July 10, 2026
NEW: Investigators Suggest Lynette Hooker Never Fell Off Dingy; Possible “Foul Play” On Sailboat
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RSS Feed There is a potentially huge development for the missing Michigan woman whose husband claimed fell off their dinghy in rough waters in the Bahamas. While the body of Lynette Hooker has not been found, investigators believe she may never have fallen out of the dingy. There is a new theory that Hooker may have had an altercation on the sailboat she shared with her husband Brian. Hooker’s mom has been giving interviews saying foul play was involved in her daughter’s death, adding that the investigation is taking longer than she anticipated, “but that’s what the coast guard told me to say.”
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey, folks, it is Friday, July tenth, and we have potentially a huge, huge update in the case of the Nette Hooker, the Michigan woman who went missing in the Bahamas after a dinghy ride with her husband. The new development is investigators have a whole new theory about how she disappeared, and with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. The theory is that it didn't happen the way the husband said it happened.
00:00:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is kind of crazy.
00:00:35
Speaker 3: We were thinking about all the different possibilities, but I never actually considered that she never fell off the dinghy in the first place.
00:00:44
Speaker 1: Never crossed my mind. Baby, I did not cross my mind. And now they say it, I'm like, wow. And that's what they are saying. Robes that there was no dinghy accident. She made it back to where they were going at.
00:00:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, they took the dinghy back to the sailboat.
00:00:57
Speaker 3: They got back on the sailboat, and the new theory is that there was an altercation on that boat between Brian Hooker and Lynette Hooker and that is how she met her untimely death.
00:01:11
Speaker 1: Robes that none of it made sense. That theory, I'm thinking oh, okay, maybe maybe, But Robes. This is coming to us now, we should say, from CBS, citing law enforcement sources and others, But rose is also coming from Lynette Hooker's own mama, who might be doing more talking in public than authorities would like for it.
00:01:36
Speaker 2: You know what, though, I get it.
00:01:38
Speaker 3: She has been waiting for answers for a long time. And to see Brian Hooker be arrested by the Bahamian officials, held for five days and then released and allowed to go on and off on his merry way. He said he was never leaving the Bahamas until he found Lynette. Left the next day, said his.
00:01:58
Speaker 2: Mom was so literally was. The next week, he gives.
00:02:01
Speaker 3: An interview saying, I'm not leaving until I find my wife. I still believe she could be alive. Maybe she's on some island somewhere. And then he leaves and says his mom sick. We never see him again, never hear from him again. So yeah, mama is pissed. Mama's mama wants justice. Mama wants to know what happened to her daughter. And by the way, fifty five year old Lynette Hooker's body has not been found.
00:02:25
Speaker 1: It has not because we were under the impression, because it was given to us by Brian Hooker, who is really the only one who knows for sure what happened. But he is the one Robes that told us she fell off a dingy. This was back in April. They're taking this small eight foot dinghy from one spot from the land essentially out to their sailboat, trying to get back to it. Simple enough, these are two avid sailors. Their experience is this. They know what they're doing. His story, Robes with that is she keep using the word bounced. I see it everywhere.
00:02:55
Speaker 2: She bounced off the dinghy rough seas.
00:02:57
Speaker 1: Yes, went into the water, got taken away by a current. They got separated. He said she had the keys. He couldn't even operate the dingy anymore, so he had to paddle essentially back to land. Took hours and hours. That is a story as he told it. Robes. He gave all of his information. He drew maps. This is where we were search hap all this. That is his story, and it appears Robes he has been sticking to it, and yet.
00:03:24
Speaker 3: We knew just a short while ago authorities questioned that story because the maps he made and all of the routes he said he took to get to try and get to the sailboat ultimately to get to land. Well, guess what, the GPS didn't jibe with his story, and so all we heard, Okay, maybe the boat was in a different place, and so they actually sent dive teams and searchers to a new area of that water to try and find Linett his body.
00:03:54
Speaker 2: That didn't work, but.
