Jay Slater documentary shows text he tried to send before death

Jay Slater had drafted a social media app message saying he “wasn’t going to make it” shortly before his death, his mother has revealed.

The 19-year-old from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, whose body was found at the bottom of a ravine in Tenerife in July 2024 after a month-long search, had written “Listen, I’m not going to make it” in a Snapchat message.

Debbie Duncan told the Channel 4 documentary The Disappearance of Jay Slater that when she accessed his account on his phone after it was returned to her, the message sent itself through to his friend Bradley Geoghan.

Ms Duncan said: “That was the last message he sent… it’s kind of like he knew he just wasn’t going to make it.”

Ms Duncan 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’.”

Jay had been in a nightclub with friends in the resort of Playa de las Americas and then went to an Airbnb in the north of the island with two men he had met.

The following morning, 17 June, he left the property in the Masca area and called friends, saying his phone was dying and he had no water.

A huge search was launched after he was reported missing and a month later his body was found in a ravine.

An inquest established Mr Slater had died instantly from injuries sustained in the fall.

Ms Duncan told BBC Radio Lancashire how she wanted tougher regulations to stop the spread of misinformation about missing people online.

She has previously described how online trolls accused her of murdering her son during the height of a social media frenzy after he disappeared on the Canary island last June.

She said: “I feel really passionate about getting a change in the law, if it is a change in an existing law or a new law.”

Ms Duncan said she had spoken to MP Kanishka Narayan, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology about her campaign, and had the backing of her local MP Sarah Smith.

Ms Duncan also highlighted online speculation during the disappearance of Nicola Bulley, also from Lancashire, whose body was found in the River Wyre on 19 February 2023.

She had been missing for about three weeks, during which there was intense social media speculation about her disappearance.

An inquest in June last year found she had died from accidental drowning.

Her partner Paul Ansell described the social media fixation and online obsession with her disappearance as a “monster” that got out of control.