On Wednesday this week, the inquest into the death of Jay Slater last summer in Tenerife came to an abrupt end after not one of five key witnesses turned up.
Preston Coroner’s Court did, however, hear from one of Jay’s friends as well as a forensic pathologist, both of whom shed new light on a case that so fervently captured the public’s imagination.
In June last year, apprentice bricklayer Slater had travelled to Tenerife for the New Rave Generation music festival with friends. But on the final night of the festivities, the 19-year-old left the Papagayo nightclub and, instead of returning to his hotel, had unaccountably travelled 25 miles to a remote AirBnB in the mountains.
Then, the following morning – and again unfathomably – Slater attempted to make the ten-mile walk back to his hotel while in a state of extreme dehydration and with drugs in his system.
At 8.30am, Slater made a phone call to his friend Lucy Law in which he revealed he had only one per cent charge left, that he was dehydrated and was lost. Sadly, the bricklayer was never heard from again.
Despite huge international attention, it would take Spanish police a month to find his body in the Juan Lopez ravine, while the precise circumstances of his death remain troublingly unexplained.
Today, the Mail’s FRED KELLY– who reported extensively from the scene at the time and has unrivalled knowledge of the story – picks apart the ten most pressing questions over the young man’s tragic passing…
1. Why was Jay kicked out of the nightclub?
The waterfront Papagayo nightclub in the hugely popular tourist district of Playa de Las Americas is Mecca for the youngsters who flock to Tenerife to cut loose.
And on 16 June last year, one of those revellers was a British teenager from Lancashire named Jay Slater.
But just the following morning, he would be reported missing. A few days later his face would be featuring on news bulletins around the world.
Jay Slater went missing in June last year, after travelling to Tenerife for the New Rave Generation music festival with friends
Until earlier this week, it was believed Jay had left Papagayo of his own volition at around 5am as the revelry drew to a close. However, evidence from a previously unknown witness has thrown that narrative into doubt.
On Wednesday, a man called Joshua Forshaw gave evidence to Preston Coroner’s Court via video link revealing that he had met Jay during the New Rave Generation, or NRG, music festival in Tenerife.
He then dropped the bombshell revelation that Jay had sent him a Snapchat message revealing the Lancashire teenager had ‘ended up getting thrown out’ of Papagayo just hours before his disappearance.
What exactly did Jay Slater do to get thrown out of the club?
‘He was quite excitable,’ continued Mr Forshaw of Jay’s behaviour that night. ‘He seemed to be in a happy mood, joyful, excited to be there,’ before concluding that Jay must have been ‘off his head on drugs’.
However, considering drugs are rife and easily obtained across the island, it is unlikely this is the reason for Jay’s expulsion from Papagayo.
So what really happened for bouncers to decide Jay was no longer welcome?
2. Why did he travel to Masca?
Shortly after 5am on the morning of his disappearance, Slater made the seemingly inexplicable decision to get in the back of a Seat Leon rental car with two people he’d only just met and travel 25 miles north to the village of Masca.
Nestled in the mountains of the Rural del Teno national park, Masca is remote.
Members of the search and rescue team look for Jay near his last-known location, near to the village of Masca
The village boasts just one cafe, a bus stop and a dispersed scattering of homes. In other words, this is not the obvious choice for party-going tourists on a come-down.
Jay’s hotel, meanwhile, was just a short walk from the Papagayo nightclub where he had been celebrating the culmination of the NRG music festival.
So what convinced Slater to seek out the £40-a-night Casa Abuela Tina Airbnb in Masca with two men he barely knew, one of whom turned out to be a convicted drug dealer, rather than go back to the comfort of his own hotel?
3. Where is the stolen watch?
No sooner had Jay’s disappearance been reported than rumours began to swirl over the whereabouts of a gold Rolex watch he had allegedly stolen.
At the time, Jay’s mother Debbie Duncan said the claims were ‘nonsense’ and that her son would ‘never have been involved in anything like that’.
But Wednesday’s dramatically curtailed inquest shed fresh light on the supposed watch theft.
Jay with his mum, Debbie Duncan, who called the claims that her son had stolen a gold Rolex watch ‘nonsense’
Jay’s holiday acquaintance Mr Forshaw revealed on Wednesday that had he received a message from Jay, sent to friends shortly before 6am on the day of his disappearance, saying: ‘Just took a 12k rolly of some c*** wi (sic) this Mali kid off to get 10quid for it now haha off my undies.’
