars Hill and Paul Foster the same person?
The flat above the butcher’s shop
In 2014, a man
who Valerie calls Ed Weaver who claimed that he used to sell drugs for Nicky,
said that he was at the flat above the butcher’s shop when Damien had shouted
up asking for pills, on the night that he disappeared. Ed alleged that this
had angered Nicky. In 2014/15, DI Liz Williams confirmed to Valerie that the police
had spoken to Ed Weaver, but that it had been an informal chat. This suggests that Ed wasn’t actually in the flat and was simply repeating hearsay/rumours
(he also said that he had been at another property later that evening when a
lad came in saying that he’d just seen Nicky beating up a kid). The butcher’s
shop flat is mentioned again in other information that was given to Unsolved –
that Damien was taken there in the early hours of 3 November 1996 for the
tenant to look after him, who later realised that Damien was in fact dead.
Did Damien
shout up to the windows of the flat? I think that he probably did simply because it was one of the first rumours to emerge after his
disappearance, and the times that it got repeated were when rewards for
information had been offered. Did Damien shout up for drugs/pills/for someone
to throw something down? The two men who gave statements confirming that they
were in the flat at the time are said to have had drug-related histories, and
the flat was identified in Unsolved as one of the places in Cowes to
score drugs. Did this anger someone in the flat? If I was a drug dealer and a
kid was down on the street, shouting up at my windows for pills, I’d be pretty
angry. However, it’s a big jump between being angry about it and beating
the kid to death for it. Was Damien beaten up somewhere else and taken to the
flat either injured, dying or dead? People who beat people up don’t
generally take them to someone else to be looked after, and if he was dying or dead,
he wouldn’t have been moving under his own steam – he would have likely been
left wherever the beating occurred. I think that if he did shout up at the
windows of the flat asking for drugs, he was probably just told to ‘f**k off or
you’ll get a beating.’
Did Damien fall foul of Nicky?
Did Nicky’s
name become attached to Damien’s death before or after Nicky died?
Although Nicky may
have been mentioned early on in relation to the lad being beaten up against the
wall, his name didn’t come to light until the Isle of Wight County
Press reporter said that she thought it would be him in the Yorkies footage – at least 13 months after Nicky died and
a whole seven years after Damien vanished, which is an awfully long time for it
to have remained in the dark. It was only after this that Nicky’s name started to crop up in the drug dealer/drug debt rumours that had been
circulating for years. The one question that needs to be answered in relation
to this, is when did the ex-police informant tell the police that Nicky had
killed Damien in an argument over cannabis – was it before the Isle of Wight
County Press reporter said Nicky’s name, or after?
Additionally,
public and media pressure on the police ‘to catch the killer’ can be immense
(as it was in the three cases mentioned above), and the longer an investigation
continues without delivering results, the more the police are criticised for
not doing anything. One of the reasons that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)
was created was to put an end to police prosecutions, to ensure that the evidence
that police had against suspects met certain thresholds, and to prevent police ‘fit ups’. The
police can’t just pin serious crimes on the petty offenders who are constant
thorns in their sides anymore.
Summary
Nicky
McNamara’s name could have become associated with Damien’s soon after Damien
disappeared if Paul Foster is to be believed, as late as the end of October 2003
when the Isle of Wight County Press reporter told Valerie that she
thought the dead drug dealer would be Nicky, or at any time in-between. However,
it wasn’t until 2003 that Nicky’s name became linked with Damien’s death. If this
was after the end of October 2003, there is a very strong case for believing that
Nicky didn’t kill Damien.
Questions
that only the police can answer:
- Was Nicky ever questioned about Damien’s disappearance?
- When did the ex-police informant tell the police that Nicky killed Damien in an argument over cannabis – was it before or after the Isle of Wight County Press reporter told Valerie that she thought the dead drug dealer that the police might have been referring to in the Yorkies footage was Nicky?
- When did the two men who were confirmed to have been in the butcher’s shop flat on the night that Damien disappeared make their statements?
- Did these two men corroborate the claims that that Damien had been heard shouting up, asking for drugs/pills/something to be thrown down?
- Have the police ever done a reconstruction of what Paul Foster witnessed at the wall using men of Nicky’s and Damien’s heights to see how plausible Nicky was as the shorter aggressor?
- Did Paul Foster positively identify Nicky in his 2005 statement (as opposed to a man resembling Nicky)?
- Did Paul Foster tell the police that Daniel Spencer was also present?
