Transcription
Hey everyone, I'm Ashley Banfield and this is Drop Deadad Serious. Thank you so much for being here. It's great to have you. Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already. Um, and many thanks if you already have. Thanks if you're a member, too. Very appreciated.
Um, I've got some other stuff I need to share with you. If you are just joining us, um, we have been talking for weeks, um, in fact more than four weeks about the disappearance of Lynette Hooker. Her husband Brian Hooker swears up and down. They were just on their dinghy, leaving the Landmark Abico Inn in the Bahamas where they just had drinks and were heading out to their sailboat where they've been living for four years, live aboard on their sailboat when she just bounced right off the back of that dinghy and he just couldn't save her. Couldn't go. She was separated by the wind and the waves and the and that, you know, go back in our episodes in the playlist because the story is preposterous and we have been proving all the way along with not only um evidence, facts, witnesses, reports, marine experts, um that pretty much everything Brian Hooker has said about this catastrophic disaster where his wife bounced off the back of the dinghy and he just couldn't save her and he floated all night long and ended up at Marsh Harbor 4 miles away. We've pretty much been able to disprove a lot of that story and it has taken weeks and a lot of research and a lot of work and a lot of interviews. So, back over the playlist and you'll get right up to speed.
If you are already up to speed, good for you. And I got something for you. Um, I discovered some some things in Lynette Hooker's social media that for days and days I've been trying to track down uh where these things happened and some locations. And I want to show you a video that Lynette posted. Uh, and I can tell you why I know where this video is now and why I think it's significant. Because in a prior episode, I talked to you about if something happened to Lynette, not the way Brian explains it, but maybe something else. Maybe even aboard Soulmate, their 46t catch, their sailboat that they lived on. If something happened to her and let's just say she was killed on board Soulmate and let's just say somebody needed to get rid of the body. I am not suggesting that Brian Hooker uh did this. I am only trying to figure out where is Lynette because the way Brian explained it her body would have turned up in the Sea of Abaco because it's like a bathtub or on the shores or some detritus of her would have. And so if that's not what happened, then what did?
And one of my prior episodes gave you an idea of where you could, if one say wanted to get rid of a body, could get rid of a body uh up near Hopetown and the harbor that's sort of on the uh northern end of Elbow Cay. They were anchored off of Elbow Cay. And that wouldn't be very hard, just a couple miles up. But we've also discovered another possibility where if someone wanted to get rid of a body and then say launch themselves up on Marsh Harbor saying that they had floated for 9 hours with no keys and no oars and all the rest. Um, we found another possibility. And back in Lynette Hooker's social media, uh, she shows an excursion one day that she took with her husband, Brian Hooker, but also her daughter, Carly Alsworth. And we put the pieces together because we saw originally this photograph of Carly and her mom, Lynette, and Lynette's husband, Brian Hooker. And they've got sort of like some wrecked out docks behind them. Doesn't look like a very nice place. It kind of looks like a an abandoned old wretched sort of marina that no one has taken care of. And we've been trying and trying and trying to figure out what is in the backdrop of that picture. And I think we may have put the pieces together with the help of Lynette. Thank you, Lynette. Um, in our effort to find where Lynette may have ended up, because I don't believe Brian's story, that picture of Carly, Lynette, and Steve now accompanies a video that Lynette herself took. And I want you to sort of play along with me here as we look at Lynette's video. She's got one of those 360 cams where she's holding the selfie stick, but the selfie stick disappears because it's awesome technology. And wouldn't you know it, her video actually shows this this sort of abandoned awful marina. And there's a little sign there. I'll get to that in a minute because it tells you what the name of the marina is. You can see the docks are all busted up and broken. It looks It looks like it's a century old. You know, the pathway looks nasty and the buildings are all broken down and all the rest.