00:03:56
Speaker 3: We were still under the impression, well, yeah, maybe he just was in a going in a different direction or not exactly where he said he was, and that seemed suspicious. But now to think that maybe the whole reason why they didn't buy where he was is because he went straight to the sailboat. I've also never understood why he would need to paddle back to shore, which took hours and hours and hours, when if he was paddling, why wouldn't he have just paddled to the sailboat that they were headed to in the first place.
00:04:23
Speaker 1: That never made any sense. It never made sense. Why a call wasn't made at all, Why and nobody had a cell phone didn't make any sense. Why she might have keys to the thing and going into the wall. None of it made sense, but Roaches was I thought, okay, when they went back and did this recent search, this was within the past several weeks, they went back and checked another area that they didn't check before because they were doing it based on his information. So Rose, we heard that and say, oh, now they're possibly looking in the correct area, but that's still turned up nothing. So here we are now with the new reporting from CBS and new comments from the net Hoooker's own mama, and I'll stop there for a second reminding about the mom. But the mom and Linet Hooker's daughter, when this first happened, they were pretty vocal about at least they stopped short of full blown accusations, but they certainly were suspicious of Brian.
00:05:13
Speaker 3: I actually thought they were fairly measured because they did want to leave space for the fact that maybe there was a terrible accident, and they didn't want to believe and I understand that that Brian Hooker, her husband of decades, could have been capable of doing something like this, and yet they felt the need to explain their very tumultuous relationship on again, off again, and as of I think the most recent communication, her mother said she had with her daughter was that her daughter wanted to leave him and wanted to and she was urging her, I'll get your ticket back here, and she was just saying, I sold everything, I gave up everything to sail my golden years with my husband. And so she was trying to figure out how to make it work, trying to figure out how to stay on this sail boat with him because it was their dream and she didn't want to leave it. That's understandable. But yeah, both the daughter and the mother talked about violent episodes, physical episodes, heavy drinking, major arguments, and her own daughter said that there was a threat by Brian Hooker to push her mother off the boat.
00:06:19
Speaker 2: At one point.
00:06:20
Speaker 3: The argument got so he did he threatened to do what Now they believe he may have actually done.
00:06:26
Speaker 1: All of this we have to say, does not a murderer make However, we have seen similar movies before, if you will, in these types of cases. So you combine with the family is saying with some of his questionable behavior after she disappeared. Now with what's happening with the investigation robes. Right before we came on, you just kind of made a comment like they're about to get this guy. Everything is going that direction, you.
00:06:55
Speaker 2: Would think right now.
00:06:56
Speaker 3: And yes, with the mom making statements to the press, I mean she's not you said, not mincing words.
00:07:00
Speaker 1: The mom isn't. Now and again we're getting this reporting from CBS News essentially saying the family has been told by investigators that yes, Lynnette made it back to the boat. This is the new theory that is being told to the family by investigators. That is the reporting is that they're telling the family she made it back to the sailboat. The next thing, then Robes, what the hell happened? Where the hell is she?
00:07:23
Speaker 3: And we know that the coast Guard, which is leading this investigation, they took that boat how long ago? A couple months ago, and they had been going through that boat for forensic evidence with a fine tooth comb. So for them to make that statement, they must have something that leads them to believe or to feel very fairly certain that she was back on that boat and that whatever happened to her happened on that boat, not in the water.
00:07:48
Speaker 1: What was that soulmates, that's what it was called. That was the name of that Saleland.
00:07:51
Speaker 2: Oh god, the irony.
00:07:53
Speaker 1: When they took the boat, Robes we and we haven't gotten anything from them about the boat, but we wondered, I mean, she went in the water.
00:08:01
Speaker 2: What's really a final vote and.
00:08:03
Speaker 1: Now here we are. Maybe the boat was key Rope.
00:08:06
Speaker 3: Maybe the boat was the crime scene. And so according to mom's statement, she actually said she as in Lynette, made it back to the boat and there was foul play.
00:08:17
Speaker 1: And she said that in an interview. She said, in a recent interview, this was with Fox News, Fox News, but Rope, she's kind of a to some degree, letting a cat the bag ahead of investigators here, don't you.
00:08:28
Speaker 3: Think, Oh yeah, she wants the world to know. And then she said, as a mother, it's taking longer than I would anticipate. But that's what the coastguard told me to say. That's all I'm saying, which says a lot. It wrote.
