Exclusive New Pics & Vids: No Lynette as Hubby Heads to Dock + Proof Weather Was Calm That Night

Hey everyone, I'm Ashley Banfield and this is Drop Dead Serious and I have a big exclusive

piece of news to share with you regarding the Lynette and Brian Hooker story.

If you'll recall, Lynette Hooker has been missing now for over two weeks.

On a Saturday night, a beautiful sunny Saturday night on elbow key in the Bahamas, Lynette

was having some drinks with her husband, Brian, sometime between 4.30 and 7 o'clock and

she was never seen again because her husband, Brian, suggests they went down to the docks

and got in their little dinghy, little tiny eight foot dinghy with about a two to four

horsepower on the back and were motoring out to their sailboat where they'd been living

literally in their retirement, they'd been living on that sailboat 46 foot catch that

was anchored just south of the abacoin where they were having drinks and Brian said they

never made it to the sailboat because the waves were two to four feet high, the wind

was screaming, it was getting dark, she bounced off the back, they got separated because

of wind and current and I tried, I tried, I even threw her a flotation cushion and you

know, just it didn't work, she went out with the dry bag and with the key, the electric

key that keeps the engine going on a lanyard, she took both those things out with her and

the spare key was in that dry bag and you know what you know it, I just had to float for

the next nine hours until I hit shore over on March Harbor.

So many things to address here, but first the most important thing to address and it's

a timeline of when Brian said he left with Lynette from the abacoin after having drinks.

He says it was around 730, it's about a 15, 10 to 15 minute little dinghy ride from the

docks of the abacoin around the corner of white sound channel and down the shore of Elbow

Key and the lee side of Elbow Key, screaming wind over on the Atlantic side but nice and usually

a lot more calm over on the sea of abaco side where they were, they only take about

six inches of water too so they can drive over the really shallow stuff, they don't have

to go way out, they can just skirt the shore real close where it's protected.

But Brian said two to four foot seas, so wavy, it's very, very shallow there, very, very

shallow.

But let's just say they're in five feet of water where it's deeper, it literally

it's that shallow.

Okay, waves a little hard to maybe stand, but getting separated from her again, I digress,

here's the critical issue.

We saw the last known photo taken of Brian and Lynette and we put it out on this podcast

and it was timestamped 6.34 pm and they were out the pool behind the abacoin.

You could see Lynette was wearing her green cover up, she has her arms crossed, it looks

like she's maybe kind of cold because it's windy back there.

We've been back there.

I have stood back there at that exact time and it is a little colder because the wind

is really screaming from the Atlantic onto that shore.

That is the eastern shore of Elbow Key, so it's an east wind coming at Elbow Key and up

over the key on the west side it's a lot quieter, a lot hotter, actually I was sweating

on the other side because it was still sunny when I was there at seven o'clock at night.

All sunny till 7.30 at night, in fact we've got the sunset picture and this is the photo

that's so critical that I want to show you.

This is an exclusive picture that we just got our hands on today and it is Tuesday, April

21st.

This is a photo that someone who was up in the bar of the abacoin where Lynette and Brian

had gotten their drinks from, she wanted to see the sunset, so she took a beautiful sunset

picture.

You know what live pictures are, right?

They kind of move for like a second and a half or two seconds.

It's a live picture and she didn't know it at the time because how could she, till she

heard about this terrible story and went back to see her picture, which is time stamped

7pm as the sun's going down.

So at 7pm if you zoom in, there's somebody crossing the road leaving the abacoin bar

area.

And it appears to be Brian Hooker.

Lynette's not with him.

Lots of things could be happening here guys.

But it's key, first of all to establish, she is still on shore at 7pm.

Originally Lynette's daughter, Carly and her boyfriend Steve had seen a quick look at

the surveillance video from the abacoin and they could have sworn it was somewhere around

6.38 that they could see Lynette and Brian walking down towards the dock.

They were on the path.

They hadn't hit the road yet.

They were walking down towards the dock.

And that was our last known time stamp for when they might have actually been leaving

and boy was at a lot earlier than Brian says, right?

He left the dock at 7.30.

Well, this was like almost an hour earlier, which gives you an hour more of daylight, which

tells you that you know as you're heading out to your sailboat 10, 15 minutes to get

out there.

It ain't dark.

