Jay Slater‘s body was found by police in Tenerife in a ravine close to a phone mast near the village of Masca. The 19-year-old made his last call from a spot near where his remains were found by members of a mountain rescue team from Spain’s Guardia Civil last Monday.
Discovery of the apprentice bricklayer close to his last known location at the end of a 29-day-long search raises the question: Did the police miss the body?
Tenerife’s Guardia Civil has declined to answer questions about this, telling reporters they would not give details of their investigation.
Spanish police had carried out what they termed a “massive” search days into Jay’s disappearance, then announced such efforts had been called off.
However, mountaineers continued the search discreetly in a bid to put off curious onlookers and take attention off what the Guardia Civil maintained was a missing persons case.
Jay, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, had been partying at the NRG music festival with friends at Papagayo nightclub in the tourist resort of Playa de las Americas in the south of the island on June 16.
In the early hours of June 17, he travelled with two men he had only just met to stay in an AirBnB in Masca, a village in a remote area in the north west of Tenerife.
At 7.30am on the same day, Jay posted a picture on Snapchat from the doorway of the property he stayed at overnight, tagged as being in Rural de Teno park.
An hour later he called his friend, Lucy Law, telling her he had tried to walk back to his accommodation after missing a bus – a journey which would take more than 10 hours on foot.
In that frantic last call, Mr Slater said he had “cut his leg” on a cactus and had “no idea where he was”. Ms Law said her friend told her he was “lost in the mountains, he wasn’t aware of his surroundings, he desperately needed a drink and his phone was on one percent”.
Jay’s phone ran out of battery shortly afterward with his last known location being in Rural de Teno park. He was reported missing at 9.04am.
Local police and mountain rescue teams started scouring Rural de Teno park on June 18 – the same date members of Jay’s family flew to Tenerife to join the search.
On June 19, the search was temporarily moved to Los Cristianos in the south of the island because of a potential lead, which was quickly discounted and the search returned north.
The next day, the search returned to Rural de Teno park, around the village of Masca. Emergency workers met in several locations throughout the day, scouring bushes, overgrown terrain, hillsides and rivers.
Police, firefighters, and search and rescue personnel combed a vast area of land in and around the village of Masca on June 21, with personnel looking through dead palm trees over a river at the bottom of a hillside near the Airbnb property Jay had been driven to.
By June 22, the search teams appeared to be smaller, with just a handful of emergency workers in Masca and the surrounding area. The next day, efforts focused on small buildings near where Mr Slater’s phone last sent out a signal.
Five days later, the Guardia Civil appealed for experienced volunteers to take part in a “busqueda masiva”, or massive search.
A renewed search for Mr Slater got underway on June 29 in the village of Masca, near his last-known location, coordinated to take in a steep rocky area, including ravines, trails, and paths.
Spanish police called off the search for the missing teenager the next day.
Last Monday a body was found, with the Guardia Civil saying Jay could have fallen in a steep and inaccessible area where he was discovered.
A Spanish court later confirmed the body was Jay’s, with fingerprints matching the youngster and the cause of death consistent with multiple injuries sustained in a fall in a rocky area.
