Transcription
Hey everyone, I'm Ashley Banfield and this is Drop Deadad Serious. Welcome to the Southern Depot. I'm at my mom's place in uh Florida. I'm recording this on Monday, April 27th.
I've got a lot to tell you, like so much. Um I am still following the Lynette Hooker story. I like to call it Lynette's story because Lynette is still missing. Brian Hooker has amsed from the Bahamas where he said he would never leave her until he found her. Uh, he swears she bounced off the back of his dinghy in terrible seas. Um, but you know, one by one we're able to tear his story apart.
If you are just coming into this story, welcome. Hi. Uh, please subscribe. It's nice to have you here. And then go back through my other episodes because we have discovered a lot of stuff that does not add up. Every single day we find something new that basically flies in the face of Brian Hooker's story about how his wife disappeared in the Sea of Abico off of Elbow Key in the Bahamas. Um, I I mean I I couldn't even in an hour list all of the things that don't make sense. But in this coming hour, you are about to hear um some things about Brian Hooker. We're going to go back over some of the things in his story and some ways that we believe it would be possible, could be possible to turn his live aboard yacht called Soulmate into a ghost ship, which can't be seen, can't be tracked. We're going to talk about that all in just about a minute.
Um, there's also a couple things I need to tell you about. If you've been following the story up till now, you might have heard the story of the blue dry bag. Um, basically the rescuers who picked Brian up off of his marooned location on uh the shores of Marsh Harbor the morning after he drifted nine hours after losing the wife off the back, you know. Um, the weird thing is is that witnesses on the shore said he had a yellow dry bag that morning, but the rescuers who got him on board, like welcome to the rescue boat to say, "Let's go look for your wife." Uh, one of them remembers an aqua colored um, dry bag. And one other rescuer remembers a royal blue, slightly bluish colored dry bag, kind of tracks with the aqua. Another one can't remember the color of the dry bag at all. Another one remembers a yellow one. So there is a big mystery when it comes to the dry bag. But we wondered if maybe a couple of dry bags might have been inside one another. Maybe one in another or two in another one. And we found a blue dry bag um on board the dinghy that we showed you a picture of in in a prior episode and thought, I wonder if this is the the dry bag in question. I went back to the rescuer and I asked that very question and he said to me, that's not it. Absolutely not. And he remembers the texture. It was like a a more plasticky textured dry bag, not a loose sort of uh ski jacket material dry bag. So, he has a good memory of that royal bluish dry bag. Still trying to piece together the story of the dry bag and how this fits in. And I think we'll get there at some point, but for now, it's just another piece of the puzzle floating out here till we find a a spot where it fits.
Also, you are about to learn a couple of things about technology. The amount of technology on board Brian Hooker's boat with Lynette on board as well and the kinds of things he was capable of doing with such technology because he swore up and down to his friend who he could not stop talking to after Lynette bounced off the back of the dinghy. Uh, swore up and down. didn't even know how to load WhatsApp onto his phone. Guess what? Brian Hooker was a telephone repairman and installer at AT&T. Yeah, that's just the least of the information that I found out about Brian Hooker's technical savvy. Uh, wait for it because Brian knew a whole lot about how to mask your position electronically. I'm going to get to that in just a moment, but it's going to fry your loaf. Um, when I learned the things that Brian has done in his past to mask his location and mask his position, uh, I nearly lost the top of my head, but you're going to find out in just a moment. I'm getting there.
Also got some information about his or pins. You know, he said I was trying to row and one snapped off and I lost it. Yeah, I've been saying to you, I have not been able to find a receptacle anywhere in the pontoons of that little dinghy because they I just couldn't see them in any of the social media. So, I don't think he ever used as as used the ores as ores. I think he used them as maybe paddles at some point, but we have found them finally. The reason we couldn't see them is because they were covered up by those seat floaties. the same seat floaties, the green of which he threw to Lynette, he says, trying to rescue her, but I don't know if she ever got it. It's not even a rescue thing. It's just a swimming thing. You can flutterboard with it, but it's probably not going to keep you up. It's got some weight and girth and heft to it. So, maybe he thought in his story, this won't fly out in the wind like a life jacket would. Nevertheless, there were two life jackets in the bottom of the dinghy. And I've got news about those, too. more possibilities that show you are full of because there might have been something on those life jackets that instantly could have attracted attention. Get into that in a moment.
Before I go any further, I just want to mention that you guys have been amazing at bringing us tips and leads. And if you know anything about this case, about the lay of the land, if you have video or photos from April 4th at any point looking off into the sunset off of Elbow Key towards Lobers, you may have caught all the boats that are in Anchorage in front of you and there may be an incredible clue right there on your photographs. dropdeadseriousinfogmail.com dropdeadseriousinfogmail.com we will keep you anonymous but if you think you may have a lead or if you know of anybody who's in the Bahamas in Elbow Key area at that time on that date sometime around 7 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. The night before Easter, Saturday night, April the 4th, you or your friends might be sitting on a gold mine of forensic information. You may have caught a crime on camera. You may have caught a crime on video. You may have seen something that you didn't realize. Maybe it's a flare. Maybe there was no flare. Any information you may have, again, dropdeadadinfo@gmail.com. you have been incredible sending us in your information so far and we are so thankful.
Um, also if you want to be anonymous, CGIS tips, that's an app you can download uh for anonymous tips to the Coast Guard. I know they will be extremely thankful as well. Uh, one thing is they cannot share with us. So if you want to send to us um you have to send to both of us. You can't send it to them and expect that I will get it. So, you do have to send dropdeadadseriesinfo um atgmail.com or you can uh go to cgis tips as well and um make sure you send it to me too. Um you got a QR code on your screen too, so that should help.
Um, also, there's something to the social media pictures of Brian and Lynette's dingy that we didn't catch before, but my guest tonight pointed out to me, and he's going to tell you why it's so important. You've probably seen the little tiny electric engine that they use. Well, there are two different ones. We have discovered two different engines. By the way, my mom is wandering or you'll hear her and she might be wandering in the background at some point. So, never mind. Anyway, um so there are two different engines on the back of the dinghy. One from several years ago that is sort of a lighter gray color and then one that's more recent that's a black color. There's something important about that that you're going to find out shortly. And I think it's really um significant that you learn about the way sailors behave and the things that sailors keep and why you can't be a hoarder as a sailor because you don't have enough space. But there are things that you definitely will hoard and you will learn about that in just a moment.
Then I also learned something more about the speed and capacity of that electric engine. Up until now, I've been telling you it's about 2 to four horsepower, right? Yes. But it can go 2 to three miles an hour and you'll have a lot of run time. Way more than I said around four hours. Oh, no, no, no, no. More like 30 hours. If you're only going 2 to four miles an hour. If you're going four to 5 miles an hour, you can go up to four hours. There's that four hours that I thought about, but there's another speed you're going to hear. uh how fast you can go and how many hours of run time you're going to have at that. It all matters because he says he floated for nine hours and I keep wondering what the hell were you doing in the nine hours because you didn't float to Marsh Harbor in 9 hours. It's impossible. The wind, the waves, the current, the tides, none of that would have been you would have probably hit Lobers with the wind and you sure as wouldn't have taken nine hours to hit Marsh Harbor if in fact the wind was even blowing as hard as you said it was blowing. So, wait until you hear about the specs on that engine. It's really important.
