Damien Nettles: Language analysis of Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared interviews – Part 4

In this sixth 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 applying language analysis to the interviews with Shirley Barrett from the Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared documentary series that aired on BBC3 in 2016. 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

The reason I am spending so much time analysing these interviews is because only when someone’s choice of words and how they are spoken are scrutinised, may the truth of what is said emerge. One of my aims of writing this ‘body not found’ blog is to try and separate facts from rumours in ‘no body’ murder cases. Damien Nettles’ case is no exception, but unlike many missing-presumed-deceased cases, an investigative documentary series was made about it. The interviews with Damien’s family and friends, witnesses, informants and persons of interest, are a source for information that simply can’t be ignored just because language analysis is incredibly time-consuming, laborious, open to interpretation, and doesn’t always generate new or definitive information. The point is that it might, and so it must be done. 

Shirley Barrett

Shirley Barrett is interviewed in episode 6. One of the reasons that Unsolved spoke to her was because of an unsigned statement that she gave to private investigator, Ivor Edwards, in which she claimed that on the night that Damien disappeared, Nicky McNamara had picked up Damien with another man who she refused to name, on the Cowes end of Baring Road not far from Bars Hill. At 3:27 in episode 6, Ivor Edwards, who began investigating Damien’s case in 2007 five years after Nicky McNamara died, confirms that Shirley told him this, and also that if he repeated it that she would have him ‘murdered’. In her book, The Boy Who Disappeared, Damien’s mother, Valerie, writes that the police spoke to Shirley about her claim, but that it didn’t amount to anything. It is not clear when Shirley made her claim to Ivor or when the police spoke to her about it, but Valerie writes about it in between events that happened in late 2012 and early 2013.

Shirley lived in a house on Prospect Road in Newport, Isle of Wight, for at least ten years until 2003, when she was forced to move out under a court ordered Antisocial Behaviour Injunction. During that time, her home was the centre of four deaths – two men who died in the property, one of whom was Nicky McNamara, a regular visitor to the house who discovered Nicky’s body in the bath and was found hanged nearby a few months later, and the garden was excavated by the police in a search for another body. At the time of Damien’s disappearance, Shirley was a 34-year-old heroin addict and drug dealer. She was married to Christopher Thomas, who in 1999 was convicted of attempting to murder Edwin Wilcox who Thomas claimed sexually abused him from the ages of 11 to 16 when he lived in care. Thomas said that he kicked Wilcox off Culver Cliff. Wilcox’s scarf was found part-way down the cliff, which was enough to convict Thomas, but Wilcox’s body has yet to be found.

Prior to interviewing Shirley Barrett (SB), Unsolved reporters Bronagh Munroe (BM) and Alys Harte (AH) speak to her on the doorstep of her flat. The following excerpt was filmed by one cameraman, but the final edit that we see and hear is not in the order that questions were asked and answered. It may or may not have been filmed on the same evening. Here's the link to episode 6 on YouTube so that you can watch the interview that accompanies my analyses should you wish to. The single digits indicate four different scene shots as applied to what is being said, and the double numbers indicate the minutes:seconds of each scene start:

1 BM 8:16: Do you remember Damien Nettles?

1 SB: Yeah, vaguely, yeah.

1 BM: He's the little boy who disappeared 19 years ago…

1 SB: Yeah…

1 BM: …and we are looking to help his mummy find him.

1 SB: Yeah. It’s…

2 SB 8:24 If I knew anything… I’ve-h I’ve-had the police round to me about a thou… about a million times.

3 BM 8:29: For years, Nicky McNamara has been blamed, right, so we're looking to

2 BM 8:33: talk to people who knew Nicky McNamara as well. Can you tell me if you thought Nicky was a violent person? Was he ever violent?

