Jay Slater's mother, Debbie Duncan, returned to Tenerife in June 2024 to retrace her son's final moments before he went missing and was found dead. The teenager had disappeared during a holiday with friends, leading to extensive search efforts and numerous conspiracy theories online. In a new Channel 5 documentary titled "Cause Of Death," Duncan discusses viewing photos of Jay's body and visiting the site where he left the road. She also speaks with Dr. Richard Shepherd about the post-mortem findings, which confirm that Jay died instantly from injuries sustained in an 82-foot fall into a ravine.
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Jay Slater's mother has returned to Tenerife to retrace the final steps of where her 19-year-old son went missing, for a new documentary in which she reveals she was shown photographs of her son's dead body she was horrified to see.
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she → see → body
The teenager's disappearance in June 2024 sparked a massive manhunt across Tenerife but also a torrent of conspiracy theories and trolls who made unevidenced claims about what had happened to him, even abusing his relatives and friends.
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what → spark → relatives
And two years later, his mother Debbie Duncan continues to be tortured by the question of whether her son suffered in his final hours before he was found dead in the hills of northern Tenerife.
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he → continue → Tenerife
In Channel 5's Cause Of Death, the 57-year-old returns to Tenerife's Rural de Teno national park with Jay's uncle Glen Duncan to go over his final steps before he plunged to his death.
She also reveals in the documentary that she was shown photographs of Jay's dead body by Spanish police when she visited the island to pick up her son's phone.
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she → return → phone
Ms Duncan, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, said: 'I did think about it (viewing his body) and thought, I don't think I can.
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I → say → body
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.
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we → have → Jay
I thought my heart was going to stop beating.
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heart → think → ?
'Whenever people say, "How did you know it was Jay?"
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it → say → ?
She also visited the spot where Jay left the road, where she broke down as she left flowers for her son, who she said would be 'so sorry for the mistakes he made'.
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he → visit → mistakes
Jay Slater (pictured with his mother) died on June 17, 2024, after getting lost and falling from a height while trying to get home from a night out in Tenerife
Jay was found dead after disappearing while on holiday with friends in Tenerife
In Channel 5's Cause Of Death, Ms Duncan returns to Tenerife's Rural de Teno national park with Jay's uncle Glen Duncan to go over his final steps before he plunged to his death
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he → picture → death
The filming for the documentary took place 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 82ft-deep ravine.
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he → take → ravine
In another part of the documentary, she speaks with pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd about the findings of both the Spanish and the Home Office post-mortems.
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she → speak → mortems
Dr Shepherd, who conducted the Home Office post-mortem, told The Sun that due to the 'trolling' that Ms Duncan had suffered it was 'really important she knew the truth'.
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she → conduct → truth
He said: 'She wanted to know how his injuries would have affected him.
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injuries → say → him
I was able to tell her that yes, it was an awful injury, and yes, it killed him.
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it → tell → him
But the head injury was so severe that it probably would have killed him immediately.
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it → kill → him
It was the end — there was no pain and suffering.'
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It → be → ?
Conspiracy theorists were quick to make false claims such as that his disappearance was a 'revenge attack' for his past behaviour and even questioned his mother's own behaviour asking why she wasn't visibly more upset.
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she → make → behaviour
Jay's body was discovered four weeks after he disappeared in a remote area near Masca - but even after the inquest in 2025 that found he had died on June 17, 2024, with injuries on his body consistent with a 'heavy fall from height', online sleuths continued to put forward fabricated claims about the case.
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sleuths → discover → case
Home Office pathologist Dr Shepherd said his post-mortem examination gave the cause of death as head injuries, and Jay's body showed no evidence of restraint or assault - but it didn't stop the messages.
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it → say → messages
Speaking on This Morning earlier this year, Ms Duncan said: '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.
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it → speak → mafia
[Trolls have been] calling his family, calling me [saying] 'they're drug dealers... he had a bad upbringing', it just got really personal.
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it → call → upbringing
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.'
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conspiracies → know → Jay
Last year, Debbie hit back at 'disgusting' online trolls after the family were bombarded with more than 30 million videos speculating about the case.
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family → hit → case
She first revealed she was calling for a law change to tackle the spread of misinformation and online abuse during the investigation into a missing persons case back in October 2025 and has been campaigning for Jay's Law over the past 12 months.
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she → reveal → months
Jay went missing during his first holiday without his parents, after partying at the NRG music festival and Papagayo nightclub in Playa de Las Americas.
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Jay → go → Americas
After the event died down, he got into a car with two men he'd met on the holiday and drove to their Airbnb in the village of Masca, about 20 miles away.
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he → die → Masca
After leaving the property, he phoned his friend Lucy Law saying he was lost in the mountains and his other friend Bradley Geoghegan to tell them he was trekking home after missing a bus.
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he → leave → bus
When he failed to return to his accommodation he was reported missing.
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he → fail → accommodation
Before long, dozens of conspiracy theories about Jay's whereabouts were posted online.
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dozens → post → whereabouts
Some of the theories claimed that he had been kidnapped by drug dealers and murdered in the mountains after losing a bag of drugs, while others claimed he had staged his own death or been killed by relatives.
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he → claim → relatives
The Aporia