It ain't pitch black.

Can't see her anymore.

I lost sight of her.

It was so dark.

Nope.

It blew his timeline away.

So I'm reeling some of that back in because this photo is at 7pm.

Again, it's a still photo.

It's a live photo, but we don't know what happens after he crosses the road.

It's a little 30 second walk to the dock where you tie your dinghy up at that point.

Did he get in the dinghy?

Where was Lynette?

Will she back up at the abaco inn maybe using the restroom?

You go down.

I'll meet you down there.

I'm just going to use the restroom.

Or maybe they walked down and she said, you know what?

I'm going to run back up.

I got to use the restroom.

It's still a mystery though.

It's one more piece, but this gets us just a little bit closer to when Brian and Lynette

if Lynette did get into that dinghy at the dock and start making their way towards their

sailboat 10 to 15 minutes away by dinghy.

So this photograph is really important.

There's something else in this photograph that's very important to the story.

And that is when you zoom in, it's hard to see it when it's a still picture, but when

you let the live picture go, you can see he's carrying a yellow dry bag.

It's important.

The dry bags are going to be an issue in this investigation.

He's carrying like a banana yellow dry bag, right?

But Lynette is always seen in their Instagram videos carrying a bright green dry bag.

In fact, we can see it in the Florida, in the Key West videos.

We can see it in the Bahamas videos.

If you zoom in to the last known photo at the pool over on the Atlantic side, Velbo

Key at the Abaco Inn, it's hard to make it out, but it sure looks like there's something

lime green on the ground to the left of Lynette's sun chair.

And it would make perfect sense.

She's got her stuff in her dry bag and she's got it down on the ground beside her sun chair.

That would make sense.

I don't see the lemon yellow dry bag that Brian is carrying off when he's seen in this

brand new picture.

It's 7 p.m.

I can't see that in the pool picture.

But we know this, Brian's story, and I put the story in heavy quotes, as many asked

just as you can fit on there, Brian's story is that he leaves the Abaco Inn with Lynette

at around 7.30.

So it's a half hour later than we see him walking down towards the dock.

And they go out of White Sound Channel and take a left which will be going now south down

the shore of Velbo Key.

And the waves are rough and it's getting dark.

It is only getting dark at 7.45 to 8 p.m.

Been there five days straight and measured it every day.

The sun does go down, but it's still light until 8.

At 8, it's dark.

At 8 o'clock, if you told me your wife bounced out of the dinghy and you couldn't see her,

now I could believe you because it is dark.

But at 7.30 or at 7.45, let's give them 15 minutes to get around the channel and start

heading south on Elbo Key.

I'll give you 10 minutes.

That's all that would take.

If you really left at 7.30 and I'm not so sure that's true because I see you walk

into the dock at 7, that takes you to about 7.40.

Let's say you mucked about getting untied for a little bit or maybe you spent a second

on the dock or so.

Let me just give you to 7.50.

At 7.50, it's not too dark to see her if she went overboard.

It's not too dark for another 10 minutes and you're in pretty shallow water.

So let's talk about how windy it really was because we've had remember on all my episodes

I've had varying reports of how windy it was right there.

Right there in the Sea of Abaco, 150 yards off of shore, right?

Off the western shore, the leeward shore that isn't screaming with wind.

I've had one report from the owner of the Firefly Inn who said to me, it can be 30 knots

screaming on the Atlantic side.

The wind can be 30 knots and over on the Sea of Abaco side, on the western side, you

could be snorkeling because it's that protected.

Hence it is like a dream for people who throw anchor or just want to find safe harbor.

Sleep for the night, swim, have fun, it's safe harbor because it's protected from the wind.

But that was a report I had not yet heard.

It could be 30 knots screaming back there on the Atlantic side and you could be snorkeling

on our side.

Let's back it up with some pictures from that exact day.

How about that?

So the surveillance, and the reason that Firefly Inn is so important to me is because I had

heard from Fire and Rescue that Lynette and Brian had actually been at the Firefly Inn

earlier in the day, sometime around 11 a.m.

And then pulled up anchor and moved southward along the island, not even a quarter mile,

to where they threw down anchor to get in their dinghy and go into the abaco inn, to

enjoy some sun drinks, etc.