By the way, remember that whole business about not knowing the tides that Brian said in his phone call to his friend Blaine Stevenson. Remember, I don't know the tides and you know the currents around here. And I said, "Horshit, you sure did know the eb tide, etc." in another message to the the rescuers. Well, we found something else that Brian once wrote, and this is about sailing under a bridge. It's always very scary when you got a a high mast and you need to sail under a bridge. You need to know. You need to know how high you are. You need to know the tides or you're going to break your mast off going under a bridge. So, here's Brian. Ready? Let's read along. We had to follow the outgoing tide going under six bridges that are nominally 65 ft above the high tide mark. Couple problems with this were a full moon the other night that made the tides very high, about an extra foot higher. Oh boy, you sure know the tides because you know what the moon does to the tides, bro. And the bridges are not as high above high water as they say they are on the charts. And so some of these crossings under were within inches. And then a ah emoji. That's a guy who knows tides and knows what the moon does to a tide and knows how important tide knowledge is when you have a mast going under six bridges. So once again, Brian, you're adorable with your I don't really know the tides or the, you know, currents, you know, around here. No, really, you've only been there nine weeks. So, yeah, in the most shallow part of the Bahamas, other than one other, you know, location south of uh of Nassau, the Sea of Abico is one of the most shallow areas. And if you don't know the tides, you can't go in there. Not with a keelboat. Lynette even sent a picture uh looking up the mast saying too close for comfort.
But now to the piesta resistance and that is that I am so incredibly thankful to an anonymous tipster who reached out to Lindsay and me with a story about uh Brian Hooker's past at AT&T. And we have now spoken to two different sources um who confirmed that Brian Hooker was released from his job at AT&T not once, not twice, three times. He fought like a tiger to get his job back. The first time and the second time. Um the first time, this is a bit of a rumor uh among employees, but not fully confirmed. There might have been a bar fight and he got his job back. that he was released because of possibly a bar fight. Got his job back. That's a possibility. Allegations, can't prove it. Don't know it, but that was something that some of the employees were talking about. And the second time, I don't know what caused the release. But the third time and the final time, y'all. Y'all, Gro was released from AT&T for tampering with the GPS on his van, trying to mask his position, mask his location from management. Can we just all let that sink in for a hot effing minute? Brian Hooker is techsavvy enough to know how to f with the GPS on his van to make sure that management maybe didn't know exactly where he was at any given time. Well, now we're talking, aren't we? Here's a guy who can't load WhatsApp on his phone. That's what he was telling his friend. Horse Not only could you load WhatsApp on your phone, you're a telephone repair man by trade and a telephone installer, so you know a thing or two about communications. And that isn't even the half of it. Lynette even had a Facebook post about Brian geeking out right now because he's networking the boat. Brian knew a lot about technology. Brian got fired, got let go, got released from AT&T because of his ability to manipulate technology.
Sources tell me there was a huge meeting among employees just three days after Lynette went missing because Lynette worked there, too. And by all accounts, she was really, really well-liked. Super nice. Everybody said the same thing. They really liked Lynette. Brian, not so much. Mostly what I heard about him was that he was manipulative and kind of a dick. Uh in that as a union steward, guy who kind of runs the union aspect of the complaints of any of the employees go through him to management. Apparently, he just could not want to with management more. His whole mission was to make management like suffer, make it difficult for management. These are the reports that are coming from employees, right? that he just anything he would do anything to screw the man to screw management even if it made it difficult for the guys and gals that he worked with. Manipulative and mean. That's what that's what the reports come back at. There was one time he met Lynette there. He met Lynette at AT&T and there was one time in a in a room full of people where he just kind of blurted out, "I'm marrying the kid." Referring to Lynette as the kid. She's only like three years younger than him, I think. Like, so you can see kind of the I don't know, maybe he meant it cute and fun. Maybe it was more like the kid cuz, you know, she's less than or she's less than me anyway. She's less than most of us. She's the kid. But that's the report that came back to me.
There's more. One source who was very close to Lynette said to me that Lynette in one of the episodes when she was leaving Brian Hooker because this happened many times. Friends, family have all said the same thing. She uh would leave him and allege abuse and had photographs of bruises and say, "I'm never going back." And then went back. Um, one of these episodes when she left Brian, she confided in one of my sources at AT&T who said she was in tears and she said that Brian had blown through his 401k and she just didn't know what to do. So now we've got the potential at least in that moment in time and this is about four years ago where one report from a source says he's blown through his 401k. Lynette's got a sizable 401k. her mom said $650 or more thousand dollars. So, I always follow the money. I always look at the money. I don't say it's always the the the end all be all, but it's another piece to the puzzle, right? Lynette's got a sizable 401k. Sources who were close to Lynette who said in tears, I've left him again. He's blown through his 401k. That's not good. It's not a good fact. In the business, we call them bad facts. But Brian's not charged with anything yet. He was released because he didn't have enough evidence at the time in the Bahamas to hold him any longer. That doesn't mean you don't get more as you keep looking into things. Tick tock. Tick tock. Brian.
Anyway, um so this is the significance of the background of Brian Hooker. Super smart with technology, super manipulative with technology. So, I guess the question is, when you're telling your friends you don't know how to load WhatsApp on your phone, are you are you masking your actual abilities to mask your yacht? I'm going through a million different scenarios in my mind, right? I'm going through something that Blaine Stevenson, a very good friend of Lynette and Brian's, who is no longer much of a friend of Brian because of all the kaka that he's been fed in this long long voicemail that Brian well long long conversation that he recorded with Brian. Um, that doesn't add up. There is a period of time where Brian Hooker and Lynette Hooker's soulmate yacht went offline. Okay. It it stopped its connectivity with satellites. Now, yacht folk will tell you that can happen. Sometimes it's cloud cover. It's temporary. Sometimes there's a problem with the satellites and everybody's affected. That didn't seem to be the case here. But the times that Brian's and Lynette's satellite uh disconnected, and I'm going to show you the actual um ship tracking uh chart, and my guest Blaine is going to explain this in a moment, is right around 9:30 at night on Saturday night. 9:30 at night, Saturday night. If you believe Brian Hooker, he's already been floating for an hour and a half. He's already on the way to Marsh Harbor. never made it back to the yacht because ah my wife bounced out, took the key and the ore broke and floated away and what do you know? Couldn't find her. It was too dark and the waves the sea was angry my friend. I'm floating off to Marsh harbor. Somehow an hour and a half after that boat lost connectivity with satellites. How? Why? Sometimes boats run out of power and they just shut down. Okay, got it. But you're about to hear from my guest who says that was never the case with their with their yacht. It's never happened in the past. So why suddenly that night went offline at 9:30 at night and it came back online? Want to take a guess? 8:30 in the morning. You know what was happening at 8:30 in the morning? Brian Hooker had been welcomed onto the rescue vessel from his marooned location way over on Marsh Harbor. And they came back to his yacht. They brought him back to his yacht for the first time since catastrophic events the night before. He boarded that yacht with one police member from the Royal Bohemian Police Force and the two of them went down below for an hour. He's picked up at Marsh Harbor at 7:30. Takes about 20 minutes or so to cross over to the boat. So now it's 7:50. They board till 8:50. They're down below for an hour. Well, that would encompass the 8:30 switched back on. If that police officer is asking them questions and he says, "Oh, hold on a second. I just got to look over here and maybe get some lights and switch on the power." It's back on. Just another piece of the puzzle, my friends. Just another piece of the puzzle. But a more skilled yachtsman than I mariner than I is about to uh explain all of this for you and make more sense of it than I can. But I am telling you that is weird AF.
