Jay Slater’s mother has criticised the investigator that claimed to know the truth about the teenager’s death after he posted a video online this week.
Earlier this year, the Brit went missing in Tenerife, leading to a huge search ensuing on the day he went missing (17 June), after his friend Lucy Law informed authorities of his disappearance.
The British media covered the case extensively, with volunteers even travelling to the island to search for the missing 19-year-old.
A month later, on 15 July, police would recover the Lancashire teenager’s body, in a ravine located in the north-west of the island, with a post-mortem determining that Slater died of traumatic head injuries after falling from a significant height.
His death was likely to be instantaneous, according to the Spanish Civil Guard, and it was officially ruled as an accident.
But questions still remain as to why he decided to leave the Airbnb he’d gone to the night before to attempt an 11-hour walk back to his original accommodation.
‘A huge amount of misinformation’
Detective Mark Williams-Thomas claimed to have these answers, explaining that he’d been in touch with the right people and saying in a video posted across his social media accounts: “One of the things that’s very clear is there is a huge amount of misinformation.
“I’ve been back and looked through some of the videos that I took when I went out there, in relation to my investigation and thought processes of whilst the investigation was going on,” he added, while saying that he needed to ‘validate’ information he uncovered early on.
Jay Slater with his mum Debbie Duncan (Family Handout)
However, he said he was mindful of how his family would react and didn’t want to reveal anything yet – which angered Slater’s mum, Debbie Duncan.
She has urged him to ‘stay out’ of the situation, telling MailOnline: “If he knows something I wish he would say it, otherwise people will think it’s just publicity and it’s not doing me any good.
“I’m still in bits here, I’m having counselling, and it doesn’t get any easier, I couldn’t sleep at all last night because after he posted what he did it on his social media just kicked off all the trolls again.
“Losing Jay was hard enough but then having to read what some people are writing is torture, I’m not good really and I would be lying if I said I was alright, the last few hours have just been awful.
The detective claims that he knows why Jay Slater left the Airbnb (Family Handout)
“What he said has knocked me back a million steps, I just wish he would say what he knows or just stay out of it. We last spoke a few weeks ago briefly because I wanted to clear some things up.”
She added: “There was nothing really new, I just wanted to go over some things and he said if I remembered anything to give me a call and that was it.
“I thought for a second he might have something but now I’m thinking it might just be a PR stunt as all it’s done is that it’s got all the bloody TikTokers back and they have never really stopped which is even sadder.”
Duncan continued to say that ‘there is only one person who really knows what happened, and he’s not here to tell us what happened’, which is why ‘everything is just speculation’.
She added that she’d ‘like to know more from the guy who was at the Airbnb.’