Damien Nettles: No body, no crime?

In this ninth post of a series that examines the disappearance of 16-year-old Damien Nettles on 3 November 1996 from Cowes, Isle of Wight, I will be taking a brief look at Daniel Spencer – primarily because in May 2011, he was arrested on suspicion of murdering Damien. His file got as far as being referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), but he was eventually released from bail without charge in June 2012 due to lack of evidence. 

If you have arrived here without having read the previous posts in the series, here are the links in order:

Damien Nettles – The facts
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?
Damien Nettles – Nicky McNamara: Untangling the rumours

Daniel is interviewed in episode 7 of Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared. He was door-stepped on his way home from work by Unsolved reporter, Bronagh Munroe, in what is probably best described as a failed attempt to try and make him ‘confess’. Daniel is interviewed between 14:47 and 16:08 – here is the link to the episode on YouTube if you have not already watched it. My intention had been to do a language analysis of the interview, but given that Daniel is understandably on the back foot from the moment Bronagh accosts him and says ‘I want to talk about Damien Nettles’, it is impossible to make a reasoned judgement in terms of truth or lie detection. Additionally, the one minute and nineteen second interview is filmed using at least two cameras and there are angle and frame changes galore, meaning that we have no idea in which order some of the questions were asked, or what questions some of the answers were in response to.

In a similar vein to Shirley Barrett’s interview, the footage cuts from a scene where Daniel is uncomfortably but calmly answering Bronagh’s quick-fire questions at 15:30 to him suddenly being mildly annoyed with her at 15:31, before the footage jumps again at 15:35 where he swears a bit, and then continues to answer Bronagh’s questions before riding away on his bicycle at 15:55. If this was done for dramatic effect and to paint Daniel in as poor a light as possible, it was a monumental flop. He got mildly confrontational and swore a bit. He didn’t lose his temper. He used single negatives when asked if Nicky McNamara had something to do with Damien’s death. He was consistent in his denial of knowing anything about Damien’s disappearance. He didn’t hesitate in confirming that he had been arrested and questioned by the police. If he is innocent of any involvement, he was justified (if somewhat insensitive) in saying that the case had ruined his life.

There are things though that Daniel did say, is said to have said, and is said to have had, that warrant further attention. In response to Bronagh asking him ‘What would you say to Valerie Nettles?’ he replies ‘that I’m sorry for her loss.’ ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ is a phrase that is only said when someone has died, and there are plenty of commenters under the episode on YouTube who profess that because he said this, he must know that Damien is dead and is therefore guilty in some way. However, given that he was arrested for Damien’s murder (implying that Damien is dead) and kept on bail for over a year while the police conducted searches for Damien’s body and put their case together for the CPS, coupled with it being twenty years since Damien went missing without a trace, it could be argued that ‘I’m sorry for her loss’ has a pretty reasonable explanation, and is more realistic than ‘I hope she finds him’.

Unsolved also claimed to have spoken to more than ten acquaintances of Daniel who all ‘suspected’ that he may known something about Damien's disappearance. Bronagh spoke to a local private investigator who she claimed had said that he had spoken to the same sources. At 10:08 in episode 7 he says: ‘I’m talking to one of our sources. Mr Spencer repeatedly referred to Damien Nettles as a little c**t’ and that he ‘did say on more than one occasion if there’s no body, there’s no crime.’ So why would Daniel have called Damien a little c**t? Did he actually know Damien or have any dealings with him? There’s nothing to suggest in any of the Unsolved interviews with Damien’s friends that this was the case. Daniel was 22 when 16-year-old Damien went missing. Could Daniel have been one of the slightly older group of friends that Damien had started to associate with?

Damien lived on Woodvale Road in Gurnard at the time and had done since 1990 when his family had moved to the Isle of Wight. His circle of friends will have consisted of people of his own age who he went to school with in Cowes and Carisbrooke, and the slightly older group of friends from his summer job at Gurnard Pines (although summer job friends come and go and he’d been back at school for two months before he disappeared). Daniel was living on Westhill Road in Ryde in November 1996. Prior to this he lived on Hunnyhill in Newport for a brief period in late 1995/early 1996, and before that, Dover Street and Nelson Street in Ryde. Distance-wise, Woodvale Road in Gurnard is between 9.4 and 11.8 miles from Westhill Road in Ryde, depending on the route taken.

The Isle of Wight is a small place, but contrary to what people like to say about it, everyone doesn’t know everyone else. When you are sixteen and relying on public transport, lifts from your parents or your own two legs to get around, if you have no reason to venture beyond the area of your home, school or weekend/summer work (and those family/friendship circles), you just don’t mix with people from different areas. Damien will have known the north-west quarter of the Island reasonably well and in particular Gurnard, Cowes, the shopping areas in Newport, and the immediate area around Carisbrooke High School. Living mostly in Ryde, Daniel will have known the north-east quarter very well. That’s where his closest connections will have been, and according to newspaper reports, where the significant majority of his offending occurred. His only known offence in the north-west quarter was being drunk and disorderly in Cowes on 7 August 1996. I think that it’s doubtful that Damien and Daniel knew one another other, and even less likely that Daniel had any kind of dealings with Damien that would give him reason to repeatedly refer to him as a little c**t. It boils down to someone who doesn’t know Daniel very well (an acquaintance) telling a stranger what Daniel is supposed to have ‘repeatedly’ called Damien.