Concluding thoughts
Obviously being homeless, Nicky could have been staying anywhere on the night of 2-3 November 1996, but he had been associating with Daniel Spencer in the month prior to this. Maybe Nicky was in Cowes on the night that Damien disappeared. Maybe Daniel Spencer was with him. Although it took him until 2005 to give his statement, maybe Paul Foster really did witness both Nicky and Daniel at the wall with the youth, which places Daniel Spencer just as much in the picture as Nicky – or perhaps they were simply placed together because of the joint burglary charge that was reported in October. The one thing to keep bearing in mind though is that whatever may have happened to Damien, it wasn’t Nicky in the Yorkies CCTV footage. Had DI Murphy not told Valerie that they believed one of the men in Yorkies with Damien was a ‘well-known drug dealer from the area’ and had the Isle of Wight County Press reporter not said that she thought it would be Nicky McNamara, his name may never have become connected with Damien’s death.
I’m not sure
what to look at in the next post in my Damien Nettles series. Perhaps Daniel Spencer as a suspect needs to be examined – he was
arrested on suspicion of Damien’s murder and his file was passed to the CPS, therefore
the police must have been hopeful that the evidence against him would meet the
thresholds. There are also other theories that have been overshadowed by the prevailing
drug dealer/drug debt rumour that may warrant investigation – that Damien was
killed by paedophiles for example, which isn’t as farfetched as it might seem
when the horrifying death of 16-year-old 6’1” rugby player George Mortimer at
the hands of paedophile Darren Colling is considered.
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.
~~~~~~~~~~
Late October 2003:
DI Murphy told Valerie that they thought they had identified one of the unknown
men in the Yorkies CCTV footage – ‘a well-known drug dealer from the area’ who
had died the previous year. He did not tell Valerie the drug dealer’s name, and
the police did not tell the media or make it public. Having learned that
journalists were sometimes more aware than the police of what was happening on
the Island, she contacted the Isle of Wight County Press hoping to find
out the dealer’s name. A reporter there told Valerie that she thought it would
be Nicky McNamara.
Soon after this
the police reported back to Valerie – it wasn’t who they had thought it was in
the Yorkies footage.
Valerie shared Nicky McNamara’s name
with her family and friends.
Damien’s younger brother, James, spoke
of going to Nicky’s house once with a friend from school who knew Nicky’s sons
and that ‘it was after Damien disappeared’. James said that when Nicky was told
who he was, the friends were told to get him out of the house. James also said
that Nicky’s sons used to taunt him about Damien being fish bait. Damien’s
younger sister, Melissa, spoke of remembering Nicky’s daughter who was a year
above her at school, suddenly asking her ‘lots of questions about what the police
were saying about Damien’.
6
November 2004: An article appeared in The Times
entitled ISLAND BOY ANNOYED DRUG SELLER ON THE DAY HE VANISHED. In it, three
friends of Damien spoke about it being ‘common knowledge’ among young people on
the Island that foul play was to blame for Damien’s sudden and unexpected
disappearance, and that he had been the victim of a botched drug attack.
Damien’s friend, Alex Roberts, claimed that many people involved in the Cowes’
drug scene in the late 1990s were very aware of Damien’s fate and urged them to
speak out. Another man, also in his 20s, claimed that Damien had angered a
local drug dealer shortly after leaving Yorkies, with fatal consequences – an
account that the paper said was ‘backed up’ by a former drug addict’s testimony
to the police that Damien’s body had been moved in the back of a car, which
police had dismissed as unreliable. The article also claimed that Valerie and
Damien’s close friends had said that they believed certain members of the
community had deliberately held something back from the police.
On the same day that this article was
published, Valerie received an email from the DCI in charge of Damien’s case
explaining that none of the statements given by sixty or so of Damien’s friends
and acquaintances had suggested anything about an argument with a drug dealer.
March 2005: Valerie received a confidential email
informing her that the police would be conducting a 6-8-week investigation
around Nicky McNamara’s associates. However, it’s unclear whether the police
mentioned Nicky by name in the email or whether this was Valerie’s assumption.
Valerie was updated on the investigation four months later in an email that
‘contained nothing of real note’.
