TEENAGER Alex Sloley hasn’t been seen since his disappearance in 2008, and his mum thinks the police didn’t take it seriously.
A new Channel 5 show looks at this case along with some of the other unsolved mysteries of people missing in the UK.
Alex Sloley is a teenager who disappeared in North London over fifteen years ago and hasn’t been seen since.
He was a bright maths student studying accountancy.
When he went missing, he had no money on him and no change of clothes.
Alex’s mum, Nerissa Tivy, says she thinks the police didn’t take Alex’s case seriously.
I’m from a working-class black family…why is there no interest in Alex’s case?”
Nerissa Tivy
It wasn’t until more than two years later that they even considered him a missing person.
Alex Sloley went missing on 2nd August, 2008.
There’s been no trace of him since, despite multiple police appeals and inquiries.
Detective Constable Tom Boon, from the Central North Command Unit’s Missing Person Unit, said: “The hope is he is safe and well and somehow has managed to stay off the radar in terms of using bank accounts, passports, that sort of thing.
“As time goes on it becomes more and more concerning, although there’s no proof of harm.”
There was speculation by the retired head of the Metropolitan Police’s Central Images Unit that there could be a link between Alex’s disappearance and that of another teenager, Andrew Gosden.
He went missing in 2007 after travelling to London from Doncaster.
Alex Sloley’s mum Nerissa last saw Alex in North London at the end of July 2008, just days before his 17th birthday.
He had gone to stay with friends further north, in Edmonton, when he vanished.
When he didn’t return to his home in Islington on his birthday, or her 40th birthday a few weeks later, Nerissa reported him missing to police.
There’s no closure to this and, with all the appeals and knowing your child would not just run away, you start thinking something terrible has happened to him.”
Nerissa Tivy
But she’s said since said she wasn’t taken seriously.
Police turned up at Nerissa’s house in 2009 to arrest her son, even though she’d already reported him missing to them six months previously.
Vanished: The Search for Britain’s Missing is a live studio discussion programme on Channel 5.
It will air on Wednesday July 4th, 2024, at 7pm.
It will also be available to watch on the catch-up service My5 afterwards.
It will feature other cases of missing people from across the UK, including chef Claudia Lawrence who went missing in 2009.
The programme is presented by 5 News host Dan Walker.
