Speaker 1: School of Humans. Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold
Speaker 1: case murders in an effort to raise public awareness invite
Speaker 1: witnesses to come forward and present evidence that could potentially
Speaker 1: be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights
Speaker 1: from family and community members, their statements should not be
Speaker 1: considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts
Speaker 1: inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone has
Speaker 1: presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Speaker 1: Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply
Speaker 1: that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime
Speaker 1: is guilty of any wrongdoing. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: On Sunday, June seventeenth, twenty twenty four, Jay Slater, a
Speaker 2: nineteen year old bricklayers apprentice who lived in Lancashire, England,
Speaker 2: was on his first ever foreign holiday and he seemed
Speaker 2: to be having a blast. He had gone to the
Speaker 2: island of ties Henry from Spain with a female friend
Speaker 2: named Lucy and another guy named Brad. That night, he
Speaker 2: and Lucy went out to a music festival called NRG
Speaker 2: New Rave Generation. It was held at Papagayo Beach Club
Speaker 2: in an area called Veronica's Strip. It's an area that
Speaker 2: has a ton of nightclubs and neon signs. It's very
Speaker 2: popular with British tourists. According to the information that Lucy
Speaker 2: posted later on a go fund meet, they had a
Speaker 2: great time that night. Jay had just finished his course
Speaker 2: at technical school back in the UK. He was getting
Speaker 2: ready to take his exams when he got home, so
Speaker 2: they were blowing off some steam. But Lucy said she
Speaker 2: was tired from the weekend, so she went home early
Speaker 2: that night. Jay stayed on at the club. He posted
Speaker 2: photos and snapchats from there. He appeared to be having
Speaker 2: a great time. At eight thirty five pm, he posted
Speaker 2: a snap of himself hanging out with friends, looking happy
Speaker 2: and chilled and dancing. More camera footage has come out
Speaker 2: from inside the club. You can see him laughing and
Speaker 2: having a great time. Eventually he made his way outside
Speaker 2: the club, which closed at three am. After that, he
Speaker 2: was sitting on a wall. At around four am he
Speaker 2: started chatting to two other British men. Somehow they made
Speaker 2: a plan to go on to those two guys Airbnb.
Speaker 2: They left that club sometime after four am. He got
Speaker 2: into a car with these two strangers and went back
Speaker 2: to their airbnb, which was in a remote area about
Speaker 2: an hour away from where Jay was staying in the
Speaker 2: touristy resort area. The airbnb was near a small town
Speaker 2: called Masca. The next morning, Lucy got one last frantic
Speaker 2: call from Jay a little after eight am, saying he
Speaker 2: was lost, didn't know where he was, and that he
Speaker 2: was panicked. That was the last time that anyone ever
Speaker 2: heard from Jay Slater, because after that he disappeared. This
Speaker 2: healthy young man who had his entire life ahead of him.
Speaker 3: Was just gone.
Speaker 2: And what happened to him has become a huge story
Speaker 2: in the UK and now throughout the world. What did
Speaker 2: happen to him? Was he kidnapped and murdered, like a
Speaker 2: lot of people believe. Did he wander off into the
Speaker 2: wilderness or did someone else pull up alongside him on
Speaker 2: that narrow strip of road, coax him into their car
Speaker 2: and drive off somewhere. This case is wild. It is
Speaker 2: exposed the seedy underside of this beautiful island and the
Speaker 2: criminal underworld that are operating there. This case has taken
Speaker 2: over British news. Everyone from police detectives to psychics and
Speaker 2: TikTok stars have descended on this Spanish island in the Canaries.
Speaker 2: They're all trying to find a young man who is
Speaker 2: partying and vanished about a trace right in the middle
Speaker 2: of an island full of tourists. I'm Catherine Townsend. This
Speaker 2: is Helen Gone Murder Line. If you listen to this podcast,
Speaker 2: you know I don't normally cover cases that are ongoing
Speaker 2: unless there's a good reason, like a missing person's case
Speaker 2: that isn't getting attention, not like this case, which actually
Speaker 2: is all over the new I prefer cold cases for
Speaker 2: several reasons. First of all, I don't want to be
Speaker 2: one of those reporters that stands on people's lawns right
Speaker 2: after tragedy and ask for sound bites from grieving families.
Speaker 2: And even though we are sometimes critical of the police
Speaker 2: when they are investigating a case, I really don't want
Speaker 2: to get in.
Speaker 3: The police's way.
Speaker 2: But this case, the Jay Slater case, is fascinating. It's
Speaker 2: fascinating for a couple of reasons. In my opinion, it's
Speaker 2: a good lesson in what to do when a loved
Speaker 2: one goes missing and what not to do. Because this
Speaker 2: case has brought out some of the darkest, worst sides
Speaker 2: of true crime. Journalism and of what they call black
Speaker 2: tourism or murder tourism. A little background here. I used
Speaker 2: to live in London. I work for a British newspaper
Speaker 2: for several years for people who don't know that, and
Speaker 2: I am an American citizen, but I also have a
Speaker 2: British passport, so really London is like my second home.
