Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared (2016) s01e04 Episode Script
The Weatherman
It's the last place I ever saw my son.
It's exciting.
Because I'm getting close to where Damien last was seen.
So I feel I'm coming home, I'm coming back to Damien.
I do think maybe one day we might get the answers that we need so that we can move on.
Hi.
How are you? All right.
Nice to see you.
You, too.
Nice to see you in the flesh.
Hi.
Hi, finally.
How are you? You're looking very glamorous.
Oh, thank you.
Brings it all back, you know.
Being right here.
Where Damien, you know, just kind of vanished off the face of the earth.
I have such happy memories of this place and then such terrible ones, so, you know, I love the island.
I don't want to think of it as a graveyard, but to me it has that connotation because there's just no way of knowing what happened to him.
We're investigating the disappearance of Val's son, Damien Nettles.
We have a suspect - convicted drug dealer Nicky McNamara, who died in 2002.
It's very possible Damien used to score from him, and a source has told us McNamara killed Damien over a drugs debt.
So we're on the hunt for proof.
Val has hooked us up with someone who could help.
Just on our way to see Ivor Edwards, who is a PI who worked for the family for about five years on the case.
PI? Private investigator.
This is the first time I've had a suit on for about two years.
It suits you well.
How are we going to go about communicating? Following a serious illness, Ivor has lost his hearing.
You write it down.
Yeah, I'll write it down.
OK.
I am not going todeviate.
In other words, I'm not going to go off on a tangent.
When he started looking into Damien's case, Ivor got a knock on the door.
They sent a police constable to see me and basically said, "We really don't want you investigating this case," and then they dropped the bombshell on me.
They said, "We think Damien swam across the Solent "to see his sister.
" I've heard a lot of cock-and-bull stories in my lifetime, but this is one of the biggest cock-and-bull stories that I've ever come across, which made me more determined to find out what actually happened.
PHONE RECORDING OF IVOR: Can you give me details of what happened in Cowes High Street the night that Damien Nettles was murdered? MAN: Yes.
In 2012, Ivor recorded this conversation with a witness.
To protect the identity of this witness, we've used an actor's voice.
I was coming up to the junction of Sun Hill in Cowes High Street.
A group of males and one female came rolling up Sun Hill as though it was like a posse entering a cowboy town.
Nicky McNamara was doing windmills, spinning around, and I said, "All right, Nicky? You seem to be off your face on something.
" And he came out with some technical, chemical name of whatever he was on.
We've called this source The Weatherman.
He puts Nicky McNamara just where Damien was last seen before he went missing.
The guy's frightened.
He was a bag of nerves when I spoke to him.
Did you believe him? Yeah, I do, and I'll tell you for why - there's too much information there, and he didn't make it all up.
There's too much detail there.
The Weatherman's story continues into the next day.
I see Nicky McNamara and he's chucking wood into this oil drum, a big 45-gallon drum.
Right.
Fucking great blaze.
This is about half two in the afternoon.
He's chucking this wood in, right? I see Nicky go back in, come out with another bit of wood, and he was scraping something along the ground, and as he picked it up and he scooped it up off the ground, he then flicked it into the fire.
It was the shape of a sleeve.
Do you believe him? I don't know.
I mean .
.
it's taken how many years for this guy to come forward? And all of a sudden, he's in all of the major places at all the right times.
It's a remarkable or very fortunate coincidence.
The rumours have been like wildfire.
How much of what he has is actually first-hand recollection as to now what he's made himself believe is first-hand recollection? There's only one way to make our minds up - meet the man, face-to-face.
He's too scared to speak on camera.
Some of the people he says he saw with McNamara are still alive but, crucially, we get the same account he gave Ivor.
Well, that was a long cup of tea.
Yeah.
We should move away from here, I think.
Do you think the presence of the camera would upset him? Absolutely.
Yeah.
He's frightened.
What he told us was his first-hand account of what he says he saw the night that Damien went missing and in the couple of days afterwards.
He is nervous.
I was convinced of how anxious they are.
I mean, that's gen You thought that was genuine? I do.
So why did it take The Weatherman so long to reveal his evidence? Well, in 2011, police investigating Damien's disappearance searched the chalet of an associate of McNamara .
.
a heroin dealer named to us by one of Damien's friends.
This chalet is the one where The Weatherman says he saw burning.
The search never resulted in any charges, but The Weatherman says his memory was triggered by the news reports.
'The Weatherman told police his story, 'but says he was too scared to sign a statement.
' OK.
Treat everythingsceptically, unless it can be proved otherwise.
What he's now prepared to do is give Val his account in person.
This will be face-to-face and I think I'll be a pretty good judge of whether or not I feel, as Damien's mother, that this person honestly believes what they're saying, and then you have to wonder why, if they do.
His camera is pointed solely there Right.
.
.
and all you're going to do is talk to Val.
All right.
All right? So that's the only thing that's going to happen, OK? OK.
All right.
You OK? Yeah, I'm fine.
