I wouldn’t consider myself a true crime fanatic but there are cases that pop up here and there that I get fascinated by. Mostly the unsolved or still debated ones- the first one that comes to mind is the Amanda Knox case which my AP Lang class studied in my junior year of high school. I know that was ‘technically’ solved but I spent so long trying to figure out if she actually did it or not. I still don’t know.
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More recently, I’ve been looking at the Jay Slater case. If you haven’t been following this case (which is fair, it’s based in Spain), Jay Slater is a British nineteen-year-old who went to Tenerife, an island off the coast of Spain, for a three-day music festival. He left the festival with two men he had just met, then the next day called his friend Lucy Law and said he had 1% battery on his phone, no water, and he missed his bus back to his AirBnB, so he was planning to walk ten hours back. He hasn’t been heard from since.
This seems like your normal missing persons case. However, internet sleuths quickly found that Jay Slater wasn’t any innocent teenager, but a former machete-wielding attacker. Yup. In August 2021, he and some of his friends attacked a seventeen-year-old named Tom Hilton with a machete, splitting his skull open. Slater didn’t receive any time behind bars.
This information shifted the public attention surrounding his case. Many of the self-proclaimed true crime fanatics have declared that he deserved to go missing (and likely killed) because of his past actions. One X user even said, “Jay Slater rn getting souped and slashed in Tenerife after literally attacking a young guy with a machete and dealing drugs to the wrong gangsters.”
If you thought splitting someone’s skull open would make him second guess his life of crime, you’re wrong. After his time in court, he was caught trying to steal expensive watches from a local apartment and there are rumors going around that he was newly involved in drug dealing with his friend Lucy. Some people are even claiming that that is why he went missing– he lost a bag full of drugs in Tenerife and is being held captive until the value of the drugs is returned.
My opinions on the matter are mixed. I’m more interested in when we as people draw the line on when the perpetrators of crimes suddenly become the victims. I think a lot of it ties into how much you believe in the phrase “an eye for an eye.”
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Jay Slater never received a real punishment for what he did to Tom Hilton, and he clearly didn’t learn from his actions seeing that he remained involved in crime. I think that’s where a lot of people drew the line. It’s different when a criminal receives rehabilitation for what they did and shows that they’ve changed before becoming the victim of a crime.
That being said, Tom Hilton himself came out and said that he is supporting the efforts to find Jay Slater because he is still a person too and it’s hard to wish a kidnapping or death upon someone. This would be a case of not believing in an eye for an eye as the best way to receive justice.
An eye for an eye has been a term in the legal system for years– literally predating the Hebrew Bible. It’s built into the system, as seen with the death penalty, though in recent years many people and organizations have fought against it, claiming it’s unethical and cruel.
When it comes to cases like these, I think it’s important to look at your own views regarding an eye for an eye and understand why you think the way you do.