Bahamas Custody Clock Ticking as Missing Wife’s Apple Watch and Disturbing Texts Emerge

Clear Facts

• American Brian Hooker remains in Bahamian custody after his wife Lynette disappeared from their dinghy on April 4 near Elbow Cay
• Authorities have until 7:20 p.m. local time to charge or release Hooker, who claims his wife fell overboard in rough seas
• Text messages and family testimony describe a documented history of alleged domestic abuse spanning over 20 years of marriage

An American man awaits a critical decision from Bahamian authorities regarding the mysterious disappearance of his wife during what he claims was a boating accident. The clock is ticking on whether charges will be filed.

Brian Hooker has been held in Freeport since Wednesday following the April 4 disappearance of his wife, Lynette Hooker, from their small dinghy near Elbow Cay in the Abaco Islands. After extending his custody an additional 72 hours on Friday, Bahamian officials face a 7:20 p.m. local time deadline to either charge Hooker or release him, according to his attorney Terel Butler.

Hooker maintains his wife simply fell overboard due to rough seas at sunset. Elbow Cay is known for its shallow, clear waters where boaters frequently anchor.

“He definitely denies causing her death, and he still asks about her and is hopeful that she will be recovered,” Butler said Friday.

Days before his arrest, Hooker contacted fellow sailors Marnee and Blaine Stevenson to explain the incident as the couple returned 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.

The Stevensons recorded their April 7 phone call with Hooker and posted it to their YouTube account. But Marnee also shared troubling text messages from Lynette that paint a different picture of the marriage.

“We were married 21 years. Our marriage lasted 6 weeks cruising,” Lynette wrote. “It was real bad. I can’t be out there with him.”

A flotation device has been recovered since Lynette’s disappearance. According to her mother, Darlene Hamlett, her daughter’s Apple Watch was also found. Lynette herself remains missing.

Butler said authorities are “close to a decision” on potential charges. “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 described her client as “drained” from interrogations and said 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 mother appeared on the “Drop Dead Serious” podcast, detailing what she described as repeated abuse throughout the 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.”

These accounts prompted Hamlett and her granddaughter, Kylie Aylesworth, to push for a thorough investigation into Lynette’s disappearance.

According to Hamlett, Lynette left Brian multiple times during their marriage and documented the alleged abuse with photographs to remind herself not to return. Her daughter would stay with her in Florida during troubled periods, and each time Lynette returned to the Bahamas, Hamlett feared it might be the last time she’d see her.

The 76-year-old grandmother said if she could speak to her daughter one more time, she would say: “I love you, and I wish you would have come home.”

The United States Coast Guard is investigating the incident but declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.

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