Speaker 2: I come here every summer. And when I came to
Speaker 2: London this week, literally the entire country was talking about
Speaker 2: this Jay Slater case. It reminded me a little bit
Speaker 2: of the Natalie Halloway case in the US back in
Speaker 2: two thousand and five. The difference is that since the
Speaker 2: Natalie Hallway case, we have social media, so in addition
Speaker 2: to this nationwide press coverage, we have all these amateur
Speaker 2: detectives that have gone into a frenzy over this case.
Speaker 2: As we said before, Jay's friend Lucy started to worry
Speaker 2: the next morning when he didn't come back to the
Speaker 2: resort where they were staying. This was a big resort
Speaker 2: called Plia de las Americas. It was about a forty
Speaker 2: minute drive from their resort to the area where Jay
Speaker 2: went with the two strangers that was in a more
Speaker 2: rural area in the north of the island, near a
Speaker 2: park called Rural Deteno Park. This is a long way
Speaker 2: from the Lively Beach resort area where they'd been hanging
Speaker 2: around the night before. This park is in an area
Speaker 2: that is remote popular with hikers. At around seven thirty
Speaker 2: am the next morning, Jay had posted a snap of
Speaker 2: a hand. We haven't seen this snap, but presumably it
Speaker 2: was his hand holding a cigarette on the front steps
Speaker 2: of that airbnb. We know it's that airbnb because Lucy
Speaker 2: said you could see the tile pattern on the steps.
Speaker 2: He called Lucy shortly after eight am. Now some reports
Speaker 2: at eight fifteen, but later it seemed like the correct
Speaker 2: time was eight fifty am. He called her and sounded panics.
Speaker 3: She said.
Speaker 2: He told her his phone was dying, he only had
Speaker 2: one percent battery, he was thirsty, and he did not
Speaker 2: know where he was. She wrote on the GoFundMe page quote,
Speaker 2: I woke up to a phone call off Jay at
Speaker 2: eight thirty am, saying he was lost in the mountains.
Speaker 3: He wasn't aware of.
Speaker 2: His surroundings, he desperately needed a drink, and his phone
Speaker 2: was on one percent. He had met two people on
Speaker 2: Sunday night and left with them to go to their apartment.
Speaker 2: Their apartment was miles away from civilization and in a
Speaker 2: very secluded location. Now, after this went down, a lot
Speaker 2: of people asked did Lucy or Jay know these guys
Speaker 2: before the night he vanished? The post on GoFundMe that
Speaker 2: was made by Lucy, in my opinion, made it sound
Speaker 2: like the two guys from the airbnb were complete strangers.
Speaker 2: Later someone else would come forward to question that. But
Speaker 2: we'll get back to that later. So after Jay said
Speaker 2: he was in trouble and lost, Lucy immediately.
Speaker 3: Went out looking for him.
Speaker 2: Apparently that snap that Jay sent had his location. That's
Speaker 2: how Lucy was able to find that house so quickly.
Speaker 2: It's also the only house in that area in the mountains.
Speaker 2: It's along a winding strip of roads, surrounded by rural
Speaker 2: cliffs and very difficult terrain. She said that she knocked
Speaker 2: on the door and that there were two people there,
Speaker 2: presumably the two men whose Airbnb it was. According to Lucie,
Speaker 2: that morning, Jay had gone out for a smoke, come
Speaker 2: back for a short time, and then said he wanted
Speaker 2: to go home.
Speaker 3: After that, they said he left.
Speaker 2: Now, according to media reports, Lucy said that she believed
Speaker 2: that Jay may have been kidnapped, but after he left
Speaker 2: the residence, he did talk to Lucy at eight fifty
Speaker 2: and there was someone else in that remote wilderness who
Speaker 2: saw Jay after he left the airbnb, so someone did
Speaker 2: see him after he left the airbnb. The last person
Speaker 2: to see Jay alive that we know about was a woman,
Speaker 2: Ophelia Medina Hernandez. This was a neighbor the person who
Speaker 2: owned the airbnb. She was interviewed by British media and
Speaker 2: by the police. She said that when she saw Jay
Speaker 2: that morning, right after he left the airbnb, he was
Speaker 2: asking her about the bus, what time the bus came,
Speaker 2: because there was a bus stop right in front of
Speaker 2: the house. Apparently he was trying to get a bus
Speaker 2: back down the hill, back in the direction of Los Cristianos,
Speaker 2: which would have been the direction of the resort.
Speaker 3: Where he was staying.
Speaker 2: You can see that bus stop from the house. The
Speaker 2: woman said she told him the bus was at ten am.
Speaker 2: She didn't really speak English, so she held up ten
Speaker 2: fingers to signal that she meant ten. So if that
Speaker 2: bus came at ten o'clock, he would have had over
Speaker 2: an hour to wait at that bus stop. The woman
Speaker 2: said later that she saw Jay one more time. She
Speaker 2: said she passed by him in her car about fifteen
Speaker 2: minutes later after they had that conversation, but she said
Speaker 2: something strange.
Speaker 3: She said he was.
Speaker 2: Walking uphill, so in the opposite direction from town. She said, quote,
Speaker 2: he was alone, he was walking normally though he was
Speaker 2: walking fast end quote. So what made him lead the
Speaker 2: bus stop? And why was he walking uphill toward the
Speaker 2: middle of nowhere instead of downhill toward town. Jay's phone
Speaker 2: died just after eight p fifty am. The last ping
Speaker 2: was from an area near a hiking trail uphill from
Speaker 2: the airbnb.
