Jay Slater’s GoFundMe enchantment tops £70,000 as cash retains pouring in

The fundraiser for tragic holiday teenager Jay Slater has smashed through the £70,000 mark almost a week after he was found dead in a ravine on Lanzarote.

Apprentice bricklayer Jay, 19, disappeared in the early hours of June 17 after attending the NRG music festival in the Playa de las Americas resort on the island’s southern coast.

Friends of the teen, from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, set up a GoFundMe with the intention of financing search efforts after he phoned pal Lucy Law to say his phone battery was low, and that he had injured himself.

The fundraiser, however, will now be used to repatriate Jay’s body and to give him, as his mother Debbie Duncan put it in a plea for further donations, ‘the send-off he deserves’ after he was found in the Barranco Juan Lopez valley.

It has garnered £70,075 of donations against a £30,000 target at the time of publication.

Ms Duncan, writing two days ago on the fundraising page, said: ‘We are overwhelmed with grief and are so grateful for your support.

‘We are working with agencies to arrange Jay’s repatriation to the UK and the remaining funds, along with any future donations will be used to help with this if needed and to pay for Jay’s funeral costs back home. 

‘We want to give our boy the send-off he deserves so please do continue to share and support our fundraiser however you can.’

The family intends to fly back with Jay together before holding his funeral in Britain. A memorial service was held at the West End Methodist Church in Oswaldtwistle last week, where friends released balloons.

But the plea for further funds – when the GoFundMe had already reached £60,000 – was met with some derision and scepticism from online trolls, who questioned whether the family needed more donations.

This prompted a heartfelt defence of the family from Matthew Searle, chief executive of international aid charity LBT Global, which has been assisting Jay’s family with the search and subsequent efforts to repatriate his body.

Mr Searle wrote in a social media posting: ‘We are seeing vast amounts of hateful content online, regarding the family asking for more donations to help give Jay a really good send off. 

‘This hate comes from people who, I assume, have never had to repatriate a deceased loved one. Those costs can top £20k easily. 

‘These people probably haven’t had to arrange their own child’s funeral, nor felt the need to make it the biggest and best they can as it’s the last thing they’ll ever do for their child.’

Mr Searle later removed the post after it too attracted significant backlash, writing in a later entry: ‘I was not trying to downplay the feelings of anyone who has lost a child. It was not aimed at those asking legitimate questions.

‘As a result I have been called some very upsetting things myself but I can live with that. What I am attempting to do is slow the tide of hate and abuse towards a bereaved family.’

Some of the money from the GoFundMe – whose representatives say they are in constant contact with the family about the use of funds – have been used to pay Dutch search and rescue team Signi Zoekhondon.

 

It does not charge for its services, but asks for a contribution to be made to cover transport and accomodation costs. It has confirmed to the Mail it expects a payment to be made by the family next week. 

Estimates of the true cost of repatriating a body can vary – but Homeland International, a specialist in body repatriation, says the cost ‘usually tends to be somewhere around £3,000 to £6,000’.  

Along with the cost of freight, this fee includes the embalming process, a fit-to-fly coffin and a certificate to confirm the corpse is free from infection. 

The Mail understands Jay’s family intends to make a donation to LBT Global in recognition of the support it has given.

Jay disappeared early on June 17, with his phone pinging a phone mast roughly a mile from where he was eventually found almost a month later. 

A large-scale search was launched by Spain’s Civil Guard and Jay’s body was eventually discovered on July 15 at the foot of a ravine close to the village of Masca. Police believe he accidentally fell to his death from a large height.

An investigation found Jay had met and travelled with two men to an Airbnb after leaving the NRG festival. They were later deemed irrelevant to his disappearance.

Police have, however, remained silent on whether Jay was found with a £12,000 Rolex luxury watch he is alleged to have stolen from a reveller the night before he disappeared. 

The family have taken a ‘very small’ degree of comfort from the knowledge that Jay’s death was likely instantaneous, Mr Searle said.

‘Chances are if he did fall from a height where we saw the recovery teams searching, then it’s very unlikely he would have known much about it,’ he told the Independent.

Jay Slater’s disappearance captured the attention of people across the world, who became heavily invested in the search for the young man – with echoes of the disappearance of Nicola Bulley, who vanished in January 2023.

TikTok conspiracy theory rabbit holes and a ‘find Jay Slater’ group on Facebook became sources of speculation and harmful, unproven rumours about where Jay had gone on the day he vanished.

This continued despite pleas from the family to stop sharing ‘awful comments and conspiracy theories’ online – as attention-seeking TikTokers flew out to Tenerife and filmed themselves in the valley where Jay had disappeared.

And TV detective Mark Williams-Thomas flew out to Tenerife to chip in with the investigation – much as he had done in the case of Ms Bulley when she vanished beside a river at St Michael’s on Wyre.

But, as in the case of Ms Bulley, whose body was eventually found a mile downstream from where she vanished, the truth of Jay Slater’s disappearance was much simpler than social media may have liked. 

Questions still remain as to why Jay travelled so far with two men he had just met, and why he set off in what ultimately proved to be the wrong direction as he tried to walk back to his hotel after missing a bus. 

But LBT boss Mr Searle, speaking to Sky News earlier this week, says he intends to speak to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper about the damage and hurt caused by online trolls who turned Jay’s tragic disappearance into a true-crime free-for-all.

‘Ultimately it hinders the search and it’s terrifyingly horrible for a family that are going through this,’ he said.

‘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”.

‘It’s really worrying to the point where our charity thinks it’s time that it has to stop.’