2 SB: Yes. Very violent.

2 BM: Very violent?

2 SB: Yeah.

2 BM: Really?

2 SB: Yeah.

4 BM 8:42: Did you ever see him be violent?

4 SB: Yeah.

4 BM: To-to whom?

4 SB: Most people.

4 BM: Everybody? Boys…

4 SB: Everybody.

4 BM: ...girls? We have been told that he was a big dealer in Cowes.

4 SB: Yeah he was.

4 BM: He was?

4 SB: Yeah.

4 BM: Did he deal drugs to young boys?

4 SB: Yes.

2 BM 8:57: Do you remember talking to the police?

2 SB: Many a time about that.

2 BM: About Damien?

2 SB: Yes, many a time.

2 BM 9:03: Do you remember telling them

1 BM 9:05: that Nicky McNamara and somebody else picked Damien up on Baring Road?

2 SB 9:09: Well that’s th… well that’s what how what… you know what people are like when they say things over here, it’s just the story that’s carried on and probably got out of hand and…

2 BM: Do you remember saying that to police, though?

2 SB: Probably, I don’t know, I can’t remember. It was, you know… th-they’ve seen me so many times.

Analysis: Shirley says that she ‘vaguely’ remembers Damien. This may be true: she may not have met him, it had been 19 years since his disappearance and she was a heroin addict for many of those years, which may have affected her memory; or she may have said it to downplay the extent to which she remembers him – not necessarily personally, but in order to distance herself from knowing any information about his disappearance. At 8:24 she says: ‘If I knew anything… I’ve-h I’ve-had the police round to me about a thou… about a million times.’ However, she’s not asked if she knows anything about Damien or his disappearance and the scene shot changes after Bronagh speaks, and so although Unsolved are trying to imply that her answer is about Damien, we simply don’t know why Shirley says this. All that can be said is that after she says ‘If I knew anything’ there is a brief moment of apparent cognitive load (… I’ve-h) as she thinks about what to say next, before going with ‘I’ve had the police round to me about a thou… about a million times’. ‘A million times’ is an example of hyperbole (exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally). Exaggerating the fact of how many times something has happened can either be meant as a humorous remark, an expression of exasperation or annoyance, or to emphasise a point. Both downplaying and exaggerating are forms of deception, but of things or events that contain elements of truth – she does remember Damien, and the police have visited her many times – however, the two are not necessarily connected. ‘If I knew anything’ is also an interesting turn of phrase. Certain statements can indicate a higher probability of deception, but are not necessarily accurate predictors of deception. These statements include ‘I don’t remember doing that’, ‘why would I do that?’, ‘I don’t know what I did’, ‘are you accusing me?’ and ‘you can’t prove that’. ‘If I knew anything’ is similar in connotation because it implies knowledge of the thing that is being discussed, and so it’s something to bear in mind when considering the probability that Shirley is being deceptive.

The question that Bronagh asks at 8:29 is split across scene shots 3 and 2. This suggests what she says at 8:33 did not directly follow what she says at 8:29. However, Shirley appears to reply quickly to the questions about Nicky McNamara that are fired at her during the 9 second excerpt between 8:33 and 8:42 (scene shot 2) and the 15 second excerpt between 8:42 and 8:57 (scene shot 4), and so even though Bronagh’s question and the section about Nicky McNamara being violent and selling drugs to teenage boys have been edited together, there is nothing to suggest that Shirley is lying.

