The search for answers about Jay Slater’s disappearance continues (Image: Handout)
We are now three weeks on from when teenager Jay Slater went missing on the holiday island of Tenerife.
What has followed has been a desperate scramble to find him – with an exhaustive physical search and an urgent need for answers.
Jay, from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, disappeared on the Spanish island on June 17. He was last spotted departing an Airbnb located close to Masca village, around eight in the morning.
His close friend Lucy Mae Law, who was with Jay in the Canary Islands, was among the last to hear from him at approximately 8am on the day he disappeared. He contacted her to say he was making his way back to where they’d been staying on foot after missing the bus, saying he was thirsty and tired, had sustained a cut from a cactus and that his phone battery was nearly dead.
His mobile last signalled its position somewhere within the Parque Rural de Teno nature reserve.
Here are the leading theories about what happened to Jay – from family, friends and experts in the policing field, including those reported by The Mirror.
The official physical hunt for Jay has now been called off (Image: Getty)
He was ‘taken against his will’
Distraught mum Debbie Duncan believes “something bad” has happened to the teenager as he tried to make his way home. Debbie earlier said she thought Jay was being held “against his will.”
Speaking to The Daily Mail she said: “I’m all over the place and I’m trying to keep positive, has somebody taken him? Is he panicked and lost in the mountains? I just don’t know, that’s why if anyone has any information please just tell us.
“If he is lost then why hasn’t anyone seen him? It’s busy with hikers and holidaymakers up there, so if he was lost then someone would have seen him, so that’s why I think maybe he’s been bundled off somewhere.”
Caught up in criminality
One ex-copper says that Spanish police need to consider other factors at play.
Graham Wettone, who was a member of the Met for 30 years, said: “It seems to me on the face of it that they are just focusing on the mountain, but I would hope they are looking at other avenues and those include criminality.
“I’ve been following this case closely and discussing it with colleagues and it’s certainly a very bizarre one, lots of things just don’t add up.”
Jay Slater’s family and friends are still desperately searching for him (Image: Reach)
The missing Rolex
Detectives have begun looking into a new lead that they feel could be of relevance – the theft of a £12k Rolex potentially by Jay.
TV detective Mark Williams-Thomas alleged that during Jay’s car journey to the Airbnb, he posted a video on Snapchat boasting about the theft of a Rolex watch.
Speaking in a video statement posted on social media, Mr Williams-Thomas said: “On route Jay posted a Snapchat saying that they had taken a £12,000 Rolex from a person. We have been unable to validate this in terms of a reported theft.
“However, friends of Jay he would not make this up and the watch was the subject of a later conversation between them.”
His phone may have been chucked away
Jay’s phone last ‘pinged’ somewhere in the Parque Rural de Teno nature reserve in the rural Masca village.
But after having a conversation with an ex-British Army officer, journalist Nick Pisa believes Jay’s phone may have been thrown into the terrain.
He told GB News: “We’re not obviously being kept up to speed, but [the former officer] did tell me that he thought where the ping came from was rather surprising because it was really steep to get to, and it was covered in undergrowth and cacti.
“He said to get there you’d have to need a machete. Or he suggested, someone had thrown the phone into that growth.”
Could Jay’s past have impacted on his disappearance?
Former Lambeth Missing Persons Unit boss Mike Neville has explained his “personal theory” regarding Jay Slater.
Neville said: “The police have seemingly been too quick to dismiss this and say things are conspiracy theories.
“It was initially portrayed as Jay being a young lad on his first holiday but it turns out he’s been convicted of a violent assault.
“As well as a search of the park, the police should be looking at the background and asking is there anything else going on?
“They don’t seem to have done that. It’s been badly handled in that sense,” reports GB News.