Lynette Hooker Latest: Forensic Diver Reveals Water Search Challenges

Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: Criminally Obsessed
Host: Anne Emerson
Guest: Alexander Beer, forensic diver and police officer
Episode: Lynette Hooker Latest: Forensic Diver Reveals Water Search Challenges
Date: April 20, 2026

In this episode, Anne Emerson delves into the complexities of searching for missing persons in ocean environments, focusing on the disappearance of Lynette Hooker in the Bahamas. She is joined by Alexander Beer, an experienced forensic diver and police officer, who provides expert insight into the challenges of underwater investigations and reacts to the known details of the Hooker case. The discussion covers search logistics, the science of water forensics, procedural red flags, and emotional responses – all against the backdrop of the ongoing investigation.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Uniqueness and Complexity of Water Searches

Timestamps: 00:00–03:00

• Searching the Ocean: Beer compares looking for a victim in the ocean to finding a "needle in the water"—far harder than a haystack. Unlike land, water is variable and conditions change rapidly.
  • Quote: “People say needle in a haystack, but I'd rather look for a needle in a haystack than a needle in the water.” – B [00:19]
• Last Seen Point is Critical: All effective searches rely on knowing the exact location where a person went missing. In the Hooker case, this point is solely based on her husband’s account and is further complicated by the movement of their sailboat after her disappearance.

2. Forensic Diving: Tools and Time Sensitivity

Timestamps: 03:00–08:26

• Public Safety Diving: Beer’s background includes 18 years of underwater investigations, recovering evidence and bodies, and teaching others.
• Technological Tools: He explains how chart plotters and AIS data—if available and retained—can help pinpoint last positions of vessels.
  • Quote: “On small boats you can turn [AIS] on and turn it off. ...But typically small boats have chart plotters...you can typically pull out some data...” – B [05:24]
• Why Fast Response Matters: Decomposition rates are rapid in ocean environments and aquatic life accelerates the loss of evidence or remains.
  • Quote: “The water, especially ocean water, it's. Time is not your friend. The sooner the search starts, the better opportunity you have.” – B [06:15]

3. Lynette Hooker Case Analysis: Red Flags and Inconsistencies

Timestamps: 08:26–24:34

• Questionable Witness Account: Everything depends on Lynette’s husband’s statements, including last seen location, events, and evidence of what she wore (“I just want a description of what she had on. ...That blows my mind.” – A [25:01]).
• Sailboat Moved Post-Disappearance: Moving the boat makes the investigation much harder, hampering reference points for search teams.
  • Quote: “He had moved his sailboat to another anchorage...so we don't even have that reference point unless they can...backtrack.” – B [03:00]
• Weather and Water Clarity Misconceptions: The Bahamas is assumed to always have clear water, but weather can render visibility poor, especially after storms.
• Questionable Equipment Details: The husband’s reported actions involving oars and the dinghy do not match visible evidence (“I don't even see oar locks on the dinghy and the oars...are paddles, not oars. That's an inconsistency...” – B [20:44])
• Behavioral Red Flags: Beer finds a lack of emotional intensity in the husband’s recorded statement suspicious, as well as inconsistencies about the sequence of events.

4. Realities of Aquatic Evidence and Body Recovery

Timestamps: 25:42–33:54

• How Bodies Behave in Water:
  • Initially, a drowned victim sinks to the bottom near the drop point, but ocean conditions and aquatic life soon alter this; after days, remains may not be found or may fragment.
  • Quote: “As time goes on...the body may not refloat because it happens relatively fast...So you may be looking for things that are no longer recognizable...” – B [08:36]
• Cadaver Dogs and Sonar: Dogs can detect decomp on shorelines or over water, but wind and chop complicate their job. Sonar is mostly for large objects and is unlikely to find small articles (sunglasses, etc.).

5. Analytical Review of Husband’s Statement

Timestamps: 33:54–41:38

• Responding to the Husband’s Account:
  • Beer identifies numerous flaws: physically improbable distances, mismatches in equipment details, inconsistent actions (anchoring vs. drifting), absence of emotional urgency, and procedural oddities (why move the sailboat at all?).
• Legal and Investigative Constraints:
  • Emphasizes that real investigations are slower than TV portrays, and the Bahamian police must build a legally defensible case.

6. Broader Observations: Community, Assumptions, and Investigation Patience

Timestamps: 24:14–45:10

• Boat Community Dynamics: Contrary to assumptions, it’s not unusual for sailors to anchor alone. But this was a busy area, increasing potential for witnesses.
• Call for Patience and Accuracy: Beer repeatedly advocates that the public avoid assumptions based on TV or the pace of news and allow investigators to do careful, thorough work.
  • Quote: “It takes a lot of effort, planning, training, and time to get it done and do it right.” – B [39:44]

