body not found: Damien Nettles: Water, water everywhere

In this tenth 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 detailed look at waters surrounding the Island, exploring what happens to bodies in water and at sea, and considering data on missing persons whose bodies have been found in water.

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

In Murder, manslaughter or misadventure? I considered the potential reasons for Damien’s disappearance in relation to personal, geographical and behavioural risk factors, statistical data, and criminological theories. The aim was to try and assess the likelihood that he disappeared intentionally or unintentionally, and whether this was due to an accident, misadventure, or as a result of a crime. I concluded that he probably disappeared unintentionally, and from a crime point of view based on individual risk factors, statistical probability, routine activity theory, the victim-offender overlap and the homicide-geographical-deprivation relationship, that he was more likely to have been the victim of manslaughter than of murder. However, some of the same factors that increased his risk of becoming a victim of manslaughter, namely his age, being male, being on his own, and being under the influence of alcohol (and possibly drugs), also increased his risk of meeting with misadventure or an accident. In relation to this, there is one significant factor that criminology doesn’t consider – a missing person’s proximity to water and the associated risk of a fatal outcome.

Missing on a night out

A 2017 study by researchers Geoff Newiss and Ian Greatbatch that examined fatal disappearances of men who were last seen ‘on a night out’ is particularly relevant to Damien’s case. The study’s sample was drawn from missing persons data from between January 2010 and August 2015, and although the sample size was small at 96 individuals, the inclusion criteria was very specific – each man had to have gone missing following an evening or night of socialising in an alcohol consumption environment such as pubs, bars, nightclubs or an event such as a wedding or a party, he had to have been reported missing, and there had to have been some doubt as to where he had gone and what had happened to him (for example, men seen entering water and getting into difficulty were excluded). The men in the sample were aged between 16 and 62, with 71% aged 25 or under. The main findings of the study as they relate to Damien’s disappearance were as follows:

In 60% of cases, the person remained missing for longer than a week – this is in contrast to just 5% of all missing person cases.
For 84% (81) of cases, there was a clear indication that the missing person had consumed alcohol and/or drugs prior to their disappearance.
65% (62) of cases involved disappearances from areas of High Night-Time Economy (HNTE) – typically city or town centres with pubs, bars and nightclubs that are heavily populated at night-time.
In 90% (56) of HNTE cases, the bodies were recovered from water. However, for 60% (37) of HNTE cases, the last known place of the missing person was a street, compared to just 8% (5) that were directly by water (e.g. towpath, harbour-side, jetty, etc.).
Overall, in 89% (85) of the 96 ‘missing on a night out’ cases, the bodies were found in water: rivers (52), canals (11), sea, beach or shore (11), harbours, docks, quays or marinas (6) and lakes (5).
Of the 44 missing persons for whom cause of death was known, 93% (41) drowned, 5% (2) fell, and 2% (1) suffered cold water shock.
Of the 52 available verdicts recorded by coroners, 60% (31) were accident, 4% (2) were misadventure, 29% (15) were open (including inconclusive) and 8% (4) were narrative. The possibility therefore that some cases involved men intentionally entering water cannot be discounted.

The police’s theory for many years was that Damien had tried to swim across the Solent to Portsmouth to see his sister, Sarah, and had drowned. Though this seems like an unlikely scenario, in the days immediately prior to his disappearance, Damien had visited Sarah at her student digs. She writes that he arrived too late to eat the spaghetti bolognaise that she had made him, and they went straight to a club on the pier in Southsea where she remembers reminding him ‘the whole night to calm down with the beer’. They left the club early because Damien was ‘so drunk’, and after arriving back at her room, Damien promptly fell asleep on the floor. At some point during his visit, they also had had a conversation about drugs. Damien told her that he wanted to know what it felt like to ‘take drugs’, and Sarah told him that if he ever was going to do it, that she wanted to be there to make sure that he was okay. Damien returned home to Gurnard the following day, and Sarah said that she would visit him that weekend. She didn’t, and on the evening of Saturday 2 November, Damien was reported by several witnesses in Cowes to have been going from pub to pub, looking for his sister.