At 9:03, Bronagh asks Shirley a question that is split across scene shots 2 (Do you remember telling them) and 1 (that Nicky McNamara and somebody else picked Damien up on Baring Road?). The camera then cuts back to scene shot 2 and we hear Shirley speaking at 9:09. This suggests that Shirley’s answer: ‘Well that’s th… well that’s what how what… you know what people are like when they say things over here, it’s just the story that’s carried on and probably got out of hand and…’ may not be in direct response to being asked if she remembered telling the police that Nicky McNamara and somebody else picked Damien up on Baring Road. All that can be said about it is that she is experiencing some cognitive load (Well that’s th… well that’s what how what…) before she says: ‘you know what people are like when they say things over here, it’s just the story that’s carried on and probably got out of hand and…’. This may indicate responsibility avoidance – speaking in the third person to remove herself from the ‘the story that’s carried on’. Bronagh then asks from the same camera angle: ‘Do you remember saying that to police, though?’ and Shirley answers: ‘Probably, I don’t know, I can’t remember. It was, you know… th-they’ve seen me so many times.’ Again, because of the switch in scene shot between Bronagh’s previous question and Shirley’s answer, we can’t be sure that this answer is in relation to Shirley speaking to the police about her supposed claim to Ivor Edwards that Damien was picked up on Baring Road by Nicky McNamara and another man. All that can be said is that ‘Probably, I don’t know, I can’t remember. It was, you know… th-they’ve seen me so many times’ may indicate self-handicapping and responsibility avoidance, which could be suggestive of deception, particularly as she begins with ‘probably’, which is an expression of greater certainty than ‘maybe’, ‘perhaps’ or ‘possibly’, and follows this with ‘I don’t know, I can’t remember’, which may be to downplay any implied certainty in relation ‘probably’.

The next excerpt of note is when Bronagh asks whether she can ‘pop back and do a little chat’ with Shirley ‘in relation to talking about back then’. Shirley replies ‘What do you mean, an interview?’ The camera then cuts away to a zoomed out scene shot as we hear Bronagh saying ‘Yeah, would you do one and set the record straight for us?’ It then cuts to a zoomed in scene shot where Shirley’s face can be seen in the light coming through the doorway, and Bronagh and Shirley can be both be heard speaking at the same time for a second before Shirley continues:

BM 9:52:   and then
SB 9:52: I’ve been running from this for years. Just because I was friends with Nicky Mac everyone thought I knew all this and I don’t know anything… I don’t know nothing.

Analysis: Again, with the switch of scene shots, we don’t know what ‘this’ is that Shirley has been ‘running from’. Additionally, her use of ‘I don’t know nothing’ shouldn’t be taken as a double-negative (that she does know something) because ‘I don’t know nothing’ is such a commonly used, grammatically incorrect phrase that the feeling expressed by it takes precedence over the logic behind it. It’s not even close to being an indicator of lying.

The footage then cuts to the inside of Shirley’s living room and remains there for the rest of the interview, although as with the doorstep footage, the final edit is made up of several scenes shot by one cameraman. At 10:40, Shirley confirms that she had a relationship with Nicky McNamara but that it was ‘a long time after, a lot longer after’ Damien went missing. Alys then asks:

AL 10:49: I think he might have been spoken to by police before he died. Did he ever mention that to you?

SB 10:54: No.

AH 10:55: So he never talked…

SB 10:56: No.

AH 10:56: …about Damien Nettles?

SB 10:57: No, no.

Analysis: This excerpt is a continuous scene shot and so we know that Alys’ questions and Shirley’s answers are in order, and there is nothing of significance to suggest that Shirley is lying about Nicky not speaking to the police before he died – she answers with a single ‘no’ to this question and the next without hesitation, and her words and gestures (‘no’ shaking of the head) are congruent. Shirley's 'No, no' at 10:57 is probably in response to Alys changing the focus of her original question (spoken to the police before he died, did he ever mention that to you) and her next (so he never talked) to ‘about Damien Nettles’. Compared to truth-tellers, liars tend to use multiple denial words and phrases – ‘no, not ever, never’ – to overstate lack of involvement or to overemphasise denial, but a double ‘no’ is not a reliable indicator of this.

Bronagh then tries to question Shirley about the circumstances surrounding Nicky McNamara’s death. Nicky died in Shirley's bath and it is said that his body remained there for three days before his death was reported. What is said during the next excerpt is continuous camera footage. Shirley states that she doesn’t want to talk about the circumstances of Nicky’s death. Bronagh then asks her about the supposed deathbed confession that Nicky made about Damien, to which Shirley replies:

SB 11:12 I told you I don’t wish to talk about… (BM I’m sorry I don’t) …and no, there was no deathbed confession.

