Alexander Sloley (born 4 August 1991) was a British boy who disappeared without a trace on 2 August 2008 in Edmonton, north London, England, when he was 16. No evidence of his fate has been found, and his current whereabouts remain unknown.
Background
Sloley went by the nickname "Gog". He had studied at the Islington Arts and Media School in north London and was attending City and Islington College.
Sloley disappeared two days before his 17th birthday. Sloley was described as someone who dressed smartly and was not scruffy. He liked
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
and eating traditional
West Indian food
Caribbean cuisine is a fusion of West African cuisine, West African,"Cuisine." (Caribbean. fried plantain,
dumpling
Dumpling is a broad class of dishes that consist of pieces of dough (made from a variety of starch sources), oftentimes wrapped around a filling. The dough can be based on bread, flour, buckwheat or potatoes, and may be filled with meat, fi ...
s and porridge.
His parents were separated, and he had three sisters: Tasha, Tazrah and Lattina. Sloley's father, Christopher, died in 2014 without learning of his son's fate.
Disappearance
Sloley had been staying at a friend's house in Edmonton, north London. He left there around noon on 2 August 2008 to return home for his birthday, but never arrived. When he disappeared he had little money and no change of clothes. Sloley did not have his
passport
A passport is an official travel document issued by a government that contains a person's identity. A person with a passport can travel to and from foreign countries more easily and access consular assistance. A passport certifies the personal ...
with him. Sloley had a mobile phone with him but it stopped connecting when he went missing. His disappearance was uncharacteristic.Police found nothing to indicate where Sloley may have gone. "It's like he disappeared off the face of the planet," one officer said in 2012. No trace of Sloley was ever recovered from CCTV footage.
Subsequent investigation
In September 2009 a possible sighting was reported in Ilford, east London, but has never been confirmed. In October 2009 the charity Missing People and supermarket Iceland arranged for Sloley's story and photo to appear on milk cartons. Sloley's was one of the first cases to be publicised in such a manner, and he was featured on nearly 13.5 million milk cartons.
In July 2015, Sloley's mother Nerissa Tivy was surprised to learn that police had received numerous reports of sightings in 2009. Tivy stated that she had met with police a number of times and they had never told her about this list.
In September 2017 Mick Neville, retired head of the Metropolitan Police's Central Images Unit, drew comparisons between Sloley's disappearance and that of another bright maths student who disappeared without a trace in London.Andrew Gosden was 14 when he disappeared in 2007, less than a year before Sloley. Gosden's last known location was King's Cross, and when Sloley disappeared he was thought to have been on his way to
Islington
Islington () is a district in the north of Greater London, England, and part of the London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the ar ...
, which is two miles from King's Cross. "It raises the question on whether there is a serial killer on the prowl? ...the potential links between these cases need to be recognised," said Neville.
In September 2019, the Metropolitan Police released an updated
e-fit Electronic Facial Identification Technique (E-FIT, e-fit, efit) is a computer-based method of producing facial composites of wanted criminals, based on eyewitness descriptions.
Uses
The system first appeared in the late 1980s, programmed by John ...
depicting Sloley as he may have looked at that time. It was reported that there had been no use of Sloley's national insurance, bank account or passport in the intervening 11 years.Detective Constable Tom Boom of the Missing Persons Unit stated that there was no evidence of harm but the case had gone cold and there were no major leads.
Media
In 2023 in August he was the subject of a three episode podcast ''Where is Alex?'' and in November he featured in episode 4 of ''Vanished'' series 2.