Jay Slater’s mum has revealed she was once convinced by a disturbing conspiracy about her missing son that spread online while he was still being searched for.
Debbie Duncan shared her heartbreaking account in Channel 4’s documentary The Disappearance of Jay Slater, which looks at what really happened to the 19-year-old from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, according to the Mirror.
Before Jay’s body was found in Tenerife on 15 July, the internet was filled with speculation. One of the biggest rumours revolved around a GoFundMe page. Debbie explained: “Lucy, Jay’s friend, set up a GoFundMe, and I mean I didn’t say, ‘Let’s get a GoFundMe.’ I didn’t think there was any need because I just thought, ‘He’s going to turn up.’ Although Lucy couldn’t access the money, she thought it may help with people searching and accommodation costs but the money were going up and up and it just span out of control. Conspiracy theories of, ‘Jay’s lost an amount of drugs.’ YouTubers, TikTokers, it was all, ‘He’s been taken up into the mountains – he’s been kidnapped’.”
The stress left Debbie unsure of what was true. She described how, after arriving in Tenerife, she even received a chilling message from a troll which said: “I’ll give you one warning your son won’t be coming back he owes us enough f***ing g money kiss goodbye to him.”
Speaking about the GoFundMe rumours, she told the programme: “Lucy put a target amount £30,000 so that is it, once it reaches £30,000, she will hand this money over to these people who have got Jay. I was convinced that was going to be the case. And I was even saying to her, ‘Is that what you need the money for? Is that why you set it up?’ And she was saying ‘no no’.”
Breaking down, she added, “I just wanted to believe anything to think he was still alive.”
Jay’s body was eventually found in a remote area near Masca four weeks after he went missing on holiday. An inquest later confirmed there was no third-party involvement. His injuries matched a “heavy fall from height” as he tried to make his way back to his accommodation over dangerous terrain.
Even after that closure, Debbie said the abuse from online sleuths didn’t stop. Trolls continued to claim her son was still alive, and some even accused her of killing him. The pressure became so intense she suffered a breakdown.
Speaking in the documentary, she said: “Now we have the truth, Jay’s family and Jay’s friends can process it as a tragic accident but I will never ever understand why social media detectives were totally destroying people’s lives. It has been torture, absolute torture. The YouTubers and the TikTokers have made this situation a million times worse.”
Since the inquest, Debbie has taken her fight to Parliament with the help of her MP, Sarah Smith. She is campaigning for new laws to protect families from being targeted by false theories online.
The director of the Channel 4 documentary, Annaliese Edwards, said she was shocked by the scale of the conspiracy theories. “You’ve got a family who’ve been through the most awful experience, they’ve lost their son and they’re being trolled. It just evolved you couldn’t keep up with what was happening online”.
“And what is still happening. It’s happening right now, it’s just horrendous. It’s not ok at all, the things that the family have been accused of murdering Jay, being part of a huge conspiracy for money, his friends have been accused of killin,g was difficult to even select a few to include in the film.”
