Here’s a plot twist a lot of people saw coming – Jay Slater admitted to friends that he stole a £12,000 Rolex and was trying to sell it just hours before he vanished in Tenerife, according to Maddie McCann detective Mark Williams-Thomas.

The investigator, who also worked on Nicola Bulley’s disappearance, says Jay’s friends revealed the missing 19-year-old had sent them a Snapchat in the early hours of June 17 in which he admitted to stealing the luxury watch, and was trying to sell it.

Update: With so much speculation and inaccurate information and reporting – here is an update on our investigation into Jay Slater’s disappearance. Please listen carefully to my overview. We have had full access to witnesses and our investigation is evidence based and remains… pic.twitter.com/RuF47DIvTi

— Mark Williams-Thomas (@mwilliamsthomas) July 3, 2024

At the time Jay Slater sent the Snapchat, he was sat in a Seat Leon hire car heading to the rented Casa Abuela Tina Airbnb, near the village of Masca, with two older British men just after 6am.

One of those men, who used he name Ayub Abdul to book the £40-a-night holiday rental online, is pictured below:

Although Williams-Thomas has not been able to verify that the Rolex theft took place, he says Jay Slater’s pals have assured him that the missing teenager would not have made it up.

According to Williams-Thomas, shortly before 6am, Jay left the Veronicas strip where he had been partying with friends on the last night of the three-day NRG festival in Tenerife’s Playa de las Americas resort. He and the two men – who Jay and his buddies had spent time with over the previous two days – made an hour-long journey on the motorway back to the Airbnb.

It was during this journey that Jay Slater sent the Snapchat claiming he had stolen someone’s Rolex.

Interestingly, police previously said they were investigating a fight outside Papagayo Beach Club, where Jay was seen partying the night he went missing. It’s believed the fight involved an Eastern European guy whose Rolex had been stolen.

So Williams-Thomas’s theory is that Jay Slater went back to the Airbnb rental with these two British men after stealing the Rolex, got spooked for some reason, and decided to leave the Airbnb rental and go on an 11-hour walk back to his holiday accommodation, after realising there was no bus.

Williams-Thomas added that Jay spoke to at least three friends via message and on the phone while walking back, telling them he was lost. One of them was, of course, the now-infamous Lucy Mae. Two of those friends tried to talk him into going back to the Airbnb rental, which would have been the sensible thing to do, but Jay said that wasn’t an option and that he’d already been walking for 30 minutes and was lost.

Jay sent his location at both 8.49am and 8.50am to friends, which showed him on a hiking trail in the rugged Rural de Teno park. Since then – there’s been no trace of him.

The two men Jay Slater was with spoke to police on the island before flying back to the UK. Spanish police have said they are not ‘relevant’ to the investigation. Maybe Williams-Thomas wants to have a word?

In any case, it does seem we owe Mark Williams-Thomas an apology, after taking the mick out of him yesterday when it was reported he’d pulled out of the search. Turns out he may have uncovered some useful information after all, even if these stolen Rolex rumours were already doing the rounds on social media.

Jay Slater’s mum Debbie is still of the belief that her son has been kidnapped, but I’m sure would shoot down any speculation about a stolen Rolex. Meanwhile, she’s announced that she’s pulling out more of the GoFundMe cash, and will be using it to fund TikTok mountaineer Paul Arnott’s search for Jay around Tenerife. Sounds like a joke, but it isn’t.