The day after his wife disappeared during a nighttime boat ride in the Bahamas, Brian Hooker told a friend that she tried swimming back to him following her apparent fall overboard, but strong winds pushed them apart “pretty quickly,” according to messages reviewed exclusively by CBS News.
Lynette Hooker, who is from Michigan, has been missing since Sunday. Bahamian officials arrested her husband Wednesday night and are holding him for questioning in connection with her case, but he has not been charged with a crime, according to his attorney, Terrel Butler. Hooker can be held for 48 hours until he has to be either charged or released, Butler said, noting that officials can extend the period to 96 hours if deemed necessary.
Brian Hooker denies any wrongdoing. He previously told authorities that his wife fell from their dinghy Saturday night while the couple sailed from Hope Town to Elbow Cay in the Bahamas. 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.
He shared a similar account of what happened in Facebook messages to Daniel Danforth, a friend of the Hookers since 2023. Danforth told CBS News he met them because of their shared interest in boating.
The messages show that Danforth reached out to Brian on Monday after seeing news coverage of his wife’s disappearance.
“The wind blew me away from her and she swam towards the sailboat and we lost sight of each other pretty quickly as it was just about sundown,” Brian wrote in reply. “I 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.”
Bahamian police have said Brian Hooker arrived at the Marsh Harbor Boat Yard on the island of Abaco at 4 a.m. Sunday morning, after paddling the dinghy to shore. They said he told someone his wife was missing once he made it there, and that person informed authorities.
In the messages, he told Danforth his family was “in hell” as search crews failed to locate his wife.
When Danforth checked in again the next morning, Hooker said he had moved his boat to Marsh Harbor and had been sleeping there, but planned to relocate “for a night or two” to stay with his sister and brother-in-law, who were flying in to meet him. He told Danforth that he planned “on heading back out to the site” after that “and continuing search.”
“I will most likely definitely need help in the future but I just don’t know what it is yet I’m trying to take it a day at a time and keep the faith,” he told Danforth, before congratulating him on his recent sailboat purchase.
“The stories don’t really match up”
Danforth told CBS News that he first met the Hookers three years ago, while sailing in the New Orleans area. A Facebook notification from Brian over the weekend initially reminded him of the couple, before he started seeing headlines about Lynette’s disappearance, Danforth said.
He received the notification because Brian had liked his comment on a post that Danforth’s wife had shared about boating. In retrospect, Danforth said the fact that his friend was scrolling social media and liking posts at that time raised some questions for him.
“You know, my wife’s missing, Facebook’s the last thing I’m worried about. You’re going to find me on the water riding around,” Danforth told CBS News.
Danforth said he was concerned that Brian moved his boat from Elbow Cay, where it was anchored, shortly after Lynette went missing. He also noted that, in comparing Brian’s s retelling of Lynette’s disappearance with emerging media reports, “the stories don’t really match up.”
While police have said Hooker recalled his wife being swept overboard and out to sea, Danforth said his messages reflected “she was casually swimming back toward the sailboat.”
He also said the Hookers “always had their phones with them” and frequently posted videos online, so he wondered why Brian’s “phone didn’t work or why they didn’t have their phones in the boat” the night Lynette went missing.
Danforth said his wife was friends with Lynette and he didn’t have concerns about the couple’s relationship, although there had been a period where Brian and Lynette “had separated for a while,” he said.
“You know, most of the time people do get back together and you don’t want things to be awkward,” he said. “So we didn’t — I don’t really get into a whole lot of personal business because of those reasons.”
Lynette Hooker’s daughter, Karli Aylesworth, told CBS News in a separate interview that her mother and Brian Hooker had broken up and gotten back together in recent years. Aylesworth said she is seeking answers about the circumstances surrounding her mother’s disappearance and has said she doubts the sequence of events described by Brian Hooker.
“For one, I don’t understand how she got the key,” Aylesworth said. “Brian’s always driving. So he basically is in charge of the key. So the fact that my mom had it doesn’t make any sense.”
In an earlier statement, Butler, Hooker’s attorney, said he denied the allegations made by Aylesworth, and added, “He has been cooperating with the relevant authorities as part of an ongoing investigation.”
Butler has spoken to Hooker on the phone and told CBS News that he was focused on continuing the search for his wife.
“That’s all he’s been talking about,” Butler said. “Yesterday… he made arrangements to go back out and search for her.”
The whereabouts of the boat key was also an issue for Danforth, who said pictures and videos the Hookers took while on the dinghy never show either of them with the key, which is usually attached to a lanyard. But he said it’s possible that Lynette Hooker would “reach out in desperation” to grab hold of something as she fell overboard, and “that’s the closest thing.”
Ultimately, Danforth said he didn’t fully believe strong winds and ocean currents could separate Hooker’s small dinghy from his wife so rapidly. And, if she were swimming toward the dinghy, as Brian Hooker said in his messages, Danforth asked: “Why didn’t he try to go get her?”