From Sarah’s description of their night out in Southsea, Damien appeared to be acutely vulnerable to the effects of alcohol. This may have been due in part to drinking on an empty stomach, but also because of the complex developmental changes that occur in the brain during adolescence. The prefrontal cortex, which controls impulses, isn’t fully developed in teenagers, and when alcohol floods the brain's reward circuits with dopamine, this impulse control deficit makes it difficult for teenagers to resist pleasure. Consequently, teenagers don’t pace themselves when they drink alcohol, and are vulnerable to drinking more and faster than their bodies are able to keep up with. Another characteristic of adolescence that can amplify the effects of alcohol is higher head-to-body ratio. Within five minutes of drinking alcohol it reaches the brain, and due to teenagers having a higher head-to-body ratio than adults, a comparatively large part of the alcohol ends up in the teenage brain.

Alcohol is associated with disinhibition and can lead users to behave out-of-character, out-of-control or excessively. Underage drinking in particular can lead teenagers to make poor decisions and engage in potentially risky and/or harmful behaviour. Damien is known to have consumed alcohol on the evening of 2 November 1996, and whilst he didn’t appear to be rolling drunk in the CCTV footage from Yorkies when he bought chips at 23:39, he was certainly far from sober. It is unknown whether Damien had taken any illicit drugs in addition to drinking alcohol that evening. He did use cannabis, and according to his friend, Chris Boon, speed and at some point (not necessarily that evening) they had taken some ‘trips’ (hallucinogenic drugs). This suggests that his conversation with Sarah may have been about other ‘drugs’, which really only leaves cocaine, ecstasy and ketamine in terms of popular recreational substances, particularly in the 1990s. In the interest of gaining a fuller picture to help better understand what might have contributed to Damien’s disappearance, knowing which ‘drugs’ Damien wanted to know what it felt like to take, could be beneficial. For example, hallucinogenic substances can cause users to take risky yet deliberate decisions, as can cocaine. Common risks associated with taking cocaine include panic attack, heart attack and/or stroke, and those of ecstasy include overheating and/or dehydration. The effects of ketamine include feeling detached and altered perceptions of time/space, and the risk of injury without knowing is common because pain is numbed. Mixing ketamine with alcohol is dangerous, and the main advice to never use it without being with other people you trust.

Damien was eating chips when he was last seen on the Cowes High Street CCTV at 00:02, which doesn’t fit with the appetite suppressing effects of some drugs, particularly speed, cocaine or ecstasy. However, he had bought the chips twenty minutes earlier, and so he was perhaps taking longer than might be expected to get through them. Maybe he wasn’t feeling all that hungry, but thought he’d better eat something to try and sober up a bit before he got home. Whilst taking any drug with alcohol increases the risk of the harms associated with each, even if he had consumed only alcohol that evening (and maybe a bit of cannabis), he will still have been at risk of making potentially hazardous decisions due to alcohol’s disinhibiting effects on the brain in addition to alcohol-related physical impairments such as poor coordination, loss of balance, numbness, and slowed breathing and heart rate.

Night-time + alcohol + water = increased risk of fatality

Going back to the missing on a night out study findings, for the few cases where the missing person was last known to be directly by water, night-time (reduced vision) + alcohol-related impairments (disinhibition, risky decision-making, poor coordination, loss of balance) + beside a body of water = high risk of fatal consequence (accident or misadventure) certainly seems to be true. Additionally, dangerous responses to cold water peak at water temperatures between 10 and 15°C. In particular, cold water shock, where sudden immersion in cold water can trigger reflexive gasping, rapid breathing or hyperventilating, and an increase in heartrate and blood pressure, is an involuntary response to the body being suddenly or unexpectedly immersed into water that has a temperature of 15°C or less. It can be the precursor to drowning, and quickly creates a drowning emergency if water is inhaled and staying afloat is compromised.

Sea temperatures at Cowes in October range between 15.1°C and 17.3°C, and in November between 12.7°C and 15.9°C. Taking an average for 31 October/1 November this range becomes 13.9°C to 16.6°C, with a mean temperature of 15.25°C. This would have made Damien’s risk of cold water shock relatively significant, particularly as the month of November 1996 was recorded as being colder than average, and his breathing and heartrate will have been slower than normal due to alcohol consumption, which may have raised his susceptibility to sudden involuntarily respiratory/circulatory increases.

