Coast Guard Seizes Brian Hooker's Sailboat in Probe of Wife's Bahamas Disappearance

The U.S. Coast Guard seized Brian Hooker's sailboat as it left the Bahamas during the probe into his wife Lynette's disappearance, a forensic expert said.

Hooker told Bahamian officials that Lynette fell off a dinghy after they left shore at Hope Town around 7:30 p.m. on April 4, taking the ignition key with her. He reached a marina at Marsh Harbour around 4 a.m. on April 5 after paddling to shore, about eight hours later. Authorities conducted a weeks-long search but failed to find Lynette Hooker.

A source familiar with the investigation said the sailboat, named Soulmate, was seized Saturday en route to the U.S. and taken to a Coast Guard station in Fort Pierce, Florida. The Coast Guard Investigative Service has stepped up its examination. Brian Hooker faces no charges.

Forensic scientist Joseph Scott Morgan said investigators likely seek large focal areas of blood. "That would be a copious amount of blood, dried blood, has there been any effort to sanitize the area, clean the area?" Morgan said. "I'd want to see if there was any evidence of struggle in the form of like breakage of any kind."

"What they could do is they can go in there and look for any kind of trace evidence on there that might give them some kind of indication of any kind of violent act took place," he said.

Morgan noted the seizure came more than a month after Lynette went missing, putting investigators at a disadvantage. "You don't know what individuals may have been on there," he said. "The more time trickles through, you know, the hourglass, all that stuff becomes degraded. It becomes compromised. So that's, it can be problematic."

He added that the Coast Guard can draw on the entire federal government, including the FBI.

Kenneth Engerrand, an adjunct professor of maritime law at the University of Houston Law Center and shareholder at Brown Sims, said U.S. authorities have jurisdiction for arrests or prosecutions on American-flagged vessels, even in foreign waters. "The United States is well within its rights to assert a violation of the murder statute. It also has jurisdiction over statutes involving violent acts committed on a United States vessel," Engerrand said.

Engerrand said the Coast Guard likely needed no warrant. "[The Coast Guard has] the authority to seize any vessel that they believe is involved in a criminal activity. So they have the absolute authority," he said.

The seizure occurred about a week after the Coast Guard asked the public to identify the owner of a sailboat moored near Soulmate in the Bahamas. The agency declined comment Monday, citing the ongoing investigation.

Bahamian police held Brian Hooker for five days after his wife's disappearance but released him without charges. His Michigan attorney, Crystal Marie Hauser, urged the public to give him the benefit of the doubt. "I would ask those watching to treat him the way you would want to be treated, to give him the benefit of the doubt, and to consider that not all of us, nor you, considering your own relationships, the way you speak to one another, we all handle things in different ways," she said.

Hooker left the Bahamas soon after his release to visit his very ill mother, his Caribbean attorney said.