Lynette Hooker’s Sailboat Went Dark for 11 Hours the Night She Vanished
Lynette Hooker disappearance: On the night Lynette Hooker went missing in the Bahamas, the Soulmate’s AIS tracking system — the transponder that broadcasts a vessel’s position to other boats and to authorities — stopped transmitting for eleven hours. It went dark. Then it came back on.
If it had failed permanently, you’d assume a hardware malfunction. But shutting off and restarting is what happens when someone disables the system and turns it back on later. A maritime expert quoted in reporting on the investigation called the shutoff “highly suspicious.” There were three additional blackout periods in the days that followed.
Lynette, 55, from Onsted, Michigan, and her husband Brian had been living aboard their sailboat Soulmate and documenting their travels on a YouTube channel called The Sailing Hookers. On April 4, the couple left dinner at the Abaco Inn in Hope Town and headed out on an eight-foot dinghy toward their anchored sailboat. Brian told police Lynette fell overboard with the ignition key, the engine cut, and the current took her. He paddled to shore and reported her missing hours later.
Investigators found GPS data from Brian’s own device that contradicted his account and pointed to a different location in the Sea of Abaco. The Coast Guard seized the Soulmate at sea in a federal interdiction operation off the Florida coast and sent it to Fort Lauderdale for forensic analysis. Evidence is being processed by the FBI at Quantico. The case is being investigated as a possible foreign murder of a U.S. national. A $33,000 thermal camera on the Soulmate — capable of detecting a person in the water — was never activated that night.
Lynette’s daughter, Karli Aylesworth, has alleged Brian had a history of choking her mother and threatening to throw her overboard. A 2015 Michigan police report documents a domestic incident between the couple. Brian has denied all wrongdoing and has not been charged. Coast Guard divers returned to the Bahamas in June to search the area identified by the GPS data, deploying underwater vehicles, drones, and a cadaver dog. The search has concluded. No body was recovered. The investigation remains active.
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