July 2007: DCI Kilbride visited Valerie in Texas to
go over Damien’s case review. There were no names in Kilbride’s report,
however, Valerie writes that it talked about Nicky McNamara and his ‘cronies’
and their potential connection to Damien’s disappearance: ‘The extensive
investigation DCI Williams had been managing back in 2005 had seemingly drawn
no conclusions. Kilbride didn’t seem to think much more could be done with
regards to that line of enquiry barring the discovery of new evidence’. The
report also recommended a number of rumours surrounding Damien’s disappearance
be reinvestigated including one that ‘a male resembling Nicky McNamara had held
a youth up against a wall near The Harbour Lights pub and had given him a
beating.’ Again, the report contained no names, only codes, and so this is
Valerie’s naming of Nicky, not Kilbride’s.
February
2008: Ivor Edwards, a self-styled private investigator who began
investigating Damien’s case in November 2007, put an appeal in the Isle
of Wight County Press to raise a reward fund. A few weeks later, the paper
received an anonymous letter. The author asked that it be passed to Ivor. The
letter’s author said that he/she had been told by many people that Damien was
in Cowes, drunk, shouting up to the flat above the butcher’s shop on the corner
of Terminus Road for drugs, that he ended up inside, was either punched or hit
over head with something and rendered unconscious, that Nicky McNamara did part
of the hitting, and that Damien’s body was wrapped in chicken wire somewhere,
put in boot of a car and dropped off the back of the Island over a cliff. The
letter’s author also said that he/she had been told that the police had
investigated this. Ivor is said to have pressed to discover more about Nicky’s
connection to Damien and found out about the circumstances of Nicky’s death and
link to Shirley Barrett/Thomas. Other information that the reward appeal
generated included noise heard near Bars Hill that sounded like a fight, and a
vague account of a youth being held up against a wall in that area at a similar
time.
October 2010: James received a text message from
someone claiming to be one of Nicky’s associates, saying that Damien was buried
on ‘a cycle track’. The information was passed to DI O’Callaghan and DI Heelan.
O’Callaghan made it clear that the source couldn’t be trusted, and that they
had spoken to him before.
November
2010: Ivor Edwards
heard about an alleged associate of Nicky who couldn’t help talking about
Damien when he was drunk, repeating ‘no body, no crime’ over and over again.
January 2011: A source came forward to a friend of
Valerie’s, believed to be the same source that had texted James in October
2010. The source alleged that eight years previously he had told the police
that Nicky had killed Damien in an argument over cannabis – that he had thrown
a punch at Damien in anger but hadn’t intended to kill him. The source
explained that Damien’s body had been hidden ‘in a renowned drug den’ on
Fellows Road and kept there for up to two weeks before being buried near a
cycle path in a sail bag. Valerie passed the information to Damien’s case
officer, DCI Powell, reminding him of the information she had passed to
O’Callaghan and Heelan in October. Powell informed her that based on new and
existing intelligence, a search would take place looking at the places the
informant had mentioned and the people named. The plan was to arrest those who
either claimed knowledge or who were named as being involved in Damien’s
alleged killing to see if they would crack or grass on one another.
January 2011: A young man came forward to Damien’s
older sister, Sarah. Valerie met with him and his mother. The mother told
Valerie about how two of her sons had got into drugs and on the wrong side of
the Island’s dealers. They had heard that Damien had upset a well-known crooked
businessman by standing up to some of his dealings and that Nicky was sent to
sort Damien out. They named Parkhurst Forest as a burial site. DCI Powell
believed that the family had an agenda and were using Damien as a means to an
end for their own benefit.
10 May 2011: In a dawn raid police arrested and
questioned five people in connection with Damien’s disappearance. The marsh
adjacent to the Cowes to Newport cycle track near Stag Lane was searched. While
the search was underway, an anonymous tip-off came in about a man matching
Nicky’s description burning clothes in an oil drum outside a chalet on Marsh
Road whilst shouting ‘I’m a damned man’. The search of the Stag Lane marsh area
turned up no evidence or remains.
May 2011: The informant who had first spoke
about the cycle track and Damien’s alleged altercation with Nicky contacted a
friend of Valerie’s to say that the police had searched the wrong spot, that
Damien was buried in a wooded copse (Winding Way) on Gurnard cycle path.
01 November
2011: The police
conducted a two-day fingertip search of the chalet on Marsh Road implicated in
the May search tip-off. The chalet was owned by an acquaintance of Nicky, and
he and his wife were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder. Residents
of Marsh Road told the Isle of Wight County Press that the chalet had
been unoccupied for years.
