‘To my beautiful boy,’ begins Debbie Duncan’s hand-written tribute to her son Jay Slater. ‘I’m so sorry we never found you. I miss you so much.’
This poignant note now adorns a bouquet of white chrysanthemums left in the ravine where the British teenager’s body was finally recovered by Spanish authorities in Tenerife earlier this week, 29 days after he went missing.
‘Love you little bro,’ writes Jay’s brother Zak. ‘I’ll look after Mum and Dad… Hope to see you again some day.’
Jay’s father Warren left a bracelet emblazoned with the letter ‘J’ and this simple, heartbreaking message: ‘To My Boy. Love Dad. Always.’
The family decorated the memorial with a teddy bear wearing an England jumper and a single candle in a red jar.
Jay Slater with his brother Zak and mother Debbie Duncan, who as the Mail understands, are determined to fly home with his body
To the side stands a large plastic bottle of water. It might seem incongruous alongside these moving messages. But those who have followed this harrowing story will know that the water is a heartbreaking reference to Jay’s final words — delivered over the phone to friend Lucy Mae Law — in which he told her he was desperately dehydrated.
With this gesture, Jay’s family have shown they are there for their boy, even in death.
And perhaps, who knows, it might one day save the life of some other lost soul who falls foul of the blistering heat and disorientating ravines in the Rural de Teno Park in north-west Tenerife.
An official statement released at midday on Monday revealed that Civil Guard agents — belonging to the Mountain Rescue and Intervention Group – had located the ‘lifeless body of a young man’.
The following day, a spokesman for the High Court of Justice in the Canary Islands confirmed: ‘We have a positive identification and more data, fingerprint tests, show that the body is [that] of Jay Slater.’
The statement added ‘the death was caused by trauma consistent with a fall in a rocky area’.
The Slater family decorated the memorial to their son with a teddy bear wearing an England jumper and a single candle in a red jar
Zak left a heartbreaking note to Jay, in which he promised to look after their parents and said he hoped to see his brother again
This was later verified by the Civil Guard: ‘The result of the preliminary autopsy points to the cause of death being a fall or plunge from height due to the broken bones he suffered.’
Wild conspiracy theories had whirled around this case — from the suggestions Slater had been trafficked off the island to claims he had been murdered by a local drug cartel. But it appears the untimely death of Jay Slater was a tragic case of misadventure by a carefree teen abroad, who seems to have been seduced by the island’s notorious drugs industry and perhaps fell into the wrong company.
The question is: what happens next?
Earlier this week, after three weeks investigating Jay’s disappearance for the Mail, I made my final visit to the ravine, near the small village of Masca, where his body was recovered on Monday by helicopter.
It was eerily quiet. News crews had packed up, police and rescue teams returned to base. In fact, Barranco Juan Lopez was exactly how Jay Slater would have found it in the early hours of Monday June 17, a harsh, empty and unforgiving wilderness.
The teenager’s remains were found deep in the ravine, just a few hundred metres from where it drops into Juan Lopez Bay and the North Atlantic Ocean. Here, the thicket gives way to steep cliffs and sudden, deep chasms where Slater is understood to have met his end.
That the teenager, in a T-shirt and shorts and after a three-day bender, managed to get so far into the ravine, which is carpeted in cacti and perilous underfoot with loose rock, is remarkable.
Almost five weeks on from his disappearance, the Mail understands that the Slater family were advised not to see his body in the morgue and say a final farewell.
In a statement, the Slaters said they took some ‘very small comfort’ from the likelihood Jay’s death was instantaneous.
For now, Debbie, Warren and Zak remain on the island. The Mail understands they are determined to travel home with their son.
Debbie ended her message on Jay’s GoFundMe page with a plea for further donations
Debbie, who has been posting on a GoFundMe page since her son’s disappearance, left a letter to Jay, in which she said that he would be ‘forever young’
Speaking on behalf of the family, Matthew Searle, chief executive of the missing persons charity LBT Global, said ‘complex issues’ — believed to relate to completing the autopsy — were hampering efforts to repatriate Jay’s body. ‘But the plan is for his family to be on the same flight,’ he added.
Mr Searle also suggested that while Jay’s travel insurance may cover some of the cost, money donated to a GoFundMe page to help with the search could now instead be used to take Jay’s body back to Britain.
The teenager’s travel companion Lucy set up the fundraiser on June 20 in order to ‘Get Jay Slater Home.’ Lucy originally hoped to raise £30,000 but the account now boasts almost double that figure.
Some of the cash has already been withdrawn to help pay for Dutch search and rescue team Signi Zoekhondon, according to information posted on the GoFundMe page by Debbie last weekend.
