An American man will soon learn whether he’s being charged in the recent disappearance of his wife while they were boating in the Bahamas.
Brian Hooker has been in custody in Freeport since Wednesday, when authorities arrested him in relation to his missing wife, Lynette Hooker. Brian claimed that she fell overboard from their small dinghy on April 4 at sunset. Since extending Brian’s custody an additional 72 hours on Friday, Bahamian officials have a deadline of 7:20 p.m. local time to either release Brian or charge him in connection to his wife’s disappearance, according to his lawyer, Terel Butler.
From the beginning, Brian has denied any foul play and insisted that Lynette simply fell overboard due to rough seas near Elbow Cay. Elbow Cay is a five-mile long cay in the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas, known for its shallow, clear waters where tourists and locals alike drop anchor and spend a day on the water.
“He definitely denies causing her death, and he still asks about her and is hopeful that she will be recovered,” Butler said Friday.
Brian reportedly called fellow sailors, Marnee and Blaine Stevenson, a day before his arrest and explained what had happened as the couple headed back on the dinghy to their sailboat, Soulmate.
“She basically just bounced off the dinghy in the middle of a little blow, like 20-something knot winds that popped up,” Brian said.
Marnee and Blaine recorded the April 7 phone call with Brian and posted the video on their YouTube account. Marnee also shared text messages with CBS from a conversation with Lynette, during which the 55-year-old told Marnee she could not be out on the water with Brian.
“We were married 21 years. Our marriage lasted 6 weeks cruising,” Lynette wrote in the texts. “It was real bad. I can’t be out there with him.”
A flotation device has been recovered and since Lynette disappeared — and according to Lynette’s mother, Darlene Hamlett, her daughter’s Apple Watch was recovered — but Lynette still has not been located.
Brian’s lawyer said authorities are “close to a decision” on whether or not to charge Brian with a crime, per Fox News.
“Even if they decided to charge him, it’s highly unlikely that he would go to court today,” Butler said. “So we will know by 7:20 p.m. today what their decision will be … It is possible that when a person has completed their time, that when they walk out, they can be re-arrested and time starts again.”
Butler said her client is “drained” from the interrogations and that he is “just hoping to have closure to be released so that he can continue to search to find out what has happened to his wife.”
Lynette’s mom joined the “Drop Dead Serious” podcast, describing in detail how her daughter was repeatedly abused by Brian over their more than 20-year marriage.
“He has two sides to his personality, he can be very pleasurable, pleasant and he can be very vicious,” Hamlett said. “He threw her down on this bench … the boat has a little bench where you sit around the table in the galley. She landed on that, he was on top of her, he was choking her, and she felt something crack in her neck. She was so stiff-necked for a long time. I don’t know how or why, but she stayed on the boat that night … 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.”
Stories like the one Hamlett shared are why she, along with her granddaughter, Kylie Aylesworth, wanted a thorough investigation into Lynette’s disappearance.
Lynette has reportedly left Brian several times during their marriage and often documented the abuse with photos to help her not go back to him, according to Hamlett. Her daughter would often come stay with her in Florida when things with Brian were tumultuous, and every time Lynette returned to the Bahamas Hamlett said she believed it could be the last time she saw her daughter.
The 76-year-old said she doesn’t want to talk to Brian, but if she could talk to Lynette she would tell her daughter this: “I love you, and I wish you would have come home.”
The Daily Wire reached out to the United States Coast Guard, who is looking into the incident, and officials with the Coast Guard told us “we cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.”