Is it possible? And if so, how can you turn your yacht into a ghost ship but keep your location for all eyes to see in one spot? If you game this out, it is possible. And that's about to happen. Blaine Stevenson is about to explain to me using a dinghy. Could you scrape the electronic guts up out of the yacht, place them in the dinghy, anchor the dinghy, put some power on there, and go ship your way to do what you need to do, maybe in deeper water or just maybe with some power. You're going to hear all of that in just a moment.
There's something else I want to show you. Um TMZ obtained video of a fellow sailor or motorboat operator. I don't know what kind of vessel uh this person was on, but he was wearing like glasses with cameras and I don't know if they're Google or they're Meta or whatever they are. He was recording from his glasses and he's calling over to Brian on Soulmate from his yacht. Okay. And what stood out to me about this is this was recorded on Monday, April 6th. So it's only been, you know, a day since all this happened, right? And so you would think you'd be a bit apoplelectic that your wife is still maybe floating out there or marooned on a shore somewhere. And so this neighbor boat is speaking to Brian and Brian is having a conversation about trying to bring up his anchor and move his boat on his own. It's usually a two-man job. Someone's got to be out at the windless getting the anchor up while the captain is at the helm kind of backing up and getting off anchor. And it's super hard to do it on your own unless you've got uh your own electronic windless switch at the helm, which they didn't have. And that's what Brian is kind of explaining to this other boater. Uh, but what I noticed was that the boater seemed more empathetic and upset about the loss of Lynette than Brian even mentioned. It was almost like business as usual. I got to move this boat. Take a look.
[Video Clip]
That's just I don't know. To me, it's really telling that the guy with the camera glasses is like, "Sorry, man." And Brian's just like, "Yeah, the wife fell overboard and I got to I need to move this boat and I, you know, I'm only a oneman show here." It's like, it's only the next This is Monday. Lynette went out Saturday night and Brian floated all day Saturday, Sunday morning, all night and was marooned and then they're looking all day Sunday and this is just Monday. So, I don't know. Everybody grieves differently, but you're not even grieving at that point. You're still in panic mode trying to find your wife. There's so many things that should have happened. so many things because the amount of equipment that Brian Hooker has on board and the knowledge that Brian has of the equipment that he had in his hand, his own phone, uh it don't add up.
So, with all of that in mind, um I had such an insightful conversation with Blaine Stevenson. Blaine, as you may know if you've been following the story up till now, uh Blaine and his wife Marne are also cruisers, live aboards. They have been on their boat for years. They haven't even tied up to a dock in two years. Uh, currently they're sailing down in St. Martin and they are struggling with this because they are friends with Lynette and Brian. Brian actually called Blaine and just sort of dumped out 40 minutes of information which they were recording because they couldn't keep up keep up writing it down fast enough. But then ultimately during this long verbal loggeria, they started to realize what the actual f is going on right now. Nothing sounds right. So Blaine's recording has been the source of so much information for us and for police as well. And he's also a skilled mariner um being a liverboard. And so I have bounced off so many possibilities uh questions, theories, ideas, everything off Blaine. And so with a bunch of the information that I had amassed up until now, I called Blaine. I said, "You need to help me sort through some of these things, specifically the ghost ship possibilities because talking it out with Blaine, it is entirely possible." Here's my conversation with Blaine Stevenson from aboard his yacht as he's at anchor um off St. Martin.
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Blaine, how long uh do you know Lynette and Brian had u planned to be in the Bahamas. And when did they get there?
>> Um I know they got there about nine weeks ago. Um I remember the the Facebook post of them crossing. Uh they did a immigration uh check-in and I made fun of Brian for cutting his hair and looking good for immigration. Uh so I know it's been about nine weeks.
>> Any idea what their plan was? Was it a short stop, a long stop? What they want to do there?
>> Uh they're like most of us voters where the plans are written in tide, you know, written in the sand at low tide. Um they talked about heading down to Beckway and down to the southern islands where we are. Um, and I feel like that was kind of most of the conversation that I that I followed on Facebook with them. Um, and uh, I believe in our messages there was the idea of hooking up down island. Um, and then I feel like in the last few weeks it kind of shifted more towards they were heading back to Florida.
>> But they had like a cruisers permit, right? Like explain what that is.
So, when you check into the Bahamas, and that's been a really big point of contention for like this last year, Bahamas changed the policies and rules, and they had a one-year cruiser permit for their boat. Um, but they have a 90-day visa for the person. So, like when we check into a country, we have to check our boat in separately than we do our ourselves. Um, and at any time any one of these countries can say the boat's allowed or you're allowed, but you're So, it's it's a separate check-in process, but their boat is was checked in on a one-year cruiser visa into the Bahamas.
>> And and they had indicated in Facebook, if I remember correctly, that they were thinking about 90 days and even sad that that was too short.
>> right? But they had they had the cruiser permit for a year.
>> Okay. So, there was a Facebook post that somebody else made and I only can assume that it's a friend of Lynette's because she was kind of commenting back and forth and it's her Facebook page. Um, but it was disturbing. I mean, it it sort of I'll just paraphrase it. It said, "I thought you would have murdered each other off by now, but you both look happy."
>> Yeah. I mean, looking at the situation now, it's like, holy, you know, I'm expecting to see that person on a podcast or in news at some point soon, right? Like, um, because that was a pretty damning statement. But also, I mean, it's social media. We all make jokes, but I don't think anybody would make that joke about me and my wife, you know? I mean, everybody has their their quirks, right? People are going to assume I'm going to fall off the boat because I'm clumsy. Um, but they're not going to assume me and my wife are going to get into a fight. So, I think I think that just shows a little bit more of the history that we were a little blind to.
>> There's also some talk on Facebook about the kind of technology that this couple had on board. I'll just list off a few things that I've been able to pick up from all of their social media posts. Um, they talk about having a drone on board, and that's going to matter when I ask you about what you can do with a drone in an emergency in a moment. They had a 360 camera that Lynette regularly used. You hold it out and it it sort of disappears the po the the the selfie pole that you're holding. So it just looks like the the camera's above you. Um they had an underwater camera. I think it was the same 360 camera that might have actually gone underwater. They could they could shoot themselves out of the water and then down under the water all in the same shot. Um and and Lynette was very social media savvy and good at editing, great at posting. This was not a couple that didn't get tech.
>> right? So, out here, I mean, we make a joke with me and my wife that um we're right in the middle cusp. We're not part of the Young Cruisers Association cuz we're late 40s, but we're not part of the paper chart boomer generation either, right? That is mad that everybody's out here on social media. Um they they were more tech savvy than we are. Um they were on the socials before we were. Um they Brian I mean Brian wired up his own solar system himself. Um I think one of the pictures that you keep seeing in all the news reels is him putting two PVC pipes together but that was the structure system for his side solar panels. Um he you know he had that I I think it's a Garmin smartwatch like um you can look at their you know their Navionics their tablets you know they had all the equipment they they they had more equipment than we have.
>> I I'll tell you what, I've kind of knocked him a couple of times for the comment that I believe he made to you in the big long rambling I think 40minute message uh that he was you know or at least phone call that he made to you where he said something along the lines of and I'll paraphrase I don't know the tides or the currents around here. I mean look you are a live aboard sailor. You don't sail a keelboat in the Sea of Abico, which is four, five, eight feet deep, when you're drawing somewhere around four feet without knowing the tides and knowing the currents. Am I right?