7. Closing Thoughts: Foul Play and Hope

Timestamps: 45:10–46:44

• On Foul Play: Beer explicitly says the case sounds like foul play to him, but he still hopes for a positive outcome, even if his experience tells him otherwise.
  • Quote: “It sounds to me like this is a case of foul play how it sounds to me. ...If I was hoping...my hope is that ...she swam to shore and ...she's gonna reach out to her daughter and tell her that everything. That I'm okay and that I'm just...gonna lay low for a little bit.” – B [45:14]
• Expert Hope vs. Reality: He acknowledges wishing for the best while trusting his investigative gut, which points to a grim likelihood.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On ocean searches:
  • “People say needle in a haystack, but I'd rather look for a needle in a haystack than a needle in the water.” – Alexander Beer, [00:19]
• On equipment:
  • “I've looked at pictures that I could see of this dinghy and I don't even see oar locks on the dinghy and the oars...are paddles, not oars. That's an inconsistency...” – B [20:44]
• On the husband’s story:
  • “Do I find flaws in the story? I do, yes. ...He's a very inconsistent storyteller, for sure. ...That, in and of itself, to me raises the idea that he's being deceptive.” – B [35:30]
• On moving the sailboat:
  • “If my wife was last seen a thousand meters from my boat, I'm sure as hell not moving my boat until I've checked...” – B [40:39]
• On reality vs. TV:
  • “A lot of people's perception of investigations comes from television... that is TV and real life does not work like that.” – B [19:06]

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Timestamps for Notable Segments

• Expert Introduction and Role of Underwater Evidence: [01:48–02:16]
• Why Search Efforts Are So Challenging: [03:00–04:21]
• Breakdown of the Husband’s Statement & Red Flags: [14:10–21:20]
• Weather/Visibility in the Bahamas: [10:06–11:53]
• Cadaver Dogs and Tools Used in Search: [27:42–30:28]
• Assessment of Husband’s Audio Statement: [33:54–41:38]
• Closing: Is Foul Play Suspected?: [45:10–46:22]

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Final Thoughts

The episode provides a sobering but insightful look at the unique complexities of aquatic forensic searches, especially when an account is dependent on a single, potentially unreliable witness. Forensic diver Alex Beer highlights the technical, logistical, and emotional challenges that hinder investigations in open water, as well as the telltale signs of possible deception in this particular case. The tone is thorough, compassionate, and grounded in real-world investigative experience, reminding the audience both of the importance of patience and the complexity underlying high-profile missing person cases at sea.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, everyone, I'm Ann Emerson, and welcome to Criminally Obsessed. Normally when you picture an investigation, there's a room, a house, a business, even a parking lot, you know, somewhere on solid ground where police can put up some crime scene tape. But how do investigators search the water, the bottom of the ocean?

[B]

You know, people say needle in a haystack, but I'd rather look for a needle in a haystack than a needle in the water.

[A]

And now that Lynette Hooker has been missing for more than two weeks, what happens to a body in warm water with a lot of aquatic life?

[B]

I don't mean to sound crass, but it does become a source of food. And the Bahamas are, you know, you have sharks and stingrays and shrimp and fish and all these things.

[A]

Who else is better to answer all of my questions than a forensic diver? I've got Alex Beer with me. He's a dive rescue investigation trainer, and he's a veteran police officer from South Florida, and he's pretty much spent his entire life sailing. He's not part of the hooker investigation, but he gives me the red flags he sees based on his experience. And the biggest one surrounds the hooker's 44 foot sailboat Soulmate. I know what you're thinking. They were in that little dinghy, right? Just hold on. He'll explain like and subscribe so you don't miss any of the updates in this missing wife mystery. Now, let's get into it. Alexander Beer. Alex Beer, thank you so much for joining us today. You have extensive experience in the water and working on investigations. Can you just give me a little bit about what you do, Alex, so I can understand? We can tell our viewers a little bit about what. What you do.

[B]

Sure. Thanks for having me. And so my background is in public safety diving. I'm a public safety div with a large law enforcement agency here in South Florida. I'm a corporate trainer for Dive Rescue International. So I teach classes around the country to other dive teams. And I've been a public safety diver for now going into my 18th year. So I spent quite a bit of time performing underwater searches, underwater investigations, recovering evidence, things like that.

[A]

Alex, if you were investigating this case down in the Bahamas that were following Lynette Hooker's disappearance, what's the first thing that you would be doing right now?

[B]

I guess as a law enforcement person, I don't want a Monday morning quarterback what another agency is doing.

[A]

No, of course not.

[B]

And I don't know what they have or have not done, but, you know, the Key to any underwater search. The most important thing to a successful underwater search is knowing what a last seen point is or where was the last point at which that person was seen. Unfortunately, or you know, the only witness in this event is the, the other person that was on the dinghy, her husband. And we're unsure of where that last scene point was.

[A]

Yeah, we aren't we, because it's just his word is what you're saying, right?

[B]

Well, we have what he is saying. And so if we just took that at face value, okay, put us about where you think you were when you last saw her in the water and that's where the search would start in the absence of a last seen point. So we've, we've had calls where nobody saw it, but we're searching a body of. Then the next thing would be, okay, well let's figure out. They started at point A, they were supposed to end at point B. So those are your reference points. And then you have to determine where to start in there. It's a much larger area. It makes it much more difficult. The water is a difficult spot to search under the best of circumstances. And then from what I understand is that before they even got around to that, he had moved his, the sailboat to another anchorage or to a mooring. So we don't even have that reference point unless they can go back electronically. And I believe they have taken the electronics but the GPS on the boat and maybe backtrack and determine its last known fixed position where it was at anchor. And then you would at least have an endpoint or where they were destined to go to and work it backwards from there.