Analysis: As Shirley says this, she raises her left hand with her palm towards Bronagh in a ‘stop’ gesture. Linguistically, there is nothing to suggest that she is lying about there being ‘no deathbed confession’. In support of this, 90% of heroin overdoses are accidental, meaning that the significant majority of people don’t know that they are going to die. The odds of a heroin overdose deathbed confession are negligible at most. Bronagh keeps pushing for information in relation to the circumstances surrounding Nicky’s death and about who else was in the house when he died, to which Shirley replies: 

SB 11:38: It doesn’t… I don't want to talk about that. You keep on talking about that and I tell you I’m not talking about that. That’s nothing to do with Damien Nettles.

Analysis: Again, there’s nothing to suggest that Shirley is lying when she says that the circumstances and people surrounding Nicky’s death had ‘nothing to do with Damien’. Shirley is clearly annoyed by this line of questioning – she rolls her eyes and subtly shakes her head in a ‘no’ gesture when she finishes speaking – but she doesn’t become aggressive or lose her temper. Bronagh then asks:   

BM 11:46: What about the suggestion that Nicky McNamara picked up Damien in Baring Road along with another man? We know that information came potentially from you (Shirley frowns) about Nicky McNamara.

AL 12:02 Do you think you might have said to the police or...?

SB 12:06 Well… if-if I did, I don't remember, but also, another thing that was said about me was that I was supposed to have known what field he was buried in. I didn't know anything about it.

Analysis: When Shirley frowns after Bronagh says ‘you’, her left eyebrow drops before her right. Some body language experts say that uneven micro-expressions of the face are a sign of deception – that only expression symmetry reflects genuine emotion. However, according to left-right brain symmetry and associated emotional expression, the right brain is activated by uncomfortable or negative emotions. This can mean that emotions such as anger, sadness, disgust and doubt may be expressed by the left side of the face before the right side follows. Shirley’s uneven frown alone is therefore not a reliable enough indicator of deception; however, her subsequent use of double hand gestures as she says ‘if I did, I don’t remember, but also, another thing that was said about me’ and the giving of additional information that wasn’t asked for (another thing that was said about me) ‘was that I was supposed to have known what field he was buried in’ may be – she is not denying that she spoke to the police about her claim to Ivor Edwards of seeing Nicky McNamara pick up Damien on Baring Road, she is saying that she doesn’t remember doing so. ‘I don’t remember’ is associated with memory – that either she knew and then forgot, or that she was in a position to know but made no note of the event when it occurred. However, whether the claim itself is true or false is a separate matter. Within her deflection from speaking to the police about Damien being picked up on Baring Road, she says ‘what field he was buried in’. It is easy to assume that this must mean that she does know where Damien is buried because none of the rumours about where his body might be mention a field, but the sudden offering of a veiled truth just doesn’t fit with her saying that she doesn’t remember speaking to the police about her claim. Even if she does know where Damien’s body is buried, ‘field’ is unlikely to be a slip of the tongue truth-tell because she doesn’t correct it, and police did in fact search a field in 2002 in connection with a convicted paedophile who made an admission about being involved in a murder on the Isle of Wight in the mid-1990s.

In the next excerpt, Bronagh asks Shirley when ‘yous’ were partying and taking drugs together, whether anything was ‘ever talked about in relation to’, and Shirley is quick to say ‘no’ before Bronagh finishes her question:

BM 12:24: Damien’s disappearance?
SB  12:24:     No…                             Never. Never.

BM 12:28 Never?

SB 12:29 No, never.