Between
November 2011 and April 2012:
Mr X/The Weatherman claimed that he saw Nicky and some others outside Moira
House on Sun Hill the day after Damien vanished. He said that Nicky was putting
what appeared to be a bloodied carpet into a red car. He claims to have said,
jokingly, ‘What have you got there, a body?’ and they apparently all looked at
him in horror. He continued to speak to Ivor Edwards, making various claims
about witnessing Nicky – that he had been in Cowes the night Damien
disappeared, the oil drum fire at the Marsh Road chalet, etc.
28 February
2012: BBC News
publish an article entitled MOTHER OF DAMIEN NETTLES TALKS OF DRUGS DEBT MURDER
THEORY. In it, Valerie spoke of believing that Damien had been beaten to death
by a drugs gang and that ‘there has been more information that he fell
foul of some people. […] A couple of these people have since passed away from
overdoses so it's difficult to prove now, but there are still people around who
have information about what happened. […] We understand that someone involved
with these particular people told them what they did to Damien.’
Late
2012/early 2013:
Shirley Barrett made a claim to Ivor Edwards that Nicky had picked up Damien
with another man who she refused to name on Baring Road near to Bars Hill on
the night that Damien disappeared.
2014: Information about a lad who claimed to
have seen Nicky beating up another lad on the night that Damien disappeared
found its way to Valerie via her friend, Kaley. Kaley
was told about the altercation by a lad who Valerie names Ed Weaver. Ed claimed
that he used to sell drugs for Nicky and was at the flat above the butcher’s
shop on the corner of Terminus Road when Damien had shouted up, asking for pills, on
the night that he disappeared. Ed alleged that this had angered Nicky. Ed
claimed was at another property later on when a lad came in saying that he’d
just seen Nicky beating the crap out of another lad. Ed said that it was only
over the next few days when it came out that Damien was missing, that he and
others thought that the lad being beaten might have been Damien. They told the
lad who claimed to have witnessed the altercation and urged him to go to the
police, but as far as Ed knew, he never did.
October 2015: The filming for Unsolved: The Boy
Who Disappeared began.
~~~~~~~~~~
The following
revised timeline is based on the first timeline but begins with the night of
Damien’s disappearance, plus some additional details:
Timeline 2:
Evening of 2
November 1996: Ed
Weaver claims that he was at the flat above the butcher’s shop in Cowes, that Nicky
and at least one other person were there also and that Damien had shouted up at
the windows, asking for pills, which angered Nicky. Ed
Weaver told this to a friend of Valerie’s in 2014.
- Two men with drug-related histories were confirmed as living at the flat at the time. Both made statements saying that they were in the flat on the night of 2-3 November 1996. They alleged that Nicky was in the flat also. This suggests that the two men’s statements were taken after Nicky died (post 21/09/2002). It is unknown whether the men corroborated Ed’s claim that Damien shouted up for pills and this angered Nicky, or indeed if Ed was actually there in the flat with them.
- In 2014/15 DI Liz Williams confirmed to Valerie that police had spoken to Ed Weaver but that it had been an informal chat. Because the butcher’s shop flat residents were spoken to after Nicky died, it is reasonable to assume that Ed was spoken to after Nicky died also. Was Ed actually in the flat, or did he just hear that Damien had been shouting up at the windows, asking for pills? If he was in the flat, he is an eyewitness and would have been urged to make a statement. If he wasn’t, his account is second-hand hearsay (which may explain why the police only had an informal chat with him).
After
midnight on 3 November 1996:
Ed Weaver claims that he had left the butcher’s shop flat and was at another
property in Cowes when Paul Foster came in saying that he’d just seen Nicky
beating up a lad. Ed Weaver told a friend of Valerie about this in 2014.
After
midnight on 3 November 1996:
A young man who Valerie calls Simon W in her book saw a youth in the small
hours when he’d been making his way home from his parents’ house. He’d been
walking along Baring Road and had seen the youth between Egypt Hill and the top
of Woodvale Road directly level with Solent Middle School. He said that the
youth resembled Damien’s disappearance. This information had been given to the
police in the first couple of weeks after Damien vanished, but was dismissed by
DC Clarke due to the witness being unreliable.
00:30 on 3
November 1996: A
motorist and his wife saw a youth resembling Damien’s appearance in the middle
of Baring Road near to the Solent Middle School towards the top of Woodvale
Road. The youth was carrying a blue and white striped plastic bag. This was
presented to Valerie as new evidence in January 1998 in relation to the police
searches in Gurnard on 15-16 January. Valerie writes that it was the same
account that had been given by Simon W in the couple of weeks after Damien
vanished that DC Clarke had dismissed as unreliable. However, they are clearly
different accounts – the first witness was a single young man walking home from
his parents’ house, the second witnesses were a motorist and his wife in a car.