>> No, you're not going in there and not knowing it. Um, you might be there for a few days and lose track of it. I will say that, right? Like if I'm I've been here for two weeks, I know that I'm good at high and low tide regardless. So, I'm not looking at the tide today. I'm not knowing what the tide is today. But he was moving in and out of that area that same day. He moved from Tahiti Beach to um his anchorage where he was that same day.
>> or or or uh I don't know if he actually went all the way down to Tahiti Beach with the big boat. I know he said he went down with the small boat, but I do know he was further north at the Firefly Inn and picked up anchor at 11:30 in the morning and about 20 minutes later was setting anchor not even a quarter of a mile south down the beach outside this the um the Abico in which at which point you can go even further south and go to Tahiti Beach by the little dinghy and then come all the way back and go to the dinghy go with the dinghy to to the Abico in. Yeah. I mean, he was traversing, you know, the western shore.
>> that little half mile to 8 one mile section. Yep.
>> And the thing that, you know, caught me and we talked about is at roughly 9 or 10 that morning, the guy who recorded him for TMZ, um, he's telling that guy he needs help raising his anchor because he needs a foot of water underneath his boat. So he's waiting for high tide. That is 10 hours before he talks to me and doesn't know what tides are. And then an hour after talking to me, he messages search and rescue and suddenly knows about the eb and the flow and matte k and montage k and all that. So all in one day, he knew, didn't did know tides and currents in a 12 hour. I love the part where he knows eBide, you know, and it already said, I don't get these tide things, you know, it just didn't make any sense.
>> Well, again, like I said at the time, you know, when we were recording it, we were there to help a friend like, but you can't listen to that recording after three weeks of searching for Lynette and and not understand that somebody was practicing their story on you, right?
>> Like I I feel like I was being used on that aspect. Maybe not to record it and put it out, but I think he was definitely practicing his story and see what would fly.
>> Well, what what seems strange to me, and I've been in this business a few times, so it's not my first rodeo uh with with crime, and if there is a crime here, which that hasn't been established yet. However, there is a criminal investigation. Um, that was verbal loggeria if I ever heard it. Uh, most people who are looking for their wife don't just talk for 40 minutes straight about all the things to do with them. They don't have time for that. And to that effect, I want to ask you about the drones. Brian has a drone.
>> Yeah.
>> Aren't drones about the best thing that you can tell searchers? I've got a drone. Let's get it up there and search the shores.
>> Oh, especially if you look at the timeline of events, right? So, he was out with search and rescue in the morning. Um, and then search and rescue took him back to his boat, but his ding, he still didn't have his dingy. So he's stuck on that boat for Sunday night and Monday morning until until they brought him back his dingy, helped him lift his anchor, and he went to Marsh Harbor. How many flights did he do? Right. I mean, I would have had that if I'm stuck on the boat, I'm honestly I would have got on the cruiser's net and gotten everybody. I can't say there's a single thing he's done since the incident that I would have done. But if he had a drone, he's a super tech savvy guy. I mean, you you fly it. You're looking. You're looking. And I don't know that he didn't, but he doesn't tell anybody he did either. Right.
>> Well, I can tell you this that that was not ever a part of the immediate search and rescue because I have spoken to both of the guys who spent time with Brian Hooker on the morning of his catastrophe. And never once did he bring the drone off of Soulmate onto the search and rescue boat and say, "Let's fly this. let's go over to where this happened and start flying it. I'll take you guys. Let's fly my drone and look around. He never mentioned the drone. He didn't pick the drone up off the boat at 8:30 in the morning and bring it onto the the rescue boat and say, "Let's launch this." It never came up.
>> Well, and and there was a part of me that as you were saying that I'm like, "Well, you know, if there if it's really windy, you don't want to fly a drone." Um, but I'm I'm also replaying that interview of the guy who came up and talked to him the next morning. you could hear each other clearly. There was no wind. His boat wasn't being drifted there. There it was glass, so he could have been flying it then. Um, but he also didn't need to spend an hour on the phone with me. I mean, yes, we're friends. Yes, we voted together. Um, but you can't for me when I found out like he left Carly a voicemail and then spent 45 minutes on the phone with me.
>> Yeah, that was uncomfortable. And Carly was uncomfortable about the tone of the way she put it as, "Well, your mom fell in the water. I'll talk to you later." There wasn't a lot of empathy or panic or fear or worry or concern or consoling. There was in Carly's estimation, there was next to none of that.
>> right? And I don't understand the timing of it all. Like, he obviously had his phone. He says in his recording he has his phone with me, but I mean I think we're at that point with Brian now where we just dismiss what he says. But we know he had his phone to call Carly, to call me, to be on Facebook Messenger to message Dan, right? Like he had this technology available to him. Why was he not using it to get voters together in the area? Right. How about this? How about I was just gonna say how about the technology and his phone before we move on from that.
>> He is a tech savvy guy. Okay, we've already established he worked for AT&T. He was a phone installer and a phone repairman. He wired his own boat. He was extremely savvy when it came to the boat. There's that message that you found uh from Lynette saying, "Hey, Brian's busy uh geeking out and and networking the boat, you know, like he knows he knows the business of phones, right? And yet he's floating across to Marsh Harbor for 9 hours with a cell phone in his hand that says on the top, for emergency calls only when you don't have a SIM, all you need to do is hit and maybe it'll cost you more because you've got the American plan. Or maybe you'll just get the emergency call you can make even if you don't have a SIM card. That's the kind of guy who would know that.
>> Well, and I was talking to somebody from Cricut Mobile because I don't want to speak to things I don't know. But evidently, you can still dial Cricut Mobile to spend money. Right. If you want to upgrade your plan, that call is going to go through on roaming network to get a hold of Cricut Mobile to upgrade your plan to you. The idea of an eight hour shift. And again, if he did make these calls and he did try anything, he hasn't brought that up. And I think that that would be something that you could have easily go to. It's not going to ruin an investigation to say, "Hey, here's my call log. Look, I tried to call emergency. I know that doesn't show up in your call log, but look, I tried making these phone calls. I tried calling Lynette. I tried. It's not
>> Didn't you Didn't you also show me a picture of your phone that has no SIM card, and it says up top for emergency calls only?"
>> Yeah, I did until I broke it. And now I'm using that phone and I immediately I called I called my carrier and I'm like, "Hey, I have this phone that doesn't work from an other carrier. I just dumped my phone in the water. Um, can you turn my SIM into an ESIM and put it on this phone?" And it was done in an hour. Now I lose all my apps and everything and I have no clue of previous conversations and all of the stuff.
>> You had connectivity.
>> You had connectivity to them >> within an hour. It's something that a man who works in the business of phones would know if I were a betting man.
>> Yeah. I mean, especially a guy who I mean, it's public knowledge. If you look up AT&T versus Brian Hooker, um you will see that among other things, he was terminated for disabling GPS devices in his truck. Um I I don't know how to do that. Um, you know, he he knows how to work his AIS. He knows how to work his radar. He knows, you know, he knows more about the electronic side to sailing than I do. I mean, he taught me about about that part of it, you know. He taught me to trust my equipment. Um, I I do still got to credit him to this day for getting me through a hurricane u with his knowledge. So, um, yeah, I would say he's very tech-savvy.
>> Well, let's talk about that issue about, uh, being fired from AT&T or released from AT&T for, um, manipulating the GPS unit on one of the fleet uh, vans that he worked with. Um, that's somebody who was trying to hide his position. That's someone who knew how to manipulate a GPS device to hide his position. If you adopt that into this story, this becomes very disconcerting about what happened between the last photo we've seen of him, which is 700 p.m. possibly heading down to the dock to leave in the dinghy with Lynette, and then suddenly uh 9 to 10 hours later washing up on Marsh Harbor with this preposterous story. Let's talk about how one might have perhaps made it to the yacht with his wife, tied up the dinghy, gone aboard, something goes sideways. This is all supposition. Okay.