Speaker 3: Lucy reported Jay missing.
Speaker 2: To police and started looking for him. She met someone
Speaker 2: who gave her a ride. They drove around the mountains
Speaker 2: all day. She said she thought she would see Jay
Speaker 2: walking along the road, but he was just gone. Authorities
Speaker 2: in Spain contacted Jay's mother, fifty five year old Debbie Duncan,
Speaker 2: and his father Warren back in the UK. Debbie and
Speaker 2: Warren and Jay's brother immediately flew over to Spain. Pretty
Speaker 2: soon there was a massive search being done. There were police, firefighters, volunteers,
Speaker 2: people with canine dogs, drones and helicopters. Tenerief is the
Speaker 2: largest of the Canary Islands. There are seven of them,
Speaker 2: and they are geographically located near North Africa. Because they
Speaker 2: are just a short flight from the UK a little
Speaker 2: over four hours. The Canary Islands are very popular or
Speaker 2: tourist destinations for British people. A lot of people come
Speaker 2: to these islands to party and soak up the sun.
Speaker 2: There is a huge bar culture, drinking, dancing, and of
Speaker 2: course some drug use that comes along with going out
Speaker 2: and partying, and a lot of young people being at
Speaker 2: a rave. Early in the investigation, Lucy was kind of
Speaker 2: criticizing the Spanish police. She seemed to be a mysterious
Speaker 2: figure herself. When she did interviews, she had her identity hidden.
Speaker 2: She was just kind of this dark silhouette. Basically, she
Speaker 2: said the local authorities in Spain had fobbed her off.
Speaker 2: She said she believed they were not taking Jay's disappearance seriously.
Speaker 2: She also asked, by the way, why the Spanish police
Speaker 2: did not have a translator after three days, which is
Speaker 2: reasonable because it's not like English to Spanish translators are
Speaker 2: hard to find, but also, unfortunately, the Spanish media seemed
Speaker 2: to kind of have an issue with this and seemed to,
Speaker 2: at least at first kind of in my opinion, paint
Speaker 2: her as this demanding foreigner. Fortunately, that happens in a
Speaker 2: lot of these cases. Pretty soon a lot of online
Speaker 2: commenters were speculating about Lucy. A lot of people were asking,
Speaker 2: how was this young woman able to take so many
Speaker 2: foreign holidays?
Speaker 3: How did she pay for them? Was she some kind
Speaker 3: of drug mule?
Speaker 2: By the way, there's absolutely zero evidence for any of this,
Speaker 2: and I can totally understand why Lucy would have wanted
Speaker 2: to hide her identity exactly for this reason. Because people
Speaker 2: started to get very involved in this investigation, they were
Speaker 2: following it on social media, Lucy did something else. She
Speaker 2: set up a GoFundMe campaign, and, as we know from
Speaker 2: listening to true crime podcasts, since every decision that family
Speaker 2: members or friends make early an investigation, unfortunately can be criticized,
Speaker 2: this is one of the biggest areas for criticism. What
Speaker 2: happens with these gofundmes? Where did the money go? Why
Speaker 2: did the friends started and not the mom? This prompted
Speaker 2: Jay's mother, Debbie, to post an update. She said they
Speaker 2: would be using the funds for travel and lodging and
Speaker 2: to support the Spanish authorities.
Speaker 3: As of June twenty.
Speaker 2: Seventh, by the way, the go fundme had received around
Speaker 2: forty thousand pounds a little over fifty thousand dollars. So
Speaker 2: the police were wondering how in the world did this
Speaker 2: young man just disappear. They talked to the two men
Speaker 2: who Jay had gone home with, and it seemed like
Speaker 2: they were mystified too. Police said the two men answered
Speaker 2: their questions, they cooperated, and they voluntarily stayed on the
Speaker 2: island for extra day. They said that the Spanish police
Speaker 2: had their names, addresses and all their personal details before
Speaker 2: those two men flew back to the UK. Now, a
Speaker 2: lot of online commenters made statements like how could Jay's
Speaker 2: friends leave him alone? But honestly, I find that probably
Speaker 2: the easiest part of the story to believe, because we
Speaker 2: see this over and over. We see that there's a
Speaker 2: lot of press about young women being preyed on whether
Speaker 2: they are at home or when they're on vacation, but
Speaker 2: young men are generally less careful about these things. There's
Speaker 2: much less awareness about the danger that a young man
Speaker 2: can feel when he's on his own, and people do
Speaker 2: disappear in Tenerief, even though the crime rate on the
Speaker 2: island is pretty low. Sometimes they wander off into the
Speaker 2: rough terrain and fall through ravines or get trapped there.
Speaker 2: But then a lot of people speculated maybe Jay got
Speaker 2: involved in some kind of drug trade. There is a
Speaker 2: drug trade, an underground criminal element on Tenerief. It's been
Speaker 2: described as an island where the Italian mob is very active.
Speaker 2: It's also been described as one of the islands of
Speaker 2: what they call geostrategic importance when it comes to international
Speaker 2: drug trafficking. Because the case made national and then international news,
Speaker 2: there were sightings of Jay everywhere, all of them to
Speaker 2: this date have been unbeverified. The rumors continue to fly.
