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Brian Hooker, whose wife Lynette disappeared during a nighttime boat ride in the Bahamas earlier this month, was released from custody Monday night, five days after being detained.
Brian Hooker, 59, was arrested by Bahamian authorities last Wednesday for questioning about his wife’s disappearance, his attorney, Terrel Butler, told CBS News. Hooker has denied any wrongdoing. He declined to answer questions from CBS News when a reporter approached him the day before his detention.
Lynette Hooker, 55, has not been found. The Royal Bahamas Police Force said last week that search and rescue operations had turned into search and recovery.
A search warrant for Hooker’s boat allowed authorities to take “a digital video recorder, digital tablets, and cell phone related equipment” and accessories. The devices may be “material evidence and or contains material evidence related to a missing person causing bodily harm,” according to the warrant, which was reviewed by CBS News.
Brian Hooker said his wife was swept away
The couple, from Michigan, were known to be avid sailors. Brian Hooker told authorities that Lynette fell from their eight-foot dinghy the evening of Saturday, April 4, while they sailed from Hope Town to Elbow Cay. He said powerful currents swept her away, along with the keys to their boat, which cut power to its engine and prevented him from reaching her.
Police said Hooker paddled to the island of Abacoa, where he docked at the Marsh Harbor Boat Yard around 4 a.m. Sunday, April 5. Police said he told someone that his wife was missing, and that person then informed authorities.
Hooker also shared his account of what happened with several friends and even annotated maps of the area. His friend Daniel Danforth spoke to CBS News and shared text messages he had received from Hooker after Lynette’s disappearance. In the messages, Hooker said that the wind blew him and Lynette apart. He said she swam towards the sailboat but the two “lost sight of each other pretty quickly.”
Hooker told Danforth he “drifted and tried to paddle with one oar for the next 7 hours until I washed up behind the shore of the next Island over and was able to get some help finally.”
Lynette Hooker’s daughter seeks “full and complete investigation”
Karli Aylesworth, Lynette Hooker’s daughter, has called for “an intensive review of the facts and circumstances” around her mother’s case. Aylesworth told CBS News that Brian and Lynette Hooker had split up and gotten back together in recent years.
Messages that Lynette sent to a friend in January 2024, obtained exclusively by CBS News, suggest she had concerns about Brian and their life at sea at the time of the couple’s separation, but they later reconciled.
“My sole concern is to find out what happened to my mother and make sure a full and complete investigation is performed into her disappearance,” Aylesworth told CBS News.
Aylesworth described her mother as an experienced swimmer with more than a decade of sailing experience, and said she doesn’t believe the sequence of events described by her stepfather, Brian Hooker.
Butler said Hooker denies the allegations made by Aylesworth.
“Brian appears completely heartbroken and deeply distressed,” Butler said in a statement. “His primary concern and source of intense frustration is his inability to continue the search for his wife of 25 years. The trauma of her disappearance, coupled with his current detention as a suspect, has left him in an extremely fragile state.”
Butler also told CBS News that Hooker went back out on the boat with police investigators as they continued the search for his wife last Wednesday. She said he was handcuffed aboard the vessel, which led to him falling overboard in rough seas while disembarking. Hooker was rescued by officers, Butler said in a written report, and sustained a “visible abrasion” and a knee injury that caused him to limp. A CBS News team saw Hooker being taken to a local hospital to get checked out.