But what of the significant majority of men and boys who go missing on a night out whose bodies were found in water, but whose last known place was a street? There must have been water nearby, but why did they leave the street and go so close to the water that they ended up in it? Unfortunately, there are no research answers to these questions as yet, but we can hypothesise. Fifteen years of data from the Water Activity Incident Database indicates that the consistent majority of drowning victims are male (upwards of 80%). This is thought to be because men are more likely than women to participate in swimming and water sports under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Around half of all incidents involving under 19s are a result of swimming and walking/running near water, and around half of these incidents occur at river, coast, beach and shore locations. So there are some commonalities between male drowning victims where the circumstances are known, and male missing on a night out fatalities in water, namely consumption of alcohol and/or drugs, being a teenager, and river/coast/beach/shore locations. Maybe for some men who go missing on a night out, a waterside walk was on their route home. For others, perhaps the decision to enter the water was deliberate (deciding to go for a swim) or accidental (slipping and falling in).

I also have another theory. It may sound a bit off the wall, but in areas of HNTE, public urination is so common that in some places it has become normalised. When drunk and disinhibited, given the choice of peeing against a wall (and the consequences of poor aim/splashback) or walking a little way to pee into a known body of water, do some men choose the water, only to slip and fall in? Might this help to explain accidental drowning/cold water shock associated with men who go missing on a night out whose last known location is a street?

The waters surrounding Cowes

Although the Solent is a seawater strait, geologically it is a submerged river that extended from west to east and swung round the eastern end of the Isle of Wight at a time when sea-level was low and the English Channel was dry. This river channel has a series of terraces which descend to 46 metres below sea-level at the deepest point off the east of the Isle of Wight. Currents are complex and strong in the Solent off Cowes and change direction from a roughly westerly to easterly direction and vice versa with the tides. Low tide at Cowes on 2 November 1996 was at around 22:45. High tide was between 04:00 and 06:30 the following morning, and so the tide would have been on the flood and the tidal current flowing eastwards when Damien was most likely to have entered the sea.

The opinion of the harbour master at Cowes at the time was that if Damien had drowned, his body would have turned up within days. It is reported that five days after Damien vanished, the police drafted in a marine unit to scour the banks of the Medina Estuary (River Medina) and the shore round to Gurnard, and according to the harbour master, a thorough search was undertaken with boats. However, the sea and bodies do not always do what is expected. In which direction and how far Damien’s body may have travelled depends on multiple factors such as where he entered the water, whether his body became stuck or remained mobile, how far his body moved with each tidal current, and the speed at which his body progressed through the stages of decomposition. If he had entered the sea anywhere off the Esplanade west of the Royal Yacht Squadron at the mouth of the Medina Estuary, his body may have remained in the area due to an eddy (circular current) that develops on the flood tide between The Green and Egypt Point. It takes a while for this eddy to develop and form in deep water, and so whilst his body may have eventually come ashore in the same area, due to a tidal phenomenon characteristic of the Solent known as a ‘stand’, the sea can remain at high water level for up to four hours. It is therefore very possible that his body could have made its way into the East Solent.

There are also other potential entry points to the water that may not have been previously considered. Damien was last sighted at 00:02 on Cowes High Street walking in a northerly direction just before the junction with Sun Hill to the left. A few metres past this junction to the right is a public slipway known as Sun Slip. 90 metres north of this opposite the bottom of Market Hill is Market Slip (where the Harbour Lights pub was at the time) and 50 metres beyond this, Watchouse Slip on Watchouse Lane at the south end of The Parade. All three slipways, which are accessible at all state of tide, are situated on the Medina Estuary, which extends 6.8km from its tidal limit at Newport Harbour to its 1.75km wide mouth between Cowes and East Cowes that opens into the Solent. The estuary’s shoreline is approximately 14.4km, and even at low water, a single, relatively wide but shallow channel remains.

