The hunt for missing teenager Jay Slater descended into farce yesterday as Spanish police called an abrupt halt to their search of the remote national park where he vanished exactly two weeks ago.
News of the shock development emerged after rescue teams failed to turn up for duty at the mountain restaurant where they have been assembling daily at around 9am.
‘The search is now over but the investigation remains open,’ a police spokesman said. ‘My understanding is that Jay’s parents have been informed.’
Jay’s mother Debbie was, in fact, unaware of the news until the Mail passed on details. A source close to the family insisted yesterday that ‘no one is leaving’ the holiday island ‘until we find Jay’.
Jay’s mother Debbie was unaware the search for her son had been called off until the Mail passed on details
Tenerife’s Civil Guard police force had been meeting in this spot each day to begin their search for missing 19-year-old Jay Slater
The remote meeting place near Masca was empty yesterday morning
Other reports said Debbie was ‘heartbroken and devastated’, with relatives feeling ‘a sense of bewilderment’ at the decision to end the mountain search.
They were entitled to feel confused. Just 24 hours earlier, the same police, Tenerife’s Guarda Civil, had been playing a very different tune.
They were promising to orchestrate a ‘busqueda masiva’ (‘massive search’) to track down the 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer, who has not been seen since locals saw him walking briskly up the road out of the village just after 8am on Monday, June 17.
Volunteers were invited to spend Saturday scouring the rugged Masca valley, where he’d disappeared the morning after spending three straight days at Tenerife’s New Rave Generation dance music festival.
In the event, however, a mere six people showed up to the busqueda. Their number was dwarfed by the several dozen journalists and film crews present.
The officer in charge, Cipriano Martin, then spent the thick end of an hour staging bizarre photo opportunities in which he and several colleagues stood atop a mountain pass and pretended to scour the horizon.
Frustrated by the delay, the only British volunteer, Paul Arnott, stormed off, demanding that his name be removed from the list of official rescuers. He released an angry video on TikTok, where he earns a living as a mountaineering ‘influencer’, dubbing the official search operation ‘ridiculous’, ‘madness’, and a ‘massive PR thing’.
Back at base camp, Officer Martin then staged a short press conference. It was the first time any member of the Tenerife police had agreed to answer questions about the high-profile case, which has been generating headlines worldwide.
Things took a further surreal turn when he was asked about the two middle-aged men who had driven Jay from the Papagayo Beach Club in Playa de Las Americas to the village of Masca. Speaking in Spanish, he told reporters: ‘Those men have been spoken to, and they don’t have any relevance whatsoever for the case.’
The remarks quickly made headlines. When I heard him utter them, my initial view was that one of two things had happened: either something was being lost in translation, or the local police chief had parted company with his marbles. A press officer accompanying Officer Martin denied that the first possibility was true, telling the Mail: ‘What he was saying was that the investigators have not found anything pointing to those two people being linked to the disappearance.’
The second explanation – that Tenerife’s police chief has taken leave of his senses – therefore seems a distinct possibility. After all, the duo’s role in Jay vanishing was hitherto regarded as being of critical relevance, with Mark Williams Thomas, a private investigator working for the family, describing them as ‘key witnesses’.
Both of the mysterious men, who have yet to be named, appear to have decided to rent the two-bedroom Casa Abuela Tina in Masca for the duration of the music festival. A modest property, listed on Airbnb for around €40 a night, it’s described on the internet site as ‘ideal to enjoy tranquillity, reading, hiking or nature’, with ‘wifi and all the necessary appliances for a comfortable stay in one of the most beautiful and rugged places on the island, nestled in the heart of Macizo de Teno’.
It makes a bizarre bolthole for someone attending a festival more than an hour’s drive away, in a town filled with reasonably priced resort hotels. To leave Masca, you must navigate a treacherous single-track mountain road riddled with hairpin bends.