Well, there's a really good reason why the videos that Lynette is taking show such an awful place. Uh, it is the result of Hurricane Dorian. And if you remember Hurricane Dorian from 2019, uh, it was a monster. I covered Hurricane Dorian. I was freaking out about Hurricane Dorian because my brother lives in the Bahamas and I thought he was going to die. He's in Nassau, right? He's close to Nassau on the island of New Providence, whereas most people go, you know, to Paradise Island, they they go to Atlantis and all the rest. That's all on New Providence. And Dorian kind of like spared them. It was a nasty storm, but it didn't destroy them, right? But it did destroy the islands and the Cays all like a 100 miles north. And the Abacos just got hammered by Dorian. And the Abacos are where we've been discussing the story of Lynette Hooker. It's Lynette's story. It's not Brian's story. It's Lynette's story. And the Abacos, including Elbow Cay and Marsh Harbor, those are the places um eastern and central Grand Bahama, too. Those are the places that got just hammered by Hurricane Dorian and like almost wiped off the map, right? It was terrible. It was 2019. Like I said, this was one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record, and it was the strongest hurricane to ever hit the Bahamas. As a Cat 5, it was 185 mph winds, gusts of 220 mph, and the storm surge was 23 feet high. So, yeah, these little keys, they just barely stand a chance. And so what Lynette is showing us is what happened to this beautiful place when Hurricane Dorian came ashore. This is Snapper Point Marina. We have been able to figure it out because in one of Lynette's photos, she actually snaps the sign for the marina. And so we are able to see the filled sign Snapper Point Marina. And you can see some of the other things in their pictures. I'm going to show you a picture right now where it's kind of a gray sky. It's not a very nice day to be out and about, but they decided to be out and about. Um, and there's a picture where Brian is seen posing on one of the rocky outcroppings in front of one of the beaches there with his arms spread wide and his patterned shorts and what looks like reef walker uh shoes. Means you can walk in water and not hurt your feet on coral or anything else that might be rough like those rough rocks. So there's Brian out in front of the wrecked out uh Snapper Point Marina. And by the way, Snapper Point Marina wasn't just a marina. It was like a high-end place. It was beautiful. It had places for like yachts that were up to or fishing boats that were up to 90 ft to dock, protected little um marinas for a number of different boats to dock, beautiful little uh guest houses and decks and a gorgeous pool. And I want to show you the pool because in Lynette's pictures, you can see the pool is just totally abandoned and wrecked out as though it's many, many years old. But the reality is once upon a time it was gorgeous. Was just stunning. You look at these like side by side and oh my god, this place just got so wrecked and and obviously was just left this way. You can see inside like the damage from one of the buildings inside. And I'm sure at one point this was such a lovely place, but now it just looks like a it just looks like an old place from like the 1950s that just fell into disrepair. Not. So, it got beaten into submission by Hurricane Dorian. Um, and so anyway, I was so interested in the fact that they had visited this place and the pictures that resulted. The pool picture bothered me the most cuz I thought, "Oh god, it's got a lovely view. Maybe one day." And and look, you see the hurricane even like took off the tiles of the the side of the pool, like the decorative tiles. Um, it was fascinated because they're sightseers and they're going into really like off-the-beaten-path places and they're doing so usually on a paddle board. Um, or maybe they're dinghy because you can get into, you know, you can get into shore. And if you look at some of these pictures, you can see that there are beaches like the one behind Brian where he's standing there with his arms way out. I think he's holding a water bottle or something. Maybe a beer. I think he's holding a beer. But there are beaches and beaches are great for coming ashore real safe. Especially if you're in a dinghy. You can come up on a beach and you can pretty much almost get up on the beach without hitting your engine 6 in of water. I think that engine might take maybe that. Um, and so I was sort of fascinated wondering what are all the places that um, Brian and Lynette knew from doing these cool exploration excursions, especially with Lynette's daughter, Carly, and this Snapper Point Marina came up. And so when I did a deep dive, I I want to show you the but before I show you the location of Snapper Point Marina because this is going to all come full circle. It's all going to make sense in a minute. I do want to show you how beautiful Snapper Point Marina was just in 2019. I mean, the photos are just kind of like they're stunning and it's like super duper sad that this place fell into the disrepair at the hands of uh the violence of