FIRST ON FOX: Data from Brian Hooker’s phone led U.S. investigators to plan to search a new area in 25-foot-deep Bahamian waters for missing Lynette Hooker, and Bahamian authorities have approved the search, sources familiar with the investigation told Fox News Digital.
Brian Hooker and Lynette Hooker initially left shore at Hope Town in the Bahamas at around 7:30 p.m. on April 4, with the husband telling local authorities that rough waters caused his wife to fall off their dinghy. However, GPS data from Brian Hooker’s phone obtained by authorities allegedly shows a discrepancy between what he first told law enforcement, sources familiar with the investigation told Fox News Digital.
That discrepancy prompted federal U.S. authorities to seek permission from Bahamian authorities to search a new area in the Sea of Abaco with 25-foot-deep waters, the sources added.
A source familiar with the matter told Fox News Digital on Thursday that Bahamian authorities have approved the U.S. request to send a team of divers to search the new area.
LYNETTE HOOKER MISSING IN BAHAMAS: TIMELINE OF MICHIGAN WOMAN’S DISAPPEARANCE, HUSBAND’S ARREST
Authorities obtained data from Brian Hooker’s phone, specifically GPS data from a marine navigation app that was used while the couple was on the dinghy, the sources said.
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The couple was headed back to their sailboat, the Soulmate, their full-time home in retirement, when Lynette Hooker fell overboard, the husband told Bahamian authorities. They frequently sail around the U.S. and Caribbean, according to their social media pages.
Karli Aylesworth, Lynette Hooker’s daughter, told Fox News Digital that the Coast Guard has asked her family to submit DNA samples to help with their investigation.
Mo Monestime, a local boat charter captain on Elbow Cay in the Bahamas, where Lynette Hooker vanished, previously told Fox News Digital it’s hard for him to imagine a scenario where she isn’t found.
“Not being found, that’s the mystery. It is very hard to disappear, because, again, we’re so close to land,” he said. “So if you do fall overboard [and] drown, somebody will see you the next day. Again, we can see bottom, you know? I’ll be driving the boat, I will see stingrays, I will see turtles, so I would see a human body. Somebody would see something. Somebody would say something, like, ‘Hey, we just saw something strange in the water.'”
“It’s very hard to disappear by accident,” Monestime added.
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The Coast Guard seized the Soulmate in early May and took it to Fort Pierce, Florida, but it was recently moved to Fort Lauderdale, as authorities couldn’t pull it from the water.
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Brian Hooker was detained for five days by Bahamian police after his wife disappeared, but wasn’t charged.
Brian Hooker’s Michigan-based attorney asked Americans in an earlier interview to give him the benefit of the doubt in an interview with ABC News.
“I would ask those watching to treat him the way you would want to be treated, to give him the benefit of the doubt, and to consider that not all of us, nor you, considering your own relationships, the way you speak to one another, we all handle things in different ways,” Crystal Marie Hauser said.
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Fox News Digital reached out to the Coast Guard and Hauser for comment.