00:08:42
Speaker 1: That sounds like something my mom would say, like arm like, I'm not doing this back and forth. I'm supposed to say what not supposed to? She said, They told me I love that comment, Rope. This. I don't know how close we are, but this now, these updates feel like something is coming, something is going a certain direction at least, and nobody, look, you leave room, but nobody bought the story. It just didn't make sense. Didn't make sense. Just her falling out and being swept away so quickly that she couldn't even put her hand out and getting back, it.
00:09:16
Speaker 2: Didn't make sense.
00:09:17
Speaker 3: It seemed as though they were kind of near the sailboat as well, Like it wasn't that far when you see where the sailboat was, where they were coming from, this dinghy taking them to and from and to hear that she was an avid swimmer, an avid boater, her mom and her and her daughter immediately like my mom is an unbelievable swimmer. Like this is not something that makes sense. And why would she have the keys to the boat. Why wouldn't she have her cell phone? How would she just fall in and not be able to get back?
00:09:45
Speaker 2: How would he not.
00:09:46
Speaker 3: Have he claimed he tried to throw a life preserver to her, and how would she not have gotten it? Like that makes no sense.
00:09:54
Speaker 1: Well, that she could be sweat Look, we've been out in waters and choppy seas and been you were recently, and you current kind of got you when you were getting far, but things happen, you could get carried away. It's just robes. It seems so unlikely. What he described is so unlikely.
00:10:14
Speaker 2: It wasn't pitch black. It was so sad.
00:10:16
Speaker 3: So look, there were why he couldn't have gotten the boat to her, why she couldn't have gotten the life preserver, why she couldn't have swung back to the dinghy or back to the sailboat.
00:10:24
Speaker 2: None of it ever made sense.
00:10:27
Speaker 1: The other thing is why didn't he jump in the.
00:10:29
Speaker 2: Water one hundred percent?
00:10:31
Speaker 1: You know, I know it's danger. It's not the smartest thing. It's just something instinctively you do. If your loved one is in trouble.
00:10:37
Speaker 3: And he didn't have a phone to call nine one one, he couldn't have gotten people out there to help immediately.
00:10:41
Speaker 2: Source to her.
00:10:42
Speaker 3: He doesn't show up on this other island until like it was like in the like two o'clock in the morning or something.
00:10:48
Speaker 2: It was like several hours. If this was around sunset, it was like seven hours later.
00:10:53
Speaker 3: It made he probably like, oh, I won't even speculate, but yes, that timeline doesn't sit well with anyone.
00:11:02
Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense. And in the story robes about woman going missing, sailing in the Bahamas, and all of these weird circumstances it sounds like a crazy story that is once in a lifetime. It ain't. It happened there in twenty seventeen, yep in the Bahama.
00:11:21
Speaker 3: Stay here, Welcome back everyone to this episode of Amy and TJ, where there are some major developments and hopefully potentially a breakthrough in missing Michigan woman Lynette Hooker fifty five years old.
00:11:42
Speaker 2: You remember the story.
00:11:43
Speaker 3: We've been covering it and it has been a mystery for all these months.
00:11:47
Speaker 2: It happened back in April.
00:11:48
Speaker 3: Her husband Brian says she fell off the dinghy, never saw her again, couldn't get back to her. And look, it's never been a story that many people have necessarily believed.
00:12:01
Speaker 2: And now we're understanding that investigators have a new theory.
00:12:06
Speaker 1: They don't believe it either.
00:12:07
Speaker 3: They don't believe it either. They don't believe she was she fell off the dinghy. They believe she may have died on that sailboat and that Brian Hooker may be responsible.
00:12:16
Speaker 2: He has denied it, but her mom is speaking out.
00:12:19
Speaker 3: Investigators reportedly have told family members that this is their operating theory.
00:12:24
Speaker 1: Now and Rose, you just said when the story happened, the details came out a lot of people just didn't believe it what they were hearing. ROMs. We have been conditioned when you say, anytime we just hear that a couple went out on the water and only one came back, and the one that came back said there was an accident and they went missing, we immediately go Bs exactly, Robes. We are conditioned to question these stories.