The time of the sighting at 00:30 was confirmed according to the car’s clock,
which was 01:30 minus one hour because it hadn’t been set back at the end of
British Summer Time.
After
midnight on 3 November 1996:
A lad said that he saw some men in a red van abduct and murder Damien. The lad
gave this information to Ivor Edwards sometime between late 2007/early 2013.
After
midnight on 3 November 1996:
Nicky allegedly picked up Damien with another man on Baring Road near to Bars
Hill. This information was given to Ivor Edwards by Shirley Barrett in late
2012/early 2013.
In the days
after Damien went missing:
Ed Weaver and others wondered if the lad that Paul Foster saw Nicky beating up
might have been Damien. They told Paul Foster and urged him to go to the
police. At the time, Paul Foster didn’t think that the lad had been Damien. Ed
Weaver told a friend of Valerie about this in 2014.
Between
January and May 1997: Rumours
that emerged about what happened to Damien included:
- He had been shouting up at the windows of a flat above the butcher’s shop in Cowes.
- Some shady characters had beaten him up after he tried to defend a friend.
- A young drug addict, Harry Corbett (not his real name), told a nurse at the hospital that he’d helped to bury Damien and that his body had been wrapped in a carpet (this was later connected to a story that was passed to Valerie in February 2004 via councillor Lynn Hammond about two paedophiles who had taken Harry and Damien to a chalet they owned on Gurnard Marsh, killed Damien, then wrapped him in a carpet and burned his body in a blue car).
- He had come to harm at the hands of known paedophiles who groomed boys by supplying them with drugs and booze.
Between May
1997 and January 1998:
The rumours that circulated about what had happened to Damien included multiple
claims that Damien had been killed and his body disposed of including:
- Being buried in the foundations of the new Grantham Court flats on the seafront.
- Being buried/dumped in the cement mine off Stag Lane in Newport because he was too heavy to carry down the cycle track.
- Being chopped up and put into lobster pots off the coast.
- Being fed to pigs in the New Forest.
16
June 1998: In an Isle of Wight County Press
article to mark Damien’s 18th birthday, Valerie is quoted as saying: ‘Either he
has met a sticky end, been the victim of foul play at someone’s hands, or
someone has helped him to leave the Island.’
Sometime
between mid-November 1996 and summer 2000 when James was still at school: Nicky’s sons taunted James about
Damien being fish bait. James went to Nicky’s house with a friend from school
who knew Nicky’s sons and when Nicky was told who James was, the friends were
told to get him out of the house. James told Valerie this information in
October 2003 after Valerie had shared Nicky’s name with
her family and friends.
Sometime
between mid-November and summer 2002 when Nicky McNamara’s daughter was still
at school: Nicky’s
daughter suddenly started questioning Melissa about what the police were saying
about Damien. Melissa told Valerie this information in October 2003 after
Valerie had shared Nicky’s name with her family and friends.
21 September
2002: Nicky McNamara
died of a heroin overdose in Shirley Barrett’s bath at Prospect Road in
Newport, Isle of Wight. The mother of his children saw and spoke to him the day
before he died and writes that he had been clean for a while and looked well,
but that he had said that he was worried about money he owed and that it was a
serious situation – that he had heavy people on his back.
6 March 2003: A coroner recorded
a verdict of self-induced heroin overdose following the death of heroin addict
Nicky McNamara. Shirley Barrett claimed that she, Nicky, and another man, Sean
Michael Thompson, injected heroin on the night of 20 September 2002. She also
claimed that Nicky injected again on the morning of 21 September 2002 in her
bath. At 5pm on 23 September 2002 Thompson discovered Nicky in the empty bath,
naked and dead. There were two empty syringes on the floor (not sticking out of
his back as Unsolved claimed) beside some clothes and a towel. Thompson
was found hanged near the property three months later.
Late October
2003: DI Murphy told
Valerie that they thought they had identified one of the unknown men in the
Yorkies CCTV footage – ‘a well-known drug dealer from the area’ who had died
the previous year.
- The police did not tell Valerie the drug dealer’s name or publish it anywhere.