[A]

I'd love to go in a little bit about that. Is it, Are you talking about the AIs system and can you explain what that is?

[B]

Well, AIs, it can give you GPS location. It can give you a location. AIs is an identifier. So AIs is used ships mostly you'll find as on big ships or smaller boats that travel or in and out of ports. And it's just an identifier. So what it does is it sends out a signal to radars on other boats in the area. So that radar can say, oh, I have a 40 foot sailboat 2 miles off my port bow on this heading. Are we going to have a conflict of our travels? Large ships use it for the same reason we have ship traffic coming in and out of port. And you can track those boats just like a data recorder on an airplane or anything else. It's basically the just sends out the location of that ship at any particular time.

[A]

Well, and on the soulmate, this, this sailboat that they were on, if it has these kind of tracking devices, and that's what they would have taken.

[B]

Well, the thing with AIs on small boats is you can turn it on and turn it off. Okay, so if it was on, great. If it was off, you don't know. I don't know. But typically small boats have chart plotters. You know, a brand of chart plotter that shows you a digital navigation chart and that usually has some type of memory in it where using the manufacturer to go back into it and look at, you can typically pull out some data from that as to like the last few days or few hours of where that chart plotter was. And that could also give you a location.

[A]

You're a diving instructor. If Lynette Hooker went overboard, what are you looking for in the water? What else are you looking for besides Lynette?

[B]

Well, you know that it's tough. We don't know other than what his witness account is. What, you know, what was she wearing, what did she have on, I mean, at all, you know, does she wear glasses? Does she have, was she wearing shoes? Was she, what did she have with her? And you may be looking for those types of articles, a phone or anything that would sink to the bottom and then obviously looking for her herself. And there's a lot of variables there. We know a lot about land based forensics, right? There's entire college courses about the study of human decomposition on land because it's a, it's very fixed and the variables are very controllable. Weather is easy to monitor on land. We don't have that same sort of data for things in the water. So the reality is the water, especially ocean water, it's. Time is not your friend. The sooner the search starts, the better opportunity you have. So as time goes on, things begin to happen, right? Body becomes, starts to, you know, become decomposed and will maybe start to refloat and then start to drift. But initially, if somebody drowns, whether that via traumatic injury or just simply they drown, they don't float away, they sink straight to the bottom. So an unconscious drowned victim weighs between, depending on body size and body type, you know, on average between 10 and 16 pounds. So that will drop straight to the bottom. So if you can imagine if it was 10ft of water and you drew a straight line from the top to the bottom, they would be within a 10 foot radius if you drew a circle. So they're not, they didn't start to sink and then drift with the current. Miles and miles they're there, but that's only initially. And so, and that time is undetermined, they can, depending on what they ate, body type, can affect all of those things before maybe they become buoyant again and then become susceptible to currents and tides and things like that.

[A]

We're more than 10 days out, 11 days out, I think. So is that a time frame that you start getting concerned that. That the body could move?

[B]

Yes. And I think beyond just moving, what I know from doing this, as long as I have bodies that go missing in the ocean, there's a lot of predation. There's a lot of creatures and animals in there that begin, you know, it's a. It becomes a food. And I don't mean to sound. No, you don't crass. But it does become a source of food. And the Bahamas are, you know, you have sharks and stingrays and shrimp and fish and all these things. And as that happens, the body may not refloat because it happens relatively fast in the ocean because the amount of sea life that's in there. And so you may be looking for things that are no longer recognizable as a whole person, but you may be looking for parts of a person or clothing or things like that.

[A]

You know, we are only going on Brian Hooker's account, her husband's account of where the dinghy was, where the sailboat was, because, as you said, he's moved this sailboat to a new mooring in Marsh Harbor. But, you know, when you're looking at where this is all allegedly had taken place, you know that he had left Abaco in that he had come into this area. The water's like six to ten feet deep.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

So why can't we see? I mean, this is the Bahamas. That water is notoriously beautiful and clear.

[B]

Well, contrary to, you know, your vision of the Bahamas, if you've never been, is the travel brochure version. Right. The crystal clear blue water. And that is true a lot of the time, but weather plays a factor in water clarity. So it had been windy and it had been stormy. And so a big introduction of rain and fresh water and wind will stir it up. And the visibility is no longer like looking in a swimming pool. It's a little bit more cloudy. Depending on where you at or on what side of the island you are, it could be outflow from a harbor that is causing the water to be a little bit more turbid, so that it may not be as easy as saying, you know, oh, I'm looking down through, you know, 20, 30ft of visibility. I don't know what the conditions are now. And even in some of the footage I've seen, it does appear that it is not necessarily the crystal clear. You know, it's a bit. It was a bit cloudy. And then if you're looking from the surface through the water, even with polarized glasses, there's other things down there. It's not just a sandy bottom. You know, there's coral heads and rock piles and debris and any number of things. So you're. You're now having to be like, is that. Is that what I'm looking for or is that what I'm looking for? And it may not to the human eye. You may not. You may look right at something and not actually recognize it to be what it is you're looking for. So until you're down there, surface searches are usually not super effective, especially in the daytime. Now, we have found people in the ocean at night, but that's because they had a light on. And so we didn't necessarily see them, but we saw their light, and the light brought us to them.

