For the first time since her mom’s disappearance, the daughter of a Michigan girl who went lacking in the Bahamas is visiting a ship the place her mom lived together with her stepfather.
In a Dateline unique, Karli Aylesworth visited the boat the place the couple lived collectively for the first time since her mom, Lynette Hooker, disappeared on April 4. She was reported lacking after Hooker’s husband, Brian Hooker, informed authorities she fell overboard whereas on a dinghy journey collectively.
“It’s making it a little bit more real,” Aylesworth informed Dateline’s Andrea Canning in an excerpt shared on TODAY April 17.
“A lot of sadness,” she continued. “When I first got here, I sat up there and looked at the boat and started talking to her like she was here. I was like, ‘Hey Mom, I’m here. Wherever you are. I just want to talk to you and see you again.’”
Brian Hooker, 58, was taken into custody by authorities on April 8 after which launched by police 5 days later. His lawyer, Terrel Butler, told reporters that authorities “had no evidence” towards him and have been required to launch him.
Hooker stays a suspect in his spouse’s disappearance, Royal Bahamas Police Commissioner Shanta Knowles informed NBC News on April 13. He has not been charged with a criminal offense and denies having something to do with it.
Aynesworth, 28, informed Dateline she spent three hours speaking to police and hopes to maintain a highlight on the case.
Brian Hooker has left the Bahamas since being launched by police as a result of his mom is in poor health, however he plans to return, his lawyer informed NBC News.
He informed police that Lynette fell overboard on a dinghy they have been driving in and had the key to the vessel, which compelled him to paddle from Elbow Cay to Marsh Harbor Boat Yard to inform police. Authorities are nonetheless trying to find her by land, air and sea.
Police questioned Brian Hooker for greater than three hours at Central Police Station in Grand Bahama about whether or not he harmed his spouse, his attorney told NBC News.
Aylesworth has beforehand questioned her stepfather’s model of what occurred.
“I hope this was just a freak accident, but I just have a hard time believing it at the moment,” Aylesworth told NBC News on April 9. “I just want to know the truth.”
“I feel like this was probably preplanned, if anything, like, it doesn’t seem like just some accident,” she added.
Brian Hooker “categorically and unequivocally denies any wrongdoing and in particular the allegations recently made by Karli Aylesworth,” Butler stated in an announcement to NBC News.
Aylesworth informed NBC News the couple had a turbulent historical past, “especially when they drink.”
Lynette Hooker was arrested on charges of assault and battery/simple assault in 2015, although the warrant was denied for “insufficient evidence as to who started the assault.” She and her husband accused one another of assault, in accordance with a Michigan police report.
Brian Hooker was additionally acquitted by a Michigan jury of a kid abuse cost in 2006, in accordance with courtroom information. Details of the case weren’t accessible.