Analysis: Unlike her denial that Nicky spoke to the police before he died, Shirley may be overstating her denial of Damien’s disappearance ever being talked about with ‘never’ being added to her ‘no’ answers. At first glance, her ‘no’ headshakes appear to be congruent, however, when her first ‘no’ headshake (before Bronagh had finished her question) is compared to her headshakes at ‘never’ (12:28) and ‘No, never’ (12:29), there is a slight alteration in plane – her first headshake is very much wide and remains horizontal, whereas her subsequent headshakes are shallower, and on her third ‘never’ she raises her chin slightly. This may indicate incongruency between her words and gestures from her second ‘never’, and that aspects of Damien’s disappearance were talked about.

Bronagh then talks about articles that she’s read, her giving Shirley an opportunity to respond, and one article that mentions Shirley in relation to the deaths associated with her house on Prospect Road. There is a change of scene from a continuous wide angle shot of Shirley’s living room where we see Bronagh, Shirley and Alys, to a close scene shot of the side of Alys’ face seen previously all the way back at 10:53 and we hear Bronagh say ‘Shirley’ as Shirley shouts: ‘They’ve destroyed me outside and inside.’ The camera then cuts back to a wide shot of the living room but from a lower angle:

Up until the scene shot changes to the close up of Alys, Shirley has been wearing spectacles, but suddenly at 12:50 she is without them. She’s holding a tissue in her right hand and is upset and agitated. Clearly there is a major lack of continuity in footage and so we don’t know who ‘they’ve’ is in reference to – it could simply be drugs. Shirley continues:

SB 12:50 I can't do any more. I know nothing. I don't know fuck all. I wish I fucking did then they'd all fucking leave me alone, wouldn't they? Cos I'd tell them. I know fuck all. I don't know nothing. Fucking hell, I wish I did and then it would all go away, wouldn't it? But it just won't and is-it’s all in my head, all these deaths and all this shit is-n-I didn't kill any fuckers, they-it I had a house, it was a drug house, people took overdoses. They died.

Analysis: On average, liars use more swear words than truth-tellers because it takes a lot of cognitive energy (conscious brain power) to lie, making it harder to monitor themselves in other areas. Liars will also repeat phrases as they struggle to buy time to gather their thoughts. Compared to truth-tellers, liars tend to become more emotional the longer questioning goes on due to the mental strain that the effort of lying generates, with emotions expressed rooted in agitation and frustration – crocodile tears are common, as is defensiveness and anger. Shirley is clearly experiencing ‘pressure release’ as she speaks through this final excerpt. Her swearing and repetition (I know nothing. I don't know fuck all. I wish I fucking did then they'd all fucking leave me alone, wouldn't they? […] I know fuck all. I don't know nothing. Fucking hell, I wish I did and then it would all go away, wouldn't it?) could suggest deception – that she does know something – but because of the significant change in scene shot between Bronagh’s question and Shirley’s answer we simply don’t know what question Shirley was responding to. Her outburst may be genuine defensive anger at being repeatedly asked something that she really doesn’t know anything about or doesn’t want to talk about. She is living with memories of ‘all these deaths’ (plural) as opposed to death (single), and what she finishes with are truths – she did have a drug house, people did take overdoses there and they did die. ‘All these deaths’ followed by the truths about her Prospect Road house suggests that she may have been responding to a question in relation to Nicky McNamara’s death and/or supposed deathbed confession. There is nothing to suggest that this outburst is in relation to Damien.

Summary: Shirley remembers Damien and the police have visited her many times; however, the two events are not necessarily connected. She claims that Nicky McNamara could be violent and that he dealt drugs to young boys. Before he died, Nicky did not mention to Shirley that the police spoke to him about Damien. He did not make a deathbed confession. The switching of scene shots when Shirley is asked about her claim about Nicky picking up Damien with another man on Baring Road makes it impossible to know whether her answer at 9:09 is in direct response to the question that Unsolved want viewers to think was being asked. However, when asked at 11:46 whether this information came from her and if she remembers telling the police, she says that she doesn’t remember and is quick to offer something else that she was supposed to have known about Damien. Importantly, she doesn’t say that she didn’t make the claim or that she didn’t speak to the police about it – she says that if she did, she doesn’t remember. In terms of being deceptive, it is simply easier to say ‘If I did, I don’t remember’ than it is to say ‘no’ because it’s ‘less’ of a lie. ‘If I did, I don’t remember’ probably indicates that Shirley does remember the police speaking to her about her claim. However, this says nothing about the truthfulness of the claim itself.