Speaker 2: Some people said Jay lost a bag full of drugs
Speaker 2: and he was being held hostage until the money was paid.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of crazy conspiracy theories flying around,
Speaker 2: each one a little more unbelievable than the next, and
Speaker 2: a lot of them entered around this go fundme money
Speaker 2: that somehow Jay's family or friends had set up this
Speaker 2: GoFundMe to repay a drug death. This was all some
Speaker 2: elaborate scheme, which really should have seemed totally ridiculous from
Speaker 2: the beginning, but people were continuing to repeat stuff like this.
Speaker 2: Then on Saturday, Jane twenty second, there was a break
Speaker 2: in the case. There was a reported sighting of Jay
Speaker 2: in Santiago del Tierde, a town that's about five miles
Speaker 2: away from Masca, the nearest small town to that airbnb.
Speaker 2: Someone said they saw Jay there with two men outside
Speaker 2: of church. That would have been on the day he
Speaker 2: disappeared at around six pm in the evening. There was
Speaker 2: blurry footage outside that church, but no confirmed sighting of Jay.
Speaker 2: There was another rumor he had been spotted watching a
Speaker 2: football match.
Speaker 3: Now, this is all.
Speaker 2: Going on in the middle of the Euro twenty four matches.
Speaker 2: It was reported in the press that the mayor of
Speaker 2: that town, Santiago d'ltierede, said that the Spanish police had
Speaker 2: spoken to several people who may have seen Ja.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I mention this because it's a really good example of
Speaker 2: how in these situations, when there's fastbreaking news, rumors start
Speaker 2: flying and things do not get corrected.
Speaker 3: So the rumors started because the.
Speaker 2: Mayor mentioned he heard someone saw Jay. Now somehow in
Speaker 2: some of the news reporting that became it was definitely
Speaker 2: Jay and he.
Speaker 3: Was watching football.
Speaker 2: But by the time police went there to question people
Speaker 2: and other news organizations showed up, they got the real story.
Speaker 3: The mayor had heard people.
Speaker 2: Saying that they saw a young man who may have
Speaker 2: matched Jay's description. Now, of course Jay had a very
Speaker 2: general look. He's a young tan guy on vacation and
Speaker 2: with his darker skin and hair and kind of alive complexion. Honestly,
Speaker 2: he could have been a local or a tourist. Clearly
Speaker 2: they just saw someone who looked vaguely like Ja.
Speaker 3: It was not Jay.
Speaker 2: So it's natural to ask a question in a case
Speaker 2: like this, how common is it to go missing in
Speaker 2: a place like this. Well, the Independent newspaper did a
Speaker 2: super interesting synopsis of other men who were from the
Speaker 2: UK and went missing in Teneriffe and have never been found.
Speaker 2: There was Billy Bennett, who was eighteen when he disappeared.
Speaker 2: He was on vacation in Tenerief in December of nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty five. He was supposed to go to the island
Speaker 2: with a friend of his, but the friend couldn't go,
Speaker 2: so Billy went alone. He stayed at the Los America's Resort,
Speaker 2: the same resort where Jay stayed. He went to a
Speaker 2: nightclub often called the Sergeant Pepper's Nightclub. The friend who
Speaker 2: was supposed to go on the trip, talked to the
Speaker 2: press later. He said that later he did go to Tenerief,
Speaker 2: he met up with Billy. He said Billy was, in
Speaker 2: his words, worse for wear. He said Billy told him
Speaker 2: that he lost all of his money and was worried
Speaker 2: about having somewhere to go.
Speaker 3: Billy was never heard from again.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty seven, there was a similar story another
Speaker 2: young guy, a twenty three year old named Ricky Decata.
Speaker 2: He went to Tenerif in March of nineteen eighty seven
Speaker 2: to party and never came home. He was working a
Speaker 2: season out in Tenerief, which a lot of young people
Speaker 2: in the UK do to earn money. Interestingly, he worked
Speaker 2: in the same club that Billy frequented, the Sergeant Pepper's
Speaker 2: Disco pub in the Plia Delas America's resort. His sister
Speaker 2: was interviewed by the Independent newspaper back in two thousand
Speaker 2: and one. She said that Ricky was a loving, caring brother.
Speaker 2: She said he was super excited about going to work
Speaker 2: in Spain. She said she talked to him and he
Speaker 2: said he was planning to come home. He called in
Speaker 2: October to ask for forty pounds for a ticket home
Speaker 2: for Christmas. Then she said she called him and confirmed
Speaker 2: that he did get that ticket money. But Ricky never
Speaker 2: showed up for Christmas and his family never saw him again.
Speaker 2: His passport was handed in to Spanish authorities, his bag
Speaker 2: was given to the police, so eventually his parents got
Speaker 2: his passport and his stuff back, but had no idea
Speaker 2: what happened to Ricky. There's actually a lot more to
Speaker 2: this story. There was a documentary made about the case
Speaker 2: called Looking for Ricky. They did testing on five bodies
Speaker 2: that were found in Tenery that the tests were inconclusive.
Speaker 2: The documentary put forward the theory that Ricky may be
Speaker 2: indirectly involved in the drug trade and Tenery, basically that
Speaker 2: he may have annoyed the wrong person, but no one
Speaker 2: has ever been arrested or charged in this case. In
Speaker 2: two thousand and four, another brit named Kevin Ainley disappeared.
