Dead or on the lamb?

[l0st]

Also in the article, it mentions that the anchor was down, which in the case of inclement weather, the captain should have raised, along with, lowering the keel (yet to be confirmed), sealing all windows and hatches and assembling the passengers… all precautions that appear to have been disregarded. So, even if he ignored Italy’s Marine weather reports and considering he had been warned about bad weather, specifically by email, it would seem that the sinking was caused by negligence… but that’s for the courts to decide.

I think the Captain/crew were paid off. Seamen take their jobs very seriously - their own lives are at stake as well as the lives of others. Most ships that I've seen are run like a military op. In this case, it appears that literally every single precaution that was supposed to be taken with an approaching storm was completely ignored by not only the Captain and crew but everyone else on the ship. Somehow, I just don't see this happening without incentive. I can see forgetting a single hatch, but hatches, watertight bulkhead doors, the keel, the anchor not being pulled up, ignoring weather warnings and assistance requests from the Italians, no lifejackets, no passenger meeting in the saloon, no effort to inflate a life raft. Literally every single thing the captain and crew were supposed to do to secure the vessel in the face of inclement weather was completely ignored. Just doesn't add up unless everyone was passed out/incapacitated.

Add to that the 7 people who it appears never attempted to leave their cabins? They say exists were blocked. Were the exits blocked before the ship took on water? This series of failures really isn't explainable by "oops, we forgot." The whole series of failures reads like a deliberate, planned event. I can believe crew forgot a thing or two, but 7 or 8 things all at the same time? Nah. Not happening organically anyways. Even total idiots do things correctly some of the time.

[guyfriday]

I bet the Cook wasn't in on it or showed some doubt which might be why they were the only crew member to die. 

Then we have the other possible target is this was a paid off assassination, Jonathan Bloomer of Morgan Stanley fame. Could there be more there?

For now, I think that this was a way to get Lynch out of the picture given that his co-defendant was killed right before this sinking.

[Encia22]

@l0st and @guyfriday

I read this morning that the investigation is being broadened to include more members of the crew.

Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08...slaughter/

Prosecutors are preparing to place under investigation more crew members of the superyacht, including two Britons.
They are looking to broaden their inquiries and to place under investigation Tijs Koopmans, 33, the Dutch first officer, and two British crew members, named as Tim Parker-Eaton and Matthew Griffith, according to Italian press reports.

Mr Parker-Eaton, from Clophill, Bedfordshire, was the ship’s engineer, while Mr Griffith is reported to have been keeping watch on deck.

I love a conspiracy theory as much as the next person and my mind raced at looking at different angles, just like both of you propose.

However, no matter which hypothesis I choose or what rabbit holes I go into, I’m always stuck on the sudden storm that struck the yacht. From the same article, data apparently confirms the storm hit the ship…

Data from the superyacht show that it was hit by a violent storm at 3.50am last Monday and sank 16 minutes later, at 4.06am. But it was not until 4.34am that the crew fired a red flare from their life raft to raise the alarm.

So, how can something like this have been planned. Yes, we could simply say that foul play was in the pipeline and that it was just a matter of waiting for the right time and place. Their trip had many programmed stops around Italy, but violent storms are rare in summer, even if they have increased in numbers due to the excessive heat Europe is experiencing.

I just have a hard time putting the pieces together that point to a planned operation. Too many people are involved, with anyone of those complicit eventually squealing under interrogation. As I mentioned in another post, if I were to plan something like this, it would be done in open international waters, far away from any possible intervention and investigation. The Bayesian will reveal all once she is brought up, which, by the way, is the responsibility of the owner… Lynch’s wife has to pay for the salvage.

And here we open another can of worms… why was Angela Bacares the owner? Apparently bought through one of her companies… Was she just lucky to survive or is there more?

[l0st]

@l0st and @guyfriday

I read this morning that the investigation is being broadened to include more members of the crew.

Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08...slaughter/

I love a conspiracy theory as much as the next person and my mind raced at looking at different angles, just like both of you propose.

However, no matter which hypothesis I choose or what rabbit holes I go into, I’m always stuck on the sudden storm that struck the yacht. From the same article, data apparently confirms the storm hit the ship…

So, how can something like this have been planned. Yes, we could simply say that foul play was in the pipeline and that it was just a matter of waiting for the right time and place. Their trip had many programmed stops around Italy, but violent storms are rare in summer, even if they have increased in numbers due to the excessive heat Europe is experiencing.

I just have a hard time putting the pieces together that point to a planned operation. Too many people are involved, with anyone of those complicit eventually squealing under interrogation. As I mentioned in another post, if I were to plan something like this, it would be done in open international waters, far away from any possible intervention and investigation. The Bayesian will reveal all once she is brought up, which, by the way, is the responsibility of the owner… Lynch’s wife has to pay for the salvage.

