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Everyone from the sunken yacht off Sicily has now been accounted for
Bill Chappell
Dive and recovery teams searched for a final missing person off Porticello harbor near Palermo on Aug. 22, three days after the British-flagged luxury yacht Bayesian sank. ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images/AFP hide caption
Italian authorities say the bodies of all seven people who died after a sailing yacht sank on Monday have now been recovered. The final discovery was announced on Friday; the other six bodies had been found after the calamity.
Tech mogul Mike Lynch is among the people whose bodies were recovered from the sailing yacht, called Bayesian. The massive yacht sank in a violent storm along the shore of Sicily early on Monday.
Italian divers on Friday recovered the body of Lynch’s daughter Hannah, 18, who was the last person unaccounted for.
Lynch’s body was identified on Thursday, according to The Associated Press and other news outlets, citing the Italian coast guard. The agency did not immediately respond to messages from NPR.
The sea rescue operation included 123 dives, according to the Italian fire brigade . Robotic craft have also been used in the search.
Local newspaper Giornale di Sicilia reports that Lynch’s daughter, Hannah, 18, is believed to be the only remaining missing person from the calamity.
15 people survived the catastrophe
Bayesian, with a length of more than 180 feet, had 22 passengers and crew aboard when it sank in the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning. Eyewitness accounts cited a waterspout — a highly localized spiraling storm that’s essentially a marine tornado. One body was found, and 15 survivors made it to safety. That left six people unaccounted for.
Since then, the Italian Coast Guard has been working to find survivors -- and as time passed, what started as a rescue effort became a recovery operation to retrieve bodies from inside the sunken ship.
The Palermo Coast Guard told NPR that the operation has been complicated by the depth and position of the hull, which lies on the seabed at a depth of around 50 meters, about a half-mile from the port in Porticello, Sicily.
Who were the missing people?
The six passengers who had been unaccounted for include Lynch and his daughter, along with Morgan Stanley International Chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife. Judy. A lawyer for Lynch named Chris Morvillo, and his wife, Neda, were also missing in the days after the yacht sank.
One member of the crew -- Recaldo Thomas, the yacht’s chef -- also went missing. Local news reports have suggested it was Thomas’ body that was found soon after the ship sank.
Who survived the sinking?
Survivors include Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares, along with Charlotte Golunski, who works at Invoke Capital, Lynch’s venture capital firm. Golunski was on the ship with her daughter, Sofia, who had just celebrated her first birthday.
In an interview with La Repubblica , Golunski said that as the ship sank, she used all her strength to hold her arms above water and prevent Sofia from drowning. Sofia’s father was also onboard and survived.
Ayla Ronald, a lawyer who worked on Lynch’s fraud case, and her partner also escaped the wreck. Other survivors include several crew members, including two women in their early 20s who were part of the ship’s staff.
Who was Mike Lynch?
Lynch, 59, was the founder of Autonomy, a search engine and software company. Hewlett-Packard bought Autonomy for $11 billion in 2011, but Lynch then faced accusations — and then federal fraud charges — that he had misrepresented his company’s financial health and prospects. Lynch denied the claims, saying HP was blaming him for its own problems.
This past June, a lengthy trial in San Francisco ended with Lynch’s acquittal of all charges against him , after he testified on his own behalf. The sailing voyage along the coast of Sicily has been portrayed as a celebration of the end of the court case.
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Lynch Yacht Sinking Off Sicily Proves as Baffling as It Is Tragic
As bodies were recovered, the authorities and experts wondered how a $40 million, stable and secure vessel could have sunk so quickly.
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By Emma Bubola and Michael J. de la Merced
Emma Bubola reported from Porticello, Italy, and Michael J. de la Merced from London.
Two months after being cleared in a bruising legal battle over fraud charges, the British tech mogul Mike Lynch celebrated his freedom with a cruise. He invited his family, friends and part of his legal team on board his luxury sailing yacht, a majestic 180-foot vessel named Bayesian after the mathematical theorem around which he had built his empire.