>> I don't know that this happened, but if it did, could you, Blaine, could you make your yacht go into a ghost ship and keep the AIS location at that in that dinghy anchored to that spot while you beat a path to do something nefarious with your big boat to deeper water?
>> Your AIS data would require a 12 I I would have to know his model number. Okay. But AI has data and if he's if his is connected through what's called Nema, right? If it's part of his whole network system on his boat, um how it receives its power. If it's a you know, I'd have to know if it's Rayarine or Garmin or whatnot. But basically, in a sense, our boats are just 12vt systems. Some are 24volt systems. Um but everything plugs in. I do believe that there would be a logged event of the Starlink being unplugged to be plugged in on the boat on the on a on a dingy or whatnot or um there'd be an event of it going offline. Um as far as everything else that you have, that's just systematically going through and turning off your electronics. I can make my boat go smoke. To answer your question, I could there would be logs of it. Um, you know, my Starlink will tell me if I had a millisecond outage five minutes ago, it'll tell me that on my phone. So, if I disconnect it for five minutes to set it up somewhere, that's going to be a little blippet. Somebody's got to look for it. Um, you know, when we look at his AIS data, it shows that he never moved. But if you actually go into the logs on my ship tracker, you can see that like his AIS was
Offline from 9:30, I think it was. I I don't have it in front of me.
9:30 at night. So, Saturday night, 9:30 p.m., suddenly his goes offline, not to come back online until 8:30 the next morning, which is right around the time that the search and rescue boat idled up next to Soulmate, tied up, and he boarded his yacht for the first time since the catastrophe. So, it's it just something kind of stinks in Denmark there.
So, and for me, yeah, that that's obviously what I I hooked up on is because then I went back through the logs because I don't know what his normal routine is. Do they turn their AIS off at night to save power? Um, but then I went back through his logs of the previous month and it had never been offline for it it for more than two to two and a half hours.
Lane, they're not supposed to be on board at 9:30 at night. At 9:30 at night, he's already an hour and a half drifting over to Marsh Harbor, never having reached Soulmate. So, what happened at 9:30 at night on board that boat when nobody was supposed to be on board for it to go offline but suddenly come back online when he boards his boat with the search and rescue folks the next day?
Well, and that's what I was thinking about when I said that. Um, do they normally turn it off to save power? I'm not. So then I started looking at it's been on at nights. So it's not that his battery bank can't handle his AIS staying on all night, right? So it's not you don't see the routine pattern of it being turned off every night, which means they leave it on every night, which means that his battery system can handle that load overnight.
It's not going to go off on its own.
It's not going to go off on its own. Um, now as far as how the satellite systems work to the IIS, the Coast Guard's going to know way more about that than me, but looking at his log, there is definitely on that night a clear distinct difference from any other night in his AIS history.
Well, I'm I I can't put two and two together because I don't have that kind of tech knowledge. I have some mariner skills, but not this many mariner skills. I can't understand how suddenly at 9:30 at night when any other night the boat can handle uh that power and it wouldn't just shut off on its own. How did that boat shut down at 9:30 at night when he's supposed to be, you know, floating past Lobers at that point, maybe setting off a flare at that point? It's all very curious. And I think one by one, the pieces are coming into focus of how preposterous his story is.
Blaine, there's complete groups out there. I mean, um, we ran into a group on TikTok that actually is the one that found some of this information, right? Like, there are people that are metadata diving way beyond my tech level skills somewhere up in Brian's level of tech, right? Cuz I mean, this is a guy who has an electric dinghy motor. He's gone through a couple of them. Like, so everything about him is wanting to be technology based. Um, he's not your average 59-year-old who's like, you know, give me a two-stroke. They don't sell those in America anymore. you know, where's my sex kind of guy. Um, he is, you know, smartwatch, control my boat with, you know, with my watch kind of person. Um, and so it's really hard when you live that kind of life to not leave that exhaust, I think is the word you use.
For us, I'm not a tech-savvy person, and I would screw it up if I tried to go ghost, but there's also a lot less on my boat. Um, and the battery logs for me, if if I was the investigator, we all have manage our battery systems out here down to the hour to know what we're, you know, what we're consuming, can can I make water? Can I do a load of dishes? Can I turn on hot water? We have to watch our power systems and what's draining and what's drawing. And that's all logged. And it would be very interesting to see. And what scares me is it it'd be interesting to see what his battery system did that night. Was it a slow trickle down like there was nobody on the boat until the sun came up and the solar start raising it back up again? Or are there power events? Did somebody come onto the boat, have a shower, turn on the water pump? You would see that spike in power. Um, you know, did they come in, turn on the lights, stuff like that. Um,
you can turn on the water or have a shower, any of that, right? Cuz normally if I ever got back up on a sailboat after being out all day or even going into shore and back with the spray or whatever, I'd probably rinse off on the back of the sailboat cuz there's usually like a little, you know, shower nozzle on the back of the transom. Or I'd get up and maybe get into one of the little bathrooms and um I would take one of the small shower, a quick one because you really conserve the water. But quick one doesn't matter. It registers.
Yeah. And we set up our boats to where we don't have to do it like you do on charter, right? So, when we come back from a night out or being on the beach or whatnot, I mean, we literally walk through the boat, um, flip on the anchor light if we didn't turn it on before we left, right?
And then turn on the water heater for both sides cuz like me and my wife both use separate sides of the boat for our bathrooms. So, we turn on the water heater for both sides so we have hot water. Um, put the dinghy up, right? There's a for ours, it's a winch that would log it. I think his was hand, but he would plug in his dinghy motor that would suddenly start draining power. You would see an event on his power lock. Um,
he'd plug in the dinghy motor. You're right. You're right. Again, this is all if they made it back if they made it back to Soulmate. They're
none of that business, right? None of that business happened with her bouncing out in two to four foot seas. It's all That didn't happen. The weather wasn't like that. So if he did make it back to soulmate with her, there would be power events in the normal course of boarding your boat and doing the things you normally do,
right? Yeah, totally. I mean, I could tell you when we boarded our boat last it just it's so it's so definitive. Um, because we have to I mean we run out of power. I mean I have the same bragging bragging right me and Brian do. We have not been to a dock for the same amount of time,
right? He has not been to dock since he's seen me. Yeah. We've only been to a dock once since we seen him. And that was to take a generator off our boat and throw it on a dock and then leave.
Um,
dude, I don't know how you did that. All I keep thinking is where can I get to a dock to get another uh tank full of fresh water and you're somehow not having to do that.
Well, that's partially out of fear because you know that the only thing that's going to hurt a boat is land. So, the more you avoid it, the better. Um, and but that also goes to show like if he was to have I've seen a lot of speculation online that he moved soulmate in the middle of the night. And I'm following that theory to a degree in my head and working through it, but there's no way he's navigating those waterways without a breadcrumb trail on some digital device because he's going to need to navigate
unless he knows his way. I navigate at night every night that I'm on the water from memory. Never do I use electronics ever. Now that's a lake that I'm very familiar with, but they had been there for 9 weeks and see Abico is small and even the sort of the way out is not huge and and that I listen I got to ask you though about moving the the the yacht because it's a 46t catch. So what does it draw? Four or five feet.
