The investigation into a missing wife who fell overboard in the Bahamas while sailing with her husband is now being treated as a murder probe, officials say.
Lynette Hooker, 55, fell from a dinghy in rough conditions off the coast of Elbow Cay in the Abaco Islands on April 4, and her husband Brian Hooker, 58, said she vanished in the waters.
In a dramatic update to the case on Tuesday, a US official told Fox News that the case was now being treated as a murder investigation.
The US Coast Guard added that it was sending a dive team to search the waters where Lynette fell overboard, after GPS data pulled from Brian’s phone allegedly showed that his movements contradicted his initial story to investigators.
Brian claimed he had to paddle for several hours to get to a nearby island after his wife fell overboard, but investigators said they now believe they searched the ‘wrong area’ in the hunt for Lynette.
It comes days after officials said investigators had also been authorized to search the couple’s vessel, the Soulmate, which had been taken to Florida after the tragedy.
Their boat was seized by the US Coast Guard at the outset of the case, and it is set to be scoured by investigators at a warehouse in Fort Lauderdale for any clues over her disappearance.
‘Any sort of digital devices that you can take, any computer systems that you can extract, anything of that sort [will be taken in],’ former FBI agent Nicole Parker told Fox News at the time.
Lynette Hooker, 55, fell off a dinghy in rough waters while she and her husband, Brian Hooker, 58, were heading back to their sailboat, the Soulmate, on April 4
Their boat, which has since been taken to Fort Lauderdale, will be searched by authorities
Brian has not been charged in the disappearance of his wife.
‘I’ve never harmed Lynette, and I never would harm Lynette, and I want to find Lynette,’ he told NBC News in April.
Brian’s attorney Terrel Butler previously told the Daily Mail: ‘He categorically and unequivocally denies any wrongdoing.’
The husband was initially detained by Bahamian officials for five days following his wife’s disappearance, but he was released without charge and has since returned to the US.
Parker said despite the case unfolding in the Bahamas, the FBI got involved in the investigation because the suspect and victim are both US citizens and their vessel was registered to the US, which she said ‘gives the United States jurisdiction.’
In his telling of the disappearance to police, Brian said he and his wife were headed toward their sailboat in a dinghy when they hit rough conditions on the water.
He said they paddled against strong currents until Lynette was knocked overboard around 7:30pm.
Brian said he desperately paddled to the shore for hours, and only reached the island of Great Abaco at around 4am the next morning.
However, his timeline came under question, with the couple’s friend Daniel Danforth and a local bartender among those who have publicly questioned the story.
The Coast Guard reopened the search after new GPS evidence from the boat contradicted what Brian told authorities, officials said
Brian has not been charged in his wife’s disappearance and he maintains his innocence
Danforth said last month that while Brian said he searched the waters for Lynette for hours, he allegedly failed to inform investigators about a high-tech camera known as a FLIR system, which may have helped in the search.
Danforth told Fox News that the camera ‘would have been my first choice like if I was trying to rescue somebody,’ but claimed that Brian did not appear to have told investigators about it.
‘I told them about it and they were very interested,’ he said. ‘That was the first they had heard about that system being on the boat. And so they told me that they were going to file for a warrant of seizure for that because it has a serial number.’
Danforth previously shared messages between him and Brian in which Brian said he saw his wife swimming ‘toward the sailboat’ before they ‘lost sight of each other pretty quickly.’
‘I drifted and tried to paddle with one oar for the next seven hours until I washed up behind the shore of the next island over and was able to get some help finally,’ he Facebook messaged Danforth.
Local bartender Ken, 38, who did not give his last name, also said last moth that he served the husband and wife on the night Lynette went missing, and said he did not believe the timeline added up.
He said the couple got drinks at the Abaco Inn in Elbow Cay, Bahamas in the early evening and downed several rounds of rum and cokes.
But while he thought at the time that their encounter was unremarkable, Ken started to think Brian’s story didn’t make sense when he saw the news of Lynette’s disappearance.
The couple’s friend, Daniel Danforth (pictured with his wife), questioned Brian’s version of the events, as the husband didn’t mention the thermal camera on board the Soulmate
Bahamas bartender Ken, 38, who served Brian and Lynette Hooker the night before she was lost at sea, says he doesn’t believe the timeline of her disappearance adds up
The bartender said he was doubtful of Brian’s story that it took him all night to paddle across Embow Cay (pictured) after his wife went overboard
He said he found it ‘weird’ that Brian told authorities he paddled to Marsh Harbor, a cove a few miles across from the bar in Elbow Cave, through the night after Lynette ‘fell overboard” – believing it should not have taken him so long.
‘What catches my eye is they left here at 7, 7:30pm and [her going missing] supposedly happened right after they left here, and he didn’t make it over there until 4 a.m. or something like that, in 25-mph winds,’ he told the New York Post.
‘It’s only four miles that way. It shouldn’t have taken eight to 10 hours to get there,’ he said.
‘Even if he was only floating, it should have been a much quicker time.’