And here we open another can of worms… why was Angela Bacares the owner? Apparently bought through one of her companies… Was she just lucky to survive or is there more?

:beer:

I don't believe in coincidences. Why weren't the crew part of the investigation from day 1? And, why are they suddenly a part of it now?

I get what you're saying about the storm. I do believe this inclement weather was known in advance though. In 2024, someone could easily have contacted the crew that night with a murder ransom. More likely, they were already in contact and knew about the scheduled voyage. Could have contacted after seeing the weather report and said "if the storm hits, tonight's the night."

Most victims of crime, particularly murder, are not random victims. They typically know their assailant quite well, and that goes for a lot of other crimes as well.

The owner of the yacht? Did she give them the "go" that night? She would have known the crew and ship itinerary well. She is a prime suspect, IMHO. She could have said "you know the deal, storm is rolling in, it's GO time" for all we know.

People act like every crime has a very specific plan due to the way these cases are presented in crime dramas on TV. In reality, there's a lot more going on, and the plans may be liquid, as with many other aspects of life. For all we know, plans could have been in the works for years, waiting for the right moment.

[Encia22]

I don't believe in coincidences. Why weren't the crew part of the investigation from day 1? And, why are they suddenly a part of it now?

...

If I remember correctly, everyone was questioned immediately after the incident. With more information coming out, the investigators are now probing manslaughter charges, so further interrogations are required. However, no one has yet been formally charged.

I agree that Angela Bacares is worth keeping an eye on and digging deeper.

Everything you say is plausible and I'm keeping an open mind. All I know is that this case will drag on for a long time. I've seen other criminal investigations here in Italy that appeared like open and shut cases and then new evidence always came to light that completely changed the dynamics of the cases. One particular case of the murder of a young girl was like a soap opera, it dragged on for years, but justice was finally served.

Three key elements will be the salvage of the Bayesian, the new testimonies and the autopsy reports, which can now begin in light of the direction the investigation is going, and the people involved all having been notified that they must appear for further questioning.

[Maxmars]

I wouldn't normally share this because I can't actually access the story (Fox websites insists that I 'register' with them to see the story - I will not give them my name to sell.)

But just in case some of you already have... this headline caught my eye...

From Fox: Deadly superyacht sinking off coast of Sicily investigated as possible manslaughter

Apparently someone thinks there's more to the sad tragedy...

[guyfriday]

I wouldn't normally share this because I can't actually access the story (Fox websites insists that I 'register' with them to see the story - I will not give them my name to sell.)

But just in case some of you already have... this headline caught my eye...

From Fox: Deadly superyacht sinking off coast of Sicily investigated as possible manslaughter

Apparently someone thinks there's more to the sad tragedy...

There was a story that came out earlier that said that both Lynch and his daughter died from drowning. I wasn't going to do an update until I found the article to see if any toxicology report was given in the story. If the charge of Manslaughter is to hold up at this point, then it might be through the issue of a negligent crew. I'm not sure if the charge of Conspiracy to commit murder will be in play unless something popped up in the toxicology report, tough if this was a political hit, then "I'm sure a report will be done", but really it's still up in the air. 

As soon as I get that report found, I'll post a link and any new information from it.

Figures, as soon as I typed all that the story was found. 
Autopsies reveal cause of death for NYC lawyer and his wife killed in Bayesian $40M yacht wreck (nypost.com)

 New York City lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda — two victims of the Bayesian tragedy — drowned when the super yacht sank off the coast of Sicily last month, according to autopsies.

and the other autopsies,

The first autopsies in the tragedy were conducted on the bodies of the Morvillos.

 Autopsies on the bodies of Morgan Stanley Bank International chair Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy are planned for Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. 

extra information brought forward of this case:

 A judicial investigation is also probing three Bayesian crew members for suspected negligent manslaughter and causing the shipwreck.
 The ship’s captain, James Cutfield, has not spoken about the wreck and refused to talk when questioned by prosecutors. 
 
Other members of the crew have maintained that they did what they could to save those on board.

And this keeps popping up as a piece of mystery making:

The exact cause of the wreck has yet to be determined. Some have suspected that a rare weather phenomena occurring at the time, a “black swan” weather event, may have contributed to the accident. Naval experts, however, have suggested that the 185-foot yacht could have withstood a storm. 
 
The Bayesian has yet to be salvaged.

I wonder if they will salvage the ship so that we will know what happened?

[Encia22]

I wouldn't normally share this because I can't actually access the story (Fox websites insists that I 'register' with them to see the story - I will not give them my name to sell.