‘We have a team of experts flying in over the weekend from the Netherlands,’ she wrote on July 13. ‘We are only able to fund this with the generosity of all those who donated.’
The rescue charity, which does not charge for its services but asks that a contribution be made to transport and accommodate its volunteers, confirmed to the Mail that a payment has been agreed, which they expect to be made next week. In an update posted on Thursday afternoon, Jay’s mother — the sole listed beneficiary of the GoFundMe page — thanked everyone for their ‘kindness, support and condolences’.
She confirmed that ‘the remaining funds, along with any future donations,’ would be used to pay repatriation costs, as well as ‘Jay’s funeral costs back home’.
Debbie ended her message with a plea for further donations: ‘Please do continue to share and support our fundraiser however you can’.
This has prompted some questions. The expense of repatriation is small when compared with the £60,000 already at the family’s disposal. According to Homeland International, specialists in body repatriation, the cost varies but it ‘usually tends to be somewhere around £3,000 to £6,000’. Even at the top end, that’s just 10 per cent of the money currently available to Jay’s family.
Debbie and Jay’s father Warren leave a Civil Guard station in Playa de las Americas, Tenerife
The apprentice bricklayer’s father left a simple note at the memorial for his son
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.
Few would disagree with Debbie that her son should also have ‘the send-off he deserves’ once he is repatriated, but once Jay’s funeral costs are considered, it can be assumed there will still be a sizable chunk remaining.
A spokesman for GoFundMe said the platform was in ‘regular contact’ with the Slater family, and the Mail understands that Debbie is making a donation to LBT Global as a thank you for their support. It may be that she will give any leftover money to another good cause or set up a memorial fund in Jay’s name.
What is clear is the sense of loss not just in Jay’s own family, but in his hometown of Oswaldtwistle, in Lancashire.
On Tuesday evening at 7pm, the skies in the northern town turned blue as around 100 mourners released balloons at a memorial service hosted by the West End Methodist Church, around the corner from Jay’s home.
‘Today it might feel that the darkness has overcome us,’ said Minister Matt Smith, presiding over the ceremony. ‘But today we also stand together and say that we will remember Jay. His light will never go out. We will remember him.’
While his mother Debbie was unable to attend the service, she did request two songs be played: Wings by Birdy and a cover version of Alphaville’s 80s synth-pop hit Forever Young – played at Debbie’s father’s funeral — which rang out through the church.
Andrew Williams, head teacher of Rhyddings High School, and James McBride, head teacher of West End Primary School, where Jay had been a pupil, released a joint statement: ‘All members of our school communities, both past and present, share in our condolences and deepest sympathies for those who knew Jay.’
Similarly, Accrington and Rossendale College, where Slater was training to become a bricklayer, said they were ‘deeply saddened’ to hear of his passing.
Jay Slater smiles alongside his friends Brandon Hodgkin, left, and Lucy Mae Law, right, at the Hard Rock Cafe hotel in Tenerife
In a tribute on Instagram, Jay’s friend Lucy posted images of the pair together, writing: ‘I’m sure you’ll have your dancing shoes polished and ready waiting for us all. We all love you buddy. Fly high.’
The discovery of Jay’s body still leaves unanswered questions.
The police — who have remained almost totally silent throughout this investigation — have refused to say whether the Rolex watch Jay allegedly stole the night before his disappearance was found on his person. We are also waiting to hear whether Jay’s phone — which last ‘pinged’ near the road at the top of the ravine and could contain vital information as to what happened to him — has been recovered.
Nor is there any clarity as to why Slater chose to travel 25 miles north to Masca at 5am with two men he’d met after partying at the Papagayo nightclub in Playa de Las Americas, rather than walk the short distance back to his hotel. And, perhaps most puzzling of all, it remains a mystery why Jay — on the way back to his accommodation at around 8am — chose to leave the tarmac road and head cross-country down towards the sea.
Having walked extensively in Jay’s footsteps down the ravine where his body was found, I know just how difficult the terrain is.
The volcanic rock underfoot crumbles immediately upon contact, making every step a hazard, especially with the area’s undulating topography.
When one slips, instinct kicks in and you reach out for something to hold on to. But all your hands find are prickly cacti or thin air. Indeed, in the penultimate phone call Jay made during his ill-fated trek, he told Lucy that he had slashed his leg on a cactus.
The question one cannot help but ask, is why did this young man not turn back in the face of such palpable danger?
It may make no sense to you or me. But on the morning of June 17, it made sense to Jay Slater. And, tragically, he paid for that decision with his life.
What the Slater family have since endured over the past five weeks is grief beyond comprehension.
In my first dispatch for the Mail from Tenerife almost three weeks ago, I warned that at the heart of this story was a son without his mother and a mother without her son.
Today, those words ring more true than ever.