(NEW YORK) — Nearly three weeks after American Lynette Hooker went overboard and disappeared in the Bahamas, an attorney for her husband Brian Hooker is asking the public “to give him the benefit of the doubt.”
Michigan-based attorney Crystal Marie Hauser told ABC News that Brian Hooker never would have harmed his wife of 25 years.
Lynette Hooker has been missing since April 4. That evening, after the couple departed Hope Town for their yacht, Soulmate, in Elbow Cay, bad weather caused Lynette Hooker to fall off their dinghy and go overboard, Brian Hooker told authorities.
Brian Hooker was arrested on April 8 and questioned by police. He was released on April 13 without charges.
On April 14, Brian Hooker told ABC News that he was staying in the Bahamas with a “sole focus” of finding his wife, “no matter how likely or unlikely that is.”
“My only focus is to go back to the boat and then hire or beg people to help me go find some areas to search,” he said.
But hours after that interview, Brian Hooker left the Bahamas, with his Bahamian attorney saying he wanted to be with his terminally ill mother.
Asked if Brian Hooker plans to return to the Bahamas to help with the search, Hauser said, “I imagine that is where his heart is, but I can’t speak on whether or not that’s what he would be doing.”
Karli Aylesworth, Lynette Hooker’s daughter and Brian Hooker’s stepdaughter, has traveled to the Bahamas and told ABC News she doubted Brian Hooker’s story.
“I don’t understand how she drowned or got floated away,” Aylesworth said. “It just made me be more, ‘Why didn’t he do this? Why didn’t you do that? Why did that happen?'”
Lynette Hooker’s mother, Darlene Hamlett, told ABC News the couple had a volatile relationship.
“We all handle things in different ways,” Hauser said. “Be open-minded to the fact that just because Karli and Darlene are making these claims, there’s absolutely no evidence to support any of the allegations — absolutely none.”
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