As Jay Slater case gripped the nation – here is 5 causes he had everybody speaking

It started out as an ordinary story – a young lad heading off to Spain for his first holiday with mates.

But what was it about the Jay Slater case that suddenly became so extraordinary it spawned conspiracy theories that spread across social media like wildfire?

Was it the lack of information from police that fuelled an appetite so ravenous, it led to an army of armchair detectives filling in their own gaps? Or was it the discovery of links to a “criminal network” that sent people’s imaginations into overdrive?

READ MORE: Grim discovery of ‘lifeless body of a young man’ found in inaccessible area of Tenerife

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Whatever the reasons, the 19-year-old’s family have endured a fierce backlash from vile trolls while living every parent’s worst nightmare.

Now, with the 29-day search reaching a tragic end with the discovery of Jay’s body close to where his phone last pinged, here we take a look at the factors that saw the case of an apprentice bricklayer from Lancashire catapult into the spotlight and grip the nation.

Final hours

Jay travelled to Tenerife with friends, Lucy Mae Law and Brad Hargreaves to attend the three-day New Rave Generation (NRG) music festival.

But after becoming separated from them, he left the rave with two British men and travelled to a remote Airbnb in the mountains.

One of the men was convicted drug dealer, Ayub Qassim, 31, who said he met Jay at Papagayo nightclub in Playa de las Americas and offered him a sofa to crash on.

The youngster from Oswaldtwistle posted a snapchat video of himself at the £40-a-night Casa Abuela Tina, near the village of Masca.

Instead of staying the night, he said he was hungry and wanted to make his way home.

Jay is said to have told Lucy that he was planning to make the 11-hour walk back to their apartment in the popular resort of Los Cristianos with only 1% battery left on his phone and no water.

He told her he was lost “in the middle of nowhere” and had cut his leg on a cactus.

Brad said he could hear Jay slipping on rocks during a video call. Jay’s phone last pinged in a remote area of the Rural de Teno park.

When reporters from Mail Online tracked Ayub down, he said: “He came to my Airbnb alive and he left my Airbnb alive.

“I let the geezer stay at mine because he had nowhere else to go, his friends had all left him.”

Meanwhile, after becoming a target of trolls, Brad posted on social media: “Thinkin’ I’m involved in it all is beyond me. We’ve been pals for years, took our first holiday together and sadly this has happened. We ain’t drug mules or whatever…. people need to get their facts straight before spouting rubbish on the internet..”

Lucy deactivated her Facebook account but it didn’t stop keyboard warriors rooting out one of her old ones, spamming it with hate and dubbing her ‘Lu-ci-fer.

The GoFundMe

Shortly after Jay was reported missing, a GoFundMe page was created by Lucy to support the family during the search.

A £30k target was set but the amount currently stands at over £53k with donations bolstered by the recent discovery of Jay’s body.

Jay’s mum Debbie said some of the money was used to privately fund the search after Spanish Police said they’d called off their efforts after 12 days.

However, the fundraising page fell victim to trolls who spread nasty theories about why it had been set up.

The frantic mother even had to contend with being compared to the notorious Karen Matthews, who orchestrated the fake kidnapping of her young daughter Shannon, 16 years ago.

Expressing her dismay in a Facebook post at the time, Debbie wrote: “I really am saddened by all your comments. You seem to be so bothered about this GoFundMe page.

“I really hope I am not taking my son home in a body bag…This may happen to any of you one day. Very let down by you all.”

Criminal network

Some internet sleuths took it upon themselves to travel out to the Spanish island to assist in the search for Jay.

Among them was TV detective Mark Williams-Thomas who liaised with Jay’s family and posted regular updates on social media.

He said spoke to Ayub Qassim – aka Johnny Vegas – and later said he had information to suggest Jay left the apartment “in a panic.”

It was suggested that Jay, during the journey to the Airbnb, posted a social media video bragging about the theft of a £12,000 Rolex watch.

At the time, Mr Williams-Thomas said: “We’ve still not found evidence of a third party criminal involvement in Jay’s disappearance, although we have opened up links with a criminal underworld drugs associated crime.”

Even after the discovery of Jay’s body, he said the family will still need reassurance from police that there is no foul play.

It comes after police were given a lead about a fight in relation to a missing Rolex that took place before Jay vanished.

The “scuffle” supposedly happened at the Papagayo Beach Club where the missing Brit was partying in the early hours of June 17.

Meanwhile, another TikTokker, Christopher Tenerife headed off road to the area where Jay’s phone last pinged making a bold claim about Jay’s whereabouts which appear to be exactly where he was found.

In a clip, he claimed there was “no way” the huge mountainous region of Masca was searched properly adding: “I don’t buy into the conspiracy theories, I don’t buy into someone took Jay. When you come and stand on this terrain, if that lad was heading for the coast I honestly think he’s had a bit of misfortune.

“He’s had a fall, he’s had an accident or he’s dehydrated and passed out. I feel he’s in this ravine, in this area of Tenerife . . . missing – I honestly believe that.”

The ‘media blackout’

The Civil Guard have been criticised for the lack of information they put out to the media despite the huge interest in the case.

Speaking on TalkTV, Scotland Yard detective, Mike Neville spoke to Dr David Bull about a “media blackout” and said: “I congratulate the Spanish police having found him. It’s taken four weeks but when you look at the terrain, it is absolutely nightmarish – the ravines, the vegetation. What I find odd though is how the Spanish police have handled the media because what they’ve done is, they said they were stopping the search, they obviously haven’t and carried on the search.

“They haven’t really held any press conferences, they’ve dealt with it in a kind of 1970s cop-style of ‘don’t involve the media’…what happened was a vacuum was created and we had all these crazy conspiracy theories involving drugs, Rolex watches, yachts disappearing and all this sort of stuff which causes further misery to the family.”

But commenting on the clip on YouTube, one viewer argued: “Isn’t it about time people stopped criticising the Guardia!? That’s a very difficult terrain out there and people have risked life and limb to find this poor lad! They also had to keep the search quiet because of all the ridiculous Youtubers who thought they were Hercule Poirot in climbing gear and were hindering the investigation.

“Not only that, these youtubers were putting themselves at risk of needing to be saved or having a nasty accident themselves and the last thing the Guardia wanted was more people getting injured or lost! The biggest insult to them tho is thinking that we can send over our own force and they’ll somehow do better!”

Armchair detectives

Much like the case of tragic mum, Nicola Bulley, there were wild theories circulating on social media from Jay escaping on a yacht to being hunted down by the Eastern European mafia.

Some even dredged up his past after he was given a community order for his involvement in a gang machete attack in 2021. It also wasn’t long before sick songs and jokes started doing the rounds with the release of a Spotify track by an artist called Jay Slater titled ‘Lost in Tenerife.’

Former Scotland Yard detective, Peter Bleksley told the Express: “This is a story which is so inherently ordinary: a teenager goes on holiday to Tenerife with his mates. It’s a story repeated thousands of times over the summer. But it becomes extraordinary very quickly. Driving off with two people he didn’t know.

“Such cases seize the public interest and fling wide the gates for wild theories…It grabs the public’s imagination and, unfortunately, opens the doors for conspiracy theorists to run rampant.”

Mr Bleksley slammed social media giants for not taking enough action against unfounded speculation and acknowledged the herculean task of silencing the endless chatter of gossip, rumour, and conspiracies in the digital world.

“Families need to be suitably advised to steer clear of it, but that’s difficult in the desperate situation they find themselves in,” he said.

“These kind of things will never go away. We saw it with Nicola Bulley, with people chipping in with their theories when their experience boils down to watching two episodes of Vera.”

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