[A]

I keep on hearing about various reports, you know, she did have the kill switch with her, that she had been able to have that lanyard on her. That was the report from her husband.

[B]

As somebody who's. I mean, I spent my entire life, I lived on a sailboat. I was a kid with my parents. I've been on boats my whole life. I can say from experience that it is probably more frequent that people are not wearing their kill switch than are a lot of times. It's just sort of tied around the steering wheel or just hanging there dangling and not clipped onto them. Not to say that that's correct or right, but it's there for a reason, that if you were to have an accident, the boat would stop running and then you'd be able to get back to your boat. So that's not uncommon, that it wasn't clipped on.

[A]

Does it float, though?

[B]

Not necessarily. I mean, unless you have a float tied to it. But it's not. It won't necessarily float.

[C]

Right.

[B]

They're not, you know, they're not designed. If it's attached to you, it doesn't need to float. And if it just. It shouldn't just fall off if you're just doing normal operations. I mean, there are things about the case that I question. As a curious person and as a law enforcement person who deals with the water, I have questions about it. But certainly there are things that you can rule out. I mean, it's a small little electric motor. It's basically a souped up trolling motor. So it's not like she fell off the boat and took a prop strike from like a 30 horsepower engine with a 5,000 rpm spinning prop. So I'm not thinking that it could have been that as far as, as soon as the engine died. I mean that boat doesn't go that fast anyways. So as soon as the engine stopped going, I don't, it wasn't like there was a huge distance created. And you know, there's talk about wind. I will say that in that scenario, the wind is affecting the dinghy more than it's affecting her. Just based on if she's in the water, the surface area of, of what's exposed for her is not as exposed as the dinghy. So the dinghy would be moving at a disproportionate speed to how fast she would be. The wind's not really going to blow her through the water.

[A]

So you're questioning, I mean your question started, you're on this dinghy, she starts going overboard. Is that where your questions begin?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So let's go through those.

[B]

You go overboard in a, in a dinghy and the engine dies. It's not like you were traveling 50 miles an hour and it took 30 seconds for the boat to come off a plane and slow down. It, it basically just stopped. So. Okay, I mean, I would think, honey, are you okay? Get back in the boat. Like you're not that far away from the person. Even in 25 knots of wind, I and 3 foot chop, it's just not that dramatic a change in distance that I would think especially, I mean, you know, if my, my wife or one of my kid got forbidden, one of my kids were to fall off a boat. I mean I would move heaven and earth to get them back. So I don't, I don't see that. You know, if you fall off a high speed speedboat, right. 50 miles an hour, it's like hitting concrete and the boat will travel for quite a ways. This is not that scenario.

[A]

But you still know what to do, right? Like that's the first thing. Man overboard. That's like literally the first thing you learn as a boater. And these are extremely experienced voters.

[B]

Yeah. So I mean that, that raises my curiosity. Like, you know, and I'm not, I don't know these, these, this, this family and I'm not involved in the case. So I mean these are Just what I'm seeing, based on what's been reported,

[A]

we actually asked our, one of our meteorologists, Emily Gracie, about the weather conditions right there. And then, you know, this is, this is not a deep dive, forensic meteorology, you know, kind of report. But to give you an idea, the waves were around 2 meters and winds were from the east, but not that bad, about 30 mile an hour gusts. But this, the one question I have about this, is this offshore? Is this on the other side of Elbow Key or the inside, does that sound, what does that sound like to you? And if that was what he was dealing with on the inside of Elbow

[B]

Key, I would doubt that he was dealing with 2 meter Cs in that, in that ding. What it sounds like is it does sound like an overall weather forecast for like if you were planning to say cross from the Bahamas to Florida or, or make some long open water passage. If it was. And I'm, I'm sure if you're, if you're anchoring out or anybody that's ever anchored and slept on a boat, sailboat or otherwise, they would be on the western side of the island. So the island is blocking those seat, those seas.

[A]

Right.

[B]

To make sure that there's nothing that is going to affect that. You're not, you're not anchored in two meter seas.

[A]

No.

[B]

You're just not. There's no. So that weather report is probably not indicative of what they were experiencing. Now the Bahamas are relatively flat. There's not a lot of elevation to those islands. So are you feeling the wind? Yes, probably. Is that causing a surface chop? Of course it is, but you're not dealing with the direct brunt of all that because you're on the, the lee side of the island that's protected, that is protecting you from that weather with

[A]

the current, with those surface winds and that sort of thing. Could the boat have been pushed away from her or could she have gotten pushed away from the boat and then the dinghy starts going in an opposite direction? Does that make sense to you?

