Detectives plotted route co-ordinates from phone

DETECTIVES are used to looking at mobile phone data to find evidence of drug dealing or confessions of violence but when they were handed the iPhone belonging to Jay Slater their job was somewhat more complicated.

- BY AMY FENTON

After the 19-year-old was found, in a remote mountainous region, around four weeks after he disappeared, his iPhone was eventually handed over to Lancashire Police.

Detective Chief Inspector Rachel Higson, head of the force's digital media investigations, was tasked with pouring over the 73,000 pages of phone records in a bid to determine exactly what had happened to Jay.

"It was a challenge for us," DCI Higson said at the aborted inquest into Jay's death, held last Wednesday at Preston Coroner's Court.

DCI Higson and her team accessed Jay's phone on April 25 with much of the data provided by his Apple ID.