00:12:50
Speaker 3: Automatic because these stories, unfortunately happen more often than you would think, and they all tell the same tale.
00:12:57
Speaker 1: It rose the one. The fact fact that there was one that happened here less than ten years ago in the Bahamas, a man ended up getting eight years in prison, pled guilty to manslaughter. Why because he was out on a boating trip in the Bahamas and his wife disappeared. His claim, Robes, was that he was asleep in the lower deck, heard a thump, a thud that woke him up, went upstairs, went up to the upper deck and she's not there. Wife is gone. She must have gone into the water, right, Robes. The story starts telling is that the boat is now damaged, it's taking on water. The boat capsizes, it goes under. He is rescued in a life raft by himself many hours later, that's the story. He survived.
00:13:46
Speaker 3: Robes.
00:13:46
Speaker 1: They went and determined there was a hole in the boat. It was made from the inside.
00:13:53
Speaker 2: So he sank the boat intentionally.
00:13:55
Speaker 1: He scuttled, as they call it. He scuttled the boat, but killed his wife for insurance, mind, whatever it was. But then went back and told this whole elaborate story about what happened.
00:14:07
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, how did he only get eight years in prison for that?
00:14:10
Speaker 1: They couldn't prove exactly how he killed her. They couldn't prove they couldn't prove exactly what happened. It was malicious, it was planned. The best they could hope for was this guilty on the manslaughter to at least give him something. Well, yeah, lou has been it, same type of thing, Robes.
00:14:26
Speaker 3: He happened, Yeah, because there are no witnesses, Nope, and no one left to tell the story of what actually occurred. You're in international waters, so all of those things tend to provide some sort of cover.
00:14:41
Speaker 1: In a very serious story. I'll give you a detail that is fricking funny. Robes. He he didn't call for any help for they say, like forty five minutes, because he was taking time to load supplies into the life raft like he had plenty of time to call for help to do all kinds of things. He patiently packed up. Then he called for help to come rescue him.
00:15:05
Speaker 3: Wow, all of that's so telling. I still am angry. He only got eight years? Are you kidding me?
00:15:11
Speaker 1: Right? And the other one I reminded you of happened right out the window here. We're sitting here looking at the Hudson River. But as soon as I said, do you remember the kayak yourself? Oh?
00:15:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, the fiance.
00:15:25
Speaker 3: Angelica Groswald was her name, but she ended up pleading guilty to manslaughter as well. But her fiance died while they were kayaking together on the hunt. One came back, Yeah, exactly. And it turns out she pulled the plug on his kayak.
00:15:40
Speaker 1: Yes, she was aware, and it was taking on water and he drowned. They said that at one point Rose in this incident, he was getting close, like he had an oar or something he could grab a hold of. She pushed it out of the way.
00:15:52
Speaker 2: Oh my god, how could you do that?
00:15:55
Speaker 1: You might be pissed. She got less time. I can't remember, but she had one cent a four year years or something. But then that ended up getting cut down.
00:16:02
Speaker 3: She denied it right, or did she end up pleading guilty. She ended up pleading guilty demands letter to a lower charge. But she tried to make up an excuse as to why she had nothing to do with it. She didn't know, she shouldn't, she couldn't.
00:16:13
Speaker 2: Get to him.
00:16:14
Speaker 1: But it's crazy to think that there are countless stories like this. Two people go out, only one comes back, and it is Robes to a certain degree, the perfect crime. Yeah, nobody's out there. Yeah, how do you prove it? And it's very hard to find a body out there When you.
00:16:32
Speaker 3: Don't have a body, you don't have the evidence. You can't prove how they died. You can't prove even when they died, and that makes it very difficult when you go to trial.
00:16:43
Speaker 1: It's just it was so easy to just find famous cases of folks and this happening. So with Brian Hooker, Lynette Hooker, Robes, just hearing something like this, it's just unlikely that this happened the way he said happened. Could it have? Sure can be a completely innocent man, Like I said, we have seen this.