Dorian. But once upon a time, I mean, there was like a a lovely protected waterway and beautiful palm trees. You can see the aerial view of the buildings. Gorgeous. The beach stunning white sand beach just gorgeous for swimming, right? And then also decks overlooking the Sea of Abaco and nice protected like places you could sit under if you were a guest there. You can see the lovely walkways that lead up to what I guess was a a blue I don't know like center of this whole resort. Maybe it was like the check-in or the dining room or all of that. But this this this walkway, this pathway seems to be the same pathway that Lynette was able to show us that had been destroyed. It's really interesting to see the the juxtaposition of Lynette's pictures and then the actual walkway when once upon a time it was super deluxe, right? Like Lynette is walking up that stonewalled pathway and you can see where it kind of bows out a little bit in the beauty shots and then you can see in Lynette's video it's just desecrated and and a mess and it's the same bowed out walkway and she's walking up to that once upon a time beautiful blue building that I can only imagine was that lovely dining room overlooking maybe the Sea of Abaco and it's just a trashed mess, you know, in in Lynette's video. Um, there's also like really nice places for them to sit outside uh in in like a hammock and relax and see the beauty of the Sea of Abaco. The beach shots are just spectacular. I want to go to this place, but now I know that it's wrecked because Lynette showed us.
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So, this gorgeous Snapper Point Marina is no more. And Lynette and um and Brian and Carly do this day excursion and videotape and take photos of all of this. But it's the location of where Snapper Point Marina is and still is that really tweaked my interest. As to why it might matter in the disappearance of Lynette Hooker. Let me explain. And for this, I'm going to need you to go to a map. So, if you look at this map of Marsh Harbor and over way over right, you can see Elbow Cay, right? That's the big Sea of Abaco. In between, you know, you can see Marsh Harbor. You can see Mermaid Reef, Snappa's Bar and Grill, Jake's Beastro, Ice Cream Parlor, and then way way off to the right, you can see Elbow Cay and Hope Town way up north and the Abaco Inn, you know, midway down. And then Tahiti Beach at the bottom, right? Sea of Abaco is right there in the middle. Very shallow. It's four miles apart. Okay. You can even see um Lubbers's Quarters. That's that little mass of land just to the left of of Elbow Cay. But let's go back to Marsh Harbor, right? Because Marsh Harbor is where Brian, if you believe his story, washed up at 4:00 in the morning, four miles away from where they had been at the Abaco Inn having drinks when Lynette bounced off the dinghy and the wind and the waves and the tide. Ah, the sea was angry, my friend, Seinfeld.
So, let's go over to Marsh Harbor. If you go to the very northern part where Lindsay was kind enough to drop a little uh red pin at Mermaid Reef, right there at the top, that is where Snapper Point Marina is slash was. Whatever's left of it, the mess that they were touring is right there where Mermaid Reef is and that little red pin is. Why does that matter? Because if you're to curve down and to the right in that inlet where you see Snappa's Bar and Grill, Snappa's Bar and Grill is at the very far right hand side of that inlet. That inlet is Marsh Harbor. That is where the Conch Inn is right beside Snappa's Bar and Grill. That is where the Mooring Balls are. That is where Brian and Lynette were hooked up to a mooring ball that they rented so that they could use the facilities of the Conch Inn regularly, the pool, the restaurant, you know, all that, the bar. So that inlet there, that's Marsh Harbor. That's their anchorage. That's where Soulmate is. That's their home base. They go out on excursions to Elbow Cay and all over the place, but that's where home base is because they've got that mooring ball. And again, if you're new to sailing, a mooring ball is a permanent anchor. The anchor's down and it's set on the bottom and then up on the top there's a floating ball that you can just hook onto. It's almost like tying up a boat. Good. You're anchored. You don't have to do any work. You can just hook onto it and be safe for the night and then unhook and go off sailing. You don't have to set your anchor back up, bring it. It's a pain in the ass, trust me. So, a mooring ball is a delight, easy peasy way of just coming in and being safe for the night. You hook onto it. And they were moored in this little inlet. Uh their bow would basically be facing, you know, Snappa's Bar and Grill. When we circled around Soulmate, it was right in that inlet and its bow was facing Snappa's Bar and Grill and the Conch Inn which is right beside Snappa's. Okay. And there were a whole bunch of other boats all moored in there because it is safe harbor. These little places are safe from the wind and the waves and the, you know, the eastern winds and even the western winds. I'm listen all the winds basically safe.