- A reporter from the Isle of Wight County Press told Valerie that she thought the drug dealer would be Nicky McNamara.
- The police reported back to Valerie that it wasn’t who they thought it was in the Yorkies footage.
- Valerie shared Nicky McNamara’s name with her family and friends.
Claimed 2003: An anonymous source told police that Nicky had killed Damien in an argument over cannabis
– that he had thrown a punch at Damien in anger but hadn’t intended to kill
him. Damien’s body had been hidden at a house on Fellows Road and kept there
for up to two weeks before being buried near a cycle path in a sail bag. The
anonymous source, who was later identified as an ex-police informant, told this
information to James in a text message in 2011.
3 November
2004: In an article for
The Times, Valerie is quoted to have said: ‘we must face the awful
possibility that something happened to our son which has prevented him ever
making contact with us, and the possibility that he suffered at the hands of
unscrupulous individuals.’ The article also said that the police had
interviewed all of Damien’s known friends and associates.
6 November
2004: Article entitled
ISLAND BOY ANNOYED DRUG SELLER ON THE DAY HE VANISHED appeared in The Times.
Several of Damien’s friends were interviewed and the following information was
printed:
- That is was common knowledge among young people on the Island that foul play was to blame for Damien’s sudden and unexpected disappearance.
- That many people involved in the Cowes’ drug scene in the late 1990s were very aware of Damien’s fate.
- That Damien had angered a local drug dealer shortly after leaving Yorkies, with fatal consequences.
- That Damien had been the victim of a botched drug attack.
- That a former drug addict’s testimony to the police was that Damien’s body had been moved in the back of a car.
6 November
2004: Valerie received
an email from the DCI in charge of Damien’s case explaining that none of the
statements given by sixty or so of Damien’s friends and acquaintances had
suggested anything about an argument with a drug dealer. The email also
referenced ‘the line of enquiry regarding McNamara, and how Murphy had
personally interviewed anyone connected to that rumour, with no evidence to
support it having yet been found.’
November 2004: Meeting with DCI Williams and DI Murphy at Cowes Police Station to go over Damien’s case. Valerie writes about DI Murphy being the man who’d first brought Nicky to her attention ‘even if not by name’, and that The Times article didn’t get much of a mention. She writes that the meeting was ‘the same old, same old’ until she asked: ‘What about Nicky McNamara?’ and the meeting subsequently took ‘an odd turn’. She clarified to the officers what she meant by saying the drug dealer who recently died of a drug overdose that she was informed may have been connected to the case. She writes that Williams appeared startled, Murphy averted his eyes, and that she said to Murphy: ‘I was told by an officer in 2003 that a local drug dealer was believed to be in the CCTV footage in Yorkies. That it was being investigated.’ Williams told her that she must be mistaken and he didn’t know where this was coming from or why she had made that connection. Valerie writes that after the meeting she was disappointed and embarrassed ‘that both officers had acted like they’d never heard of Nicky McNamara’ and that she went through her emails and found the one from Williams from 6 November 2004 that had mentioned the investigation into rumours relating to Nicky McNamara and some of his associates.
Sometime in
early 2005: Paul Foster
made a statement to the police that on the night that Damien disappeared, he
saw a male resembling Nicky McNamara holding a youth up against a wall near The
Harbour Lights pub and giving the lad a beating. At the time he didn’t think
that the lad was Damien. The friend who suggested to him that the lad could
have been Damien also made a statement (this friend must have been someone
other than Ed Weaver who didn’t give a statement). It’s not clear whether ‘a
male resembling Nicky McNamara’ is police speak, or because Paul was unable to
say with certainty that it was Nicky who he witnessed.
Paul Foster may
be the anonymous witness who took Unsolved reporter, Bronagh Munroe, to
the wall on Bars Hill where he claimed to have seen Nicky holding up a ‘young,
thin, skinny nipper’. According to Bronagh, he made a statement in 2005, ‘but
he did tell people afterwards.’
March 2005: Valerie received a confidential email
informing her that the police would be conducting a 6-8-week investigation
around Nicky’s associates.
7 September
2005: Valerie was
updated on the investigation in an email that ‘contained nothing of real note’.
July 2007: The Kilbride report, which contained
no names, recommended that the rumour that a male resembling Nicky had held a
youth up against a wall near the Harbour Lights pub and had given him a
beating, be reinvestigated.
November
2007: Self-styled
private investigator, Ivor Edwards, began investigating Damien’s case.
