Jay Slater: How search for missing teenager captured nation’s attention

Jay Slater was just four days into his first holiday without his family when he made his last panicked phone call to Lucy Law, one of the friends he had travelled to Tenerife with for a music festival.

He had “cut his leg” on a cactus, had “no idea where he was” and was “lost in the mountains” with his phone battery on “1%”, the 19-year-old, who was reported missing soon after on 17 June, told her.

Almost a month later, his mother Debbie Duncan received the “worst news” – that a body found in the deep ravine in the remote national park near his last known location was her son.

“I just can’t believe this could happen to my beautiful boy. Our hearts are broken,” she said.

Days after her son vanished, Debbie said she believed Jay had been “taken against his will” and, as the search continued, his family said they found the circumstances of his disappearance “suspicious” and feared possible “third-party involvement”.

In fact, he likely died from injuries suffered in an accidental fall from height in rocky terrain, according to a Spanish court.

It marks the end of the increasingly desperate search by Jay’s family, and, they hope, the online speculation about what happened to him.

But their nightmare continues as they deal with the logistics of taking his body home to Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, for his funeral.

Jay wasn’t the first to vanish on the island – according to the SOS Desaparecidos in Tenerife, a missing persons organisation, he was one of 82 missing people in the Canary Islands, dating back to 1981, with 50 on Tenerife alone, including some 22 foreigners – some of them also Britons.

So why did the search for the apprentice bricklayer, described as a “normal lad” by his family attract so much attention?

Unusual circumstances

On the face of it, the circumstances did seem unusual.

Why did he leave the NRG festival in the Papagayo nightclub in Playa de las Americas with two older men and make the hour-long drive to a modest Airbnb in the tiny village of Masca instead of going back to the nearby accommodation where he was staying with friends?

Why didn’t he wait for the bus back to Los Cristianos but walk uphill in the wrong direction, then leave the relative safety of the road for the deep ravine where his phone was last located in the mountainous Rural de Teno park?

Jay told his friend Lucy he had decided to walk back to the accommodation – a journey which would’ve taken about 11 hours – while his father Warren Slater said he believed his son wanted to get to the sea, which can be seen from the mountain road.

But Jay wouldn’t have known that to reach the water he would’ve had to navigate a narrowing path dense with thick vegetation before climbing the almost vertical walls of the ravine, which is almost impossible without specialist climbing equipment.

TikTokers and armchair sleuths

Jay’s disappearance came soon after the television doctor Michael Mosley’s body was found days after he disappeared on the Greek island of Symi and in the wake of other high-profile missing persons cases such as Nicola Bulley and Gaynor Lord.

Within days, Facebook groups dedicated to the case had been set up – with some going on to attract hundreds of thousands of members.

Along with serious discussions and expressions of sympathy, there were a succession of wild theories and unfounded speculation.

Meanwhile, a GoFundMe page entitled ‘Get Jay Slater Home’ was launched to help raise funds for his family, which also prompted online speculation about how the money would be used as the donations rose into the tens of thousands of pounds.

Read more:
Inside the valley where Jay was found
How Jay Slater was found

Jay’s mother was forced to condemn the “vile” comments and conspiracy theories which were “hindering investigations”, while Matthew Searle, the chief executive of LBT Global, the charity helping the family, said they were the worst he had seen in more than 20 years.

“Wherever there’s a real-life crime drama acting out in front of our eyes on television, half the population need to jump on Facebook, set up a Facebook group… to tell the world what really happened,” he said.

“This just goes on and on and it gets a huge amount of traction, and it’s really worrying to the point where our charity thinks it’s time that it has to stop.”

TikTokers had also arrived on the island to help with the search and post updates to their followers from the scene.

Some, such as Paul Arnott, a hiker from Bedfordshire, were welcomed by the family, particularly after the huge police search – involving helicopters, drones and dogs – was called off by police on 30 June after 12 days.

But Jay’s family hit back at another TikToker Callum Fahim after he quit the search amid a row over the crowdfunding money.

Why did it take so long to find him?

The ravine where Jay was eventually found had been the focus of efforts to find him, from the well-resourced police operation to the ad hoc foot searches carried out by family members, local hikers and volunteers.

So it may seem strange that he was not found sooner and even locals began to speculate he may not be in the area with one woman telling Sky News: “I don’t understand how they haven’t found him with all the means that have been used.”

But despite the helicopters, drones and dogs deployed to find Jay, the geography of the area made a thorough search much harder.

At the end of one long, hot day of searching the area, Juan Garcia, who knows the terrain well, told Sky News it was like a “labyrinth” and “like looking for a needle in a haystack”, adding: “He could be nearby, two metres away, and we wouldn’t see him.”

After Jay was found the Guardia Civil – who had faced criticism after halting its large-scale operation after 12 days – said the “incessant and discreet search” had been carried out for 29 days in a way so it was not “filled with curious people”.

One local told Sky News it is “exceptionally difficult” to safely navigate down the valley on foot, while another said: “It is sad – the spot where they found him shows he had gone a long way into the ravine.

“It is hard to understand how he got there.”