On Sunday night, after a tour of the Gulf of Naples, including Capri, and volcanic islands in the Eolian archipelago, the boat anchored half a mile off the Sicilian coast in Porticello, Italy. It chose a stretch of water favored by the Phoenicians thousands of years ago for its protection from the mistral wind and, in more recent times, by the yachts of tech billionaires. The boat was lit “like a Christmas tree,” local residents said, standing out against the full moon.
But about 4 a.m., calamity unfolded. A violent and fast storm hit the area with some of the strongest winds locals said they had ever felt. Fabio Cefalù, a fisherman, said he saw a flare pierce the darkness shortly after 4.
Minutes later, the yacht was underwater. Only dozens of cushions from the boat’s deck and a gigantic radar from its mast floated on the surface of the sea, fishermen said.
In all, 22 people were on board, 15 of whom were rescued. Six bodies — five passengers and the ship’s cook — had been recovered by Thursday afternoon, including that of Mr. Lynch, an Italian government official said, adding that the search was continuing for his daughter.
It was a tragic and mystifying turn of events for Mr. Lynch, 59, who had spent years seeking to clear his name and was finally inaugurating a new chapter in his life. Experts wondered how a $40 million yacht, so robust and stable could have been sunk by a storm near a port within minutes.
“It drives me insane,” said Giovanni Costantino, the chief executive of the Italian Sea Group, which in 2022 bought the company, Perini, that made the Bayesian. “Following all the proper procedures, that boat is unsinkable.”
The aura of misfortune only deepened when it emerged that Stephen Chamberlain, 52, a former vice president of finance for Mr. Lynch’s former company and a co-defendant in the fraud case, was killed two days earlier, when he was hit by a car while jogging near his house in England.
Since June, the two men had been in a jubilant mood. A jury in San Francisco had acquitted both on fraud charges that could have sent them to prison for two decades. There were hugs and tears, and they and their legal teams went for a celebratory dinner party at a restaurant in the city, said Gary S. Lincenberg, a lawyer for Mr. Chamberlain.
The sea excursion was meant as a thank-you by Mr. Lynch to those who had helped him in his legal travails. Among the guests was Christopher J. Morvillo, 59, a scion of a prominent New York family of lawyers who had represented Mr. Lynch for 12 years. He and his wife, Neda, 57, were among the missing.
So, too, was Jonathan Bloomer, 70, a veteran British insurance executive who chaired Morgan Stanley International and the insurer Hiscox.
The body of the ship’s cook, Recaldo Thomas, was recovered. All the other crew members survived. Among them was Leo Eppel, 19, of South Africa, who was on his first yacht voyage working as a deck steward, said a friend, who asked not to be identified.
Since the sinking, the recovery effort and investigation have turned the tiny port town of Porticello, a quiet enclave where older men sit bare-chested on balconies, into what feels like the set of a movie.
Helicopters have flown overhead. Ambulances have sped by with the sirens blaring. The Coast Guard has patrolled the waters off shore, within sight of a cordoned-off dock that had been turned into an emergency headquarters.
On Wednesday afternoon, a church bell tolled after the first body bag was loaded into an ambulance, a crowd watching in silence.
The survivors were sheltering in a sprawling resort near Porticello, with a view of the shipwreck spot, and had so far declined to comment.
Attilio Di Diodato, director of the Italian Air Force’s Center for Aerospace Meteorology and Climatology, said that the yacht had most likely been hit by a fierce “down burst” — when air generated within a thunderstorm descends rapidly — or by a waterspout , similar to a tornado over water.
He added that his agency had put out rough-sea warnings the previous evening, alerting sailors about storms and strong winds. Locals said the winds “felt like an earthquake.”
Mr. Costantino, the boat executive, said the yacht had been specifically designed for having a tall mast — the second-tallest aluminum mast in the world. He said the Bayesian was an extremely safe and secure boat that could list even to 75 degrees without capsizing.
