After spending five days in a Bahamian jail, American boater Brian Hooker has been freed by police. Hooker had been detained in connection with the mysterious disappearance of his wife, Lynette, who vanished after falling overboard from their small dinghy in waters known for shark activity.
His attorney, Terrel Butler, confirmed his release on Monday night. This development came shortly after the 58-year-old underwent a second round of questioning at the Freeport police station on Grand Bahama, following his initial arrest last Wednesday.
Addressing reporters, Butler expressed her satisfaction, saying, “Great news everyone, Mr. Brian Hooker has been released.”
“I am pleased to see that justice is truly being served in this country. They had no evidence, leaving them no option but to let him go,” she elaborated.
Butler further remarked on the length of the investigation, stating, “It’s unfortunate that they had to use the entire investigative period to reach this conclusion.”
Cops had spent several hours quizzing Hooker over the events of April 4 when he and Lynette, 55, headed in the 8ft dinghy from dinner on the island of Elbow Key to their 50ft yacht Soulmate anchored little over a mile away.
He had told authorities Lynette was tipped overboard in high winds taking the kill-switch key which was attached to her, stopping the boat’s engine. He says he fought to reach her, but she was blown away from him.
The yachtsman said he then battled for nearly eight hours with one paddle to reach shore in Marsh Harbour on the neighboring island of Great Abaco, ditching his dinghy near a boat yard and seeking help there.
Brian Hooker, 58, has been released from jail following his wife, Lynette’s disappearance
Hooker has claimed that Lynette, 55, was tossed from their 8ft dinghy into shark-infested waters as they headed from dinner on Elbow Cay to their moored 50ft sailboat Soulmate
Hooker also told a friend in a phone call that the Soulmate was anchored at the south end of Aunt Pat’s Bay near Tahiti Beach on the island of Elbow Cay. Previously, locals had said it was moored at Parrot Cays.
In audio of the April 7 call obtained by CBS, he said of Lynette after they left the Abaco Inn to return to their yacht: ‘She basically just bounced off the dinghy in the middle of a little blow, like 20-something knot winds that popped up.’
‘We weren’t wearing life jackets. It was sundown, and the sun set like basically 10 minutes after she fell over.
’The wind blew us apart so fast that I think, I think she tried to swim back to the sailboat, back to our sailboat which was probably, I don’t know, 1,000 yards or something. But the waves were three foot.
‘I yelled to her that I lost an oar, and then I threw the anchor out, anchored the dinghy, and just, yeah, I yelled. I couldn’t see her anymore because the moon had not risen yet.’
‘By the time I got the anchor set, I was probably a quarter to a half a mile away from her, and I decided that I had to go get help. But I could not get to the island, so I paddled.
‘And it was a cascade of failures, and it’s something I’m never going to forgive myself for. We stayed to long, we left too dark, all kinds of s—. No life jackets. I f—ing threw the dinghy out last— the anchor out last — instead of first. Can’t really explain it, you know?’
Throughout the investigation, revelations inside the boating couple’s turbulent 25-year marriage have emerged.
The Hookers from Onsted, Michigan, were four years into a voyage they were documenting on social media that had started in Texas and drifted to The Bahamas via Florida
The Hookers were traveling on their 50ft sailboat Soulmate, which has since been moored in a marina in Marsh Harbour
The Hookers from Onsted, Michigan, were four years into a voyage they were documenting on social media that had started in Texas and drifted to The Bahamas via Florida.
Serious signs of trouble were revealed in texts Lynette sent to friend Marnee Stephenson, a fellow boater, in January and February 2024 following a brief split with her husband.
‘I guess it was too much closeness. We decided to call it quits. I’m not going back,’ she said in one obtained by CBS.
‘Our marriage lasted six weeks cruising,’ she said in another to the friend, who meet the Hookers while sailing through Florida.
Stephenson at one point asked Lynette if there was chance of a reconciliation. ‘It was real bad. I can’t be out there with him,’ came the reply.
But late in February that year the couple did get back together after Lynette had stayed temporarily with her 76-year-old mother Darlene Hamlett.
Hamlett told reporter Ashleigh Banfield of a previous incident when they had been fighting after a drinking session.
She said Hooker had thrown Lynette on to a bench hurting her neck. The following day, the pair packed up Lynette’s belongings and she left the boat and went home to Michigan.
‘One of the conversations that they had while they were on the boat the next morning is he told her that he wished he had finished the job and thrown her overboard,’ she said.
When Banfield asked her if she thought it was all talk on Hooker’s part, Hamlett responded: ‘How could somebody think it was all talk when you’re being choked?’
Lynette’s daughter Karli Aylesworth, 29,has also raised allegations of abuse, saying her mother confided that Hooker had choked her.
Hooker tied his dingy to a tree on a small sandy cove at an area called Calcutta just south of Marsh Harbour Boat Yard, roughly four miles from where Lynette went missing.
Throughout the investigation, revelations inside the boating couple’s turbulent 25-year marriage have emerged
Surveillance footage from Marsh Harbour Boat Yard on Great Abaco is being analyzed by Royal Bahamas Police as part of the investigation and has not been released.
The Daily Mail, however, has viewed it. Hooker, showing little signs of panic, is seen walking up to security fencing and raising his arms to attract attention. He calls out: ‘Hello, I need help. Hello. Help me.’
Wearing a yellow ‘dry bag’ to keep items free from water damage on his hip, he also casually glances down at his watch at one point.
But at no time in the sections of footage seen by the Daily Mail does he cry out to immediately raise the alarm about Lynette.
The contents of the footage appears to chime with puzzling inconsistencies we have discovered with the husband’s version of events – including possibly mysterious ‘missing’ hours.
He first appears in a ghostly silhouette walking in front of a line of sailboats on raised blocks at the far side of the yard. The video is timestamped at 3.35am.
Hooker is next picked up near the main security gate where he appears to be strolling almost casually.
When he calls out, he doesn’t appear to be yelling. There is no apparent sign of panic, of desperation, of urgency or alarm for missing Lynette.
Hooker, of course, may have been exhausted.
Night security guard Edward Smith told the Daily Mail he found him in the yard, where he said he had used one paddle to battle his way to safety for nearly eight hours in heavy seas and high winds after his wife vanished.
He also said Hooker told him: ‘We were drinking, we were drunk. I should have known better. I shouldn’t have done it.’
Hooker’s demeanor on the footage has raised eyebrows among several people in Marsh Harbour who have a close connection to the case, who have also seen the video and have talked to us.
‘That’s a very strange way for someone to behave when they’ve just seen their wife swept away to their almost certain death,’ said one of them, a highly experienced local mariner.
‘He seems casual, nothing frantic there at all, not much to suggest what has happened. And what about his wife? He doesn’t seem to be raising any kind of alarm.’
‘Also, I really don’t understand the cowboy hat. He’s been through such an ordeal and he has time, or even the thought, to put on that hat?’
Another one raised a separate thought about the time a paddled dinghy would have taken to cross four miles with strong winds behind it
‘The winds were up to 25 mph, which means that dinghy would be moving at least two to three miles an hour in the direction of Marsh Harbour,’ he told us.