I think it's a sloop. But I I I just have to be a voter on that one. Single masted. So
I heard that it was a catch, but um I'm only going on what I've heard. Okay. And so
but what do you think? Draws about four or five feet.
I think six.
Six is a lot in the Sea of Abico.
Yeah. It's it's a it's a Hunter 450 passage.
So I can tell you what the draft is right now.
Okay. So, he would have to be very knowledgeable about where to go because there's lots of five foot areas. Yes. Um, and you know, you can't, you know, you can't fight mother nature underneath you. If you're banging up against that, you're going to tip over. If you hit your keel on land, you're going to tip over and need rescue. Some people, you know, really struggle with
the Bahamas. The land of the bombies.
What's that?
The little rocks underneath. They're marked on the charts. Like even if the average depth somewhere is 6.7 or 4.5, there's a rock or a coral head that is marked on a ch. It's called we call them bombies, but um
bombies.
Yeah,
I call them reefs, but okay. So listen um so the if he had wanted to turn that boat into a ghost boat, my question for you is this because I don't know how this could happen, but I know it could in my my gut. Is there a way to strip the electronic guts, the finder guts out of the yacht and say put them in the dinghy and anchor the dinghy right down beside where you are and say hook it up to a 12volt battery so that those guts keep going but in the dinghy and then pull your anchor up and turn into a ghost ship and go do your business in the dark of night for I don't know nine hours then come back. Pick the guts back up. All the electronic guts that send your pinging location out as though you have never lost left that spot. Your your location has been pinging from that spot just from the bowels of the dinghy instead of the bowels of your boat. Is that doable?
I can speak to Starlink if he had a mini. Yes, completely easy. If he had his his anchor alarm is a tablet, which I I think they use a a pink tablet for their anchor alarm, um then yeah, you would just put that in the dinghy. It wouldn't go off. It would show that they were there the whole time. Um the AIS data would have to go offline,
but it did.
Okay. But you you're asking me in a hypothetical situation, can you make the boat go dark? And I'm going through each system. If it's Starlink mini that runs off 12vt or even if his Starlink is the Gen 2 and he has the adapter for it, he could easily plug that up to 12vt. So his Starlink would show at the same spot, his anchor alarm would show at the same spot. Um, everything else on the boat would all be personal handheld electronics. So if he put all those in the dinghy then yes. The only thing I can't speak to is the IS but the IS during that period of time was offline as far as I can see. Yeah. As far as you and I can see because we're mere mortals but I always assume that the power of the United States government uh is much better than what we have. I think they've got technology that supersedes what we're able to to dig out as sleuththers at this point. I I hope so anyway because it just feels like that's something that could be done especially by someone who was let go because he was manipulating his location and masking his location on his van with GPS. That speaks to somebody who has the tendency and the knowhow to do such a thing
in in the speculation situation. I mean he would know more than me, right? like he would be the subject matter expert that we would be asking to this question to if he wasn't the subject of the investigation and that's that's the crux of it for me. He knows more about it than I do. But I could see
from our systems on our boat how we would do it. Um
let me move on to this other topic. And by the way, I keep looking behind you because I feel like is that Martineique behind you? Like what's your stern looking out back? I can see some twinkly lights behind you.
Oh, it's St. Martin. Uh that is sandy ground St. Martin. Yeah.
O to be you right now.
I know we're going to be in Guia and St. Barts and then Martineique in the next next month. So
take me with you.
Come on down.
Okay. Well, don't tempt me. Okay. The next issue I want to get to with you, I have been trying to assess the the ore situation and you were kind enough to send me the manufacturer's look at the exact dinghy that they bought and you were kind enough to point out to me that those ores and their pins are proprietary to that boat. Meaning, you can't just grab any ore and use it in that boat. You got to use those pins in those receivers, right? Those receptacle holes. And I could not find anywhere where I saw the receivers for those ores because I was looking in the center of the boat because they're not in
Thank you. Explain the ore situation on their on their dinghy.
Okay, so the Boss 8.5 dinghy is designed to where the orlocks are backed by the engines. If you look at a picture, which I'm sure you'll throw up on a graphic here, um there are two little metal silver pieces on each pontoon back about a foot from the end of the the dingy. Um on the back,
really far back, by the way, for pins, really far back.
Um and then so you would put those pins in there and you would sit on the bench and you would row it backwards, right? So the front of the boat, the pointy part of the boat is behind you and you would row like that.
And the problem I had and the reason why I started researching this is because Ryan, Brian is a very good painter. He painted this picture for me of him trying to row the boat, but then the ore snapped. I can picture that in my head, right? As sailors, we can all picture that until you look at his dingy and then I'm like, I don't see where the receptors are. Well, because they're covered up by the cushions that they're always sitting on. So, then I went to the manufacturer. I found it. Then I went through some old pictures of their boat and I could see that they do have the pin holes, but they don't have the bench anymore. They took that bench out right off the bat. So, then I'm trying to figure out and still like, okay, he's telling me the story of how he tried to put the ores into the pin locks and broke one, but how was he rowing it without a without anywhere to sit?
Um, and then I started thinking about it too, like if you're looking for somebody in the water, man overboard drills, which are beaten to all of us as Boers, you never take your eye off the person, right?
So, at no point would you want to be rowing backwards towards the person you can't see and back like that whole concept then struck me as your boat's not designed for it. you're covered the holes that it would go into. The amount of time it would take for you to get set up to row to break that pin, you would have found your two life jackets and your anchor in that amount of time on accident just moving everything out of the way so that you could do that setup that that picture you painted for me. Right. To break that pin in the hole as he described, he'd have to be sitting on the bench trying to row. But there is no bench. So
So I've said you'd have to be on your knees, but that damn anchor is in the way. So that damn anchor that you're trying to move in order to row would be in your mind to throw overboard.
Right. Right. Everything that all the other safety and every time I see the bottom of their dinghy, there's just kind of there's stuff. I mean, we all are that way. I think I got two bags of trash in the back of my dingy right now. Um,
but you're not going to kneel down, turn your back to your wife, put or and then try and kneel like that when you could just kneel over the front and do a back and forth like you would a stand up paddle board. We talk about also what's behind him uh when you're driving. You hold on to a throttle of a little engine. We've seen a lot of social media, but you pointed out to me there are two different uh electric engines that the hookers have used on the back of their dinghy and correct
that would mean there's probably a spare on board because as you have aptly noted, sailors don't just throw that stuff out. That's critical stuff. It might be down in the engine room. There should be a second engine on board.
Yeah. So, I don't know the history of the engine. Um, and I actually found this by accident in arguing in your comment section. Um, back at the very beginning when everybody was trying to argue about the key and you know, you could pull a key out on an outboard and run and I was trying to explain people it was electric. So, I was trying to pull up pictures to show people and it it that's when it dawned on me that like I'm looking at two separate motors and two separate social media posting groups here. Um, and so he had one that was more of a torpedo gray and orange color scheme, which made me think it's a torpedo. And then this the the newest one I see is an NT300 looking dingy. I mean, I can't zoom in enough to get numbers, but uh, as far as I can tell, yeah, they've gone through two different iterations of electric motors. And yeah, I we don't throw things away out here. We just don't. Maybe he did. Um, you know, that would be complete speculation on my part, but I don't know. I'd keep a backup.
