A former Scotland Yard detective has revealed why it took Spanish cops so long to find a body in the search for Jay Slater.
The 19-year-old went missing on June 17 after attending the three-day NRG Festival in Tenerife. Yesterday (July 15), human remains were discovered in an “inaccessible area” of Masca, close to where the teenager’s phone last pinged.
While formal identification is yet to place, officers say the body was found with Jay’s possessions and clothes. It comes after the Civil Guard say they carried out an “incessant and discreet search” away from “curious onlookers” – despite announcing they’d called their search off after 12 days.
READ MORE: Grim discovery of ‘lifeless body of a young man’ found in inaccessible area of Tenerife
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It has treated the case as a missing persons investigation from the start despite criticism it was too quick to write off any foul play. Ex-Met Police sleuth Peter Bleksley told the Express: “Whilst we haven’t had official confirmation, all indications are this story has reached what, for many of us, is a tragic conclusion.”
He added: “It appears the (missing person) theory they were working on was correct all along. They carried out a search of terrain near to Masca and indications are that was the area where Jay was found. It was such a vast area with gullies, ravines, caves and dense undergrowth.
(Image: Guardia Civil)
“If they had mobilised a thousand soldiers could they have reached this conclusion earlier? Yes, possibly, but they used the resources they had at their disposal. They operated within their parameters – there aren’t limitless resources.”
However the ex-detective said there are lessons Spanish police could learn in the way they handle such cases and how they deal with families caught up in such horrific circumstances, adding that a family liaison officer would have been a “definite improvement.”
(Image: Andrew Teebay/Liverpool Echo)
He also criticised the police for remaining tight-lipped with the media stating that the force was better equipped with more information than online conspiracy theorists.
But he believes the discovery of a body will finally quash the “nonsense” spouted by armchair detectives after Jay’s family fell prey to fake leads sprouting up on the web.
The apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire shared his last known location at Rural de Teno Park in the north of the Canary Island, a hefty 11-hour walk from his digs.
Leaving a remote Airbnb he went back to with two men, he told pals he was “in the middle of nowhere,” needed a drink and had 1% battery left on his phone. He also said he’d cut himself on a cactus.
(Image: Stan Kujawa)
Video released by police shows how mountain rescue experts scoured through dense terrain, scaled rock faces and picked their way through scrub and thick undergrowth as they carried out the search. Rescuers can be seen climbing rocks and battling through undergrowth in an area showing a ravine surrounded by steep cliffs.
Footage also showed two members of the search team being winched out of the area by helicopter after the body had been found and recovered.
TikTok sleuth, Chris Pennington, who has been assisting in the search for Jay found some broken sunglasses where Jay could’ve come off the road to take a “short cut” towards the coast.
(Image: christophertenerife/Tiktok)
Speaking about the terrain, he told Good Morning Britain: “I would go as far as saying it’s absolutely deadly. To try and search in that area and ensure your own safety whilst trying to find a missing person is a task of the highest order. There are a number of challenges. The first vegetation is extremely high.
“Once you enter off the road into the vegetation you disappear quickly. The ground is very dry which makes it extremely slippery and once you come completely off the path it’s volcanic rock and If you slip on the volcanic rock like I have done last Saturday I’m bruised, cut graze and scrapped.
“It’s almost like an amphitheatre and that’s a heat trap so once you’re in that area it’s so easy to become dehydrated and suffer from heat exhaustion. As you get further down to where the cliffs are, the drops are 200 to 300 feet and if you slip or fall at that point it really is game over.”
(Image: Simon Ashton)
In a statement, 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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