00:17:02
Speaker 3: Movie before, Yes, and so we will keep our eye because it does feel as though this thing is about to break at any moment. And the moment we get word that any charges have been filed or any announcement is made, we will hop back on and let you know. But we always appreciate you listening to us.
00:17:18
Speaker 2: Everyone. I'm Amy Robach alongside TJ. Holmes. Talk to you soon,
Speaker 1: Hey, folks, it is Friday, July tenth, and we have potentially a huge, huge update in the case of the Nette Hooker, the Michigan woman who went missing in the Bahamas after a dinghy ride with her husband. The new development is investigators have a whole new theory about how she disappeared, and with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. The theory is that it didn't happen the way the husband said it happened.
00:00:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is kind of crazy.
00:00:35
Speaker 3: We were thinking about all the different possibilities, but I never actually considered that she never fell off the dinghy in the first place.
00:00:44
Speaker 1: Never crossed my mind. Baby, I did not cross my mind. And now they say it, I'm like, wow. And that's what they are saying. Robes that there was no dinghy accident. She made it back to where they were going at.
00:00:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, they took the dinghy back to the sailboat.
00:00:57
Speaker 3: They got back on the sailboat, and the new theory is that there was an altercation on that boat between Brian Hooker and Lynette Hooker and that is how she met her untimely death.
00:01:11
Speaker 1: Robes that none of it made sense. That theory, I'm thinking oh, okay, maybe maybe, But Robes. This is coming to us now, we should say, from CBS, citing law enforcement sources and others, But rose is also coming from Lynette Hooker's own mama, who might be doing more talking in public than authorities would like for it.
00:01:36
Speaker 2: You know what, though, I get it.
00:01:38
Speaker 3: She has been waiting for answers for a long time. And to see Brian Hooker be arrested by the Bahamian officials, held for five days and then released and allowed to go on and off on his merry way. He said he was never leaving the Bahamas until he found Lynette. Left the next day, said his.
00:01:58
Speaker 2: Mom was so literally was. The next week, he gives.
00:02:01
Speaker 3: An interview saying, I'm not leaving until I find my wife. I still believe she could be alive. Maybe she's on some island somewhere. And then he leaves and says his mom sick. We never see him again, never hear from him again. So yeah, mama is pissed. Mama's mama wants justice. Mama wants to know what happened to her daughter. And by the way, fifty five year old Lynette Hooker's body has not been found.
00:02:25
Speaker 1: It has not because we were under the impression, because it was given to us by Brian Hooker, who is really the only one who knows for sure what happened. But he is the one Robes that told us she fell off a dingy. This was back in April. They're taking this small eight foot dinghy from one spot from the land essentially out to their sailboat, trying to get back to it. Simple enough, these are two avid sailors. Their experience is this. They know what they're doing. His story, Robes with that is she keep using the word bounced. I see it everywhere.
00:02:55
Speaker 2: She bounced off the dinghy rough seas.
00:02:57
Speaker 1: Yes, went into the water, got taken away by a current. They got separated. He said she had the keys. He couldn't even operate the dingy anymore, so he had to paddle essentially back to land. Took hours and hours. That is a story as he told it. Robes. He gave all of his information. He drew maps. This is where we were search hap all this. That is his story, and it appears Robes he has been sticking to it, and yet.
00:03:24
Speaker 3: We knew just a short while ago authorities questioned that story because the maps he made and all of the routes he said he took to get to try and get to the sailboat ultimately to get to land. Well, guess what, the GPS didn't jibe with his story, and so all we heard, Okay, maybe the boat was in a different place, and so they actually sent dive teams and searchers to a new area of that water to try and find Linett his body.
00:03:54
Speaker 2: That didn't work, but.
00:03:56
Speaker 3: We were still under the impression, well, yeah, maybe he just was in a going in a different direction or not exactly where he said he was, and that seemed suspicious. But now to think that maybe the whole reason why they didn't buy where he was is because he went straight to the sailboat. I've also never understood why he would need to paddle back to shore, which took hours and hours and hours, when if he was paddling, why wouldn't he have just paddled to the sailboat that they were headed to in the first place.