February
2008 post reward appeal:
Information received after Ivor Edwards’ reward appeal was published included:
- Author of anonymous letter passed to Ivor Edwards from the Isle of Wight County Press stated that he had been told by many people that Damien was in Cowes, drunk, shouting up to the flat above the butchers shop on the corner of Terminus Road for drugs, that he ended up inside, was either punched or hit over head with something and rendered unconscious, that Nicky McNamara did part of the hitting, and that his body was wrapped in chicken wire somewhere, put in boot of a car and dropped off the back of the Island somewhere over a cliff.
- Noise heard near Bars Hill that sounded like a fight.
- A vague account of a youth being held up against a wall in that area at a similar time.
October
2010: Text message to James from someone
claiming to be one of Nicky’s associates saying that Damien was buried on ‘a
cycle track’.
November
2010: Ivor Edwards
heard about an alleged associate of Nicky who couldn’t stop talking about
Damien when he was drunk, repeating ‘no body, no crime’ over and over again.
January 2011: A young man said that he had heard
Damien had upset a well-known crooked businessman by standing up to some of his
dealings and that Nicky was sent to sort Damien out. DCI Powell believed that
the family had an agenda and were using Damien as a means to an end for their
own benefit.
January 2011: The same source who had texted James
in October 2010 texted him again to say that eight years previously he had told
police that Nicky had killed Damien in an argument over cannabis – that he had
thrown a punch at Damien in anger but hadn’t intended to kill him. Damien’s
body had been hidden at a house on Fellows Road and kept there for up to two
weeks before being buried near a cycle path in a sail bag. Valerie writes that
the source was an ex-police informant who was now married into the ‘drugs
world’ and who police used to pay for information. The information was passed
to the police.
10
May 2011: Police arrested five men ‘based on new
and existing information’ and searched the marsh adjacent to the Cowes to
Newport cycle track near Stag Lane. Although no names have ever been released,
two of those arrested were Daniel Spencer and Jonathan ‘Bunny’ Iles. The search
of the marsh turned up no evidence or remains. During the search, the police
receive an anonymous tip-off about a man matching Nicky’s description burning
clothes in an oil drum outside a chalet of an acquaintance of Nicky in the days
after Damien disappeared whilst shouting ‘I’m a damned man’.
May 2011:
The ex-police informant said that the police had searched the wrong spot, that
Damien was buried in a wooded copse known as Winding Way on Gurnard cycle path.
01 November 2011:
The police conducted a two-day fingertip search of the chalet on Marsh Road and
arrested the two owners on suspicion of conspiracy to murder. Residents of
Marsh Road told the Isle of Wight County Press that the chalet had been
unoccupied for years.
Between
November 2011 and April 2012:
Mr X/The Weatherman claimed that he saw Nicky and some others outside Moira
House on Sun Hill the day after Damien vanished. He said that Nicky was putting
what appeared to be a bloodied carpet into a red car. He claims to have said,
jokingly, ‘What have you got there, a body?’ and they apparently all looked at
him in horror. He continued to speak to Ivor Edwards, making various claims
about witnessing Nicky – that he had
been in Cowes the night Damien disappeared, the oil drum fire at the chalet the
following afternoon, etc.
28 February
2012: BBC News
published an article entitled MOTHER OF DAMIEN NETTLES TALKS OF DRUGS DEBT
MURDER THEORY. In it, Valerie spoke of believing that Damien had been beaten to
death by a drugs gang and that ‘there has been more information that he fell
foul of some people. […] A couple of these people have since passed away from
overdoses so it's difficult to prove now, but there are still people around who
have information about what happened. […] We understand that someone involved
with these particular people told them what they did to Damien.’ At the time, three people who could be
linked to Nicky were still on bail following the May and November searches –
Daniel Spencer, and the owners of the Marsh Road chalet.
7 June 2012: The three remaining suspects were
released from bail without charge.
Between
June and October 2012: The ex-police informant remained
adamant that Damien would be found on the cycle path in Gurnard and said that
he had seen the sail bag that Damien was moved in at Fellows Road where a
dealer called Bunny Iles rented a room – that men there had been showing him
stolen goods they had in bags and when he went to look in the sail bag one of
the men stopped him and said with a smirk ‘you don’t want to look in there’.
The informant also told of young boys who had drug debts who had been roped in
to dispose of Damien’s body. One of them had been sobbing because he had seen
Damien’s murder. Valerie writes that she remembered an anonymous message
received through the Damien Nettles website ‘from years back’ that described
something very similar (according to the chronology in Valerie’s book, the
Damien Nettles website was created sometime between April and November 2004.
