A bartender who served the missing American woman in the Bahamas one day before she vanished revealed one detail that got his attention.
A bartender at the Abaco Inn, identified as Ken, 38, told the New York Post that Brian and Lynette Hooker were at the hotel’s pool during the early evening hours of April 3 drinking rum and Cokes. One day later, the couple took a small dinghy from Hope Town to a different location on Elbow Cay where their boat was, according to local police.
Brian Hooker told Bahamian officials that his wife fell off the dinghy after leaving shore at around 7:30 p.m. on April 4, adding that Lynette fell off with the ignition key. Local authorities said that Brian Hooker arrived at a marina at Marsh Harbour at around 4 a.m. on April 5 after paddling to shore, roughly eight hours after Lynette Hooker went overboard.
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While Ken was serving the Hookers, he said Brian thanked him for getting their drinks quickly.
“He was like, ‘Oh man, thank you for getting me served kinda quick’ … because we were crowded,” Ken said.
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Ken noted that he didn’t see anything unusual with the couple, though he never actually saw Lynette Hooker while they were at the pool for around two and a half hours.
“When I heard about it the next day, I was shocked, definitely. But then again, I didn’t see the lady, I didn’t get to talk to her or anything like that,” he said.
Ken, who’s from the Bahamas and knows the area well, said, however, one detail doesn’t add up.
“It’s weird … for him to be going from here to there, then ending up in Marsh Harbour and nobody sees the lady, it’s weird,” Ken said. “What catches my eye is they left here at 7, 7:30 and [her going missing] supposedly happened right after they left here, and he didn’t make it over there until 4 a.m. or something like that, in 25-mph winds.”
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“It’s only four miles that way. It shouldn’t have taken eight to 10 hours to get there. Even if he was only floating, it should have been a much quicker time,” he said.
While Brian Hooker himself flew out of the Bahamas on Wednesday to be with his mother, who’s reportedly very ill, according to his attorney, Lynette Hooker’s daughter, Karli Aylesworth, flew to the island on Thursday to help with the search.
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Aylesworth told NBC News she questions Brian Hooker’s version of how her mother went missing, adding that she spent three hours talking with police.
“I feel like this was probably preplanned, if anything, like, it doesn’t seem like just some accident,” Aylesworth said.
Brian Hooker hasn’t been charged with a crime and was released from jail by Bahamian officials, who declined to charge him at the time, but left the investigation into Lynette open.
“When I first got here, I sat up there and looked at the boat and started talking to her like she was here. I was like, ‘Hey Mom, I’m here. Wherever you are. I just want to talk to you and see you again,'” Aylesworth said. “It’s making it a little bit more real.”