[B]

It's always hard to say there are currents, whether it's tidal or just if it's near a channel where there's a flow of water. Oftentimes you'll get rougher seas. When you have the current going one way and the wind blowing against it, it'll create a bigger chop. Is it possible? Sure, it's possible. I don't know that the current would be that strong, you know, but I wasn't there and I'm not, I'm not super familiar with the exact location that this took place. It does appear that there's some type of channel there between the islands, but I don't know that one would have, would have been any more, just from the very get go that the boat didn't, she didn't fall overboard and the boat continued on for 50ft.

[A]

Right.

[B]

If she took that kill switch with her, that boat pretty much stopped right there and she was right there. She didn't shoot out of the boat 20ft or was ejected from the boat because the boat only goes two, three miles an hour. It doesn't even get up on plane.

[A]

You know, you were just saying if it was your loved one, if it was your child that went overboard, I mean, wouldn't you jump in after them or, or lean over and grab them? I mean, isn't that just common sense?

[B]

I certainly don't think I could sit there and watch my, my wife drift away from me into the water one, because I wouldn't want to face the consequences when I did catch up to her if I took too long. Yeah, I think that, I think it raises questions and I've heard people say, you know, I think it might be a little bit unfortunate and this is not a knock against Internet sleuths or anything like that, but a lot of people's perception of investigations comes from television. And when you work in law enforcement and people have watched a thousand episodes of ncis, they feel like, why is this not wrapped up in 48 minutes? And don't you have that computer thing that just shuffles through the pictures until it gives you the person and you know, that is TV and real life does not work like that. And so again, I don't want to in any way question necessarily what the Bahamian police are doing, because I'm sure they're doing the best job that they can. But there are questions that are maybe specific to like boating or diving or the water that if an investigator is not really familiar with, they may not even know to ask or recognize the, the, the misrepresentation in his statement because they're like, oh, well, he said he did this. And the example that comes to mind in this particular case is, I've heard it said that I believe he says that he tried to ship the oars and the, the orlok broke.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I've looked at pictures that I could see of this dinghy and I don't even see oar locks on the dinghy and the oars, which are different than paddles that I see in the dinghy in the dinghy are paddles, not oars. And the difference being in that on the. An oar is typically straight at the end because you're doing this motion. A paddle has a T at the end so you can grip it and you use leverage to pull it through the water. And what I see in the dinghy in the pictures that I've seen are two blue handled paddles, not oars. That's an inconsistency that I see in the story.

[A]

Yeah, it's a major inconsistency.

[B]

I see that or recognize that as somebody who's spent a lifetime on the water in boats and dinghies. And if you're an investigator and maybe you're just not familiar with it, you may not. That may not register with you. And that's not their fault. That is just not all investigators have the same level of experience. And I certainly don't know about airplane or helicopters or things like that, but I know about boats and I know about diving in the water. So sometimes it helps to have people that have that information or that knowledge to just be present to start poking the holes in those stories.

[A]

Yeah, well, and that is a massive hole. And you know, one thing I was going to ask you was if that, if, if he did, for whatever reason, have an. OR on this particular boat and it broke, wouldn't they be able to find that ore? I mean, that ore would float, like, maybe, maybe not.

[B]

You know, there's a lot of assumption of about like, wouldn't it do this or wouldn't it do that? And, and the truth matter on the surface as something small. You know, I've heard mention of like the cushions and dry bags. Yes, they should float if they didn't get run over by a boat, if they didn't get. If other things didn't come into play. And we don't. You'll know, you won't know that, but those are certainly possibilities.

[A]

Well, you know, and what keeps on coming to mind is we don't obviously, and this is the truth in all the investigations that we look at on the land and at sea, is that we're not privy to the conversations that are going on with police, on with witnesses who would have been in that area. But from your experience, I mean, I would just seeing how the, the boating community is together in these areas, you know, you don't normally just put your sailboat, you know, anchor it by itself because it's not safe, you know, and, and you usually stay within groups.

[B]

Not necessarily. I mean, that's. To somebody who if somebody doesn't sail, you think, oh, well, wouldn't you stay with other people? It's safer. But sometimes sailors, by their nature or boaters by their nature, sometimes like to anchor by themselves because they don't want to be around people. So I don't know that that would be the case. There's a lot of things that. If you were in the community, I mean, yes, it's a community and certainly they pull together and help each other out and do things with each other. But at the same time, there are oftentimes, especially in today's age of. Of YouTubers and people that are doing this, putting out content, that some of that content is like, look at us all by ourselves on this little piece of paradise over here. So I don't think that it's a safer or equal assumption to say that automatically they're always going to be in groups, because that's not necessarily true.

[A]

Well, that. Thank you. Because I think of them as like, moving, you know, at least anchoring when they're in these places. But I see what you're. I just. It's a busy key. Like, it's a busy area. There's the Abaco Inn. There's like a lot of boaters. And maybe that's what I should have said is there's just a lot of. There's a lot of people out on the water in this area, and it's a popular time of year.

[B]

It's not a remote island with nothing going on on it other than palm trees and coconuts. I mean, it's. It's an established safe harbor from the weather conditions that were currently going on. So, yeah, you would probably have a significant number of boats in the area seeking refuge because it. The weather here has been blowing out of these quite a bit lately. So they are looking for a. A blockage from that weather to just sit on the hook until they get better. Better, nicer weather.