A second message from the car journey, shared on Snapchat at roughly the same time, reads: ‘Yes cuz ended up getting thrown out of there me with 2 maili (sic) kids just took an AP off some c*** on way to sell it for 10 quid.’
In this context, ‘AP’ could be referance to the luxury watch brand Audemars Piguet. Was this the reason Jay got into the car headed to Masca – to find a buyer for the watch?
According to Mr Forshaw, Jay said he was going to sell the timepiece for ‘ten quid’ – something Mr Forshaw suggested is slang for £10,000.
If Jay did indeed come into possession of a luxury watch that night, how did he do so? And where is the timepiece now?
4. Did Jay feel threatened?
Nobody carries two knives in their underpants unless they’re expecting trouble.
So, why on earth did Jay send a photograph via Snapchat to Mr Forshaw showing two large knives concealed in his waistband?
‘I’m carrying these in case it kicks off,’ added Jay by text.
The Snapchat was sent shortly after 6am on the morning of Jay’s disappearance – while he was at the Casa Abuela Tina Airbnb with a convicted drug dealer called Ayub Qassim.
Last December, Qassim spoke out on the free speech podcast The Central Club, revealing that he had offered to give Jay a lift ‘in a couple of hours’ from the Airbnb back to his hotel, but that Jay hadn’t wanted to wait.
Jay sent a message to his friends while in an Airbnb with convicted drug dealer Ayub Qassim
Explaining why he didn’t stop Jay from leaving, he said: ‘When someone is telling you that they just want to go, you don’t know what’s going on in your head. They just want to go.
‘I’m not going to be like “you’re not going, you’re staying”. I’m just thinking you’re safe sat on the bus stop.’
If Qassim’s account is to be believed, Jay was in no danger that morning.
Clearly, the 19-year-old did not agree. Why else would he conceal two large knives in his trousers?
5. Where is Ayub Qassim?
‘The only comment I have to make is that Jay came to the house alive and he left the house alive.’
Those were the words of Qassim to the Mail last year when quizzed over his possible involvement in the disappearance of the teenager.
A year on, however, and Qassim is nowhere to be found.
He and his friend, Steven Roccas, had driven Jay to their Masca Airbnb in the early hours of the morning he disappeared.
The Mail revealed last year that Qassim had been jailed more than nine years ago for running an extensive Class-A drug-dealing operation across Wales.
He is also a close friend and associate of the 34-year-old drill rapper known as Potter Payper – real name, Jamel Bousbaa.
Bousbaa was sentenced to more than five years in prison for running his own Class-A narcotics operation in Barking, east London and was released in 2020.
Bousbaa now runs a semi-legal marijuana store in Tenerife called Potters Garden. (Possession of marijuana for personal use is not a criminal offence in Tenerife.)
Jay, in other words, wasn’t driven to Masca by your average reveller but by a convicted drug dealer with extensive connections in the murky underworld of gangs, rap music and illegal narcotics.
When, eventually, it was found, Jay Slater’s body was found to contain traces of ecstasy, cocaine and ketamine.
If Qassim is a reformed man who – as he claims – had nothing to do with Jay’s disappearance, then why has he evaded all attempts by the coroner’s court to contact him?
More importantly, where is he now?
6. Why is Lucy Law in Tenerife?
Lucy Mae Law is central to this case. The now 20-year-old British girl was holidaying with Jay in Tenerife last summer and was in the last known person to speak with him.
For at 8.50am, or so, Jay called her to say he was ‘lost in the mountains, with no water and one per cent battery’.
Jay with his best friend, Lucy Mae Law, who was with him in Tenerife
Considering all this, it is somewhat unbelievable that Lucy failed to be present at the first day of the inquest earlier this week.
But the bizarre descended into the absurd when it was revealed she is in fact currently sunning herself in, of all places, Tenerife. Why was she not at the inquest, and why would she choose to return to a place where less than a year ago one of her closest friends had died?
‘We had no idea Jay’s inquest was even being held today,’ admitted Lucy’s stepfather, Andy Davis, on Wednesday from his Burnley home.
‘The police have only just been round today to say that she was due to give evidence. But it’s the first time we knew of it.’
Meanwhile, the police have revealed they did send paperwork to Lucy informing her about the inquest and stating that her presence was required.
