Body found in Jay Slater search could provide answers amid slew of speculation

But now, nearly a month after he went missing, the fate of Jay Slater, the young British tourist who disappeared while on holiday in Tenerife, appears to be nearing a bleak conclusion.

On Monday, rescue workers searching for the missing 19 year-old said they had recovered a body. While a formal identification of the remains has yet to be carried out, LBT Global, the British overseas missing persons charity, said it was understood the body was found alongside Mr Slater’s possessions and clothes.

If, as is expected, the body is identified as that of the young Brit, it ought to bring to an end the fevered speculation that has raged online, causing further upset to his loved ones. There is, however, no guarantee the slew of disinformation and misinformation will cease. And in any case, questions of whether more could have been done will continue to be asked.

The teenager, from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, was heard from on June 17 after setting to walk from Masca in the north of the island back to his accommodation in Los Cristianos in the south after missing a bus. It was a journey that ought to have taken around 10 hours. That morning, the apprentice bricklayer called his friend Lucy Law, telling her he had missed a bus, his phone battery was nearly depleted, and he had cut his leg.

There will be scrutiny of whether authorities did enough during the search and rescue operation. The Guardia Civil employed a helicopter, drones, and dog as part of that effort, with firefighters, mountain rescue teams and volunteers also scouring the area.

The search was called off at the end of June, but the case remained open. However, it remains unclear whether the operation was still active, albeit in a scaled down capacity. A statement issued on Monday by Spanish police referenced the “constant and discreet search” that had been carried out by the Guardia Civil over the past 29 days.

It has been suggested that the decision to publicly announce the search was over was made in order to dissuade members of the public from coming to the area to join in the operation. Either way, authorities in Tenerife will be urged to explain exactly what happened, and detail the scale of the search operation.

What is clear is that the remains that were recovered were located in an area deemed inaccessible even by the standards of Masca, an arid landscape with numerous steep cliffs, deep gorges, and dense vegetatian; according to Tenerife’s El Dia newspaper, a helicopter from the regional government’s emergency rescue service was used to recover the body.

There will be an online contingent unlikely to be satisfied with such grim realities. For weeks now, the disappearance of Mr Slater has invited all manner of unsavoury conspiracy theories. Some have suggested he is still alive, having boarded a yacht, while others tied the youngster to Tenerife drug dealers.

Only on Sunday, Mr Slater’s mother, Debbie Duncan, issued a statement through LBT Global revealing the toll the speculation and intrusion had taken, pointing out that the “awful comments” and theories were actively “hindering” people trying to help.