Water continually circulates into and out of an estuary. Tides create the largest flow of saltwater, while river mouths create the largest flow of freshwater. When dense, salty seawater flows into an estuary, it has an estuarine current – common at high tide. Saltwater is heavier than freshwater and so estuarine currents sink and move near the bottom of the estuary. When less-dense freshwater from a river flows into the estuary, it has an anti-estuarine current. Anti-estuarine currents are strongest near the surface of the water and at ebb tide, and this strength depends on the flow and size of the feeding river. However, the tidal currents in the Medina Estuary differ from those of a natural estuary due to a 300-metre-long harbour wall at East Cowes, and an equally long concrete breaker at the entrance to Cowes Harbour, as this model by ABPMer shows. The tidal current flowing into the estuary is reduced to begin with as the water level rises, then a central eddy begins to form in the region of the slipways and strengthens during the hour before high water, causing cross currents. The eddy dissipates during the stand, during which period the tidal current in the Solent changes to a westerly flow, then as the water level starts to drop, the anti-estuarine current takes over briefly prior to low tide.

There are also multiple underwater structures in the Medina Estuary such as jetty and harbour footings and pilings, channel markers, cables, anchor chains and buoy lines, as well as submerged manmade debris (e.g. rope, propellers, fishing lines and nets), rocks and seaweed, that could cause a sunken body to become entangled and remain trapped. Although the film quality is dated by today’s standard (and the music is annoying) this 12-minute piece of drone footage shot in 2015 gives a comprehensive bird’s eye view of the Medina Estuary at low tide from its mouth at Cowes, all the way to the centre of Newport. Watchouse Slip, Market Slip and Sun Slip come into view at 0:17, 0:20 and 0:23 respectively.

The footage shows the sheer size and scale of the estuary, and how easily a body that entered its waters could remain hidden from view. If Damien had entered the water in the region of the slipways, unless his submerged body became entangled on something within the estuary, he could have been carried into the Solent. Once there, his body is likely to have travelled eastwards on the stronger flood tide currents. The image below maps the journeys of four individuals who went missing in the Solent’s waters and whose bodies were located. All four individuals were carried eastwards on the flood tide currents that follow the course of the old riverbed, as indicated by the directional arrows on each line:

The names of the individuals, when and where they were last seen, and when and where their bodies were found, are as follows:

Rebecca Allen – Last seen on the evening of 30/05/2015 in Yarmouth. Her body was located at 13:00 on 01/06/2015 in the water near to Brambles Bank (a sandbank in the middle of the Solent that forms at low tide). Time in the water: 1-2 days.

Elezaj Shkelzen – Last seen at 18:00 on 04/08/2020 leaving Lymington for Langstone Harbour on his jet ski. At 20:00 his jet ski was found in the water by Stokes Bay. His body was located at 10:50 on 10/08/2020 in the Solent just over one nautical mile off Ryde Pier. Time in the water: 5-6 days.

Ben Hilton – Last seen at 22:18 on 08/06/212 at the catamaran jetty at Portsmouth Harbour. His body was located at 09:00 on 18/06/2012 in the water near Hayling Island. Time in the water: 9-10 days.

Marc Richardson – Last seen on 31/10/2023 in the Portsmouth area. On 02/11/2023 he is said to have been in phone contact (type of phone contact not been stated) and his car was located in Bransbury Car Park in Southsea. His body was located at 15:00 on 03/11/2023 in the water near Selsey. Time in the water: 1-4 days (depending on whether the phone contact was actually from him).

What happens to bodies in water

In addition to how different bodies of water behave, whether the cause of death is drowning or otherwise, human bodies sink to the bottom of water once air has left the lungs. How quickly a body sinks can depend on environmental factors such as the salinity of the water, distance from the surface to the bottom of the water, tides and currents, and factors affecting the buoyancy of the person including age, bone density, body composition, and the clothes that they are wearing. For example, clothing can trap layers of air, which may increase the period of initial buoyancy; however, once this air has dissipated from the clothing, initial buoyancy is lost and the body sinks to the bottom. How long a body takes to surface again can depend on the same factors that affected its initial buoyancy, plus other factors such as footwear (for example, whereas heavy boots/shoes hinder buoyancy, trainers may aid it) when and what food was last consumed, seasonal water temperature, the water’s bottom temperature, water depth, debris and structures that could cause entanglement, and rate of decomposition. In warm, shallow water, decomposition works quickly and a body will surface within two or three days due to bloating from gases produced from internal decomposition processes (putrefaction). In cold water, the bacterial action that causes a body to bloat with gas is slower and therefore can increase the time it takes for a body to bloat/float, or it may be so slowed that the body stays on the seabed. If this happens, the skin will absorb water and peel away from the underlying tissues in about a week, and the exposed flesh will be scavenged by fish, crabs and sea lice. If the bottom of the water is 30 metres or deeper, the combination of pressure and temperature prevents a body from becoming buoyant and consequently, it may never surface.

