What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: the ‘mysterious’ Disappearance of Jay Slater
A few weeks ago, British teenager Jay Slater went missing in Spain’s Costa del Sol region, sparking international interest in the case and a flood of speculation and conspiracy theories about the mysterious disappearance. But how much of a mystery is this really?
Here are the well-known facts:
On the morning of June 17, 2024, Slater attended the NRG music festival on the island of Tenerife, Spain. After the performance, he missed the bus and went to the mountain village of Maska with two men he met at the festival. From there, Slater set off to walk 10 miles back to his home. Fifty minutes later, he called his sister and said he was “in the middle of nowhere,” his phone batteries were almost dead and he had no water. This was the last time anyone heard from him. Following a large-scale manhunt , authorities called off the search on June 30 but are continuing to investigate the case.
When does a disappearance become a mystery?
I love mysteries, and disappearances like Slater’s have an appealing ” anything could have happened” aspect to them. The unknown person takes people by surprise – maybe he was kidnapped? Maybe the two men Slater met that night aren’t innocent bystanders? Perhaps this was part of some greater and more sinister conspiracy? Maybe aliens got him?
People filling in the blanks of an unknown situation is to be expected, but all available evidence points to a tragic but mundane explanation: Slater got lost in the desert, died, and his body was never found. The mountainous region through which he walked was littered with cliffs, sharp stones, rivers and waterfalls. The area was unfamiliar to him. He was close to the ocean – there are countless ways to die that don’t require the presence of aliens. Spanish authorities seem to agree; they no longer view disappearance as a crime.
Culture of the Mysterious Disappearance
But the authorities may be involved – these are the kinds of things people are saying in the thriving online network dedicated to unsolved disappearances. One of the most notable and stupid expressions of this is Missing 411 , a book that shows how far people will go to reject logical explanations. “Missing 411” suggests that there is something mysterious and/or nefarious about the “clusters” of people who go missing in and around US national parks and are never found. Because “many people travel to national parks where they get lost and die, and we don’t find their bodies because nature is huge.” is not a sufficiently adequate explanation.
If you ignore the most likely cause of the disappearances, you can come up with all sorts of theories, and damn, people have their own theories . A few examples from the Slater case: this is a video with 3 million views that confidently says “People don’t just disappear” (sometimes they do, as we see here), this is a video with 8.3 million views that suggests random shapes in Google Street View as proof that the whole thing was a set-up and he wasn’t actually there at all, or this video (6.7 million views) that claims Jay Slater has already been found.
What’s the harm in playing detective?
The vast majority of amateur sleuths do no harm. They deal with their life’s hard work through mental journeys into darkness – everyone loves true crime, right? But there is a group of weirdos who get involved , who botch legitimate police investigations or, worse, target families with missing children for their own ends.
In the Slater case (and other high-profile cases), these people tend to fall into two camps: supposedly well-intentioned people who are looking for family because they truly believe their crazy theory will lead to Slater returning home safely and those who feed from below, who try to benefit from the situation by trying to become part of history or through real crimes.
Members of the (to put it mildly) well-intentioned contingent have publicly speculated that Slater was running afoul of Moroccan drug gangs, that it was all a scam to raise money on social media, that the mafia was involved, and a thousand other unlikely scenarios.
Online conspiracy theorists are complicating the investigation, said Slater’s mother, Debbie Duncan. “They actually said there’s too much noise and it’s having an impact,” she told The Guardian .
Slater’s employer is also pleading with people to stop slacking off. “These people are trying to ruin people’s lives and businesses (while) sitting behind a screen and looking for attention,” the company said in a post on its Facebook page. “Everyone can have their own theories and feelings, but posting them publicly knowing you will hurt people is just cruel.”
A solo climber enters the chat
Closing people offering their opinions, dime store psychics , and fake ransom demands from ghouls are depressing, but to be expected in these situations. But there are also people like Paul Arnott. The British climber and TikTok content creator traveled to Spain to help with the search immediately after Slater went missing. He then ended the official hunt, publicly calling it a PR stunt. Now he is conducting his own investigation on his TikTok channel , which is watched by millions. He’s probably a well-meaning guy trying to help. Perhaps he is trying to raise his personal authority by participating in this matter. Perhaps it’s somewhere in the middle. Right now the coin is up in the air, so there’s still a chance (very slim if you ask me) that something other than “got lost and died” happened to Jay Slater. But if this guy or any other “internet investigator” solves the case, I will literally eat my hat.