00:04:23
Speaker 1: That never made any sense. It never made sense. Why a call wasn't made at all, Why and nobody had a cell phone didn't make any sense. Why she might have keys to the thing and going into the wall. None of it made sense, but Roaches was I thought, okay, when they went back and did this recent search, this was within the past several weeks, they went back and checked another area that they didn't check before because they were doing it based on his information. So Rose, we heard that and say, oh, now they're possibly looking in the correct area, but that's still turned up nothing. So here we are now with the new reporting from CBS and new comments from the net Hoooker's own mama, and I'll stop there for a second reminding about the mom. But the mom and Linet Hooker's daughter, when this first happened, they were pretty vocal about at least they stopped short of full blown accusations, but they certainly were suspicious of Brian.
00:05:13
Speaker 3: I actually thought they were fairly measured because they did want to leave space for the fact that maybe there was a terrible accident, and they didn't want to believe and I understand that that Brian Hooker, her husband of decades, could have been capable of doing something like this, and yet they felt the need to explain their very tumultuous relationship on again, off again, and as of I think the most recent communication, her mother said she had with her daughter was that her daughter wanted to leave him and wanted to and she was urging her, I'll get your ticket back here, and she was just saying, I sold everything, I gave up everything to sail my golden years with my husband. And so she was trying to figure out how to make it work, trying to figure out how to stay on this sail boat with him because it was their dream and she didn't want to leave it. That's understandable. But yeah, both the daughter and the mother talked about violent episodes, physical episodes, heavy drinking, major arguments, and her own daughter said that there was a threat by Brian Hooker to push her mother off the boat.
00:06:19
Speaker 2: At one point.
00:06:20
Speaker 3: The argument got so he did he threatened to do what Now they believe he may have actually done.
00:06:26
Speaker 1: All of this we have to say, does not a murderer make However, we have seen similar movies before, if you will, in these types of cases. So you combine with the family is saying with some of his questionable behavior after she disappeared. Now with what's happening with the investigation robes. Right before we came on, you just kind of made a comment like they're about to get this guy. Everything is going that direction, you.
00:06:55
Speaker 2: Would think right now.
00:06:56
Speaker 3: And yes, with the mom making statements to the press, I mean she's not you said, not mincing words.
00:07:00
Speaker 1: The mom isn't. Now and again we're getting this reporting from CBS News essentially saying the family has been told by investigators that yes, Lynnette made it back to the boat. This is the new theory that is being told to the family by investigators. That is the reporting is that they're telling the family she made it back to the sailboat. The next thing, then Robes, what the hell happened? Where the hell is she?
00:07:23
Speaker 3: And we know that the coast Guard, which is leading this investigation, they took that boat how long ago? A couple months ago, and they had been going through that boat for forensic evidence with a fine tooth comb. So for them to make that statement, they must have something that leads them to believe or to feel very fairly certain that she was back on that boat and that whatever happened to her happened on that boat, not in the water.
00:07:48
Speaker 1: What was that soulmates, that's what it was called. That was the name of that Saleland.
00:07:51
Speaker 2: Oh god, the irony.
00:07:53
Speaker 1: When they took the boat, Robes we and we haven't gotten anything from them about the boat, but we wondered, I mean, she went in the water.
00:08:01
Speaker 2: What's really a final vote and.
00:08:03
Speaker 1: Now here we are. Maybe the boat was key Rope.
00:08:06
Speaker 3: Maybe the boat was the crime scene. And so according to mom's statement, she actually said she as in Lynette, made it back to the boat and there was foul play.
00:08:17
Speaker 1: And she said that in an interview. She said, in a recent interview, this was with Fox News, Fox News, but Rope, she's kind of a to some degree, letting a cat the bag ahead of investigators here, don't you.
00:08:28
Speaker 3: Think, Oh yeah, she wants the world to know. And then she said, as a mother, it's taking longer than I would anticipate. But that's what the coastguard told me to say. That's all I'm saying, which says a lot. It wrote.