For bodies that do surface after sinking, floating occurs for only as long as the decomposition gases are trapped. This may leave only a small window of time in which the body is visible in the water – days rather than weeks. On land/in air in a warm environment, a bloated body can be in active decay where fluids evacuate from the body’s orifices in as little as a week after death. At this stage, organs, muscles, skin and cartilage become liquified, and the odours of putrefaction are extremely unpleasant and long-lasting (which is why I won’t even be considering the ‘stored in sail-bag for two weeks at Fellows Road’ rumour). At this point, a floating body is subject to the factors that affect decomposition in both air and water, including airborne insect activity, and scavenging by fish and seabirds. After a few days, bloat gases dissipate and the body deflates. With the tissues that once held the body together having liquified or been scavenged, the body becomes body parts. In air, what’s left of the body begins to dry out. In water, it sinks to the bottom again.

With an average surface sea temperature at Cowes at the beginning of November of 15.25°C, a body that was free to move in open water could take anything between 10 and 28 days from the initial point of sinking to resurfacing again and floating as it progresses through the bloat stage of decomposition. Factors such as being male, tall and skinny (denser frame, no fat) will lengthen the time that a body remains submerged. Salt water (denser than a body) and the presence of carbohydrates (e.g. chips) in the stomach (gases can be produced quicker) may decrease the time.

Where a body surfaces in the sea and in what state of decomposition will depend on how far it has travelled and how long it has been in the water. Whether floating or moving along the seabed, bodies can travel great distances due to tides, currents, waves and wind. One of the bodies in the missing on a night out study was found 80kms from the person’s last known location. Bodies may wash ashore whole (if still composed or in bloat) or in parts (any time from active decay onwards). Only a couple of days ago, body parts that had washed up on the beaches at Roker and Seaburn in Wearside between February 13 and April 8 earlier this year were identified as belonging to Roy Johnson, 49, who had been reported missing on January 20. This shows that even during the winter months, it can take just three weeks for a body to become dismembered by the sea.

Summary

Damien closely fits the men missing on a night out criteria for being found in water – he went missing in an area of HNTE that was within metres of a large body of open, tidal water, he had been drinking alcohol, he was reported missing, and there is doubt over where he went after he was last sighted and what had happened to him. If Damien did enter the water, wherever this may have been, whatever his reason was for doing so and whatever caused him to die, his fully clothed body will have likely lost its initial buoyancy before daylight on 3 November 1996 and sunk to the bottom of the water. If his body had remained free and mobile, it may have taken up to 10 days to resurface, in which time it could have travelled many kilometres in an eastward/south-eastward direction on the twice-daily flood tide currents. Equally, it could have become entangled whilst at the bottom of the water either when it sank or as it was moved with the tides and currents, and remained trapped and hidden from view – particularly if he had entered the water from a slipway on the Medina Estuary where there are multiple structures that a body could become caught up on. That he was wearing clothes and lace-up boots may have increased the chance of his body becoming snagged. If his body had remained free and floating, being found would have depended on being in the right place at the right time to be spotted in the short window between resurfacing due to bloating, and subsequent deflation. His dark coloured clothing would have made his body much harder to spot in the ocean (there's a reason why lifejackets are bright orange). Remaining unseen, his body, which after three weeks in the sea would have started to fragment and disperse, would have sunk again. If his body had travelled far enough east, it may have found its way into the deep terraces of the old Solent River where it is likely to have remained to this day.

In the next and (possibly) final post of this series, I will be looking back over my work on Damien’s case, summarising my findings so far, and considering whether there are any new or remaining avenues that require further exploration before bringing the series to a close.

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

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Talk to Frank

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body not found

Thursday, June 13, 2024

Damien Nettles: Water, water everywhere

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