So what about Daniel saying ‘if there’s no body, there’s no crime’? If the police were trying to pin a murder on me that I hadn’t committed, I would probably say that too – particularly if I didn’t know the law and that a murder conviction can be brought without the need for the victim’s body as evidence. ‘If there’s no body, there’s no crime’ is not a veiled confession – it’s a way of saying ‘they can’t do me for murder if there’s no body’. It’s a form of self-reassurance. Daniel is also said to have been in possession of witness statements that according to the local private investigator were: ‘actual police statements and we couldn't work out where he got these statements from’. It was stated that one of them was given by the witness who said that Daniel may have seen Nicky McNamara pinning Damien against a wall. Daniel is said to have shown it to people and confronted the person who had made it. Neither the private investigator nor Unsolved say when Daniel is said to have been in possession of these witness statements. However, it’s unlikely to have been before he was arrested because there was no case to answer to prior to this. Perhaps this detail was omitted on purpose, because the criminal justice system procedure as it relates to evidence disclosure prior to a suspect being interviewed by the police is really very simple – a defence solicitor will normally obtain disclosure from the police prior to consulting with the suspect. It is the defence solicitor’s role to obtain as much information from the police as possible prior to the suspect being interviewed. Disclosure may be a few sentences briefly explaining the circumstances of the offence, or it could be a full disclosure of the entire police case and all the evidence.

A witness statement is a form of evidence. When someone is arrested, the evidence of the grounds on which they have been arrested is disclosed to them by the police. Suspects/defendants and/or their solicitors who receive official copies of witness statements that are made against them get a copy of the front of the statement, but not the back (which has the witness’ address on it). Additionally, suspects are normally told the witness’ name. The only person who doesn’t receive a copy of the statement at this stage (or indeed right up the point of trial if the case goes to court) is the witness who made the statement. So of course Daniel will have been in possession of witness statements – he was arrested on suspicion of murder and held on bail for over a year. His solicitor (and therefore he) will have been in possession of official police copies of the fronts of the statements, including Paul Foster’s, as part of the disclosure process. How else are solicitors supposed to defend suspects against what they are being accused of based on the evidence that will support the prosecution’s case in court if the arrestee is charged? It can only happen if the defence knows what witnesses have said. It upholds fairness in criminal justice proceedings, and prevents malicious chargings and prosecutions.

To protect witnesses, intimidation by suspects and/or their solicitors who try and influence witnesses to change or drop their statements, is a criminal offence. Did Daniel confront Paul Foster to try and get him to drop his statement, or was it simply because he was angry that he was being accused of murdering Damien, and that this hinged on Paul Foster having told the police that many years previously he had witnessed someone who he couldn’t be sure was Daniel Spencer watching who he thought was Nicky McNamara beating up a lad who at the time he didn’t think was Damien Nettles? Who did Daniel actually call ‘a little c**t’? Maybe it was Paul Foster.

In an article that appeared in the Isle of Wight County Press on 15 June 2012, Damien’s mother, Valerie, is quoted as saying: ‘if people are not guilty then they should be left to get on with the rest of their lives’. For one reason or another, that hasn’t happened. Consequently, the prevailing narrative that Nicky McNamara ‘murdered’ Damien needed to be examined and questioned, but this has only led me to doubt its plausibility. I have found nothing to support it being even remotely true. And with that, I’m going to draw a line under Nicky McNamara, Daniel Spencer, and anyone else who has been criminally implicated in Damien’s disappearance. That’s not to say that a crime couldn’t have taken place – the possibilities of what, when, where, why and generic who can still be explored – but unless new, direct evidence is found against Nicky or any of the individuals who in 2011 were arrested and subsequently released from lengthy bails without charge, there is no good reason that I can find to believe that they were involved.

On the suggestion of one of my readers, in the next post I will be taking a detailed look at the tides and currents in the waters surrounding the Isle of Wight, exploring what happens to bodies in water and at sea, and analysing data on identified human remains that have washed ashore.

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

Crown Prosecution Service (2019) Witness Statements and Memory Refreshing.

Finden, R. (6 June 2012) Fresh blow on search for Damien. Isle of Wight County Press.

Google maps.

Home Office (2003) Giving a witness statement to the police – what happens next? London: Home Office Communication Directorate. Page 3.

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.

Nettles, V. (2019) The Boy Who Disappeared. London: John Blake Publishing.

Olliers Solicitors (2024) FAQs – What happens when a suspect is interviewed?

Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared: 7 – The Search (2016) BBC3, 31 July.