What I found interesting was just how easy it would be to just take your paddle board off the decks of the sailboat Soulmate and put them overboard and climb down the transom, the back of the the sailboat and get onto your paddle board and go on a little excursion right over to Mermaid Reef. That might take you 10 minutes on the paddle board to go from, you know, they were about halfway in that that anchorage in uh in Marsh Harbor. And so if you're paddleboarding over there, what a great little getaway for you and your daughter Carly and your husband Brian. So Lynette Hooker and her family, I believe, went on a paddle board or maybe maybe they went over in their dinghy. I don't know. But it's real quick and real easy to go out from the anchorage and then go north a little bit and then head over to Mermaid Reef and maybe maybe just maybe pull up on one of those nice sandy beaches that used to be really beautiful, but now they're just kind of, you know, they just show the anger of what Dorian left behind at that beautiful resort. And then they could go exploring. Coming in for adult beverage and to investigate.
"Private beach." "Private beach. I got my own private beach with my sexy husband." "The boob cam." "The boob cam. I finally found a use for a bathing suit top."
So, we know how close it is to where Soulmate would normally anchor. And we know that they got real familiar with this real messed up place that nobody goes to anymore because why would you? I mean, they did because they were kind of fascinated by it, but it's really not a tourist attraction. It's not a place for locals. And let me tell you something about the locals when it comes to Snapper Point Marina. I spent days, weeks actually, trying to pinpoint where these photos came from before I saw the sign in one of her videos. That made it a lot easier. Easier, but still not easy. And all of the locals, and I know some locals who know every inch of that area, fire and rescue, they've been everywhere, right? I'd send them these pictures and say, "Do you recognize this area? Do you recognize this kind of wrecked out marina?" And everybody said, "No, they didn't." And I was so flummoxed by this. How is it that the locals don't know this picture? It's definitely there because Carly was visiting her mom at Marsh Harbor. So along came another clue in the video, and it had that sign, Snapper Point Marina. Snapper Point Marina. So I started sending out new communications to all my sources and my contacts and my friends, my new friends and soon to be very old friends, I hope. Um, because I really plan to go back and see a lot of these folks. This was really a wonderful place to go. Um, and I said, "Okay, I have another clue. Do you know Snapper Point Marina? And if you do, can you tell me where it is?" And most of them again said, "Not familiar with it. Don't know it." One or two said, "Yeah, I think it's up there near Mermaid Reef." And then we found the website for it and populated the pictures from it and started to learn what it used to look like and where it was exactly on the map. And this mattered to me because I want you to go back to our trusty map there where you saw Snappers Bar and Grill. That's in the inlet where they were anchored on their mooring ball. Then Mermaid Reef where they do the sightseeing. Right now I want you to curve. Go to the east. Okay. We're going to have to zoom out a little bit here. We're going to go to the east. And wouldn't you know it, see that upside down wishbone? Go right above that. You see that little land mass? That is the now famous Matt Lowe's Cay. Now it's called Montage Cay, but it used to be called Matt Lowe's Cay. Matt Lowe was a pirate. And Matt Lowe's Cay is something that Brian referenced saying we should check up there for her dry bag or maybe the oar or something washed up up there cuz I you know I I came right by it and nobody would have been there. It's under construction Easter weekend. No one would have been there. He's been directing us to Matt Lowe's Cay/Montage Cay for a long time. But let's just go around those keys and come back to the sign that says Jake's Beastro and Ice Cream Parlor. I've never been there, but I wouldn't mind trying it. Um, and then just go down the shore all the way down to the bottom. Which point? Okay. And when you see that big long eastern facing shore of Marsh Harbor from Jake's Beastro and Ice Cream Parlor all the way down to Which Point, I want you to kind of cut it in half. Right at the midway point because that my friends that midway point between Jake's Beastro and Which Point is say it with me now where Brian washed up in his dinghy after floating nine hours from Elbow Cay.