Speaker 2: He also had moved to the same area. Just three
Speaker 2: months after moving there, in June of two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: he vanished. So young men who go to tenerieve to
Speaker 2: have a good time had disappeared over the years, some
Speaker 2: under mysterious circumstances.
Speaker 3: But going back to Jay's case, a lot.
Speaker 2: Of people were trying to figure out where the last
Speaker 2: place that he was actually seen was.
Speaker 3: Could something have happened to him in that airbnb?
Speaker 2: And then things started to get even more crazy in
Speaker 2: the case because a lot of people started flying out
Speaker 2: to Tenerif from the UK to insert themselves into the investigation.
Speaker 3: I don't want to sound.
Speaker 2: Like the pot calling the kettle black here because I
Speaker 2: in the past have been accused of doing the same
Speaker 2: thing when a case is not getting attention after a
Speaker 2: long time. Yes, I have inserted myself into it, but
Speaker 2: I do feel strongly that in the beginning of a case,
Speaker 2: when the police are actively investigating, we have to let
Speaker 2: them do their jobs. And I think it's important to
Speaker 2: follow journalistic standards. It's fine to ask the police questions,
Speaker 2: even aggressively, and to demand the truth, but we have
Speaker 2: to maintain ethics in true crime reporting. One of the
Speaker 2: most important rules to follow is not to waste police
Speaker 2: time or distract from the investigation, and people do not
Speaker 2: seem to be following that rule here. TikTokers have shown
Speaker 2: up in tenery by the dozens and so of journalists.
Speaker 2: There's one female journalist from an ITV morning show by
Speaker 2: the way, that's one of the main channels in the UK.
Speaker 2: She literally has teamed up with one of the British
Speaker 2: TikTok stars and they're taking selfies together now. To be fair,
Speaker 2: at least the TikToker, whose name is Paul Arnott, at
Speaker 2: least he's a seasoned hiker. He says he did contact
Speaker 2: the authorities and that he got the go ahead to
Speaker 2: go out and search on his own. He's been posting
Speaker 2: lots of videos of himself with a camera, walking through
Speaker 2: cactus and shooting the airbnb with what looks like a
Speaker 2: long telephoto lens. It is surreal these bloggers are showing
Speaker 2: up with drones and cameras, and there's been a lot
Speaker 2: of criticism that not only are they not helping, they
Speaker 2: may be making things worse. A lot of people wondered
Speaker 2: about the two men who Jay was partying with. Who
Speaker 2: were they, why were they staying in an Airbnb on
Speaker 2: an isolated part of the island, what were they doing
Speaker 2: there and did they know Jay beforehand? But just like
Speaker 2: in America, in an open investigation, police do not reveal
Speaker 2: a lot of information, the Spanish police were no different.
Speaker 2: Police did question the two men. According to media reports.
Speaker 2: One of them is known by the nickname Johnny Vegas.
Speaker 2: They're both British Spanish. Police questioned the two men, they
Speaker 2: said that they were cooperative. Police did get their passports
Speaker 2: and their information, and then the two men flew home
Speaker 2: back to Luton in the UK. In addition, a lot
Speaker 2: of tourists have started flying over to Tenerif, which I
Speaker 2: find absolutely fascinating. Groups of tourists in jeeps driving around
Speaker 2: and taking selfies from the crime scene. They call it
Speaker 2: dark tourism, and I noticed that in a vacuum of information,
Speaker 2: commenters do make certain criticisms. Side note, laws in European
Speaker 2: countries are very different to laws in the US, and
Speaker 2: police do things differently. For example, they aren't allowed to
Speaker 2: light to suspects in Europe, so they can't, for example,
Speaker 2: throw two guys in an interrogation room and tell each
Speaker 2: one that the other one said they did it. They're
Speaker 2: not allowed to do stuff like that. They have to
Speaker 2: go about their evidence gathering in a very different and
Speaker 2: much more low key way. Another reason why I like
Speaker 2: to cover cold cases is that I find if you
Speaker 2: have a case that's actually grabbing headlines, you always have
Speaker 2: people and I call them the obligatory experts, These people
Speaker 2: who kind of rush to the scene. They start trying
Speaker 2: to solve things, and I'm putting solved in air quotes. Really,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, they're trying to grab headlines for themselves
Speaker 2: and inevitably they get in the way the police. Well,
Speaker 2: there's one of those experts in the United Kingdom. He's
Speaker 2: a former police detective named Mark Williams Thomas. Now he's
Speaker 2: a TV expert. So early in the case, he said
Speaker 2: he they made contact with the family and he made
Speaker 2: this big public statement and said he could get answers
Speaker 2: for the family in three days. So he flew to
Speaker 2: Tenerief and held a press conference. This part was interesting
Speaker 2: because Mark said he was working with the family. The
Speaker 2: family wasn't there. He said this was because the Spanish
Speaker 2: police had not officially sanctioned this press conference. He said
Speaker 2: he wanted to be able to get information without alienating
Speaker 2: the authorities. But he said very publicly he was looking
Speaker 2: for these two witnesses, the guys who Jay had partied
Speaker 2: with back at the airbnb. He said that he was
Speaker 2: appealing for these mystery men to come forward. But honestly,
Speaker 2: the police had already said they talked to these men.
Speaker 2: The Spanish police said they had their details. The two
Speaker 2: men had stayed for an extra day in Tenerief and
Speaker 2: then they'd flown back to the UK, so the Spanish
Speaker 2: police know who these people are.
