Jay Slater’s mother has revealed he sent a final social media message to a friend shortly before he fell to his death in a remote ravine in Tenerife.
The 19-year-old’s Snapchat message was only sent after his mother Debbie Duncan managed to log in to his account after finally retrieving his iPhone.
In a new documentary with Channel 4, she recalled it was received by his friend Bradley Geoghegan who was left unnerved by the message.
She said: “When we signed into Jay’s Snapchat there was an unsent message from Jay to Brad.
“So the message was obviously just flying around and then the message sent to Brad, which obviously gave Brad a fright.
“He messaged me straight away ‘Are you on Jay’s phone?’. I said ‘Yeah, we’ve just signed into his Snapchat’.
“He said ‘I’ve just got a message that’s just come through from Jay’. The last message he sent.
“He said ‘Listen, I’m not going to make it’. It’s kind of like he knew he just wasn’t going to make it.”
The teenager from Lancashire had travelled to the Spanish holiday island last June to attend the New Rave Generation festival with two friends.
During the early hours of 17 June, he left the Papagayo nightclub having met two older men from east London, and travelled 30 miles with them to their Airbnb in the remote Masca region.
A 6.22am, he posted his Snapchat location to his friends, before sending a final clip from outside their Airbnb at 7.21am.
In other messages, he sent a video saying he “just took a 12k rolly” referring to a stolen Rolex, and claimed to have grabbed two knives “in case it all kicks off”. However, the coroner ruled these were not relevant and were likely to be an example of Jay showing off.
According to his smartwatch, he began walking from the Airbnb at 8am, turning right into the mountains. He called his friend Bradley a few minutes later to tell him he was attempting to walk home.
At 8.32am, he called his friend Lucy Law to say he needed water and was frightened, and that he had cut his leg on a cactus. A final 22-second call took place at 8.50am, in which he told Lucy that his phone was on 1 per cent, he was lost, and all he could see was the mountains.
Recalling the moment she was informed her son was missing, Ms Duncan told The Times that she was called by Lucy at around 3.30pm and that her “legs turned to jelly”.
As a family, they decided to immediately fly to Tenerife, with Ms Duncan receiving an anonymous message on WhatsApp reading: “I’ll give you one warning. Your son won’t be coming back. He owes me enough fking G money.”
Over the following weeks, his disappearance turned into a social-media-fuelled conspiracy, with the family bombarded with pranks, cruel messages, and allegations that Jay was still alive and being tortured.
They also received criticism for a GoFundMe which raised money for the search efforts and eventually for Jay’s funeral, with Ms Duncan stating: “They dehumanised my child and if there is one thing he deserved it was the best. It was the last thing we ever did for him. I am not ashamed of using that money for his funeral.”
His body was discovered on 15 July above a dry stream bed, with a coroner ruling that he had fallen 65-80ft and fatally fractured his skull and pelvis.
For his mother, the inquest provided closure as it was ruled his death was caused accidentally by a fall.
“I think he saw the sea and went into the ravine heading for that. He could see the sea from the balcony of his hotel. Maybe he thought he could walk around back to his hotel? Nobody else was involved in his death, no. That’s what I think,” she said.
‘The Disappearance of Jay Slater’ airs next Sunday at 9pm on Channel 4