So I'm looking at it like wow that's interesting. Let me go and game the system again here. If something terrible happened on board Soulmate and I went all over, you know, the northern part of Elbow Cay and showed you the marsh and all the rest. If somebody needed to get rid of a body, not saying that Brian did, he's not charged with this, but if somebody needed to get rid of a body and say they were anchored in Aunt Pat's Bay on Elbow Cay, I showed you the northern part of Elbow Cay. But what if somebody needed to get rid of a body and wanted to wash up on Marsh Harbor with this story about having to float 9 hours because she went overboard and I couldn't rescue her and we got separated and I didn't have the keys because she had the keys and all that. What if what if this is the possibility? What if something happened on Soulmate and again allegation here he's not charged. He decided that he needed to get rid of Lynette and end up on Marsh Harbor under power. Went all the way to Marsh Harbor. Well, that would take maybe with that dinghy. I think you could probably do that in an hour and a half, maybe even an hour. In the ferry, it's only 20 minutes and it might be going like maybe 20 25 knots. And I'm thinking like maybe 20 miles an hour. And I'm thinking that the the dinghy at top speed you get less power but at top speed you can go about uh what was it six seven miles an hour I think I'll check those specs but faster you can go faster than 2 to three miles an hour and you can be over four miles in maybe an hour right? So what if you went over to the place you knew because you've explored that abandoned marina that used to be so pretty. Snapper Point, you've been all through that. You even know there's a nice soft beach to land on in the dark if you need to. And then let's just say if somebody decided to get rid of a body in this abandoned area that nobody goes to and it's nasty, right? Tourists don't go there, locals don't go there. A lot of the locals don't even know it's there by my estimation because I've asked and interviewed at least a dozen people about this location. Don't know, never heard of it. It would not take you but a minute to do whatever you'd want to do with say a body. Allegation only. Brian's not charged at that Mermaid Reef pin that we dropped, which was where Snapper Point Marina's detritus was. And then if you wanted to take your dinghy back in the dark out around those keys, Matt Lowe's Cay, you don't have to go out that far, but you can make your way back down the shore down past Jake's Beastro and Ice Cream Parlor area and halfway down towards Which Point and then just beat yourself up there and at 4:00 in the morning say, "I'm marooned. Help me." Because a couple hundred yards to the north is a boatyard. If you want to zoom in on the on the map to know like what the the streets look like in that area, because there are streets, you drive to the boatyard that's right effectively where Brian Hooker, so to speak, washed up. Not entirely sure he did, but uh it's kind of easy to access and it's a place you would know. You might even know that boatyard. If you're a sailor, you may have visited that boatyard either by land or by water before. And the place where Brian was marooned uh was just south of that boatyard. He was able to walk, he says, through a bunch of thicket and all the rest, but you could actually kind of walk the shore, right? Lower tide. I think you walk the shore. I think high tide was around 10:00 at night. So 4:00 in the morning, it should have been kind of lower tide. And you can get to the boatyard and say, "Help me. Help me. My wife fell out 9 hours ago and I floated all the way over here." Again, 9 hours doesn't make sense, but okay. So, it kind of made sense that if you needed to get rid of a body and you'd already been to Snapper Point Marina and you'd already poked around there, taken pictures there, your wife took selfies there, your stepdaughter and your wife were there with you all day. Not saying that Brian did this because again he's not charged, but if you needed to, this kind of would make sense. This area and the way you could just scoot back down along that eastern shore of Marsh Harbor and beach your boat, put it on the coral and get into that area where fire and rescue found that dinghy, you know, hours later. It's just kind of a fascinating possibility. And I think that if you're the police or if you're the Coast Guard, you're probably gaming out this system, too. Gaming out the possibilities.