Speaker 3: There's no need for.
Speaker 2: These men to come forward and talk to a TV detective.
Speaker 2: But Mark did pose an interesting question in the flurry
Speaker 2: of all this publicity. He said, quote, what we don't
Speaker 2: know is why, if they were partying here they went
Speaker 2: to a holiday rental around an hour away in a
Speaker 2: really remote location.
Speaker 3: I don't know the.
Speaker 2: Answer to that, but my focus is to find those people.
Speaker 2: I am giving them the opportunity to come forward. They
Speaker 2: are crucial witnesses and ask questions that could get answers
Speaker 2: end quote Again, I don't really understand why these men
Speaker 2: would need to come forward and talk to him, but
Speaker 2: I do think that it's a good idea to appeal
Speaker 2: for anyone who may have been on those roads, on
Speaker 2: those skinny roads around Mascot at the time Jay disappeared
Speaker 2: to come forward. Jay might have wandered off the road,
Speaker 2: but we can't rule out the theory that someone could
Speaker 2: have picked him up there. Mark Williams Thomas had another
Speaker 2: update on July third, according to the Lancashire Telegraph, Mark
Speaker 2: said that while Jay was riding with those two guys
Speaker 2: in the car on the way back to their airbnb,
Speaker 2: that Jay had allegedly posted a snap chat saying that
Speaker 2: he had stolen a twelve thousand pound Rolex watch off
Speaker 2: someone back at the club. Mark told the newspaper quote,
Speaker 2: We've been unable to validate this in terms of reported thefts.
Speaker 2: Friends of Jay said he would not make this up
Speaker 2: and the watch was subject to later conversation between the
Speaker 2: friends end quote. So people are talking about this stolen
Speaker 2: Rolex online. It's also been reported that after the club
Speaker 2: where Jay was partying closed that a fight broke out
Speaker 2: after a man said that his watch was stolen, but
Speaker 2: again there's no proof of this yet. Mark also said, quote,
Speaker 2: We've received information that would suggest Jay left the rental
Speaker 2: property feeling scared. He would not return to the rental,
Speaker 2: even though that would have been the most sensible course
Speaker 2: of action. We continue to investigate this aspect end quote,
Speaker 2: but again there's no proof of this. The Spanish police
Speaker 2: have said the two British men, who again have cooperated
Speaker 2: completely and flown home, are relevant to the investigation, they
Speaker 2: actually used the word irrelevant. Then another friend came forward.
Speaker 2: It turned out that Lucy may not have been the
Speaker 2: last person to talk to Jay, because Brad, the third
Speaker 2: friend who was with Lucy and Jay and Tenerife, made
Speaker 2: his own video.
Speaker 3: He said that he talked to Jay on the morning
Speaker 3: he went missing.
Speaker 2: He said they had a video chat and that in
Speaker 2: that call, Jay was walking out there in the wilderness,
Speaker 2: and he said Jay told him he had been walking
Speaker 2: for thirty minutes, that he was taking a shortcut. Brad
Speaker 2: said it sounded like Jay may have been slipping out there,
Speaker 2: maybe on loose stones. Brad also cleared something else up.
Speaker 2: He said that he, Jay and Lucy did know the
Speaker 2: two men from the airbnb. He said they had been
Speaker 2: talking to those guys and hanging out for a couple
Speaker 2: of days before Jay disappeared. So I do wonder why
Speaker 2: Jay didn't want to go back to the airbnb. Did
Speaker 2: something I am pleasant go down between him and those
Speaker 2: two men late night. But even if that was true,
Speaker 2: the facts right now are that someone did see Jay
Speaker 2: and talk to him after he left the airbnb. And
Speaker 2: this is where you see the dark side of social media,
Speaker 2: because yes, you get a lot of tips with publicity,
Speaker 2: but you also get a lot of weird people and
Speaker 2: Internet trolls. And this is where the dark tourism and
Speaker 2: these message boards cross over from kind of a curiosity
Speaker 2: to something that is, in my opinion, much more sinister.
Speaker 2: Someone hacked Jay's Instagram. It's been reported that it was
Speaker 2: hacked by someone who was trying to get in it
Speaker 2: to find clues. I have no idea if that's true,
Speaker 2: and if so, if it's someone who knew him or
Speaker 2: someone who was trying to get information after reading about
Speaker 2: the case, But either way, this is shocking. Jay's sister
Speaker 2: addressed the message boards. She wrote on social media, quote,
Speaker 2: all of the groups are full of trolls and sickos.
Speaker 2: I can't believe some people are actually this sick in
Speaker 2: the hed there are people hacking my accounts and Jay's family,
Speaker 2: making it pure lies and pretending we are all in
Speaker 2: on it.
Speaker 3: End quote.
Speaker 2: And at some point the internet turned on Jay himself.
Speaker 2: We talk a lot in true crime about the perfect victim,
Speaker 2: the idea that to get headlines to get public sympathy,
Speaker 2: a victim has to seem pure, which I think is ridiculous,
Speaker 2: but it's kind of a true crime trope that refuses
Speaker 2: to die. It turned out that Jay, the fun loving
Speaker 2: teen in the pictures, had had a dark past. In
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, Jay and seven other teens were part
Speaker 2: of a vicious machete attack on a seventeen year old
Speaker 2: named Tom. The attack apparently started after a night out.
