Fresh Evidence in Missing Levi Davis Cold Case Sparks Top-Level Calls for New Probe

The mother of missing rugby and X Factor star Levi Davis, and Labour Minister Jess Phillips, are calling for a joined-up police review of new evidence on the second anniversary of his unsolved disappearance in Barcelona.

It follows an extensive Byline Times investigation revealing serious failings in the Catalan probe into the case, claims of sextortion involving the content-sharing platform OnlyFans, and the identification of a top TV executive Davis alleged was part of a plot to blackmail him.

“We have felt abandoned by the police and I believe Levi was a victim of crime in the UK and in Spain,” Julie Davis, of Solihull, West Mids, said. “So many things do not add up. I’m determined to fight for the truth.

“They pulled out the stops to find Jay Slater and search and pursue justice for Madeleine McCann. They need to do the same now for Levi.”

Jess Phillips, who represents Birmingham Yardley, is Ms Davis’ MP. Speaking in July, before she was made Minister for Safeguarding – with a remit including sexual violence, gangmasters and prostitution – Phillips told Byline Times: “It’s clear that some lines of inquiry connected to the disappearance of Mr Davis have yet to be properly explored.

“All avenues and enquiries should be exhausted both in the United Kingdom and Catalonia. Too many questions remain for the family and friends of Mr Davis, and I would urge the police in both jurisdictions to work together to act on any new information.”

Davis was 24 when he vanished in Europe’s most baffling missing person’s case of recent years.

The former Bath Rugby winger, who found fame singing with fellow players Thom Evans and Ben Foden in the 2019 ITV1 series X Factor: Celebrity, became a cultural role model in 2020 as Britain’s first openly bisexual rugby professional.

But four days before he vanished in Barcelona on 29 October 2022, Davis posted an Instagram video in which he claimed that his life was in danger as a result of speaking out about an alleged plot to blackmail him with pictures said to be taken while he was drugged and raped.

In October 2023, the official probe of the Mossos d’Esquadra – Barcelona’s autonomous police force – into Davis’ disappearance just a few hours after arriving in the city by ferry from Ibiza became inactive pending new evidence.

Now, a 14-month investigation by Byline Times has uncovered significant new information in three key areas: analysis of a “heavily flawed” official police report that concluded Davis probably drowned at sea under strange circumstances; witness and other evidence around his allegations of rape and blackmail, and digital proof that Davis was being sexually groomed online by a prominent television figure he later said was involved in the alleged blackmail.

Byline Times travelled with Ms Davis to Barcelona in April as part of a 14-month investigation.

Dan Evans said: “We’ve looked into every aspect of Levi’s case and we can prove he was groomed online under false pretences. We’ve also found four witnesses who connect the same individual to the blackmail claims and two others who say OnlyFans was one intended conduit for Levi to earn money for what he said was a sex-trafficking outfit.

“We have made major new discoveries around the police’s preferred theory that Levi drowned, including establishing that unidentified parties had to be involved if indeed it was him seen shouting for help in a busy shipping lane a mile out to sea, casting doubt on the official finding that there is no evidence of crime.”

Tom Latchem added: “Our objective was to make the case for further investigation into Levi’s disappearance. We have been shocked by some glaring holes in the work of the police in Spain. And we’ve also found evidence of Levi being targeted in the UK. We now think there are clear grounds for a joined-up review involving police in both countries, starting with the rape and blackmail allegations.”

A spokesperson for the Mossos d’Esquadra declined to comment and asked for questions to be put to the judge who oversaw the probe.

A courts’ spokesperson declined to comment, saying the case is currently closed.

---

Among fresh developments following an analysis of the Catalan authorities’ official findings and further journalistic enquiries, Byline Times has learned that:

• Levi Davis left Ibiza – where he had been staying for 12 days with an associate – for Barcelona suddenly and was travelling light. Messages show he was embarking on a “business journey” and that he had left his luggage behind to collect later, suggesting that he did not intend to take his own life.

• Digital communications critical to identifying a key person of interest remain a mystery. The Spanish police believe Davis went to Barcelona to meet someone from the dating app Grindr. Yet the official police report shows an application for help from the company was abandoned by the authorities incomplete. A spokesperson for Grindr told Byline Times it would still be willing to assist with the investigation if it received an official request.

• The Mossos’ report mentions Davis’ activities on Instagram, WhatsApp, and OnlyFans. Yet no effort was made to check who he was chatting to on those US and UK-based platforms despite well-established international assistance protocols.

• An unexplained failure to recover footage of Levi from Barcelona’s extensive municipal CCTV network fatally undermined detectives’ efforts and created a six-hour hole in official knowledge which, according to two eminent former UK investigators, is “unacceptable” in a high-level missing person case.
  
• The Mossos investigation offered up two heavily conflicting accounts of the discovery of Levi’s passport three weeks after he disappeared. While the official report records it being headed to a security booth at the city’s port, police allegedly told a family liaison on 18 November 2022 that it had been recovered from a city centre crime scene.
  
• An eyewitness account claiming Davis was seen in the city six days after his disappearance was not followed up, despite it featuring in the Mossos’ report. The witness – British tourist John Cook – has criticised the investigation, telling Byline Times he felt the police were not “taking it seriously”.
  
• Davis could have been a man seen in deep distress a nautical mile out to sea, calling for help just before dawn on 30 October 2022. The still officially unidentified person caught in the lights of a docking cruise ship was within swimming distance of the safety of the “Sierra Boya” – an anchored two-by-four metre floating nautical radio transmitter beacon with a flashing light on top more than capable of bearing a man’s weight. Adding further to the mystery, rescuers on scene within four minutes of a ‘man overboard alarm’ found no trace after a 12-hour sea and air search.
  