Applying these findings to the events and people surrounding Damien’s disappearance

There had been a two-day police search for Damien’s body in Gurnard in 1998. Valerie Nettles was interviewed about the activity on South Today. The slow police response was challenged in the Isle of Wight County Press. ITV filmed a reconstruction of Damien’s last steps in April 1999. Valerie also writes that she spoke to countless journalists about Damien for newspapers, magazines, radio and television. The search of the cornfield at Branstone Cross in connection with the convicted paedophile was covered by the Isle of Wight County Press in August 2002, a month before Nicky McNamara died. It’s unlikely that anyone living on the Isle of Wight during those six years, never mind people who according to Damien’s friends and younger brother were dealing drugs to them, didn’t talk about Damien’s disappearance.

Shirley made her claim to Ivor Edwards about Nicky McNamara picking up Damien with another man on Baring Road on the night that he vanished sometime between November 2007 and April 2013. Going by the sequence of events in Valerie’s book, this was in late 2012/early 2013 – 16 years after Damien disappeared and 10 years after Nicky’s death. However, Shirley’s claim raises more questions than it provides answers to Nicky McNamara’s rumoured involvement in Damien’s disappearance. Unless Shirley was with Nicky when he supposedly picked Damien up, from where or whom did she hear the information? Even the way that her claim is worded can be taken two ways – does ‘picked up Damien with another man’ mean that Nicky and another man picked up Damien, or that another man was picked up with Damien? Who is the other man that Shirley refused to name to Ivor? It's a shame that Unsolved didn't ask these questions instead of pushing Shirley to confirm that the police had spoken to her about her claim – something that Valerie had already confirmed had happened in her book. Another question that the rumours surrounding Nicky McNamara's involvement in Damien's disappearance raises is when did his name become associated with Damien's – was it before or after Nicky died? In the next post I will be taking a break from language analysis of Unsolved interviews to critically examine the timeline of public information in which Nicky McNamara’s name is mentioned or implied.

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

European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (2019) Drug-related deaths and mortality in Europe.

Google maps.

Goupil, L., Ponsot, E., Richardson, D., Reyes, G. & Aucouturier, J-J. (2021) Listeners’ perceptions of the certainty and honesty of a speaker are associated with a common prosodic signature. Nature Communications, 12 (861 & 5781).

Inside Housing (25 June 2003) Injunction bars addict from her ‘house of death'.

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

Pallister, D. (16 October 1999) Life jail for victim of abuse. The Guardian.

Schafer, J. & Navaro, J. (2004) Advanced Interviewing Techniques: Proven Strategies for Law Enforcement, Military, and Security Personnel. Springfield: Charles C Thomas Publishing Ltd.

Southern Daily Echo (20 June 2003) BOOTED OUT.

Unsolved – The Boy Who Disappeared: 6. The House of Death (2016) BBC3, 30 July.

Van Swol, L., Braun, M. & Malhotra, D. (2012) Evidence for the Pinocchio Effect: Linguistic Differences Between Lies, Deception by Omissions, and Truths. Discourse Processes, 49 (2): 79-106.

Damien Nettles: Language analysis of Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared interviews – Part 2

In this fourth 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 applying language analysis to more of the interviews with Damien’s friends and family from the Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared documentary series that aired on BBC3 in 2016. In previous posts I considered the facts surrounding the last confirmed sightings of Damien on the night of his disappearance, examined whether Damien could have been a victim of murder, manslaughter or misadventure, and analysed Chris Boon’s episode 1 interviews, which revealed that he knew that Damien intended to remain in Cowes on the evening of 2 November 1996, and placed a question mark over where, when and why Damien and Chris may have parted company. 