Be that as it may, the duo seem to have become acquainted with Jay and his travel companions – Lucy Mae Law, Brad Hargreaves and Brandon Hodgkin – during the weekend-long event, where they were frequently seen drinking Hennessy cognac.
The New Rave Generation festival involved two night-time raves at a horse ranch above Playa de Las Americas, the high-rise party capital of Tenerife, plus a daytime pool party, an afternoon-long event at a legal marijuana dispensary and a final event at Papagayo Beach Club.
The whole thing ended just after 4am on Monday. But instead of returning to the three-star Paloma Beach Apartment Complex where he was staying, a mere ten-minute drive away, Jay jumped into a rental car belonging to the two men, who are described as British and in their late 30s to early 40s.
One is said to go by the nickname ‘Johnny Vegas’ and is described as around 6ft, stocky and with short dark hair. He was seen wearing an orange wristband. Little else is known about the other man. There are reports, albeit unconfirmed, that they told friends of Jay they hail from Luton.
The most benign explanation for Jay’s decision to accompany the duo is that he simply fancied carrying on the party after the club shut. He certainly doesn’t seem to have been forced into the vehicle against his will: some friends say they were sent a picture of him inside the vehicle with his hosts.
Other friends have meanwhile told police that his disappearance may be linked to a fight that broke out as revellers were leaving the Papagayo Beach Club. It allegedly resulted in a valuable Rolex watch being stolen from an Eastern European man. Whatever happened, Jay ended up at the cottage in Masca some time after 5am.
Around 7.30am, he left the apartment and sent two Snapchat images of himself outside. One showed a view of the valley. In the other, he held a cigarette while on the front steps. Wrapped around his legs was an orange blanket. It seems to have been offered by the two men, who had let him sleep on the sofa.
Half an hour later, Jay left the cottage. The duo later told his friends that he’d told them he wanted to buy some cigarettes and go home.
Jay and his travel companion Lucy Mae Law are pictured at Papagayo Beach Club hours before he disappeared two weeks ago
Some time after 5am on June 17, Jay travelled to this cottage in Masca with two men, said to be from Luton, who have yet to be named
A few hours later, he sent out this Snapchat image of himself smoking a cigarette on the front steps of the villa
A villager named Ofelia Medina Hernandez, whose brother owns Casa Abuela Tina, saw him waiting at the bus stop. However, upon learning that a vehicle wouldn’t be arriving until 10am, he began walking briskly up the steep road out of Masca.
Around 8.30am, he spoke to Brad Hargreaves via Snapchat, having apparently decided to leave the Tarmac road and walk cross-country. At 8.50am, Lucy Mae Law says Jay phoned her to say he was ‘lost in the mountains, with no water and 1 per cent battery’ and had been cut by a cactus. His phone ‘pinged’ outside a mountain restaurant atop the pass out of Masca at 8.51am and that was the last sign of him.
The two men were later questioned by Spanish police, who took their passport details. There is some confusion about what happened next. The Casa Abuela Tina appears to have been booked until the following Saturday, but the men flew out of Spain on Tuesday, June 18.
However it’s possible that different guests had taken it for the rest of the week. Friends of Jay believe the men were initially supposed to leave Tenerife on Monday, the day that Jay went missing, but were asked to stay on an extra 24 hours to help with inquiries.
They appear to have used Snapchat to share images of themselves landing at Gatwick.
Although the mountain branch of the Civil Guard has called off its search, and has no further interest in the men, who were among the last people to see Jay, colleagues in the island capital Santa Cruz de Tenerife are understood to still be looking into Jay’s disappearance. They won’t say if this is a criminal investigation.
As for Jay’s family, who hail from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, they have for some time been critical of the Tenerife police, who have declined assistance from their colleagues in the UK.
Both Debbie and her former husband Warren, who is Jay’s father, have received only intermittent communication from officers since arriving on the island.
For now, they aren’t going anywhere. So as the mystery over Jay Slater’s disappearance enters its third week, one search that remains a long way from being cancelled is the hunt for answers.