A mother whose son went missing on a British island has said a new documentary looking into his death feels “poignant” after nearly a decade of searching for answers about what happened to him.
The body of bar manager Josh Clayton was found on rocks near Tresco, Isles of Scilly days after he went missing following a party in September 2015.
An inquest jury returned a conclusion of accidental death, but his mother, Tracey Clayton, and brother, Ashley Cox, have always questioned what happened that night.
Speaking about the timing of the documentary, Mr Cox, 42, told the PA news agency: “I think this 10-year anniversary was probably a more interesting point for the media in the sense that it had been 10 years with no answers.”
“It’s poignant, isn’t it?” said Ms Clayton.
Mr Cox added: “It’s poignant that we haven’t had anything in 10 years, and we’re still the same as where we were a year into it, really.”
In the documentary The Last Party: Death On Tresco, Mr Cox goes back to the island to track his brother’s last moments, visiting spots including The Shed, a staff party venue where Josh was spotted before he went missing.
He said: “Going back to the island is something I said I would do. It’s something I said I would like to do anyway, I think before they (production crew) mentioned about doing it.”
He added: “If you can imagine someone you love passing away in a certain place, then you would inevitably have some sort of pilgrimage, some sort of thing there to go there to remember them by.
“So I think there is that urge or pull to want to go there anyway, but also for me it was really important, because…
“When we went there the first time (it) was in the immediate aftermath when Josh went missing, and we didn’t find him when we were there.
“So there’s a lot that we know, obviously, through the the inquest process and through all the investigation process and years subsequent that I felt it all the more important that I wanted to go back, not least of all I wanted to see the area of the Shed.
“I wanted to see the area – really, really important to me was trying to really see the beach again and to see the entrances to the beach.
“Because when I was there, I didn’t spend too much time on that side of the island. We spend a lot more time searching different parts of the island.”
He added: “Just being there on the beach and feeling closer to it, knowing that this was really the last place that my brother was on terra firma, if you like, when he took his last breath, or whatever, and it was all poignant in that respect, just to soak it up and just try and feel that bit closer to it.”
He continued: “It was just weird. Because I haven’t been there in 10 years, this whole thing feels like a movie but we just know the characters really well.
“Going back there, for me, just felt like being on a movie set but I knew I’d watched the film 100 times.”
Ms Clayton, 60, said: “I never want to go back there. It was too traumatic for me. It was just eerie and horrible.”
The documentary includes an interview with oceanographer, Dr Broxhall, who recounts the “heavy rain” conditions on the night of Josh’s disappearance and sergeant Colin Taylor, an author and police officer for the Scilly Isles, who says the coastline was “more treacherous than normal”.
The Last Party: Death On Tresco streams on Discovery+ from December 28.