Thanks Maxmars, in case you're interested, I was able to read the full article. It's a bit old and we've covered the newest information as it came out, and delved into the conspiracy theories, too.

Anyway, it's a concise account of what happened, so I'll paste it here for you and all to read...

Investigators in the superyacht sinking off the coast of Sicily that left seven people dead earlier this week are considering manslaughter charges in the case, judicial sources told Reuters.

The public prosecutor's office of Termini Imerese in Sicily is investigating possible negligence on the part of the crew of the yacht when it was besieged by storms while anchored. 

Divers on Friday recovered what is believed to be the body of Hannah Lynch, the final person who had been unaccounted for in the tragedy, the Italian Coast Guard said. 

She was the daughter of Mike Lynch, a British tech magnate who was celebrating his acquittal on fraud charges with friends and family on the boat. His body was found Thursday. 

The Lynch family was aboard the Bayesian, a 184-foot British-flagged yacht that sank after capsizing in the early hours of Monday amid winds as high as 100 mph. 

Bayesian had 22 people on board — 12 passengers and 10 crew — when it capsized and sank within minutes of being hit by a predawn storm. 

Fifteen people survived the sinking, including Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares. 

The captain of the yacht and the other survivors have been interviewed by the Italian Coast Guard at the request of the prosecutor's office. 

The prosecutor leading the case is scheduled to hold a press conference Saturday. No one is formally under investigation yet. 

Possible charges could include negligent shipwreck and multiple homicide, sources told Reuters. 

"The Lynch family is devastated, in shock and is being comforted and supported by family and friends," a spokesperson said in a statement for the family. "Their thoughts are with everyone affected by the tragedy. They would like to sincerely thank the Italian coastguard, emergency services and all those who helped in the rescue." 

Investigators are trying to figure out why the yacht sank so quickly. 

Giovanni Costantino, CEO of The Italian Sea Group, which built Lynch’s yacht, blamed the shipwreck on a string of "indescribable, unreasonable errors" made by the crew and ruled out any design or construction failings.

"The impossible happened on that boat ... but it went down because it took on water. From where, the investigators will tell," Costantino said in an interview.

Christopher Morvillo, an American lawyer with Clifford Chance who defended Lynch in the fraud case, also died, as did Morgan Stanley International Chairman Jonathan Bloomer, who testified in Lynch’s defense.

Morvillo’s wife, Neda, and Bloomer’s wife, Judy, were also among the dead. The body of onboard chef Recaldo Thomas, an Antiguan citizen, was recovered Monday.

A nearby sailboat rescued 15 people, including a 1-year-old girl. 

Divers had been searching for the missing in the hull of the Bayesian, which now rests on the seabed 164 feet underwater.

Civil protection officials said they believe the ship was struck by a tornado over the water, known as a waterspout, sometime around 5 a.m. Monday near the port of Porticello, where it was anchored and then sank quickly. 

---

I wonder if they will salvage the ship so that we will know what happened?

Thanks, guyfriday, I hadn't read about the first autopsies concluded.

As for the salvage, yes, they want to bring her up, but the owner, Angela Bacares, Lynch's wife, has to pay for it. They already retrieved the black box, so they have the ship's logs, comms, etc. to have determined that the Bayesian was indeed struck by a freak localised weather phenomena.

[guyfriday]

This is being reported over at FOX,
Superyacht sinks: Cause of death revealed for NYC lawyer and wife | Fox News
Also readable from Yahoo. News, Superyacht sinks: Cause of death revealed for NYC lawyer and wife (yahoo.com)

 A New York City lawyer and his wife, who were among the seven who died in the sinking of the Bayesian superyacht last month off the coast of Sicily, passed away as a result of drowning, autopsies have revealed.
 
The causes of death for Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda were confirmed by coroners in Italy, as autopsies are planned Wednesday on the bodies of Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley’s London-based investment banking subsidiary, and his wife, Judy, according to The Associated Press.
 
The Bayesian had 22 people on board – 12 passengers and 10 crew – when it capsized and sank within minutes of being hit by a predawn storm on Aug. 19. Civil protection officials said they believe the ship was struck by a tornado over the water, known as a waterspout, near the port of Porticello, where the yacht was anchored.
Autopsies are pending for British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch – who had organized the yacht trip to celebrate a recent legal victory – as well as his 18-year-old daughter Hannah and the yacht’s cook, Recaldo Thomas.

Now these reports are not very clear. Yesterday the reports have Lynch and his daughter dying from drowning according to autopsy reports, and today they are saying that only the Morvillo autopsy has been done. Neither reports have addressed anything about toxicology reports, and it just goes back to the crew being at fualt.