But he said that if some of the hatches on the side and in the stern, or some of the deck doors, had been open, the boat could have taken on water and sunk. Standard procedure in such storms, he said, is to switch on the engine, lift the anchor and turn the boat into the wind, lowering the keel for extra stability, closing doors and gathering the guests in the main hall inside the deck.
12 guests occupied the yacht’s six cabins. There were also 10 crew members.
Open hatches, doors and cabin windows could have let in water during a storm, according to the manufacturer.
Open hatches, doors and
cabin windows could
have let in water
during a storm,
according to the
manufacturer.
Source: Superyacht Times, YachtCharterFleet, MarineTraffic
By Veronica Penney
The New York Times attempted to reach the captain, James Cutfield, who had survived, for comment through social media, his brother and the management company of the yacht (which did not hire the crew), but did not make contact.
So far none of the surviving crew members have made a public statement about what happened that night.
Fabio Genco, the director of Palermo’s emergency services, who treated some of the survivors, said that the victims had recounted feeling as if the boat was being lifted, then suddenly dropped, with objects from the cabins falling on them.
The Italian Coast Guard said it had deployed a remotely operated vehicle that can prowl underwater for up to seven hours at a depth of more than 980 feet and record videos and images that they hoped would help them reconstruct the dynamics of the sinking. Such devices were used during the search and rescue operations of the Titan vessel that is believed to have imploded last summer near the wreckage of the Titanic.
After rescuers broke inside the yacht, they struggled to navigate the ropes and many pieces of furniture cluttering the vessel, said Luca Cari, a spokesman for Italy’s national firefighter corps.
Finally, as of Thursday morning, they had managed to retrieve all but one of the missing bodies, and hopes of finding the missing person alive were thin. “Can a human being be underwater for two days?” Mr. Cari asked.
What was certain was that Mr. Lynch’s death was yet another cruel twist of fate for a man who had spent years seeking to clear his name.
He earned a fortune in technology and was nicknamed Britain’s Bill Gates. But for more than a decade, he had been treated as anything but a respected tech leader.
He was accused by Hewlett-Packard, the American technological pioneer that had bought his software company, Autonomy, for $11 billion, of misleading it about his company’s worth. (Hewlett-Packard wrote down the value of the transaction by about $8.8 billion, and critics called it one of the worst deals of all time .) He had been increasingly shunned by the British establishment that he sought to break into after growing up working-class outside London.
He was extradited to San Francisco to face criminal charges, and confined to house arrest and 24-hour surveillance on his dime. In a townhouse in the Pacific Heights neighborhood — with security people he jokingly told associates were his “roommates” — he spent his mornings talking with researchers whom he funded personally on new applications for artificial intelligence. Afterward, he devoted hours to discussing legal strategy with his team.
Despite his persistent claims of innocence, even those close to Mr. Lynch had believed his odds of victory were slim. Autonomy’s chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, was convicted in 2018 of similar fraud charges and spent five years in prison.
During Mr. Lynch’s house arrest, his brother and mother died. His wife, Angela Bacares, frequently flew over from England, and she became a constant presence in the San Francisco courtroom during the trial.
After he was finally acquitted, Mr. Lynch had his eye on the future. “I am looking forward to returning to the U.K. and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovating in my field,” he said.
Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting from Pallanza, Italy.
Emma Bubola is a Times reporter based in Rome. More about Emma Bubola
Michael J. de la Merced has covered global business and finance news for The Times since 2006. More about Michael J. de la Merced
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Autopsies reveal cause of death of US lawyer and wife onboard Mike Lynch’s superyacht
Seven lives were lost when the the yacht bayesian, belonging to british tech tycoon mike lynch, capsized off the coast of sicily, article bookmarked.
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Autopsies have been carried out on a couple who drowned on Mike Lynch’s superyacht when it sank off the coast of Sicily last month.
