Jay Slater was last seen in person by two British men at their Airbnb rental home in the village of Masca in Tenerife.
The apprentice bricklayer, 19, had been partying at the NRG festival before heading with the pair to a remote holiday let, north of the island, in the early hours of Monday, June 17. The two mystery men were labelled as 'key witnesses' by a British investigator helping Jay's family in the search, but have now been deemed 'irrelevant' by Spanish police.
At around 8am on the morning Jay went missing, he left the rental home and rang his friend Lucy Mae Law, who he travelled with to the Canary Islands, to tell her that he was walking back to their accommodation after missing the bus. During his journey, which would have taken him 11 hours on foot through rough terrain, Jay, from Lancashire, seemingly disappeared.
It has now been two weeks since he vanished and yesterday, the Civil Guard announced the end of active, on-the-ground search efforts. A spokeswoman for the Spanish police said: "The search operation has now finished although the case remains open."
The two British men, who reportedly didn't attend the festival, had rented a hire car to allow them to drive easily around the island and back to their rental home, located on the side of a mountain in the Rural de Teno national park. In an interview the day after Jay's disappearance, pal Lucy said: "He's gone on a night out, he's gone to a friend's house, someone that he has met on holiday.
"One of the people he has met has hired a car out of here, so he's driven them back to his apartment and Jay has gone there not realising how far away it is. He's ended up out in the middle of nowhere. Jay was obviously thinking he would be able to get home from there. But then in the morning he's set off walking, using his Maps on his phone and ended up in the middle of mountains with nothing around. He rang me at about 8 o'clock morning saying his phone was on 1 percent. He said 'I don't know where I am, I need a drink and my phone is about to die'."
The young woman managed to locate the Airbnb on the day of his vanishing, after using markers in Jay's last Snapchat image. She approached the two men who were still inside the property. She said: "We managed to find the house. I knocked on the door and there were two people there." They said Jay had gone out for a cigarette before going back in and saying he wanted to go home.
"They told me he'd spoken to the next-door neighbours and they'd told him there was a bus every 10 minutes back down to Los Cristianos," said Lucy. "The bus stop was right next to the house. So obviously if he'd gone to get the bus he wouldn't have got lost because it [the stop] was visible from the front door. The two boys that he was last with have left the country."
The Civil Guard said on Saturday it had since spoken to and ruled out the men from their investigation. Head of the mountain rescue unit Cipriano Martin said: "Those men have been spoken to and they don’t have any relevance whatsoever for the case."
It was initially reported that Jay met the two unnamed men the night before he went missing, while out with friends. But in an interview with ITV on Saturday, Jay's friend Brad Hargreaves said they had actually met days earlier. Speaking to This Morning's crime reporter Isla Traquair, Brad confirmed Jay met the pair three days before.
In her report, she said: "The two men that he went to go and stay with, they had met them three days before. They hung out with them, they made friends on holiday. It wasn't two random people he'd met that night. They'd established a friendship and Brad said they seemed like really cool guys."
While Spanish police have not deemed the men of importance, a leading investigator who worked on the disappearance of Nicola Bulley, has. Former detective Mark Williams-Thomas drew attention to the two men and claimed last Wednesday that they are "key witnesses." He described the men, said to be from Luton, Bedfordshire, as in their 30s or early 40s.
One of the men is said to be around 6ft tall with short dark hair. One reportedly goes by the nickname of Johnny Vegas. Mark has warned that he will release an image of one of the men if they refuse to help with the investigation. The detective added: "The family have provided me with an in-depth insight into what has happened in the hours leading up to his disappearance.
"I have, to date, been able to speak to a large group of witnesses. But there are two key people to date that I have not spoken to. These are the two men that took Jay back to the holiday rental in the hills. Those two men have spoken to the police and they are now back in the UK."
Giving more details about the two men, Mr Williams-Thomas said: "They didn't go to the festival - they didn't have tickets. There will be you, as well as many other people, asking very pertinent questions into why were they here, what were they doing, why did they take Jay back to that holiday rental?"
Asked what he thought of Spanish police allowing the two men to leave the island, he said: "I think the problem is the starting point of the investigation for the Spanish authorities has been one of a missing person. If this was in the UK I would have started investigating it as a critical incident and I'd have done everything so that you can secure the potential crime scene. Once you've lost evidence you've lost evidence."
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His comments describing the pair echo that of a Tenerife local, named only as Araceli, who works in the business adjoining the rental property. Sharing an insight into the two men with the Mirror, they said: "I never saw the missing boy, but I know people saw him walking on his own. I saw the two British men who stayed here. They came in for cafe con leche a couple of times. One was aged about 40. The other one was slightly younger."
Araceli added: "The police have spoken to them both. They arrived on Saturday and were due to stay until Monday, but they left on Tuesday."