Speaker 2: Tom was having issues with one of Jay's friend group
Speaker 2: and it turned violent. The guys attacked Tom and chased
Speaker 2: him outside the club. In court later, Tom said that
Speaker 2: Jay and his friend were like a pack of gorillas.
Speaker 3: They attacked Tom.
Speaker 2: With a machete and a golf club, hitting him so
Speaker 2: viciously that his skull was exposed. Later in court, the
Speaker 2: judge said he was disgusted by Jay and his friends.
Speaker 2: He said he was disgusted by the fact the teens
Speaker 2: continued to laugh and joke throughout the trial and the
Speaker 2: sentencing process. The judge said that some of the group,
Speaker 2: though reportedly not Jay, were guilty of intimidation of witnesses,
Speaker 2: drug charges, and robbery. Now it has been reported that
Speaker 2: Jay was not one of the main instigators in this group,
Speaker 2: that he was just kind of on the periphery, but
Speaker 2: either way, this attack was horrifying. Sadly, the sentences were
Speaker 2: shockingly light. In my opinion, Jay was given an eighteen
Speaker 2: month community order. Like probation in the United States. He
Speaker 2: was required to do community service and unpaid work.
Speaker 3: That is it.
Speaker 2: Some people described his disappearance as karma. I must say that,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, the victim of this attack showed some
Speaker 2: class here. He wrote on Facebook, quote, whoever is writing
Speaker 2: on these tiktoks, give it a rest. The young lad's
Speaker 2: missing in his family's heartbroken, Put yourself in their shoes,
Speaker 2: Stop talking nonsense on social media and get this lad found.
Speaker 2: Mentioning my name, this and that. Have some respect and
Speaker 2: help find this boy and get him back to his family.
Speaker 2: End quote. The case just kept getting crazier every day.
Speaker 2: The British news would open with day ten, day eleven
Speaker 2: of the jays later search. Then more and more people
Speaker 2: started showing up this tourist destination. You had psychics and
Speaker 2: other TikTok people with drones, more TV journalists, people retracing
Speaker 2: the last steps from the airbnb. Then, in another stranger
Speaker 2: than fiction twist, one hiker who was reported to be
Speaker 2: someone who was looking for Jay, though that was never confirmed.
Speaker 3: Police had to.
Speaker 2: Come in and rescue him. The press release read quote
Speaker 2: tired and disoriented, he was located by the agents and
Speaker 2: the rescue team who helped get him out.
Speaker 3: Of the ravine end quote. At first, a lot of
Speaker 3: people got excited.
Speaker 2: They thought maybe that Jay had been found, but no,
Speaker 2: this was some random person who had turned up, presumably
Speaker 2: for the search, and gotten lost himself, wasting more police
Speaker 2: time and taking effort away from the attempt to find Jay.
Speaker 2: Every area, every single small town, even the ones where
Speaker 2: you say we can leave our doors unlocked at such
Speaker 2: a safe place, they all have this side. So this
Speaker 2: is not unique to this island, but Pliadella's America's, where
Speaker 2: Jay was staying, in particular, is known for drugs. There
Speaker 2: have been a lot of high profile drug trafficking cases
Speaker 2: there in recent years, including murders committed by gangs called
Speaker 2: the Timeshare murders who were kind of fighting over property.
Speaker 2: In addition to that, a local news outlet called Canarian
Speaker 2: Weekly reported that crime in the Canary Islands has spiked
Speaker 2: post COVID. In twenty twenty two, rape was up by
Speaker 2: twenty seven percent, violent robberies thirty two percent, and drug
Speaker 2: trafficking forty one percent. So it is possible that Jay
Speaker 2: was partying with these guys and that he got into
Speaker 2: a confrontation with them or with someone else. We do
Speaker 2: have to be open minded and consider that. But I
Speaker 2: keep coming back to the fact Jay was seen by
Speaker 2: this woman after leaving the airbnb. Whatever happened that night,
Speaker 2: he was out of that property, it was morning, he
Speaker 2: was headed toward home. He walked uphill, not downhill, toward
Speaker 2: the town. Why did he do that? And while thinking
Speaker 2: about that, I also want to think about what we
Speaker 2: can learn from this case going forward. One of the
Speaker 2: reasons that I wanted to do this story was because
Speaker 2: I have so many of these cases where someone's out
Speaker 2: and they get into trouble, they get into a fight
Speaker 2: with someone, or they're lost or potentially intoxicated, and their
Speaker 2: phone battery dies. So I did some research and I
Speaker 2: found out that there is a way if you have
Speaker 2: an iPhone or an Android, there are ways to find
Speaker 2: someone's location even if the.
Speaker 3: Battery is dead.