[A]

And so hopefully some witnesses are going to be able to tell us something about this. But. But so far, that is one thing that I've seen glaringly not come forward. Are. Are people that were there at that time that can tell us what they saw. I just want a description of what she had on. I'll be honest. Like, I. I literally have had people reach out to me saying, what did she have on? And the fact that we don't all know that with a missing poster here is Lynette Hooker. This is what she had on. This is exactly what we're looking for. And this is where she Was last spotted. That blows my mind.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, keeping in mind that we've become the news and we kind of have fallen into this idea that everything is captured on video. Right. We have ring doorbells and you have security cameras and it's cell phones and all these things where we've become so used to seeing the video come out. That's part of the. The. The good or the bad. This being the Bahamas, maybe that's not going to be as much. Not to say that there won't be any, but it may not be as prevalent just because it's a much more laid back sort of, you know, vibe in the Bahamas. You know, it's not like, well, we got to make sure we have, you know, there's just not that kind of. I don't say there's not a need for it, but it just doesn't appear to be a place where that's going to be as common as, say, Fort Lauderdale or, you know, South Carolina or somewhere here in the United States. But yes, I do think it's difficult. Witnesses would have seen them wherever. Apparently, if the story holds, the statement is that they were at dinner at a restaurant for however long. They got into a dinghy and that was then. That's it between that restaurant and wherever the. Their sailboat was. I mean, it's getting kind of dark. Is anybody paying attention to the. You may not have anybody that saw anything then. That's just a fact.

[A]

Would you. Would you have any running lights on that little dinghy or is that. Got a flashlight kind of. That's what he said. He had a flashlight.

[B]

You should have. I mean, if it's a boat with a power, whether it's electric motor or not, and you're running at dusk through dark till dawn, you are supposed to have running lights because it indicates to other boats your direction of travel so that they don't run you over.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Does everybody have running lights on their dinghies at night? No. Should they have at least some kind of light to indicate that they're there? Yes.

[A]

Yes. Isn't that tough? There are so many things that you're supposed to be doing on a boat. I've got a question for you about the Coast Guard. They have brought in. We understand, and we've been told that this has moved from rescue to recovery mission. And they brought in a cadaver dog. What is a cadaver dog doing on the scene for them, do you think? How's it work on the water?

[B]

So, believe it or not, there's a couple things A cadaver dog. Obviously dogs sense of smell and scent is, is far greater than, than humans. The smell of decomposition is very, very strong. And cadaver dogs, if it's, if the, if it's settled in around a shoreline or if even in, in a, in a lake, they are capable some dogs, not all dogs are created equal. Some are better than others. But a good handler and a good dog on the bow of a boat could in theory be able to pick up or track scent for a deep decomp. Little tough to do if it's still blowing 20 knots because the wind is carrying that scent along the water. So that's a, that's a tough, that's a tall order for the dog to make sense of that. But it's not impossible. There's a guy in northern Florida who trained a sea otter to dive and smell because sea otters, they technically they taste it, not smell it. But he can discover decomp underwater and signals to his handler where that is happening. So there's a lot of tools like that. They run sonar and things like that. But that's a little harder because it, it, you really have to be in tune with what you're looking for. Not to say that that's impossible, but it's not certainly going to pick up a pair of sunglasses or indicate, you know, oh, there's the sunglasses. That's really going to be a visual search. And the Coast Guard are really good at surface calculations. So they take datum from weather conditions at the time, all those things. They plot if it happened in this vicinity based on the conditions at the time, tides, currents and what and so on. It should, the thing should have drifted in this direction. So that's at the surface. So as long as it's at the surface, that's really it. That same formula does not work for something that is subsurface.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So they're very good at that when it's a surface thing that they're looking for. So that may indicate like this dry bag or things like that may wash up and they can have a general idea where you might want to start looking for that.

[A]

A friend of theirs with boat knowledge said that the dinghy only had a small battery powered motor, but that where they went now, I think it was like more than two miles he said from the seal. But he says if they made it to shore and back, it would have taken just about all the battery power for a little. A small battery power does that. I think his point was that made. That was kind of a hole in the story is like to be taking that dinghy that far. Would you normally take a dinghy that far to go all the way from Abaco in, all the way down and then all the way back up when you've got a little battery powered motor like that, would you be worried about that?

[B]

I'm not really familiar with specifically what the motor is. I know that it's an electric motor and I'm not sure of what size battery he had in the boat. I mean Obviously it's a 12 volt, but how large a capacity 12 volt is that? Is it lithium? Is it traditional? Was it fully charged, was it half charged? And nor do I know the specs on that engine and what it's. Its runtime is. Right. Because electric motors will have, have I'll use. We have diver propulsion vehicles. So little scooters that pull us underwater. They have two batteries in them. And I know that it has that. The capability to run for up, up to right up to 14 hours at half throttle. Full throttle it drops by like three quarters. So where you know, how hard were they running? Was it fully. There's a lot of things that, that are variables there that. Okay, as an investigator I would want to know that stuff. I would look at the make and model, how long can it run, what was the condition of the battery and try and backtrack that and see if the story makes sense.