When you're living aboard, having a spare of everything is pretty handy. Um, especially, you know, something that propels you, an engine. Those are really critical. Not like having extra, you know, extra uh, treasures or luxuries. This is really, these are essential. You wouldn't get rid of that. And listen, I'm not saying you didn't. Maybe they did, but the chances that there might be one of those spare engines on board, there should be perhaps. And if it's not, that could be a problem. And since you brought it up, you were also kind enough, thank you, um, to give me the specs on that um, potential NT300 engine. And I have been saying all along that little tiny electric engine maybe goes two to four, you know, miles an hour. There's actually a couple of different variations on how fast you can go and how much power you burn. So the faster you go with that engine, the the the fewer hours you have to to be out and about and the slower you go with that engine, the longer you can be about. Do you have those offhand? I have them in front of me, but I'd love you to sort of talk the audience through that.
So yeah, so you have a power curve much a power curve of um ideal optimum range u of where an engine likes to operate at. And the NT300, I think it runs off a 36volt battery system. Um,
that's what it says.
And then what what would happen in that scenario, especially since it's lithium, is um you're able to operate in full range, maximum amount of time of the battery and then it just cuts off. It's like your Ryobi drills, right? It It's not like the old flashlights where you can bang them a couple of times and get the light out of it. It's like once that once that drill battery is dead, it's dead. Um,
when it's gone, it's gone.
Yeah. Once it's gone, it's gone. Um, so the lithium battery pack for the NT300, if if he has been driving that thing for a couple of years now, he's going to know where his optimal range is, right? Um, and we don't know what size battery he had because his old torqued, um, there was a there was a battery pack that slid in, right? So, you could calculate how much battery. But the NT300 has a cable that comes out to it. you put in your own battery pack or their proprietary battery pack, but it's essentially 36 volts. You could have, you know, three car batteries. His dinghy isn't big enough for that, but you could have, you can't calculate his range and limit it based off of that that dingy motor because he could have had any. I thought it was interesting when I saw if you go slow, they call it low trolling speed. If you go two to three miles per hour, which is what I assumed is roughly what that engine could do, you got 30 hours correct,
of run time. I thought maybe only four hours, but they got 30. So that's interesting. If you go faster, and if you're in a hurry and you're trying to do bad things, you're probably going to go faster. If you go cruise or mid power, you're going four to five miles an hour. Still kind of slow, but quicker. and you've now you've only got four hours. That goes down to four hours. So that comes down real fast.
If you want to go full power, six to six and a half miles an hour again, you know, you'll get over to um you'll get over to Marsh Harbor in 40 minutes at that speed, right? You only get by that point, you only get one to one and a half hours. So not much. So, it's just really interesting to note the speed that he might be using at any time and the length of time he knows he's got before that battery is dead at any time of day, whatever he might be doing.
And the only thing I would add to that is they base that off of a those numbers off of a standard dinghy. And there's nothing standard about his dinghy. Um, so I'm sure his speeds are a lot slower.
Explain that.
Okay. So, uh, a rigid inflatable dinghy is as it's what RI stands for, rigid inflatable. Um, and that they're rubber sides. The whole design on them, almost anything is more modern. There's a kind of a reason why Boss went out of business. Um, but his is just a bathtub floating through the water. It's hard fiber glass. It is only 120 pounds, but those the when you look at the front of the boat, it doesn't have a deep V in the front like a lot of the ribs do for getting up on plane,
right? So there's he kind of beats the water into submission with his dingy
where the rest of us right on top of it. So yeah, I don't think because when I saw those stats, I'm like, okay, maybe he was going fast enough in the dinghy at five knots to hit like awake from another boat to cause somebody to bounce. Um, but not he's not moving that dinghy that fast with that amount of weight in it.
Yeah. And if something nefarious happened afterwards and and none of Brian's story is if if none of Brian's story is true, he's got not a whole lot of time uh to ping around the Sea of Abico in that dinghy in the dark. Um he's got if he's mid power, he's got six to six and a half hours, but he's already been out. They've already been out down to Tahiti Beach and then all the way back another quarter mile maybe half mile into Abico in and back out again and maybe all the way back to Soulmate. So the the battery use has already been um at play during that day. So it's not going to be full battery power at the time anything nefarious might have happened um on board Soulmate. So, now that we've gotten sort of the battery issue out of the way, um I want to talk a little bit about the life vests because when we spoke with Pete Calling, who is one of the fire and rescue guys who was first to spend some time with Brian, um he mentioned that he saw two life vests in the bottom of the dinghy. And I checked back with him and I said, "Pete, did you see them in the bottom of the dinghy or did you see them stowed in the front stowage area that's behind a little, you know, stowage door?" And he said, "No, they were right there in the bottom of the dinghy."
Um, and then you brought something interesting to my attention about Coast Guard approved life jackets? They almost all, if not all, have one very specific feature right up here close to them. What is it?
Yeah, the whistle.
The whistle. Um, so I've been trying for a couple of nights now to get permission from everybody in the anchorage to do a sound travel over water test, right? Cuz where I am is pretty much the entire length behind me, which you can't see at night here, but two land over there is the entire length of that Abico Sea area. Um, and so I wanted to know, I do not know how far sound travels on water, but I know I can hear a dog barking on that beach in the right.
I can hear sound traveling on water a mile away where I'm from. And I'll tell you something, the higher pitched it is, the more you're going to hear it. and he's already put himself on record with fire and rescue that where he was where he says this is about the area where Lynette went overboard. He says it's a thousand meters to soulmate. So we're talking about excuse me 1,000 yards. It's 1,000 yards. So we're only talking about 1,000 yards here. I'm pretty sure you can hear a whistle of 1,000 yards over water.
Yes. I'm so the information that you just gave about the life vest being on the floor is does it it just doesn't add up to me. Like at some point was he floating and then just taking inventory of what was in his boat and second guessing what he should have done? Like why would you pull the life vest out when you're about to land on shore and you're just drifting anyways? Uh but but the whistle is just one thing. I mean it's also the flares. Um, you know, you're getting people who are taking pictures of sunset. There are people there has been no picture of a flare. There's been no tourist who was like, "Is that a SpaceX launch?" You know, there's there there hasn't been and that's why from my very first interview till now when back when I was like, "Hey, find out who saw the flares so we can get I was trying to use that to pinpoint a location of where she fell in, right?" Well, now it turns out he knows where she fell in and now I know the area better, but there's no the the flares and the whistles and everything he had available to him. There wasn't a logical explanation ever given on how you forgotten everything you knew in the last three years.
Oh, and as a United States Marine. And you are not in a screaming wind. And you are not in big seas at all. It was fairly calm. It was glass calm at exactly that time, just a quarter mile down the shore. You know, I've seen it. We've got video of it being Yeah. So, you know, we already know that that's That whole the seas were angry, my friend. They were not. And so you could have just jumped out cuz it's about four or five feet of water where that dinghy was scooting along the shoreline. You didn't have to go out the channel. You're not a deep drawing vessel. You're drawing about six inches. You can scoot along closer to shore and fly, you know, go closer like the crow flies. So you probably could have stood on the bottom where where this whole thing was purported to have happened. So the whole thing is just none of But if you're and also if you've been in an area for 2 months,
uh you learn the depths to cut the channels in a dinghy.
Yes.
Um so you know when we make this tea coming out the channel um you know there are the voters out there and and I I see them in the comment section. I understand like you know oh well you follow all the rules and you go out to the end of the tea you know out through the channel you go that's fine but those are also the people who are wearing their life vest and not drinking and driving and you know right so the rest of us
in a dinghy
in a dinghy we know to cut the corner right around the first post or whatever post it is you know you don't know when you first get there I'm not going to say you do right but then you watch a dinghy do it you're like oh okay I know I can go that far now and then the next time you watch another local going by in a johnboat that cuts the corner even more.