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.

Before moving on to the next interview analysis, I want to briefly discuss the terminology that surrounds drugs, as this has some bearing on the next analysis. Illegal drugs are formally categorised as either ‘hard’ or ‘soft’. Hard drugs, which lead to physical addiction and potentially death, include heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine (speed) and benzodiazepines (benzos). Soft drugs do not cause physical addiction and include cannabis, psilocybin (magic mushrooms) and LSD (acid, trip). Drugs such as ketamine, MDMA (ecstasy) and phencyclidine (PCP, angel dust) fall somewhere between hard and soft drugs. However, when drug-takers talk about hard and soft drugs, particularly less experienced drug-takers, the lines are often blurred. Whereas heroin, cocaine and benzos are always thought of as hard drugs, speed and PCP often get included in soft drug use. PCP is commonly used to ‘lace’ marijuana cigarettes (joints, spliffs) because it creates a strong hallucinogenic effect when smoked (commonly referred to as a PCP trip), burns at a very slow rate, and adds to the potency of nicotine and marijuana.

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.

The interview moves on to a conversation in the Portland Inn in Gurnard between Chris and Damien’s younger brother, James Nettles (JN). James talks about Damien at age 16 as being as tall as most adults, to which Chris replies that they used to take full advantage of that by “the fact he was getting served and stuff like that”. The camera then cuts to James, who says:

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’?

Chris’ use of the phrase ‘little baggie of something’ is worth noting too because in context with drug use, ‘baggie’ refers to a small, clear plastic bag that is normally used to contain powdered drugs such as heroin or cocaine. Chris has already said that 'we had taken some trips', and so the implication of ‘he could have done it’ is that Damien could have taken something else – a hard drug if he had been offered it – particularly as the focus of the conversation between James and Chris then moves to an unnamed drug dealer who Unsolved describes as being close to Nicky McNamara and other notorious dealers, and who Vicky, a close friend of Chris and Damien’s, had mentioned to James in connection with supplying heroin to her then boyfriend, prior to Damien’s disappearance:

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).

Liars will often pad out a story or their answer to a question with elements of truth both to lessen the cognitive load of lying, and to make the lie more believable. Chris mentions an address that he and Damien used to visit ‘with Vicky and stuff’ (people and/or things related to Vicky) – a house on the corner of Newport Road and Mill Hill Road in Cowes. According to another BBC source for Chris Boon interviews, Damien used to buy drugs at this address, and Nicky McNamara is known to have been living there during that time. But even with this injection of truth-telling, Chris switches from saying that he himself didn’t really know the people living there, to knowing some of them in order to justify why he was going there, to ‘did-didn't know I didn’t everyone there’, which doesn’t even make sense as a sentence, until he finally says: ‘Damien may have known other people that I didn't’. If Chris visited this house with Damien and Vicky as he says he did, he would have been there with the same people as them, and so if the unnamed heroin dealer had been there, both Chris and Vicky would have known this. His use of ‘other people’ rather than ‘people there’ could either be suggestive of people who may have been at the house if Damien ever went there without Chris, or people not associated with the house at all.

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?

