The team undergoing a huge search for Jay Slater today has provided a major update on the men who were last seen with 19-year-old.
Investigators have now confirmed the two mystery men who invited him back to their Airbnb hours after he went missing have been identified and spoken to.
The latest twist comes after a private investigator previously called the men ‘key witnesses’ in the case.
However little is known about the men, who have not spoken publicly, besides the fact that they are British, black and in their late 30s to early 40s.
One is said to go by the nickname Johnny Vegas and one is described as around 6ft, stocky and with short dark hair. He was seen with an orange wristband but little else is known about the other man.
Witnesses say they were seen drinking Hennessey cognac in bars and nightclubs in the party resort of Playa de las Americas during the NRG festival.
They are known to have driven Jay back to their £40-a-night two-bedroom apartment, located just outside the village of Masca on the side of a mountain in the Rural de Teno national park, some 20 miles away.
Friends of Jay were sent a picture of him inside the car of the two men and this has been shared with investigating officers.
But the men were only in Tenerife for a couple of days before travelling back to Luton Airport.
The men had been questioned by Spanish police, but the family were surprised that they have been allowed to return to the UK despite them being among the last people to see him.
It is known that the two did not know Jay – but they are said to be associates of his friend Lucy Mae Law.
But today Cipriano Martin, head of the Civil Guard’s Greim mountain rescue unit, said: ‘Those men have been spoken to and they don’t have any relevance whatsoever for the case.’
The development came while the search for Jay was stepped up as a huge new hunt got underway after Spanish police opened the operation up to volunteers for the first time.
As volunteers gathered to scour the area where Jay was last seen, Mr Martin was quizzed about the two men who were originally thought to be key to the investigation.
Asked whether he’d spoken to the two men who were in the Airbnb and spent time with Jay before he vanished, he added: ‘We’re mountain specialists and we’re in charge of searching here, and it’s the Civil Guard investigators who have been responsible for the investigation.’
The TV investigator Mark Williams-Thomas, who has worked on the missing people cases of Madeleine McCann and Nicola Bulley, previously urged the two mystery British men to come forward.
While working with the family he said to the press: ‘The family are desperate for these men to come forward as witnesses. They are not currently assisting.
‘The group sat outside on the wall outside the club after the night ended. Witnesses say he seemed quite in control of himself.
‘What we don’t know is why he went with them.’
Lancashire Constabulary, who previously offered to help the Spanish police find Jay, and Bedfordshire Police, which looks after Luton Airport, both confirmed they are not seeking to speak with either of the men.
But as the investigators ruled out the two men’s use to finding out what happened to Jay, another possible lead involving a cactus could help them in their search.
Asked whether the principal information they have to go on is the last place Jay’s phone ‘pinged’ from, Mr Martin replied: ‘That’s right. We can’t come up with too many conjectures either. The clues are based on the information we have.
‘Another of the things that leads us to consider that hypothesis is when he rings his friend Lucy and says he’s cut himself on a cactus and he’s worried because he doesn’t know whether it’s poisonous or not, and she tells him not to worry that it’s not poisonous.
‘But for that to happen you have to leave the road because you’re not going to cut yourself on a cactus being on the road and he’s had to go into the mountains obviously.’
‘Well, we’ve been searching for lots of days and with the search today, we’re talking about 30 people.’
When asked if on the day Jay disappeared someone saw him he replied: ‘Yes, he was seen, the morning he disappeared, around 8.10am, he was seen very near the spot we’re at now, heading up to the look-out point, and later his telephone places him here, and after that the phone location he shares places him here.’
Pictures from the scene today show teams of volunteers joining the search.
As the hunt for the missing 19-year-old enters day 13, police are also investigating a scuffle outside Papagayo Beach Club, where Jay was seen partying on June 17.
It is believed a fight – involving an Eastern European man who reportedly had his valuable Rolex stolen – broke out after the venue had closed.
One of Slater’s friends, who had travelled to Tenerife to help in the search told detectives the alleged incident could have led to Jay’s disappearance.
Authorities are now reviewing CCTV footage from the venue where the incident occurred.
Another theory which is understood to be on the table is that the valuable watch had somehow wound up in the cottage where Jay had travelled – and that he then ventured into the wilderness in an attempt to steal it.
This clue comes shortly after an ‘army of volunteers’ answered the Spanish police’s call for help and are now helping them comb the rugged mountain area where the missing raver disappeared today.
On Friday the Guardia Civil appealed for volunteer firefighters and experts in rugged terrain to assist in a ‘busqueda masiva’, or massive search, taking place today.