Prosecutors also reportedly are investigating the captain and two crew members for possible responsibility in connection with the sinking. Fifteen people, including Lynch's wife, were rescued from the 184-foot British-flagged luxury yacht.
 
The CEO of a manufacturing company responsible for building the yacht has blamed a series of "indescribable, unreasonable errors" by the crew for the vessel’s demise.
 
Giovanni Costantino told Reuters that the yacht’s crew made an "incredible mistake" of not being ready for the storm, which was included in shipping forecasts. The passengers should have been called out of their cabins and ordered to assemble at a safety point as the ship was preparing for the storm by taking measures such as pulling up the anchor, the CEO said.

I'm wondering if any autopsy has been conducted at this point, and the whole thing will be blamed on the crew. This smells bad people, and the question is why.

[FlyingClayDisk]

I've held off saying anything up until now.  Ironically enough, I've been on a ship myself for the past 2 weeks!  LOL!  Anyway...

So a couple things here.

First, I strongly doubt any sort of a waterspout or downdraft type event.  I've been through the edge of a waterspout once in Florida in a 30' foot sportfish.  It was violent beyond imagination!  I've also been through microbursts while flying.  Neither of these was intentional, and both were violent almost beyond description.  In the waterspout incident, we were in the Gulf of Mexico about 15 miles off shore.  We saw the squall line percolate up and headed for shore.  Within minutes the squall line hit us and it was a complete white/blackout with rain; you couldn't see 10 feet.  All of a sudden we saw the rain start going sideways, and then upward diagonally.  I swung hard to port and pushed the throttles to the console.  The waterspout was so powerful it cleared out an area of rain around it like a tunnel up through the rain cloud.  We narrowly missed it, probably by 70 or 80 feet.  Even as it was, it ripped every piece of canvas off the boat and violently ripped anything not securely fastened down off the deck and hurled it in the water.  Fortunately none of us got thrown off (there were 3 of us).  It tore the plexiglass windshield clean off the center console!  Ripped the glued down cork off the console where the main compass was. 

I've watched the video on the first page.  There is canvas covering boats and furniture all over the deck.  None of it even lifted up.  That boat was NOT hit by a waterspout.  It just wasn't.  It may have encountered some sort of a rogue wave, but it wasn't a waterspout.  Neither was it a microburst, as they do the same thing but almost in reverse.  They are an intense sustained gust of wind (usually in excess of hurricane speeds (70+ knots)) directly downward (vertical).  When they hit the surface they blow horizontally across the surface (picture a hose spraying directly down against a concrete driveway, same basic idea).  Winds of that force would have ripped every shred of fabric and sent anything not attached to the deck (like bolted down, not just tied) flying in all directions.    I saw none of this in the video.  I see wind and rain in the video, but nothing severe enough to sink a vessel of that size.

Okay, next thing...vessels of that size just don't sink that fast; they just don't.  Leave every single hatch and water-tight door open, doesn't matter; they won't sink that fast.  There are too many spaces which trap air.  The vessel may heel over, or even capsize, but it's not going to sink...no unless it has a hole in it big enough to drive a tractor trailer through, and even then I doubt it would sink that fast.  Something ain't right.  I've seen yachts literally break in half and they still take longer than 16 minutes to sink.  Again, something ain't right.

When you add all these factors together, and couple them with the fact that nearby yachts were untouched and, I'm sorry, but I don't believe a single word of the published version of the events.  Not a word.

Now, I don't have a theory about what really happened, but I darn sure do have an opinion about the version of the events being circulated to date, and that is there is a lot more to this story than is being told.  I can completely believe the vessel went down stern first, and even believe that it half-submerged, BUT the events which led up to this happening would have been not only terrifying but also have given plenty of notice to all passengers that something was seriously wrong.

One other thing I find strangely missing from the story.  Vessels of this length, under charter, are required to carry life rafts equalling 150% of the maximum capacity of the boat.  On this boat, this requirement would have meant multiple life rafts.  Life rafts are mounted on deck in such a way that they automatically inflate when they become bouyant in water (there are also other things which will auto-inflate them, often things like the EPIRB going bouyant).  Why were none of these deployed?  This is something you can't even fuck up if you tried...it's all automatic.  UNLESS, of course, someone prevented them from deploying, but this would be a conscious event.

Bottom line...there's way more to this story than is being told.  This vessel absolutely needs to be re-floated immediately and investigated thoroughly for what really happened, because the real story isn't even close to being told yet.  It's only in 200 feet of water, so it's a slam dunk to re-float and any competent salvage company could do it in a single day.  Now that the bodies are off, there is no reason not to re-float it...like NOW!  (before the evidence gets further damaged).