Applying these questions to the people and events connected to Damien’s life

Who were the different group of people who were a little bit older than Damien? In her book The Boy Who Disappeared, Damien’s mother, Valerie, writes about a work colleague of Damien’s from his summer job at Gurnard Pines, a bartender who for the purpose of anonymity she calls Jon Meeks. She describes Jon as being a couple of years older than Damien and more streetwise than Damien’s friends of his own age from school, and that towards the end of the summer, unbeknownst to her, Jon and Damien had gone to Suffolk to visit Damien’s new girlfriend, Gemma, who he’d met while she was on holiday at Gurnard Pines. Damien’s cover story to his parents had been that he and Jon were going to a rock concert in Portsmouth and would stay there with a friend of Jon’s overnight; however, he didn’t come home on Sunday night as promised. Instead, he arrived the following lunchtime having failed to turn up for his work shift, and then the truth of where he had really been and who he’d been with came out. Valerie also writes that Damien had told her that Jon had bragged about drugs a few times. Was Jon one of this group of slightly older friends? If so, who were the other people in the group? The truth is that we just don’t know – Unsolved didn’t investigate this (or if it did, the findings didn’t make the final edit) and it isn’t public knowledge. Valerie has confirmed to me that Jon Meeks was interviewed by police and eliminated from their enquiries. However, two of the people who were questioned in 2011 and again in 2012 in connection with Damien’s disappearance, a man from Ryde and a woman from Cowes, were in their early twenties in 1996 (22 and 20 respectively). Both are known to have been involved in the Island’s drug scene and were socially connected to drug dealers who were in their late twenties/early thirties in 1996, including Nicky McNamara and Jon ‘Bunny’ Iles.

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.

The Newport/Cowes drug scene also had a ‘dealing house market’ – a range of residential, uninhabited or semi-derelict properties (often squatted) from which drugs were sold – including a house on Prospect Road in Newport, a chalet on Marsh Road in Gurnard, a house on Sun Hill in Cowes, and the three previously mentioned properties in Cowes: the flat above the butcher’s shop on the corner of Terminus Road, the house on Fellows Road, and the house on the corner of Newport Road and Mill Hill Road. As confirmed by Jon ‘Bunny’ Iles in episode 8 of Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared, he, Nicky McNamara and others connected to the dealing house market also ran a semi-open ‘pub and club-based market’ – sellers who generally do business in the absence of prior introduction provided that the buyer looks the part – in the pubs and clubs in Newport and Cowes that were part of Iles and associates’ drug-selling territory. Cowes also had a ‘social network market’ – users buying from friends, or from sellers who they know and trust, in private rather than public. Studies into social network drug markets during the 1990s showed that very few young drug users had direct face-to-face contact with people who they regarded as drug dealers. Rather, they were ‘sorted’ by a friend, a friend of a friend, a friend of a brother, the brother of a mate, and so on. So many of the rumours surrounding Damien’s disappearance – and suspected death – involve drugs in one way, shape or form, that it is virtually impossible to separate these rumours, and therefore the people connected to the Island’s drug scene at the time, from the fact that Damien was buying and using drugs himself and obtaining drugs for friends. His involvement in social network and dealing house drug markets goes hand-in-hand with him having a slightly older group of drug using and drug dealing friends. If his apparent death was drug-related, it is more likely to be connected in some way to these people.

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? 

An eyewitness reported seeing Damien sharing a cigarette with Chris outside The Arcade at 22:10 – but was this actually a cigarette, or something else? If it was a marijuana joint, could it have been laced with PCP? If it was, the boys may have known this, but equally, they may not. There are countless anecdotal tales of cannabis smokers not knowing that a joint was laced with something such as PCP, or contained opiated hash. Perhaps Chris really is saying 'maybe we had taken some trips' in reference to not knowing that a joint had been laced with PCP. However, if Chris and Damien ‘had taken some trips’ at some point prior to Damien’s disappearance, whilst this may have been on the evening of 2 November 1996, it could have been days, weeks or months beforehand. Therefore, the alternative scenarios are either that Damien didn’t take any drugs that evening (or only cannabis), took some kind of trip after he parted ways with Chris, or the ‘drugs’ that Damien talked to his sister about wanting to know what it felt like to take were non-hallucinogenic drugs such as cocaine, heroin or MDMA. However, his odd behaviour in Yorkies doesn’t fit with any of the behavioural or physical effects of these drugs, or those of speed, which he was known to have taken on occasion.

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.