It appears Lucy either did not receive the letter or chose to ignore it. Either way, the circumstances around her absence seem – to put it mildly – suspicious.
7. Why did Brad Hargreaves miss the inquest?
Another of the five key witnesses who failed to attend Preston Coroner’s Court this week was Brad Hargreaves (who also goes by the surname Geoghegan), who was on holiday with Jay and Lucy.
Coroner’s officer Alice Swarbrick has since revealed that Brad is currently on a holiday which he booked last October and refused to rearrange.
Brad Hargreaves was one of the five key witnesses who failed to attend Preston Coroner’s Court this week
It remains unclear as to where Brad actually is.
But surely his holiday cannot take precedence over appearing at a high-profile inquest into the death of the man he once described as his ‘best friend’ – especially when doing so could have provided some much-needed closure for the grieving Slater family?
Shortly after 8am on the day of Jay’s disappearance, Brad spoke to him on the phone and later recalled urging his friend to turn on his location settings. Jay, he said, was evidently lost and sounded as though he was walking off-road.
Regardless of whether Brad has any new information as to what happened to Jay, some might feel he owes the Slater family an answer as to why he prioritised a holiday over attending the inquest.
8. Anatomy of a Fall?
Wednesday’s curtailed inquest also heard from Home Office forensic pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd, the man who examined Slater’s body following its repatriation last summer.
Dr Shepherd’s clinical assessment provided shocking details. He noted, for example, the ‘extensive fractures of the left side of his head… extending into the bottom of his skull’ as well as ‘fractures to the left side of the pelvis and hip joints’.
Dr Shepherd concluded that the injuries were ‘entirely consistent with a heavy fall, from a height, landing on his head’.
There was, subsequently, some solace for the Slater family as the injuries are believed to have been sufficiently severe to cause the immediate loss of consciousness or even immediate death. It is likely that Jay did not suffer a lingering death.
However, Dr Shepherd admitted that, because the body had been lying in the unforgiving Spanish heat for 29 days before it was recovered, it was impossible to ‘exclude’ the possibility the 19-year-old was pushed.
‘A push would not leave a mark,’ he pointed out.
Of course, the notion of foul play remains mere conjecture and Dr Shepherd did stress that injuries on the victims of assault were ‘very different from the type of injuries I saw with Jay… there was nothing to indicate an assault or gripping of any sort,’ he concluded.
Regardless, no one can be certain of exactly how Jay fell from such a height while seemingly alone in the hills.
9. How did Jay’s body appear as if from nowhere?
At around 10am on Monday, July 15, Spanish police revealed they had come across the remains of a young man they believed to be the missing teenager Jay Slater.
It should have been a day for closure. Instead, to those members of the Press camped out in Tenerife, the announcement felt utterly incoherent.
For more than two weeks earlier, the Civil Guard had announced they were calling off the search for Jay after 13 days combing the countryside without success.
How could it be that a body decomposing in 30-plus degree heat for 29 days, just a few miles from the main arterial road, did not appear to have attracted wild animals. Why did the pungent odour of a dead body in such temperatures fail to draw attention? Just how thoroughly had the Civil Guard searched?
The announcement that Jay’s remains had been found by members of the Spanish Civil Guard’s GREIM mountain rescue team was of course some relief for his family. But for those of us immersed in the case, it has always posed more questions than it answered.
10. What happened to the GoFundMe cash?
On 20 June, Lucy Mae Law started a GoFundMe page in order to ‘Get Jay Slater home’.
Originally, Lucy hoped to raise £30,000 to support Jay’s family and friends as they stayed in Tenerife to search for him. Almost four months later, and the account boasted £72,821 in donations.
So where did all the money go?
Speaking at the back end of last year, Jay’s mother, Debbie, revealed that some of the money was used to fund the family’s time in Tenerife during the search: ‘With your support we were able to stay in Tenerife until we got our beautiful boy back to the UK.’
Debbie, along with Jay’s father Warren and brother Zak, stayed at the Club Tenerife hotel in Los Cristianos for a number of weeks.
Debbie also revealed that a portion of the cash was spent on funding a specialist team of search and rescue operatives from the Netherlands known as Signi Zoekhonden.
Eventually, the remaining money was spent on Jay’s funeral – described by the family as a ‘celebration of life service’ – which took place at Accrington Cemetery Chapel with mourners adorned in blue at the family’s request.
Questions remain, in some quarters, as to whether the entirety of the money was spent appropriately.