The search began at 9am near his last-known location in the village of Masca as the volunteers attempt to retrace his last-known steps.
The co-ordinated search is taking place in a steep rocky area, with ravines, trails and paths all being thoroughly searched.
It started from the Mirador de la Cruz de Hilda restaurant and volunteers were told to bring food and water with them as the search is predicted to take last the entire day.
It has been reported that today’s search could be ‘perhaps a final push from the Civil Guard to make some kind of headway’.
Mr Martin said: ‘The operation is going to consist of a search with the people that have come here today, in a thorough manner, because at the height we are, we need to progress by ruling out areas and make sure that the areas we search, with the work we have done this week, are looked at well and can be ruled out.
‘And of course that’s going to be done based on the information we have, and that information is his last-known position, the conservations he had the day he disappeared, and that’s what makes us focus the search on that area.’
When asked if all options were being considered Mr Martin replied: ‘At the moment, yes. Until we know something we can’t focus on any hypothesis and we work with several possibilities.
‘In terms of extension, the whole area. Masca’s been looked at, the Juan Lopez ravine, the Retamar ravine, Las Aneas ravine, Los Carrizales ravine, in all the areas we know he’s been in because his mobile phone coverage is undeniable and places him there.
‘But we have a difficulty which is that once the phone goes off the antennas stop picking it up, so that while he’s walking, and we don’t know how long he was walking for, no phone mast is going to detect it, and as the technicians tell us, they look for mobiles and not people, so we’re at that point as well, that we have certain information and we have to go on that.
Asked to specify how difficult some areas were, Mr Martin said: ‘Areas you can’t pass through, where there’s rocks jutting out you can’t negotiate unless you’ve got ropes and a harness.
‘I think that the people who are involved in the search today, when they reach those points, won’t continue because they haven’t got that equipment.
‘What they’re going to is walk.’
Asked whether Jay’s family were participating in the search, he said: ‘All week they’ve been participating because we’ve seen them and they’ve seen us in several places. They’ve been actively participating.’
Among the volunteers taking part in the search today was army reservist Juan Garcia, 53, who arrived with his dog Caperucita to help. He told : ’We try our best and we hope to find something.
‘Maybe we will be lucky today, I have the dog with me and we will see what happens. I wanted to be here to help the family.
‘It’s like a labyrinth here with a lot of bushes and the trails are not marked and they are steep, it’s easy to fall and if you go into the bushes it’s difficult to be seen.
‘But it’s not a very easy task because of the terrain. It’s not for everyone. It’s a technical place and dangerous. It’s not like you walking in the park.’
Volunteers had been asked to gather at 9am after an appeal from the police chief of Tenerife but he had stressed only for those ‘with experience’ to join in.
Temperatures were cool around 17c with barely a breeze as they gathered but the thermometer was forecast to rise to around 25c later.
The 19-year-old Jay, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, has not been seen since June 17 after he went missing following a night out on the infamous Veronicas strip in Tenerife’s Playa de las Americas resort.
The apprentice bricklayer then went back to the Casa Abuela Tina Airbnb near the rugged Rural de Teno national park, in the remote village of Masca, with two men he had met at the three-day NRG music festival.
The owner of the villa said she saw Jay standing at a nearby bus stop at around 8am.
He asked her when the next bus was to Los Cristianos, but when he was told it wasn’t until 10am, he set off on foot for what would have been an 11-hour walk.
Jay was last seen at around 8.15am walking uphill near the national park. He then phoned his friend Lucy Mae Law at 8.50am to tell her that he was ‘tired, thirsty and disorientated’ with only one per cent battery left on his phone.
In their first direct appeal for help, a spokesperson for the police said on Friday officers were preparing a ‘coordinated large scale operation’.
The search has so far focused on the Masca gorge, around 3000ft above sea level, which has been combed by police, drones, dogs and helicopters since he was reported missing.
But despite the extensive searches over the past 13 days, no trace of Jay has been found.
It comes as:
Spanish police has also faced criticism for refusing an offer of help from their Lancashire counterparts last week, as the search for Jay now enters day 13.
A statement from the police HQ on Tenerife said: ‘Collaboration is requested from volunteer associations, civil protection teams, firefighters and even individuals who are experts in rugged search terrain.’
A spokesman previously clarified that it was not asking the ‘unexperienced’ general public to join the search.
The GoFundMe page set up to provide financial support to the family smashed through the £40,000 barrier.
It recently emerged that ghoulish visitors on ‘Jeep safari tours’ are flocking to the Tenerife Airbnb where Jay spent his final hours before vanishing.