00:08:42
Speaker 1: That sounds like something my mom would say, like arm like, I'm not doing this back and forth. I'm supposed to say what not supposed to? She said, They told me I love that comment, Rope. This. I don't know how close we are, but this now, these updates feel like something is coming, something is going a certain direction at least, and nobody, look, you leave room, but nobody bought the story. It just didn't make sense. Didn't make sense. Just her falling out and being swept away so quickly that she couldn't even put her hand out and getting back, it.
00:09:16
Speaker 2: Didn't make sense.
00:09:17
Speaker 3: It seemed as though they were kind of near the sailboat as well, Like it wasn't that far when you see where the sailboat was, where they were coming from, this dinghy taking them to and from and to hear that she was an avid swimmer, an avid boater, her mom and her and her daughter immediately like my mom is an unbelievable swimmer. Like this is not something that makes sense. And why would she have the keys to the boat. Why wouldn't she have her cell phone? How would she just fall in and not be able to get back?
00:09:45
Speaker 2: How would he not.
00:09:46
Speaker 3: Have he claimed he tried to throw a life preserver to her, and how would she not have gotten it? Like that makes no sense.
00:09:54
Speaker 1: Well, that she could be sweat Look, we've been out in waters and choppy seas and been you were recently, and you current kind of got you when you were getting far, but things happen, you could get carried away. It's just robes. It seems so unlikely. What he described is so unlikely.
00:10:14
Speaker 2: It wasn't pitch black. It was so sad.
00:10:16
Speaker 3: So look, there were why he couldn't have gotten the boat to her, why she couldn't have gotten the life preserver, why she couldn't have swung back to the dinghy or back to the sailboat.
00:10:24
Speaker 2: None of it ever made sense.
00:10:27
Speaker 1: The other thing is why didn't he jump in the.
00:10:29
Speaker 2: Water one hundred percent?
00:10:31
Speaker 1: You know, I know it's danger. It's not the smartest thing. It's just something instinctively you do. If your loved one is in trouble.
00:10:37
Speaker 3: And he didn't have a phone to call nine one one, he couldn't have gotten people out there to help immediately.
00:10:41
Speaker 2: Source to her.
00:10:42
Speaker 3: He doesn't show up on this other island until like it was like in the like two o'clock in the morning or something.
00:10:48
Speaker 2: It was like several hours. If this was around sunset, it was like seven hours later.
00:10:53
Speaker 3: It made he probably like, oh, I won't even speculate, but yes, that timeline doesn't sit well with anyone.
00:11:02
Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense. And in the story robes about woman going missing, sailing in the Bahamas, and all of these weird circumstances it sounds like a crazy story that is once in a lifetime. It ain't. It happened there in twenty seventeen, yep in the Bahama.
00:11:21
Speaker 3: Stay here, Welcome back everyone to this episode of Amy and TJ, where there are some major developments and hopefully potentially a breakthrough in missing Michigan woman Lynette Hooker fifty five years old.
00:11:42
Speaker 2: You remember the story.
00:11:43
Speaker 3: We've been covering it and it has been a mystery for all these months.
00:11:47
Speaker 2: It happened back in April.
00:11:48
Speaker 3: Her husband Brian says she fell off the dinghy, never saw her again, couldn't get back to her. And look, it's never been a story that many people have necessarily believed.
00:12:01
Speaker 2: And now we're understanding that investigators have a new theory.
00:12:06
Speaker 1: They don't believe it either.
00:12:07
Speaker 3: They don't believe it either. They don't believe she was she fell off the dinghy. They believe she may have died on that sailboat and that Brian Hooker may be responsible.
00:12:16
Speaker 2: He has denied it, but her mom is speaking out.
00:12:19
Speaker 3: Investigators reportedly have told family members that this is their operating theory.
00:12:24
Speaker 1: Now and Rose, you just said when the story happened, the details came out a lot of people just didn't believe it what they were hearing. ROMs. We have been conditioned when you say, anytime we just hear that a couple went out on the water and only one came back, and the one that came back said there was an accident and they went missing, we immediately go Bs exactly, Robes. We are conditioned to question these stories.
00:12:50
Speaker 3: Automatic because these stories, unfortunately happen more often than you would think, and they all tell the same tale.
