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Jay Slater query everybody needs answered – was £12,000 Rolex discovered on wrist

A body has been found right where missing Jay Slater’s phone last pinged a signal. His best friend who partied with him in Tenerife the night he went missing, is leading online tributes for the 19-year-old.

Since news broke of human remains being discovered in the Masca area of the Canary Island, social media users who’ve been gripped by the case for the past month have been asking the same question.

Was a flash watch on the wrist of the remains? Police in Spain were told to look into an alleged theft of a £12,000 Rolex reported to have involved the missing Jay Slater. According to police on the scene, a fight to do with a missing Rolex broke out at the Papagayo Beach Club where Jay was partying in the early hours of June 17.

READ MORE:Jay Slater TV cop ‘unable’ to rule out ‘third party involvement’ after body found

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The teenager mysteriously vanished on the island that same night, after he told a friend that he was setting off on foot from an Airbnb to southern Tenerife, a journey which would have taken 11 hours. During that time his phone died.



Search and rescue teams
A body was found where search and rescue teams had scoured for weeks

Police called off a huge search for the missing 19-year-old on June 30 but kept the investigation open. Former British police detective Mark Williams-Thomas questioned why the teenager didn’t go back to his accommodation to get some water or charge his phone.

Despite there being no evidence of Jay stealing a watch, theories from armchair detectives and TikTok sleuths were sent into overdrive by the idea. Now X is rife with posts like the below.



Search
The body has not yet been formally identified

Quoting a news report, one person asked: “Clothes and possesions’ found, #JaySlater , can anyone confirm if he was wearing a #Rolex ??”

Another pondered: “I wonder if Jay Slater had the Rolex on his person?”

“It looks like the body of jay slater has been found, was he wearing a Rolex watch,” a third wrote.

Finally someone else posted on X: “I wonder if the £20k (sic) stolen Rolex watch was also found on Jay Slater.”



Spanish Police
Spanish police looked into possible causes of Jay’s disappearance

Williams-Thomas said Jay had “posted a Snapchat saying that he’d taken a £12,000 Rolex from a person”.

He added: “We’ve received information that would suggest that Jay left the rental property feeling scared and he would not return to the rental, even though that would have been the most sensible course of action.”

The detective went on to say police could not say for certain this was because of a robbery. However he added: “Friends of Jay said he would not make this up and the watch was subject of later conversation between the friends.”



Mark Williams-Thomas
Mark Williams-Thomas has suggested police should probe the alleged robbery

And after a near-month long search a body has been found. A Guardia Civil spokesman said: “The mountain rescue and intervention group of the Civil Guard has located the lifeless body of a young man in the Masca area after 29 days of constant search

“Given the complexity of the case, the discovery has been possible thanks to the incessant and discreet search carried out by the Civil Guard during these 29 days, in which the natural space was preserved so that it would not be filled with curious onlookers.

“All indications indicate that it could be the young British man who has been missing since June 17 in the absence of full identification. The first investigations reveal that he could have suffered an accident fall in the inaccessible area where he was found.”

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