• Now, two maritime experts agree the person at sea was highly unlikely to have found arrived in a busy shipping channel at night without the involvement of other people. “It is almost impossible because of the conditions,” said shipping commentator Peter Elson. Dr Emili Garcia Ladona, a researcher for Spain’s Institute of Marine Sciences, agreed citing the further dangers of sea traffic, night time disorientation and hypothermia, had Davis swam so far out to sea on his own. Yet there is no record of Catalan police – which concluded there was “no evidence” that Davis was a victim of crime – looking into this aspect of the case at all.

Julie Davis said: “To me, as a layperson, it is hard to see an innocent explanation. The fact they were abandoned in the water amounts in my mind to one of three things; either there was an accident and he fell in and someone didn’t report it and just left him there to die, or he was kidnapped and escaped from a vessel trying to save himself, or someone was trying to murder him. All three possibilities suggest crime. But the investigating authorities don’t seem to see that and I do not understand why.”

Catalan investigators believe only one vessel was relevant in Davis’ disappearance – the cruise ship the MSC Bellissima, from which the sighting was reported. But Byline Times has identified at least 12 boats active in the immediate area in the hours between Davis’ phone losing signal near the city’s commercial port shortly after midnight and the alarm raised at 06:32 BST. A Mossos source said none of these vessels has been considered in their investigations.

Despite this, Byline Times has identified one ship moored close to the location that Davis’ passport was allegedly found at the time his phone last pinged nearby. It then left dock and passed the point at which a man was seen in the Balearic sea approximately an hour before the sighting.

Of the Catalan investigation, Julie Davis said: “It started slowly, progressed slowly, and then stopped before it was finished. They also dismissed Levi’s Instagram video as irrelevant straight away. I find that very strange given that four days before he disappeared he’d said his life was in danger.”

---

In the UK, Levi Davis told multiple sources he was a victim of rape and blackmail at least two years before he sought medical help for anxiety and depression and was diagnosed with post-drugs psychosis, which he addressed in his public video.

His family and friends believe he turned to drugs to cope with PTSD and made many cries for help before the diagnosis, which – they say – was a symptom of his predicament.

Julie Davis describes her son as “quite young” of mind and vulnerable when he first moved permanently from his university city Bath to London in July 2020, eight months after starring on X Factor: Celebrity.

Byline Times has investigated Davis’ time on the ITV1 show and found no direct connection between it and the abuse he later alleged, which according to one close friend stemmed from other “super toxic” parts of the UK entertainment industry.

WhatsApp messages do show Davis being groomed by a prominent television figure in June 2020. It was around this time that he started experimenting with sex parties. It was at one such event that Davis alleged he was attacked – and then coercively controlled until his disappearance after posting about it on Instagram, when he said: “By doing this I am not safe.”

The messages were offered to UK police by one of Davis’ former professional advisors on 23 February 2023, but the force in question refused to accept them as it was not “in their area”.

Levi Davis was hugely impacted by it all, and found escape into drugs. This led him to fall foul of a “county lines gang” in West Ealing, London, who eventually “cuckooed” his flat and turned it into a “trap house”. They sold street drugs from the property as repayment for substances they had initially given Davis for free. Though money was allegedly owed, it is not believed to be related to his alleged blackmail. However it paints a picture of a young man highly vulnerable to exploitation who felt his life was spiralling out of control.

Multiple new sources describe how in late summer 2020, as he tried to fit into London life, Davis fell into the company of sex-party organisers and tell how, in time, he ended up being coerced into acting as a “servant” at secretive events attended by men in London and was on at least one occasion abused in extreme ways while unconscious.

On another occasion, fearing himself secretly filmed and under threat of exposure if he didn’t pay a £1,200 bill for the “party’s drugs”, Davis was forced to call a manager to meet the payment and try and neutralise the blackmail threat.

Two primary sources have told Byline Times that Davis’ decision to publicly announce his bisexuality in the pages of a national newspaper in September 2020 was because he was being blackmailed and he was trying to reclaim ownership over his life.

Further, Byline Times has established that Davis wished to take the extra step of announcing that he had relationships with transgender women, but that he reluctantly changed his mind at the last moment. Several sources confirm the blackmail centred on transgender themes. Although Davis was open with his friends about such experimentation, he feared it would impact his singing and sports career.

One of Davis’ acquaintances claims to possess one of the blackmail images Davis said was held over him. They have said they are willing to share it with any new police investigation if asked.

Two separate sources have told Byline Times that one way Davis was allegedly under pressure to make money for “the sex traffickers” was by setting up an “OnlyFans under them”. This both suggests the popular content-sharing platform is open to abuse by organised crime, and that there may be financial trails meriting further police investigation.

A spokesperson for OnlyFans declined to comment.

Levi Davis feared returning home to the UK from Spain because he and his family – whom he had requested move home for their own safety – had been threatened with harm relating to his alleged blackmail.

Former Metropolitan Police detective and Chair of the Metropolitan Black Police Association Janet Hills said: “There is a need for the UK police to reinvestigate this from scratch, from the initial rape allegation, and take it all the way through. It needs to be seen through a single lens by law enforcement professionals. There should be questions asked until there is nothing left to be done. There should be a reconstruction to help fill the gaps – to jog people’s memories at a broader level. It needs something similar to the Madeline McCann case – a dedicated unit looking at it.”

The Davis family are clinging on to the hope that Levi Davis may still be alive.

“Until his body is found, I will not give up hope,” Julie Davis said, adding that she fears racism and homophobia have played a part in the treatment her son’s case has received by the police and media. 

His brother Nathan recorded WhatsApp activity suggesting Davis’ account was synchronising with a new device in March 2023 – 17 weeks after he vanished.