There is also a blog that may have been created prior to this.)
October 2012:
Information received after a £20,000 reward is offered by the police to track
down Damien:
- Damien was heard shouting to someone in the flat above the butcher’s shop to ‘throw something down’.
- People living in homes off The Parade had reported shouting, almost like a fight taking place, sometime after midnight.
October 2015:
The investigation and filming for Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared began.
Additional information that Unsolved gathered included:
- 18 Shore Road was identified as a place that Damien had allegedly been killed. The source of the information, the ex-police informant, had spoken to councillor Lynn Hammond who recalled what she had been told in episode 2: that ‘this boy’ started sobbing and when he was asked what was the matter, he said that he'd been involved in helping to bury Damien, that he was never meant to be killed, only taught a lesson, and it went wrong. Damien was brought to 18 Shore Road alive and died there – his head went back against the wall and he slumped to the floor and choked on his own vomit. He was wrapped in a rug and black plastic bags.
- An anonymous witness who wouldn’t show his face on camera took Unsolved reporter, Bronagh Munroe, to a wall on Bars Hill where he claimed that he saw ‘Nicky Mac. Nick had a young, thin, skinny nipper up against a wall on the bend of Bars Hill. It was well lit, about midnight-ish. It wasn't friendly. No, I knew that straight away. It wasn't friendly. He had him by the scruff of the neck and was holding him up against the wall. Er… Danny Spencer was stood well back.’ Bronagh said that ‘the one thing that he kept telling me about the kid was that he was really tall, taller than Nicky Mac […] He makes a statement in 2005, but he did tell people afterwards.’ The witness went on to say that a few months after Damien disappeared, after people had suggested to him that the kid he saw could have been Damien, he confronted Nicky: ‘It was all in the news, and it's just sort of you know come up to my mind, like, "Oh, that were that young nipper, that Damien Nettles that night, was it, that I saw you with?” and he got really paranoid. He couldn't look me in the eyes. He's going, "No, no, no. What are you on about?" Like, you know, he was from one second being relaxed and talking or whatever to his whole demeanour had changed. To being paranoid and couldn't look me in the eyes.’ Bronagh also said that the witness claimed that he told the police that he couldn't be sure that it had been Daniel Spencer who was with Nicky.
- A claim that Damien was taken to the flat above the butcher’s shop in the early hours of 3 November 1996 for the tenant to look after him. This person later realised that Damien was in fact dead (information re: Unsolved via www.damienettles.uk).
- The ex-police informant is stated to have said that Damien’s body was moved from Fellows Road to Shore Road in a sail bag (information re: Unsolved via www.damiennettles.uk).
Sources
BBC News (25 July 2016) Damien Nettles: The Boy Who Disappeared.
Google maps.
Isle of Wight
County Press archives (8 November 1996
to 25 May 2012) Results for “Damien Nettles” and “missing teenager”.
Searches conducted 23 May 2024 and 29 May 2024.
Isle of Wight
County Press archives (5 May 1995 to 23
December 2005) Results for “Daniel Alan Spencer”, “Daniel Spencer”, “Danny
Spencer” and “Dan Spencer”. Search conducted 23 May 2024.
Isle of Wight
County Press archives (16 September 1983 to 20 June 2003) Results for “Nicholas
John McNamara”, “Nicholas McNamara”, “Nicky McNamara” and “Nick McNamara”.
Search conducted 23 May 2024.
Justice for
Damien Nettles (19 August 2016) Valerie Nettles’ response to Laura Louise
Holden’s post confirming that in 2010/11 police had identified all the men in
Yorkies as army men. Facebook.
Marsh, S. (3
November 2004) Mother of boy lost for 8 years pins her last hope on CCTV. The
Times.
Marsh, S. (6
November 2004) Island boy ‘angered drug seller on day he vanished’. The
Times.
Nettles, V.
(2019) The Boy Who Disappeared. London: John Blake Publishing.
Streetmap.co.uk
Unsolved: The boy who disappeared: 2 – The
Informant (2016) BBC3, 26 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.
valnettles (2016) Missing Damien Nettles in Yorkies Chip Shop. YouTube.
Wightliving
(N.D. updated 13 February 2010) Drugs Kill – Isle of Wight: Nicholas John
McNamara.
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