Seven lives were lost when the British-flagged boat, called the Bayesian, went down in a freak storm while anchored near the Sicilian capital of Palermo on 19 August.
British technology tycoon Mike Lynch and his 19-year-old daughter Hannah Lynch were among those who died, while his wife, Angela Bacares, survived with 14 others.
On Monday, Italian authorities said the first post-mortem examinations on the victims had been carried out on US lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda . The results confirmed that the pair had drowned.
Morvillo was a partner at Clifford Chance, a white-collar law firm. He previously worked as a federal prosecutor who investigated the September 11 terror attacks, according to the New York Post .
Post-mortem examinations are planned on Wednesday on the bodies of Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley’s London-based investment banking subsidiary, and his wife Judy.
They are also due to take place for the remaining three victims, Mr Lynch, who had organised the yacht trip to celebrate a recent legal victory, his daughter Hannah and the yacht’s cook, Recaldo Thomas.
Mr Morvillo was one of Mr Lynch’s US lawyers in a fraud case involving the sale in 2011 of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in an £8.3 billion deal that quickly turned sour over allegations Mr Lynch had cooked the books to overvalue Autonomy. He was acquitted in June.
What we know so far
The British-flagged vessel was carrying 12 passengers and 10 members of crew when it sank at around 5am local time near Palermo.
The 56-metre (184ft) luxury yacht sank during what appears to have been a sudden downburst. These are powerful winds that descend from a thunderstorm and spread out quickly once they hit the ground. The wreckage now sitting at a depth of 50m below the surface of the sea.
Of the 22 passengers and crew on board, 15 people including Mr Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares were rescued after escaping on a lifeboat.
Tributes were paid to those who died , with Hannah’s sister calling her “the most amazing, supportive and joyful sister and best friend to me”. She had been due to start studying English at Oxford University in October.
Mr Lynch founded the software giant Autonomy in 1996 and sat on the board of a number of prestigious institutions .
His close friend and colleague Andrew Kanter said: “Mike was the most brilliant mind and caring person I have ever known. Over nearly a quarter century I had the privilege of working beside someone unrivalled in their understanding of technology and business.
“There is simply no other UK technology entrepreneur of our generation who has had such an impact on so many people.”
What happens now?
Prosecutors are investigating the captain , New Zealander James Cutfield, and two crew members for possible responsibility in connection with the sinking.
Mr Cutfield is under investigation for possible manslaughter and culpable shipwreck charges. Tim Parker Eaton — the engineer who was in charge of securing the yacht’s engine room — and sailor Matthew Griffith — who was on watch duty on the night of the disaster — are now under investigation for the same possible charges, their lawyer said.
Chief prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio, who is heading the investigation, has said his team will consider each possible element of responsibility including those of the captain, the crew, individuals in charge of supervision and the yacht’s manufacturer.
Investigators are focusing on how a sailing vessel deemed “unsinkable” by its manufacturer, Italian shipyard Perini Navi, sank while a nearby sailboat remained largely unscathed. They added raising the Bayesian and examining the yacht for evidence would provide key elements to the investigation.
Maritime director of western Sicily, Rear Admiral Raffaele Macauda of the coastguard, could not confirm how long it would take to retrieve the shipwreck of the sunken yacht, adding recovering the fuel tanks was a “priority for us because it has environmental knock-on effects”.
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4 bodies found inside the Bayesian, Mike Lynch family yacht, amid search
Four bodies were recovered inside the Bayesian superyacht on Wednesday, more than two days after it sank off the coast of Italy , setting off an exhaustive search for six missing people, including British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch .
Two of the bodies discovered earlier on Wednesday were brought to shore. One body recovered was a heavily built man, Reuters reported.
Six of the ship's 22 passengers, including Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, went missing after the yacht plunged under the water just before 5 a.m. on Monday as a storm swept across the area. Americans are among the missing, officials have said.