Although Jay only spent a matter of hours in Casa Abuela Tina, the villa once popular with hikers attempting to trek up the Teno mountains now appears to have become a tourism spot.
The road outside the two-bedroom farmhouse is packed with rental cars of British tourists and groups taking photos from Jeep ‘safari’ tours, The Times reports.
One woman, who lives in Birmingham and Spain, told the newspaper: ‘This is our second time here. I asked to drive this route because I just wanted to see it one more time. I want to get some answers.’
‘It gives me actual chills,’ she added.
The teenager’s mystery disappearance has led to a number of internet sleuths flying to Tenerife to join the search in the mountains.
Although Spanish authorities claim the case has been clouded by ‘inaccurate’ conspiracy theories on social media, Jay’s desperate family have called in the help of one TikTok sleuth – Paul Arnott.
The 29-year-old, who runs the TikTok account Down the Rapids and describes himself as an ‘explorer’, has been searching for Jay since Saturday.
He has been in Tenerife for eight days and said: ‘It’s been exhausting and it’s been really hard work but I’m not giving up until we find Jay.
‘I’ve spent time with the family and to see them cracking up and crying has been really emotional, I just want to do the best I can to help them.
‘This area is so vast it needs as many people as we can to search through the area but I’m looking for marks in the soil, sliding like his friend said. It’s hard but I will do my best.’
He has posted more than 70 videos since, racking up millions of views as he joins police and sniffer dogs in the mountains. He said they had been focusing on two specific routes off the main road which lead to a water source.
‘I’m meeting the family today,’ Mr Arnott – who paid £400 for a flight from Fort William to Tenerife – told The Telegraph. ‘I’ve been speaking with Brad’s mum, Rachel. They wanted to bring me food but I said no. They said they wanted to meet me. They said they’re really proud of what I’m doing.’
Jay’s mother, Debbie Duncan said she ‘can’t thank Paul Arnott enough’ as she also praised fellow TikTok creater Callum Rahim and his friends for helping with the search.
She said the family were ignoring the unfounded social media conspiracy theories which have threatened to derail the search.
It comes as police on Thursday started searching around caves near Los Carrizales, a new area in the Masca valley which they have not looked at before.
Two abandoned shacks where Jay’s phone last pinged have been the police’s focus so far.
revealed on Thursday new photos of Jay chatting to friends at a hotel pool party just two days before he vanished.
And on Tuesday, the investigation took a strange twist when the mayor of Tenerife revealed that police were quizzing locals who claimed they had seen Jay ‘watching the Euros’ in a bar in Puerto de Santiago – a coastal resort on the island.
Police in Tenerife have said no one is talking yet about halting the search for Jay.
The Civil Guard, which has been leading the operation where the teenager was last seen, said it was continuing as normal on Thursday.
More sniffer dogs trained in searching for people over large expanses of land were flown in from Madrid and joined the operation on Tuesday.
A Civil Guard spokesman said: ‘The Civil Guard is continuing to search for the young British man who disappeared, carrying out inspections of all the paths, trails and ravines belonging to the village of Masca within the municipality of Buenavista del Norte.’
The force also released footage showing officers moving on foot through some of the rough and remote terrain and others carrying out aerial inspections in a helicopter.
A well-placed source added: ‘No one at the moment is talking about the search being brought to an end.
‘There will be a point when the operation that is taking place at the moment has to be at least scaled back. But right now the search teams appear to have decided they want to give themselves more time.’
It comes as Jay’s mother Debbie Duncan revealed she is in talks with GoFundMe to release some of the £36,000 in donations given to an appeal in order to help finance rescue efforts and ‘living costs’ in Tenerife.
Ms Duncan, 55, said the money would be used for mountain rescue, accommodation and food expenses.
In a statement posted on GoFundMe on Thursday, she said: ‘First, I would like to thank everyone for your support, kind messages, and good wishes. It’s difficult to wrap our heads around what is happening right now, but we are not losing hope that we will find Jay and return home together.
‘We are currently working with GoFundMe to withdraw part of the funds, which are being safely held. I wanted to share that these funds will be used to support the mountain rescue teams who are tirelessly searching for Jay.
‘Additionally, since our stay in Tenerife needs to be extended, we will also use the funds to cover accommodation and food expenses.
‘I’m surrounded by wonderful people who are by my side, but far from their loved ones, so we’ll also be using part of these funds to fly them to Tenerife so we can support each other during these dark times.
‘Thank you again for all your donations and support, this means the world to us.’
The appeal was started last week by his friend Lucy and reached its £30,000 target in just three days although some contributors have expressed concerns over where the funds will go.