Speaker 2: But and this is the crucial part, you have to
Speaker 2: enable it before you lose the phone, not afterwards. To
Speaker 2: do this on an iPhone, you go to settings, your
Speaker 2: name and then find my then you tick the option
Speaker 2: that says my network. This apparently enables to find my
Speaker 2: feature to work even if the battery is dead or
Speaker 2: the phone is offline. There's also an option there called
Speaker 2: ce Last Location. You can opt in and that will
Speaker 2: allow your phone to automatically send its last location to
Speaker 2: Apple even if the battery is dying. I also wonder
Speaker 2: if there were other apps on J's phone that could
Speaker 2: have helped. We saw in a previous case that, for example,
Speaker 2: the Health app was very helpful in measuring exactly where
Speaker 2: this young man was walking and how long his strides were. Secondly,
Speaker 2: and this will be controversial, I know, but I really
Speaker 2: advise people not to give to go fundmes unless you
Speaker 2: know the families personally. This is no reflection on Jay
Speaker 2: or his family. This is just a general rule that
Speaker 2: I follow because we have no idea who is using
Speaker 2: the money or what it's being used for. There's really
Speaker 2: no transparency. I would add, if you do give go
Speaker 2: fund me money to anyone, you just have to accept
Speaker 2: the fact that you're gonna have no control over where
Speaker 2: it goes, and give it as a gift with no
Speaker 2: strings attached, and never think about it again. Treat it
Speaker 2: like you would a gift to a friend, because in
Speaker 2: my opinion, it is pointless to give to a GoFundMe
Speaker 2: and later complain about how the funds are used. When
Speaker 2: you give to go fund me, you relinquish that control.
Speaker 2: And Third, I think we all have to take a long,
Speaker 2: hard look at what we're doing on social media. If
Speaker 2: we post on social media and groups for a case,
Speaker 2: we really have to remember this is a living person,
Speaker 2: this is a real family. In this case, people have
Speaker 2: been making memes about Jay Slater's case, treating it like
Speaker 2: a joke, sending messages to the family, trying to get
Speaker 2: into someone's Instagram, and then even clogging up.
Speaker 3: The search trails.
Speaker 2: It's not only immoral and unhelpful, it's potentially illegal. It's
Speaker 2: easy to forget these are not just news stories. These
Speaker 2: are real people. So why did Jay randomly walk uphill?
Speaker 2: I do have a theory, it's just an idea.
Speaker 3: At this point.
Speaker 2: Again, I'm not actively investigating this case. I'm letting the
Speaker 2: police do that. I did a Google Map search. I
Speaker 2: asked for walking directions from the airbnb down to the
Speaker 2: town of Masca below. I noticed that when I did
Speaker 2: this for driving directions, it guided me down the hill
Speaker 2: from the airbnb. It said it would be a twenty
Speaker 2: minute drive, and this was about a thirty kilometer distance,
Speaker 2: about eighteen minless. But if you put in walking directions
Speaker 2: for some reason, the walking direction takes you back up
Speaker 2: the hill and it says it takes six hours and
Speaker 2: sixteen minutes.
Speaker 3: So and again this is just a guess.
Speaker 2: Maybe Jay did start walking in that direction, not realizing
Speaker 2: it was eighteen miles away and that it would have
Speaker 2: taken him at least eleven hours to do that walk.
Speaker 2: Maybe he was out of it. It was early in
Speaker 2: the morning, he'd been out all night. Given what we
Speaker 2: know now, and again we do not have all the
Speaker 2: info that police do. For good reasons, I do think
Speaker 2: it's more likely that Jay got off the road somehow
Speaker 2: or tried to take a shortcut. Jay's phone was dying
Speaker 2: and he was tired and dehydrated.
Speaker 3: Temperatures in that.
Speaker 2: Area are brutal, approaching one hundred degrees during the day
Speaker 2: and down to the thirties a night. In fact, the
Speaker 2: UK Foreign Office has a travel advice warning for that area.
Speaker 2: They tell visitors to be very careful when hiking or
Speaker 2: walking in that area. Also by the way, a risk
Speaker 2: of altitude sickness up there, which would have been a
Speaker 2: lot worse with a hangover and dehydration. So this was
Speaker 2: Jay's first trip abroad, first time in a foreign country.
Speaker 2: The terrain there can be deadly, but that's easy to forget.
Speaker 2: It reminds me a lot of people who go missing
Speaker 2: in Malibu.
Speaker 3: It's such a.
Speaker 2: Temperate, nice area with the beach during the day and
Speaker 2: lots of people around. It is easy to forget that
Speaker 2: if you get lost out there, you're basically crossing a
Speaker 2: desert in your beach clothes. Once reporters stopped walking in
Speaker 2: the hills in their tennis shoes and they actually took
Speaker 2: the time to interview local residents, which is such an
Speaker 2: important part of these stories. They interviewed a woman who
Speaker 2: lived in that area, and I think that her comment
Speaker 2: was one of the most sensible of the entire investigation.
Speaker 2: She said that people go missing in those hills all
Speaker 2: the time. That takes police months or years to find
Speaker 2: some of them, and some of them are never found.
Speaker 2: I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen
Speaker 2: Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans,
Speaker 2: and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine
Speaker 2: Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy
Speaker 2: Tubbs for her research assistance.
Speaker 3: Music contributed by Ben Sale. This episode was sound designed and.
Speaker 2: Mixed by Noah Camer Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr,
Speaker 2: and Else Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by
Speaker 2: subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2: You can follow the show on Instagram at Helen Gone Pod.
Speaker 2: If you have a case you'd like me and my
Speaker 2: team to look into, you can reach out to us
Speaker 2: at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight
Speaker 2: seven four four six one four or five. That's six
Speaker 2: seven eight seven four four six one four or five.
Speaker 1: School of Humans