As I was walking down Sun Hill, I heard some footsteps and I looked round and, as I looked over my shoulder, I saw a group of people and, quite jokingly, I turned round to Nicky McNamara and said, "What's the matter? You all right?" and he goes to me, "I'm a damned man.
I'm a damned man.
" The morning after Damien disappeared, The Weatherman is in Cowes.
He claims he runs into Nicky McNamara.
His face, he was absolutely He looked like a man fucked.
Hm.
Really fucked up in the head.
Hm.
Later that day, he spots McNamara again.
This time at the chalet owned by McNamara's friend, the heroin dealer.
I saw Nicky McNamara shoving wood into this oil drum.
It was a big fire.
Petrol? Petrol maybe poured on it? Right, it was dirty engine oil Yeah.
.
.
and I could smell it.
But that was not the only other fucking smell that I could smell.
After Nicky had dumped all this wood into this oil drum, he legged it back in.
There was enough time for me to see him come running back out with this fucking long, black, stringy thing that looked like it could possibly have been a sleeve of something.
Hm.
It could have been clothing.
It looked like it was heavily sodden with dirty engine oil.
Basically, it looked like he had hold of an arm and he was about to go and drop it into the oil drum.
Hm.
Maybe it was just a rag, I don't know, to keep the fire going.
Was it evidence that they were disposing of? I wanted you to tell me that face-to-face, because that means a lot more than me hearing it second, third-hand.
I've waited a long time to meet you.
I appreciate you taking this time to do this.
I can see it's, you know Easier.
It weighs heavily.
The only way to put it is, it fucking eats at your soul, that's the only fucking way.
Hm.
But I spent years not joining the dots up.
Didn't think any more of it.
Hm.
It wasn't till the pods searched that all the memories started coming back.
I see.
I understand now how that could have triggered that thought process for you.
DOG BARKS It's disturbing to hear, you know, that Damien, essentially, was dismembered and burned.
That'sthat's a troubling and horrific, hard thing to think about, you know? Having seen him eyeball to eyeball and heard the story exactly from him, I don't feel like he's lying.
I don't.
I feelI feel like he is convinced that what he's telling me is true.
You know, you can't prove anything from what he told me, there's nothing that anyone can prove.
No.
Not yet.
Hm.
(Not yet.
) So, you know, that's what we're looking for, is corroboration.
But which bits of The Weatherman's story should we try to corroborate? Burning a body in broad daylight? Hard to believe.
Seeing McNamara in Cowes that night and the next morning? Much more plausible.
And there is something that could stand this up .
.
CCTV footage from Cowes High Street.
That camera would prove that The Weatherman was telling the truth.
It would also have picked up The Weatherman talking to Nicky McNamara.
It would have shown everything.
It's exciting.
Because I'm getting close to where Damien last was seen.
So I feel I'm coming home, I'm coming back to Damien.
I do think maybe one day we might get the answers that we need so that we can move on.
Hi.
How are you? All right.
Nice to see you.
You, too.
Nice to see you in the flesh.
Hi.
Hi, finally.
How are you? You're looking very glamorous.
Oh, thank you.
Brings it all back, you know.
Being right here.
Where Damien, you know, just kind of vanished off the face of the earth.
I have such happy memories of this place and then such terrible ones, so, you know, I love the island.
I don't want to think of it as a graveyard, but to me it has that connotation because there's just no way of knowing what happened to him.
We're investigating the disappearance of Val's son, Damien Nettles.
We have a suspect - convicted drug dealer Nicky McNamara, who died in 2002.
It's very possible Damien used to score from him, and a source has told us McNamara killed Damien over a drugs debt.
So we're on the hunt for proof.
Val has hooked us up with someone who could help.
Just on our way to see Ivor Edwards, who is a PI who worked for the family for about five years on the case.
PI? Private investigator.
This is the first time I've had a suit on for about two years.
It suits you well.
How are we going to go about communicating? Following a serious illness, Ivor has lost his hearing.
You write it down.
Yeah, I'll write it down.
OK.
I am not going todeviate.
In other words, I'm not going to go off on a tangent.
When he started looking into Damien's case, Ivor got a knock on the door.
They sent a police constable to see me and basically said, "We really don't want you investigating this case," and then they dropped the bombshell on me.
They said, "We think Damien swam across the Solent "to see his sister.
" I've heard a lot of cock-and-bull stories in my lifetime, but this is one of the biggest cock-and-bull stories that I've ever come across, which made me more determined to find out what actually happened.
PHONE RECORDING OF IVOR: Can you give me details of what happened in Cowes High Street the night that Damien Nettles was murdered? MAN: Yes.
In 2012, Ivor recorded this conversation with a witness.
To protect the identity of this witness, we've used an actor's voice.
I was coming up to the junction of Sun Hill in Cowes High Street.
A group of males and one female came rolling up Sun Hill as though it was like a posse entering a cowboy town.
Nicky McNamara was doing windmills, spinning around, and I said, "All right, Nicky? You seem to be off your face on something.
" And he came out with some technical, chemical name of whatever he was on.
We've called this source The Weatherman.
He puts Nicky McNamara just where Damien was last seen before he went missing.
The guy's frightened.
He was a bag of nerves when I spoke to him.