I mean, listen, amidst all of this, me looking into it, I get an email uh text actually saying from Dean Zamzal, who gave us the uh the surveillance video that looked across from Lubbers right onto the ass end of all the boats that had thrown down anchor uh off of um Aunt Pat's Bay and Elbow Cay. And he has surveillance video. And look at the past episodes, y'all. We saw some things. Anyway, um we got an email, a text from Dean Zamzal, who got a note from his neighbor with a picture of a helicopter hovering right over like Dean's house, his area, right in the middle of of Lubber's Quarters, that Cay. And of course, we're all wondering, "Oh my god, did they see something? Have they got something? Is that helicopter a law enforcement helicopter?" I chased it down pretty quick. Turns out that at the time that this was happening, um, that chopper, according to law enforcement, is not a law enforcement helicopter. It is not a government helicopter. It is a private helicopter. And, uh, my sources told me in the area, the local sources I talked to, oh, there's a huge fishing tournament going on. Michael Jordan's even here fishing in it. And the helicopter is probably monitoring, taking pictures or monitoring the the tournament itself. So, you can see how everybody's kind of thinking of this, especially the locals who, you know, they don't have a lot of murders here. Um, it's just not that kind of place. And so, this big story of the helicopter kind of took up my attention for a while until I was able to run it down and find out that it had nothing to do with um the investigation of uh of Lynette Hooker's disappearance.
But now we've looked at two places all within dinghy range of where Brian Hooker said Lynette bounced out and within dinghy range of where Brian Hooker may just may have with his wife returned to their Soulmate 46 ft catch anchored right there in Aunt Pat's Bay 150 m offshore. All these places I'm showing you the potential if if if something happened to Lynette on board Soulmate or maybe on the dinghy. What would happen next? What would a United States Marine, if he had done something to her, if if if what would he do next? Because that body is not in the Sea of Abaco, my friends. And it should be if his story is true. But everybody I speak to, all the experts, fire and rescue, uh, nautical experts, marine weather experts, tides experts, everybody I've talked to said, "Nope. Absolutely not." Her body, if his story was true, would be in the Sea of Abaco. And it ain't because it's like a swimming pool. It's so shallow. You can see the bottom everywhere. And you would see her and her dry bag would have floated up on the shore and the paddle that he lost and his dinghy and everything would have floated up on Lubbers because that's where the wind pattern was taking it.
What would you do with the body if Lynette is not in the Sea of Abaco like Brian says she was? Where else might she be? These are the things that law enforcement has to be doing. We have already witnessed the United States Coast Guard with their cadaver dog sniffing all along the north end of Lubbers thinking maybe he did something there. He said he threw his anchor down. Maybe he did something there. There are a lot of people who we've talked to who say they think Lynette may be buried somewhere on Lubbers. Maybe not the north end because he wouldn't have taken our attention there where he said I just stayed there with my anchor for a while and shot off flares. Check the last episodes to debunk that. Um, a lot of people think maybe he's buried halfway down Lubbers because there's a lot of hurricane detritus there as well. A couple of places, uh, Cracker Peas and, uh, Lubbers Landing, those are two places that are wrecked out. We'll do another episode on those, but so far we do deep dives. We try to get as much information as we can from the people who know it, people who are there and then present it to you. But again, Brian's not charged. It's not charged with anything yet. TikTok Brian Hooker. TikTok.
Thank you everybody. Thank you so much for being a part of this episode. Thank you always for um being a part of these episodes. Thank you for subscribing if you already have. And please, will you do it if you haven't and give me the thumbs up and the like because it really helps our um it it helps our little independent investigation keep going because when you're by yourself and you're trying to do things in the Bahamas, it is a lot. Let me tell you, without like a network credit card, a corporate card, it's it's a lot. So, when you like and you subscribe and you join our membership, it really does help to keep this investigation going at top-notch um efforts. Thank you again. Um, I've got some other stuff to bring to you in the near future and you're not going to believe it, but I'm going to get you on board Soulmate. So, make sure you like and subscribe. Do not miss that episode. I will see you soon. Remember, the truth isn't just serious, it's Drop Deadad Serious.