[A]

Well, and also a commenter on our YouTube when, when I put up a, an episode about this with, with Dan, someone commented that and I've never heard this and I'm just asking that if you push on the button, if the kill switch is off, there is a mechanism where if you literally put your finger on the power button and hold it there, you'll get some power.

[B]

I don't know that this particular motor can do that or can't do that. But I mean you lost your kill switch on your boat. Like a traditional kill switch. You can sit there and hold the, the kill switch part out with your fingers and start the boat and continue to drive. It's not, it's not fun and if you, you're going to let go of it 50 times in the process. But yes, you could technically do that.

[A]

That's like one of those. I'll do whatever it takes to get where.

[B]

I need to know that that engine is so strong or so powerful that I would have even been worried about the engine because I just, I know the, the story is that she bounced out of the dinghy, but even that like she didn't bounce and land 20ft away. She literally fell backwards. She literally fell backwards. If the story is she fell off the boat because she got bounced off the side. She bounced and just barely cleared the edge of the boat. So it's not like she was shot away from the boat because the boat was going so fast, because it just doesn't go fast. So I don't think she's that far away from you.

[A]

I'm gonna play something for us real quick. Tell me what you think about this, if you think this is believable.

[C]

The wind blew us apart so fast that I think. I think she tried to swim back to the sailboat, to back to our sailboat, which was probably, I don't know, thousand yards or something, but the waves were three foot. And I was trying to ship the oars, and one of the pins on the oars broken, that dropped over the side. And I was yelling for her the whole time. And I yelled to her that I lost an ore. And I threw the anchor out and anchored the dinghy. And yes, yeah, I yelled. I threw her a flotation cushion that we used to sit on the dinghy, you know, right after she went in. But I didn't. I couldn't tell if she got. She got it or not. So after an hour of calling her, I could have never heard her voice. And powerpo came by and I. I raised my flashlight on my phone, and they were so fast, it, you know, it didn't even see. And there's another one came by right behind it, sort of five minutes behind it. And I had. I grabbed the players by then. I came with. I had two flares, and they didn't see the flares.

[B]

I guess I have heard that. I think he's speaking to a friend in that recording, right?

[A]

It was recorded without his knowledge.

[B]

Do I find flaws in the story? I do, yes. My. My personal opinion as a curious investigative person, Yes, I find flaws in that story. Based on. On my experience, I think, what would you know? And again, I believe that the Bahamian police have done this. Right. I believe that they've. They've gotten a statement from him. Right. And what you're doing in this investigation, and I want to give them the time that they need to conclude it because this. This is not a. A TV show. This is real life. And so I believe they've gotten a statement from him. The idea behind that is that this is your statement. Yes. This is what I. This is how the. The facts of what happened, happened. Great. You're going to sign on to the saying that this. There's nothing else that you'd like to add at this point to what you've just said? No, this is it. I'm telling the truth. Great. Now, the investigator's job is to take that and start to poke and question and pick apart and, and look at these recordings and what he's telling friends. I mean, what it says to me, he's a very inconsistent storyteller, for sure. And so that, that in and of itself, to me raises the, the, the idea that he's being deceptive. Are parts of the story true? Probably. Are parts of the story made up? Probably. So, and, and trying to figure that out. And I think that's what investigators are doing. And, and not to lose sight of the fact that the Bahamas, much like the United States, they have very similar laws. Right. We're under the same sort of history of English law. So, you know, he has as much. People don't want to hear this when it's a case like this, but he has rights to. They have to make sure they're following the law and doing it correctly so that if this does come back and go to trial, the, the evidence is going to hold for the prosecution. Right. Because then it becomes the defense's job to say, well, you got that unlawfully, you didn't have a warrant, you didn't have the right to do that. You'd have the. So I think at this time, I believe probably they're building a case. I don't think that they're feeling like. Ah, right. I will say accidents in water, drowning specifically, all too often are immediately assumed to be a tragic accident. And very rarely is it looked at with some sort of. Like something is not making sense here. Maybe something else is at play. Right. A drowning victim who drowned just because they couldn't swim and a drowning person who was physically held underwater. They're both going to show that their cause of death was drowning and you can't tell the difference. The difference comes from, well, they had like this weird mark on their neck which will show up after they've been drowned or they've got a big cut on their head or some other factors. And those are the, the evidentiary things, you know, where they say, well, when, you know, finding the victim will help tell the tale, you know. But I don't necessarily believe the statement. I believe that his attorney, well, no body means no case. I don't believe that either, you know, she didn't vanish off the face of the planet. I don't think. I don't think she was taken. I do believe that she. She was. She's in the water or was in the water, you know, and where that is now is hard to put together without either having the last seen point, which I said is the most critical piece to have, or then if you don't have that, the reference point between point A and point B, and when you move point B, well, then where was it? And that's very hard to pinpoint because you point out at the water and you go, he was right about there. But if you're 100 yards off or 50 yards off, that's a huge difference. You know, people say needle in a haystack, but I'd rather look for a needle in a haystack than a needle in the water, because in a haystack, you just get a metal detector and sweep a little bit away at a time until you find it. The water is a whole nother complication that is very difficult to conduct good, slow, methodical searches. It can be done. It just takes a lot of time, a lot of training, which unfortunately, dive teams in general don't often get a lot of funding or recognition from departments to get the training so that they can do it, because it takes a lot of effort, planning, training, and time to get it done and do it right.