Did you believe him? Yeah, I do, and I'll tell you for why - there's too much information there, and he didn't make it all up.
There's too much detail there.
The Weatherman's story continues into the next day.
I see Nicky McNamara and he's chucking wood into this oil drum, a big 45-gallon drum.
Right.
Fucking great blaze.
This is about half two in the afternoon.
He's chucking this wood in, right? I see Nicky go back in, come out with another bit of wood, and he was scraping something along the ground, and as he picked it up and he scooped it up off the ground, he then flicked it into the fire.
It was the shape of a sleeve.
Do you believe him? I don't know.
I mean .
.
it's taken how many years for this guy to come forward? And all of a sudden, he's in all of the major places at all the right times.
It's a remarkable or very fortunate coincidence.
The rumours have been like wildfire.
How much of what he has is actually first-hand recollection as to now what he's made himself believe is first-hand recollection? There's only one way to make our minds up - meet the man, face-to-face.
He's too scared to speak on camera.
Some of the people he says he saw with McNamara are still alive but, crucially, we get the same account he gave Ivor.
Well, that was a long cup of tea.
Yeah.
We should move away from here, I think.
Do you think the presence of the camera would upset him? Absolutely.
Yeah.
He's frightened.
What he told us was his first-hand account of what he says he saw the night that Damien went missing and in the couple of days afterwards.
He is nervous.
I was convinced of how anxious they are.
I mean, that's gen You thought that was genuine? I do.
So why did it take The Weatherman so long to reveal his evidence? Well, in 2011, police investigating Damien's disappearance searched the chalet of an associate of McNamara .
.
a heroin dealer named to us by one of Damien's friends.
This chalet is the one where The Weatherman says he saw burning.
The search never resulted in any charges, but The Weatherman says his memory was triggered by the news reports.
'The Weatherman told police his story, 'but says he was too scared to sign a statement.
' OK.
Treat everythingsceptically, unless it can be proved otherwise.
What he's now prepared to do is give Val his account in person.
This will be face-to-face and I think I'll be a pretty good judge of whether or not I feel, as Damien's mother, that this person honestly believes what they're saying, and then you have to wonder why, if they do.
His camera is pointed solely there Right.
.
.
and all you're going to do is talk to Val.
All right.
All right? So that's the only thing that's going to happen, OK? OK.
All right.
You OK? Yeah, I'm fine.
As I was walking down Sun Hill, I heard some footsteps and I looked round and, as I looked over my shoulder, I saw a group of people and, quite jokingly, I turned round to Nicky McNamara and said, "What's the matter? You all right?" and he goes to me, "I'm a damned man.
I'm a damned man.
" The morning after Damien disappeared, The Weatherman is in Cowes.
He claims he runs into Nicky McNamara.
His face, he was absolutely He looked like a man fucked.
Hm.
Really fucked up in the head.
Hm.
Later that day, he spots McNamara again.
This time at the chalet owned by McNamara's friend, the heroin dealer.
I saw Nicky McNamara shoving wood into this oil drum.
It was a big fire.
Petrol? Petrol maybe poured on it? Right, it was dirty engine oil Yeah.
.
.
and I could smell it.
But that was not the only other fucking smell that I could smell.
After Nicky had dumped all this wood into this oil drum, he legged it back in.
There was enough time for me to see him come running back out with this fucking long, black, stringy thing that looked like it could possibly have been a sleeve of something.
Hm.
It could have been clothing.
It looked like it was heavily sodden with dirty engine oil.
Basically, it looked like he had hold of an arm and he was about to go and drop it into the oil drum.
Hm.
Maybe it was just a rag, I don't know, to keep the fire going.
Was it evidence that they were disposing of? I wanted you to tell me that face-to-face, because that means a lot more than me hearing it second, third-hand.
I've waited a long time to meet you.
I appreciate you taking this time to do this.
I can see it's, you know Easier.
It weighs heavily.
The only way to put it is, it fucking eats at your soul, that's the only fucking way.
Hm.
But I spent years not joining the dots up.
Didn't think any more of it.
Hm.
It wasn't till the pods searched that all the memories started coming back.
I see.
I understand now how that could have triggered that thought process for you.
DOG BARKS It's disturbing to hear, you know, that Damien, essentially, was dismembered and burned.
That'sthat's a troubling and horrific, hard thing to think about, you know? Having seen him eyeball to eyeball and heard the story exactly from him, I don't feel like he's lying.
I don't.
I feelI feel like he is convinced that what he's telling me is true.
You know, you can't prove anything from what he told me, there's nothing that anyone can prove.
No.
Not yet.
Hm.
(Not yet.
) So, you know, that's what we're looking for, is corroboration.
But which bits of The Weatherman's story should we try to corroborate? Burning a body in broad daylight? Hard to believe.
Seeing McNamara in Cowes that night and the next morning? Much more plausible.
And there is something that could stand this up .
.
CCTV footage from Cowes High Street.
That camera would prove that The Weatherman was telling the truth.
It would also have picked up The Weatherman talking to Nicky McNamara.
It would have shown everything.