JAY Slater’s devastated mum has revealed the fateful decision she still feels guilty about as she retraced her son’s final steps in Tenerife.
Debbie Duncan, 57, said she is haunted by why she did not call the 19-year-old after seeing a Snapchat he posted from an Airbnb less than two hours before he vanished.
Jay disappeared in the rugged mountains of northern Tenerife after leaving the remote property following a night out at the NRG music festival.
His disappearance triggered a massive 29-day hunt before his body was discovered at the bottom of an 82ft-deep ravine.
In a new Channel 5 documentary, Debbie reveals she is desperate to understand why Jay couldn’t turn back on to the road after telling pal Lucy in their first call that he felt “frightened”.
Recalling the last Snapchat she saw that morning, Debbie said: “I think, ‘Why did you not ring me?’
“But then I also think, ‘Why did I not ring him when I saw his Snapchat that morning?’
“Nobody knew what was going to happen. I need to stop feeling guilty about that. It’s really hard.”
Jay had left the Casa Abuela Tina Airbnb in Masca at around 8am before apparently attempting to make his way back towards Los Cristianos.
At 8.13am, the apprentice bricklayer shared his location with pals on WhatsApp – later allowing forensic experts to pinpoint where he had been.
But his increasingly desperate calls to pal Lucy Law painted a chilling picture of the trouble he was in.
When Lucy called him at 8.32am, Jay said he was thirsty and “frightened”.
His final communication came at 8.50am when he told her he was in the “middle of nowhere” and “all I can see are mountains”.
His phone died just two minutes later.
One question has tortured Debbie ever since – why her terrified son did not turn around and retrace his steps back towards the road.
She returned to the treacherous landscape with her brother Glen Duncan for the documentary Cause Of Death to follow the route Jay is believed to have taken.
And after finally seeing the unforgiving terrain for herself, Debbie said she understood how her son could have become trapped in the wilderness.
She said: “We thought, how was it possible to get to a place where he said to Lucy, ‘I’m lost, all I can see is mountains’? He must have been so scared, thinking, I can’t turn back.
“And when you look at it, you just know why. The closure I’ve got is from the walk, knowing where he set off from, how he has seen the ocean and gone down, and where he got to before he died.
“Seeing all that now, I understand it better. That’s what closure has given me.”
The emotional journey came after Debbie finally received the delayed Spanish post-mortem report into Jay’s death this summer.
It confirmed the teenager was killed by the catastrophic injuries he suffered in the fall.
Debbie had spent two years tormented by fears that her “beautiful boy” could have lain injured and suffering on the mountainside.
But pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd, who conducted the Home Office post-mortem, was able to give her a crucial answer.
He told The Sun: “The main question Debbie had was, ‘Did he feel anything?’
“She wanted to know how his injuries would have affected him.
“I was able to tell her that yes, it was an awful injury, and yes, it killed him.
“But the head injury was so severe that it probably would have killed him immediately. It was the end – there was no pain and suffering.
“He wasn’t injured on the hillside dying slowly, and that was important for her to understand.”
Jay’s disappearance had sparked a frenzy of wild conspiracy theories online, with TikTok sleuths flooding social media with claims about what had happened to him.
The Spanish post-mortem revealed police had even sent his voice box for further examination amid fears he may have been strangled.
But a second post-mortem found no evidence of strangulation or any other deliberate harm.
Dr Shepherd said neither examination suggested anything other than Jay becoming confused and disorientated before suffering a tragic fall.
For Debbie, physically walking through the brutal landscape finally helped make sense of a question she had carried for two years.
Laying flowers near the spot where her son left the road, the grieving mum broke down as she imagined what Jay would tell her now.
She said: “I know he’d be so sorry for the mistakes he made.
“He’d be saying, ‘I’m so sorry, Mum.’”
- Cause Of Death airs on Channel 5 on Wednesday at 9pm.