00:12:57
Speaker 1: It rose the one. The fact fact that there was one that happened here less than ten years ago in the Bahamas, a man ended up getting eight years in prison, pled guilty to manslaughter. Why because he was out on a boating trip in the Bahamas and his wife disappeared. His claim, Robes, was that he was asleep in the lower deck, heard a thump, a thud that woke him up, went upstairs, went up to the upper deck and she's not there. Wife is gone. She must have gone into the water, right, Robes. The story starts telling is that the boat is now damaged, it's taking on water. The boat capsizes, it goes under. He is rescued in a life raft by himself many hours later, that's the story. He survived.
00:13:46
Speaker 3: Robes.
00:13:46
Speaker 1: They went and determined there was a hole in the boat. It was made from the inside.
00:13:53
Speaker 2: So he sank the boat intentionally.
00:13:55
Speaker 1: He scuttled, as they call it. He scuttled the boat, but killed his wife for insurance, mind, whatever it was. But then went back and told this whole elaborate story about what happened.
00:14:07
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, how did he only get eight years in prison for that?
00:14:10
Speaker 1: They couldn't prove exactly how he killed her. They couldn't prove they couldn't prove exactly what happened. It was malicious, it was planned. The best they could hope for was this guilty on the manslaughter to at least give him something. Well, yeah, lou has been it, same type of thing, Robes.
00:14:26
Speaker 3: He happened, Yeah, because there are no witnesses, Nope, and no one left to tell the story of what actually occurred. You're in international waters, so all of those things tend to provide some sort of cover.
00:14:41
Speaker 1: In a very serious story. I'll give you a detail that is fricking funny. Robes. He he didn't call for any help for they say, like forty five minutes, because he was taking time to load supplies into the life raft like he had plenty of time to call for help to do all kinds of things. He patiently packed up. Then he called for help to come rescue him.
00:15:05
Speaker 3: Wow, all of that's so telling. I still am angry. He only got eight years? Are you kidding me?
00:15:11
Speaker 1: Right? And the other one I reminded you of happened right out the window here. We're sitting here looking at the Hudson River. But as soon as I said, do you remember the kayak yourself? Oh?
00:15:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, the fiance.
00:15:25
Speaker 3: Angelica Groswald was her name, but she ended up pleading guilty to manslaughter as well. But her fiance died while they were kayaking together on the hunt. One came back, Yeah, exactly. And it turns out she pulled the plug on his kayak.
00:15:40
Speaker 1: Yes, she was aware, and it was taking on water and he drowned. They said that at one point Rose in this incident, he was getting close, like he had an oar or something he could grab a hold of. She pushed it out of the way.
00:15:52
Speaker 2: Oh my god, how could you do that?
00:15:55
Speaker 1: You might be pissed. She got less time. I can't remember, but she had one cent a four year years or something. But then that ended up getting cut down.
00:16:02
Speaker 3: She denied it right, or did she end up pleading guilty. She ended up pleading guilty demands letter to a lower charge. But she tried to make up an excuse as to why she had nothing to do with it. She didn't know, she shouldn't, she couldn't.
00:16:13
Speaker 2: Get to him.
00:16:14
Speaker 1: But it's crazy to think that there are countless stories like this. Two people go out, only one comes back, and it is Robes to a certain degree, the perfect crime. Yeah, nobody's out there. Yeah, how do you prove it? And it's very hard to find a body out there When you.
00:16:32
Speaker 3: Don't have a body, you don't have the evidence. You can't prove how they died. You can't prove even when they died, and that makes it very difficult when you go to trial.
00:16:43
Speaker 1: It's just it was so easy to just find famous cases of folks and this happening. So with Brian Hooker, Lynette Hooker, Robes, just hearing something like this, it's just unlikely that this happened the way he said happened. Could it have? Sure can be a completely innocent man, Like I said, we have seen this.
00:17:02
Speaker 3: Movie before, Yes, and so we will keep our eye because it does feel as though this thing is about to break at any moment. And the moment we get word that any charges have been filed or any announcement is made, we will hop back on and let you know. But we always appreciate you listening to us.
00:17:18
Speaker 2: Everyone. I'm Amy Robach alongside TJ. Holmes. Talk to you soon,