Jay Slater's mother said she accidentally glimpsed pictures of her son's dead body 'to her horror' as she visited Tenerife to retrace his final steps. Debbie Duncan has returned to the island for a new documentary following the 19-year-old's disappearance in June 2024.
Return to Tenerife
A huge manhunt was sparked across the Spanish holiday hotspot after Jay went missing. His mother has made the journey back to the island two years later as she continues to question whether her son suffered in his final hours before he was found dead in the hills of northern Tenerife.
Debbie is accompanied by Jay's uncle Glen Duncan as she visits Tenerife's Rural de Teno national park to go over his final steps. The 57-year-old reveals in Channel 5's Cause of Death that she was shown images of Jay's dead body by Spanish police when she went to collect her son's phone.
Revelation in documentary
Debbie said: "I did think about it (viewing his body) and thought, I don't think I can. But then, when we had to go back to Tenerife to get paperwork from the courts and to collect his phone, to my horror there were images of Jay. I thought my heart was going to stop beating."
"Whenever people say, 'How did you know it was Jay?' Well, it was Jay. My beautiful boy." She also stops by the spot Jay exited the road in the documentary, and broke down as she lay flowers for her son, who she said would be "so sorry for the mistakes he made".
Post-mortem findings
The documentary was filmed just weeks after Ms Duncan received the delayed Spanish post-mortem report on her son's death, which confirmed he died after falling into the ravine. In the show she also speaks with pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd about the findings of both the Spanish and the Home Office post-mortems.
Dr Shepherd, who conducted the Home Office post-mortem, told The Sun that it was important Ms Duncan 'knew the truth' after being victim to 'trolling'. He explained: "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."
Conspiracy theories continue
Jay's body was discovered four weeks after he went missing in a remote area near Masca. However, after his disappearance conspiracy theorists claimed he was missing due to a "revenge attack" and questioned his mother's lack of upset. Fabricated claims have continued to spread about the case, even after the inquest in 2025 found he had died on June 17, 2024, with injuries on his body consistent with a 'heavy fall from height'.
Ms Duncan said on This Morning earlier this year: "It's just never ended, two years on almost, and they just keep coming - it's going round in circles, the comments about, 'He was involved in the mafia and drug dealing', and then it gets really personal. [Trolls have been] calling his family, calling me [saying] 'they're drug dealers... he had a bad upbringing', it just got really personal. They don't know us, they don't know our family, they don't know Jay but yet they just judge... and the conspiracies started almost immediately."
Jay went missing during his first holiday without his parents, after getting in a car with two men he met on the holiday. They drove to their Airbnb in the village of Masca, about 20 miles away from the NRG music festival and Papagayo nightclub in Playa de Las Americas. Jay called his friend Lucy Law after leaving the property to say he was lost in the mountains and told his other friend Bradley Geoghegan he was trekking home as he missed a bus. He was reported missing after he didn't return to his accommodation.
