The Lighthouse podcast: Theo Hayez ‘hiding’ theory linked to illegal parties

The beach where Theo Hayez is last known to have been is the site of illegal parties | NEW EPISODE

Brazilian travellers Bruno Trad, 26, Bruno Di Piero, 26, and Flavio Pineda, 23, at Tallow Beach in August.

The Byron Bay beach where missing backpacker Theo Hayez is last known to have been is frequently the site of illegal late-night parties known as “doofs” that attract large crowds of young tourists.

READ MORE: Timeline | The people involved | The Lighthouse podcast: all episodes | Theo’s Google data with destiny

Visitors to Byron also frequently go to Tallow Beach on Friday and Saturday nights for camp fires, raising the prospect there are witnesses who saw the 18-year-old when he went there about midnight on Friday, May 31.

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A new episode of The Austral­ian’s investigative podcast, The Lighthouse, released today, also reveals that after getting to an area at Tallow Beach known as Cosy Corner, Theo went up a densely vegetated hill.

He stopped amid a tangle of vines, in a completely­ private area above the beach, for 5½ minutes.

“This is why I think he was hiding­,” Byron local Sheri ­D’Rosario said in a sunset visit to the site, retracing Theo’s route for the podcast­ series. “The branches are horizontal and there’s vines with sharp prickles everywhere.

Theo Hayez.

“It’s very sort of dark in here. At night it would be absolutely pitch black and it’s hidden from the beach, so nobody around will be able to see in and even know that we were here.”

Another theory is that Theo was with someone when he went into this private area.

The Lighthouse has previously revealed that after being asked to leave Cheeky Monkey’s bar, Theo walked to some sports fields at the end of Tennyson Street near the centre of town. He stopped in this area for almost seven minutes, on the edge of bushland where there are a series of homeless camps.

Local youths have been known to gather in that spot at weekends and drink around small fires.

Byron Bay resident Nicoletta Revis, who also retraced Theo’s last known steps with The Aust­ralian, said “you can barely walk” into the private area at Tallow Beach where Theo had gone.

“Having done this walk in the light, nobody in their right mind would do what we’ve just done at night, alone,” she said.

Theo’s family has tracked his movements via his smartphone and Google account.

Google’s detailed location tracking of Theo stops at 12.05am on Saturday, June 1, when he was at Cosy Corner. However, he continue­d using his phone to send messages and to watch a YouTube video of a French TV show called Burger Quiz.

One of the biggest un­answered questions from Theo’s disappearance is why he went to Tallow Beach. He’d been using Google Maps to look up the way back to his hostel at Belongil Beach, but was going the opposite way.

Brazilian backpackers tell the podcast they often go there at night at weekends.

“Just if you’re having, like, bush parties, but I don’t remember that when he disappeared if (there was) any bush party,” one Brazilian traveller said.

The most common way to hear about the parties was through friends, he said. “People just start to speak about it. I don’t think it’s, like, a bad environment, the parties­, because after that everybody­, like, cleans the place. At some point, we need to have fun as (there are) a lot of backpackers and people living here.”

He said there were few other reasons to go to Tallow Beach at night. “Maybe if you have some girl to bring at night, but not much reason to come here,” he said.

“If someone invited you, maybe, like, do a fire on the beach.

“It’s not allowed but you know people always do, like, things that are not really right.”

Theo’s cousin, Lisa Hayez, says he didn’t use drugs, but ­questioned whether someone had drugged him.