[A]

I mean, Alex, what I hear, and I don't want to belabor it, but what I'm hearing from you is that the fact that he moved his sailboat immediately after this horrible whatever event this was with Lynette, that she vanished, is a really big problem.

[B]

Well, he says it. He says, the last I saw her, she was. She looked like she was swimming for the boat, which I mean, I hate to point out, but a thousand yards or a thousand meter, that's a kilometer. That's a long ways to say, like, I'm just going to swim over to my boat. But at least if the boat was still in the that point, you say, okay, we'll draw a circle with the boat being the center. That is 1.5 kilometers, and that's where you start your search. But if the boat is gone, where do you start that drawing that line from? That is a big. To me, that is a big. Like if my wife was last seen a thousand meters from my boat. I'm sure as hell not moving my boat until I've checked the thousand meters radius around my boat before I decided. And then even then, okay, well, I'm going to push it out further. But if this was the last known fixed point that I saw between me and my wife and my boat. I'm. I personally am not going to move it.

[A]

I have to ask, like you were saying, I see. I hear flaws in that. What else are the other flaws that I should be pointing out in this conversation?

[B]

It's. Well, it's hard to say. I. I mean, part of it is. I think the initial thing that I hear as a. As a. As a curious person and as a. As a law enforcement person, is that I just don't hear it in his voice and as he's telling the story, what I would expect the emotional response to be. And there's been a lot of talk about they're not crying and they're not doing. It's not the crying that. That is, to me, the flag. It's the tone and the voice. It's the. The panic state of, like, what am I going to do here? This is unbelievable that I've just like, I can't find my. So that's a flag to me, the. The shipping of the oars. Like I said, I only know from photos, so I don't know if there's oarlocks on that boat or not. It doesn't appear to have them. It may. I. May be wrong, but I certainly know that what I see in the boat are paddles, not oars. You know, the throwing of the cushions, the. Like, the immediate response. I think in one point he says he anchored. Another point he says he drifted for seven hours. I don't hear a lot of consistency. So I'm hoping that the Bahamian police have locked him into a statement and they are now backtracking that statement going back to where they. The last known location, which is the best place to start. And I'm sure that is what they're doing and they're asking those questions and what did you see? And what was she wearing? And I hope that the public understands. And this is. It's. I know it's difficult in a world where everything is instantaneously given to us to give the law enforcement some patience and some understanding that there is somebody doing those things and they are asking those questions. Give them the time to do their investigation, and if you have something to help and something to offer that is. That is helpful, bring it forward. But if. If all you want to do is. Is just criticize the slow pace at which you think they're working, that's not helping anybody. It's not helping Lynette's family. It's not helping the investigation. And so give them the opportunity Because I want to believe that, you know, there are great cops all over the world that do the job every day, that aren't in the news for making dumb decisions or bad mistakes, that put in the work to do a good job, and they care about the things they're investigating. And I'm sure the Bahamian police is just the same as where I work as anybody else works. There are people there that want it to be resolved. They're a tourist place. They don't want this hanging over their head any more than anybody else does. And they want exposure for the family. People ask me all the time, you know, we dive and recover victims. I've. I've done cold cases. Whereas a 50 year old cold case where we covered a. A woman and her three year old, and people are like, well, you know, to me that's just as important. I get it. It's a 50 year old case. But somebody in that family now at least knows definitively what happened. And I can promise you that the vast majority of cops out there want to bring that closure for the family.

[A]

Do you think there's any chance that Lynette is still alive?

[B]

It sounds to me like this is a case of foul play how it sounds to me. I would like to, I guess, if I was hoping, and you know, I do always tell people, you know, hope is not a tactic, but if I was hoping. My hope is that if. If they had a argument and he pushed her over the side and she's healthy and can swim. Part of me hopes that she does have that dry bag in her passport. She swam to shore and she said, I'm done with this. She's gonna, you know, I do. I want it to be that storybook ending. Yes, I. I do. I think my gut is telling me that unfortunately, and sadly, that's probably not going to be the case, as is often the case, but I guess if I was to hope for something, it would be to hope that, that she's having a margarita at a bar somewhere right now, just being happy to be free of it. She's gonna reach out to her daughter and tell her that everything. That I'm okay and that I'm just. I'm just gonna lay low for a little bit.

[A]

From your mouth to God's ears, Alex. Thank you.

[B]

You're. You're very welcome. I appreciate you having me on. And, you know, I hope that I've answered some questions for, for your comment, your. Your viewers and the people out there. And if I've offered any kind of help, I hope that I've offered some, some, some little maybe insight that maybe will help in some way.

[A]

What are the red flags that stand out to you in this case? And do you think that Lynette Hooker is going to be found? I'd also love to know what fascinates you about this case. Tell me in the comments below and I'll be sure to reply. And thank you for all of the nice compliments about our show. You know, it's not just me alone. It takes a village, as they say. Say, and thank you to all of our fabulous guests who answer my crazy questions. Keep watching and listening.