The U.K.-registered yacht belonged to Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares, who was also on board and was rescued. The tech tycoon was recently acquitted on fraud charges after a year under house arrest.
Ricardo Thomas, the ship's cook, was found dead on Monday, according to the coast guard.
The rescue mission saw a diving team, helicopters and multiple coast guard ships deployed to search the water. Fifteen people were pulled from the water on Monday, and eight were hospitalized in stable condition.
A 'black swan event'? Experts puzzle over why Bayesian yacht sank
An investigation opened by local prosecutors into the cause of the disaster is ongoing. Experts have pointed to a water spout, a tornado over the water that can travel up to 120 mph, that formed during the storm, as well as the heavy weight of ship's mast, one of the largest in the world.
The 184-feet-long ship was made by Italian ship manufacturer Perini in 2008.
Lynch set off on the cruise late last month to celebrate his acquittal on fraud charges in the U.S. that marked a decade of legal challenges, the Associated Press reported .
One of his lawyers and a character witness for Lynch during the trial were also on board and vanished when the boat went down. Authorities have not yet disclosed the identities of the four people found.
Here are the passengers who were declared missing.
Mike Lynch and Hannah Lynch
Mike Lynch, 59, is co-founder of Britain’s largest enterprise software, Autonomy, which was sold to Hewlett-Packard in 2011, and founder of venture capital fund Invoke Capital.
Sometimes known as “Britain’s Bill Gates,” Lynch was slapped with charges after HP said it had uncovered deceit and a major accounting scandal within the firm. He spent a year on house arrest after being extradited from the UK.
In early June, at the end of a 12-week trial, a San Francisco jury acquitted Lynch of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He was also cleared on a charge of securities fraud later that month.
Lynch and Bacares have two daughters and six dogs, all named after engineering parts, according to the U.K.’s Sunday Times in a profile of Lynch from last month.
Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, was also among the missing. She was preparing to study English literature at Oxford University, according to the Sunday Times.
Hannah is the younger of Mike Lynch’s two daughters, the Times reported . Mike Lynch told the outlet that his daughters had grown up with their father being publicly accused of fraud.
Jonathan Bloomer and Judy Bloomer
Jonathan Bloomer is the non-executive chairman of both Morgan Stanley International and the insurer Hiscox, among other companies. Bloomer acted as a character witness on Lynch’s behalf during his fraud trial.
Hiscox Chief Executive Aki Hussain told Reuters in a statement that the firm was deeply shocked and saddened and their thoughts were with all those affected.
Bloomer’s twin brother, Jeremy, told BBC that he is processing the news and the family is waiting to hear updates.
“He was my elder by half an hour, so, it means a lot when you lose a twin brother,” Jeremy Bloomer told BBC. “We’ll still wait and see, so it’s fingers crossed.”
Jonathan Bloomer’s wife, Judy, is a psychotherapist of nearly three decades and former teacher. She specializes in anxiety and stress. She studied English language and literature at Homerton College in Cambridge.
Christopher Morvillo and Neda Morvillo
A lawyer with Clifford Chance, Chris Morvillo was among the team that represented Mike Lynch during his trial. Morvillo is an American citizen.
He was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1999 to 2005, and he worked on the criminal investigation stemming from the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Morvillo was a graduate of Fordham University School of Law and Villanova University.
Neda Morvillo, his wife, owns a hand-crafted jewelry company under her maiden name, Neda Nassiri. The company’s website said she has been designing and making jewelry for over 20 years.
In a post on LinkedIn after the conclusion of Lynch’s trial, Chris Morvillo acknowledged his family for their support during the case.
“And, finally, a huge thank you to my patient and incredible wife, Neda Morvillo, and my two strong, brilliant, and beautiful daughters, Sabrina Morvillo and Sophia Morvillo. None of this would have been possible without your love and support. I am so glad to be home.
And they all lived happily ever after…."
Contributing: Reuters
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