But also, honest to God, come on. I mean, look at when you draw 6 in and you see that you've got three feet of water all the way off to a certain point, you're taking that route. You're not going all the way out way out into the middle of the sea of Abico because the channels marked that way. You know by the charts where the water is safe. That's how most people navigate a dinghy going to shore. you know that that's just kind of the boater's way.
Yeah. If you've if you especially if you've been there two months I will admit when I first get somewhere I'm staying in the middle of the channel. I don't know because I can't afford another propeller. I I mean once you've once you've run your propeller into the ground once you you you learn that one. But um the again I guess if there's anything I want to say is every part of this investigation or these anybody who's trying to help or anybody who's trying to figure this out or they're just following the story is just ignore everything Brian said and say we have a missing person seen at 634 here
and work from there. Right? Because I can't find a single thing that he said to me to be truthful. Yet it wasn't dark. It w and he says it wasn't dark. That's the worst part about it. He says in his audio recording me it was 10 minutes before sunset and then the sun went down and then we just I mean the picture he paints were we're we're going through this timeline. But we have to go through it at a warp speed. Because if I just sit here for 10 minutes, if I just put a camera on for 10 minutes to show people how long 10 minutes is, it's it's remarkable. I mean, basically, when you cut out the commercials, it's an entire Big Bang Theory episode.
Um,
well, let me tell you as well. I actually sat there and watched it personally in that spot and it's getting dusky around 7:50 7:55 pretty dusky but it's like three and a half minutes where it goes I mean in 3 and 1/2 minutes you go from dusky I could still see you to it's dark but I mean you still have a lot of time and and it was nowhere near 8:00 at night to to go all the way from the little Abico in through the White Sound panel and around the corner would have taken all of 12 minutes. So, it wouldn't have taken you till 8:00 at night. It wouldn't have taken you till 7:50 at night. It wouldn't have taken you till 7:40 at night. If he says what he says, I left at 7:30. I was on my way and out she went in the dark. It's not possible. But and and again, that's why I'm saying we really got to just throw away everything he's saying because
it doesn't work like that out here. And I understand like I watched your podcast where you were sitting up at that one restaurant and you're like, "And now it's dark."
But living out here on the water,
our eyes adjust as that light goes down. Right now, my outside lights are on for probably the first time in a week to have this this interview, but we can see across the water pretty well even when it's dark because it we our eyes adjusted as we came down, too. Um, so I I just Yeah, I'm at that point now where
I I'm almost done debating that because it's just not debatable, you know? I I right
just his story and his timeline is impossible with the sun. I mean, we can all screw up our own calendars and clocks, but you can't screw with the sun. The sun's going down when the sun's going down. And when you're on video and on uh, you know, snaps on iPhones heading out around 7 p.m. You can't mess with the reality of when darkness really falls. And it doesn't fall into his um, it doesn't fall into his uh timeline,
right? And that's so what we do for our social media is my wife shows sunsets every night. So we're very familiar with sunsets. I mean if there's ever be somebody who's a professional on sunset, it's my wife who broadcast them every night of the week for the last 8 months. And then she does afterwards we have underwater lights under our boat and she turns them on and lets the fish come. But from the time the sun sets till it's dark enough for her to turn on the underwater lights is the hour and a half we have dinner. That's her break in her programming. Right.
There is still there's a lot of time between when that somebody that's in Iowa arguing with me online like well they said the sun set at 6:34. It
doesn't matter.
That's not when it gets dark.
That's right. uh
sunets, but it's still light out until the sun is long gone deep under the horizon. And you're right, it's around an hour to an hour and a half. So, anybody who's looking at sunset, that's not your metric.
But it is amazing what he did in his phone call to me and in his talks to everybody is the amount of breadcrumbs that he threw out there almost as a distraction. Um, you know, he has an electric motor and the world got hung up on that for a week, right? They were hung up on how he couldn't start his engine. But he also throws in there the wife had the spare key in the dry bag. That Lynette had it in the dry bag, right? But even if it was on soulmate, it's just as unavailable to him as if it was in the dry bag. That was like an unnecessary detail. that to add in there like it's it's still unattainable whether it's on the boat or in her bag. It had nothing to do with the story. It had nothing to do
there's these weird things in a story that's just like why are you telling me where your spare key was?
Right.
Uh why are you why are you telling me your or broke when you don't have a bench?
Why are you telling me you fired a flare but you didn't use the whistle? You didn't use your cell. Why you tell me you use your cell phone for a flashlight,
but you can't use it?
Um, I I
Yeah,
I think we've I think we've come to the determination that anybody who's got half a brain can see a lot of holes in his story and then people like you who have a lot of mariners's brain see the whole thing as a civ.
Right. And I I I see a lot of mariners out there too who are like, "Hey, the ocean could do things." You don't know what was going on in that very specific moment. And I want to agree with them. I do. Until you start to see everything that we saw now, right on day one when that story came out, I'm agreeing with those mariners. We don't know. I'm not saying his story is right. I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm saying we don't know. But now we're starting to know. Right now when she fell over in the Abico Sea and you hear that word sea and you think a big body of water like the Caribbean Sea
and then you realize it's the Abico bathtub, right? Um
and so I I do want to
Yeah, it's I I wouldn't even call it a lake. That's a pond.
It's so shallow. Yeah, it's it's like a big swimming pool. It's like a big swimming pool. And the deepest end is around eight feet, but it could get to 15 at a high tide in one spot, but it's really shallow. You can see the bottom everywhere.
Yeah. So, um, yeah, from a mariner's perspective now, knowing the lay of the land and all the work you've done to get us actual eyes on the place, there's there's not one part of the story that that that makes sense. I mean, we've tried recreating it. There's so many videos we haven't put out trying to recreate things that it just makes us look silly. Like me and my neighbor boats are invested in protecting the boers's lifestyle and making sure that the islands that we do get answers to this because eventually as we travel to these islands and people keep doing stupid stuff in their islands, they're gonna stop letting us in. Right? So there is an personal investment in this to get answers and to make sure that people aren't scared off from boating because this happened when you're not bouncing off a dingy that goes 2 miles hour in 4T of water on a night where we both have seen footage of um standard waves, you know. Well, that's why I keep saying tick tock, Brian Hooker. Tick tock. Blaine, I can't thank you enough for um just having eyes on this every single detail and bringing them to my attention. Um, it's going to take a village, but uh I I don't I don't think things are going to go well for Brian Hooker. It's my own personal opinion, but given everything that I've been able to dig up and what you've dug up, um it doesn't look good.
Just help keep take care of Carly. That's that's what Lynette would want, right? Lynette left a child behind in this world and it's all of our job to step up for Lynette and help take care of Carly.
Justice for Lynette. Blaine, thank you so much.
You have a great day.
My great thanks to Blaine Stevenson for helping me to sort of uh muddle through a lot of the questions that I'm not skilled enough to answer and then knock down some of the things that I think I might have figured out. Uh he's been just invaluable and I really appreciate that long conversation. It was very very informative. Um, I also have some stuff coming up for you in the episodes to come. Um, specifically some video I want to share with you. Uh, somebody's surveillance camera was rolling right into the Sea of Abico. I'm going to show you the things that we have found and the things that we think we see in that video coming up in the episodes to come. So, I hope you'll continue to watch um, and listen and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss that next episode as well. Thank you everyone for watching. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead serious.