Editor’s Note: The video in the above player is from a previous report.
U.S. Coast Guard investigators were seen with cadaver dogs at the Bahamian boat yard where missing Michigan woman Lynette Hooker’s husband was the day he reported she fell overboard from their boat, photos show.
The photos, shared with NBC News by Captain E. Hoyer of Abaco Executive Tours, show several people in the boat yard with dogs. A U.S. official familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News that that dogs are cadaver dogs.
The sighting comes a week after the U.S. Coast Guard requested permission from Bahamian authorities to reopen the search for Lynette Hooker after new GPS data evidence from their boat, the Soulmate, appeared to contradict what her husband Brian Hooker originally told investigators of his whereabouts on the night of her disappearance.
Investigators were searching “in the wrong area” of the Sea of Abaco based on the information Brian Hooker gave them, a U.S. official familiar with the investigation told NBC News last week.
An initial statement by Bahamian authorities shortly after Lynette Hooker went missing included that Brian Hooker said she fell overboard from their 8-foot dinghy in rough seas with the boat key with her, forcing him to have to paddle to shore.
Lynette Hooker’s daughter Karli Aylesworth told NBC News last week that she provided DNA to the U.S. Coast Guard to aid in their investigation into her mother’s disappearance.
In an interview with NBC 5 Investigates shortly after Lynette Hooker’s disappearance, Aylesworth described her 56-year-old mother as an experienced mariner who sold her Michigan home four years ago to live on a sailboat and that it seemed unlikely that her mother would “just fall” overboard. She said her mother and stepfather, Brian Hooker, had been sailing around the Gulf of Mexico and recently sailed to the Bahamas.
Aylesworth also described the relationship between her mother and stepfather as “rocky at best” in the interview with NBC 5 Investigates. Brian Hooker’s attorney rebuked those claims, saying Brian Hooker denies any wrongdoing and has been cooperative with authorities.
The daughter of a missing woman whose husband claims fell overboard from a boat in the Bahamas told NBC 5 Investigates’ Bennett Haeberle that she has more concerns and questions than answers.