So I went to the Firefly Inn, spent several hours there, and I talked to the owner and

I got surveillance video from the Firefly Inn, interestingly.

Yes, Brian and Lynette did throw down anchor at the Firefly Inn but they didn't get into

their dinghy.

At least we can't find that on video.

The dinghy appears to be up on the davids, hanging off the back of the boat because that's

what you do when you're living on your boat.

You've got to have your tender, that's a little vessel that gets you to and from your yacht

because you can't get the yacht into the shallow water.

They never brought that little dinghy, the tender, down off the back of the sailboat.

And here's the weirder thing.

The timestamps of soulmate, Brian and Lynette's 46-foot catch sailboat that they're living

on.

The timestamp of it coming in and throwing anchor down out in front of the Firefly Inn

is actually the day before.

It's Friday, April 3rd, at around 1.30 or so in the afternoon.

They come in, they throw the anchor down, but they don't come into shore.

And they sleep there.

They stay on the boat and they stay overnight, I assume sleep, but they stay overnight.

And the next morning around 11 o'clock is when they pulled up anchor and pulled out.

They never came ashore, at least that the video shows.

Video does not show that tender coming ashore.

And the video does not show them in the restaurant.

And they ran the credit cards so they don't have anything that suggests a Brian or Lynette

Hooker ran a credit card.

I will say this at the abaco inn, the New York Post has a reporter who talked to the bartender

after I spoke to the bartender.

And the New York Post reporter added a detail that Brian paid for his drinks in cash at

the abaco inn.

So maybe they had done anything on land at the Firefly, they paid in cash, but the surveillance

video just doesn't show them there.

So and I spent better part of an hour going over this with the Firefly Inn folks and the

owner of the inn.

And it does not appear that they came ashore, okay?

Not critical, the most critical thing is that the abaco inn, I've never seen surveillance

videos so fiercely protected in my life.

The general manager of the abaco inn, I've tried every which way but sideways to see that

video, get that video, see the last steps of Brian and Lynette, see what time they got

in the dinghy.

That's all I really want to see.

I want to see what they're wearing and I want to see what time they got in the dinghy.

No go.

The Royal Bahamian police put the gabbosh on it and told the abaco inn, general manager,

you're not releasing this, don't release it, don't know why, but they've just done that.

So that's okay, we'll give that to them, but it is just so incredibly fiercely protected.

I'm not sure why at some point maybe we'll find out because I think it would answer a

lot of questions.

I think we would know once and for all what time Brian cast off from the dinghy dock and

made his way towards sole mate, to me that's kind of probable cause for an arrest if he

somehow got the time off by an hour.

And I'm okay with not knowing the time yourself, but unfortunately you can't fight the sun.

That's set in stone.

That's the fact the sun goes down at around 7.30 and it starts to get dark but at 7.45

I could still do a podcast and be lit up and I did at eight, it is fast.

It is fast.

It goes from almost light to dark in 15 minutes, but you cannot fight that timeline.

You can't tell me you left around 7.30, you know, if the timestamp says you didn't.

So that's why I'm so interested in this.

If you left that dock at 7.30, the time that Lynette, so to speak, bounced out would have

been at 7.40.

I'll give you till 7.45.

Let me give you an extra 5 minutes, 7.50.

It's still not too dark to see her.

And Brian said it was too dark, eventually too dark to see her.

I could see her and then he tells all sorts of varying stories to one person he says,

I called out to her and I never heard her.

But then to the fire and rescue, he says, I called out to her and she said something but

I couldn't make out what it was.

Well, that's different.

Also, you threw out the flotation device to her, right?

This flotation device is like a swimming toy, honestly.

It's not really much of a flotation device and they're sitting on these two things that

they've got in their dinghy.

They put them up on the hull of the dinghy so that either one of them has something soft

to sit on.

One of them is green and that's the one he says that he threw to her.

I can understand why you might throw that.

It's a little heavier.

It won't sort of fly away in the wind.

The screaming wind, ah!

The screaming wind.

But there were two life jackets in the bottom of the dinghy when it washed up at Marsh Harbor.

Two life jackets.

Why didn't you put one on?

Tie the dinghy to your ankle and go in after your wife with the second life jacket.

What an idea.

Didn't happen.

Didn't throw the anchor down either to stay in place.

Didn't happen.

He says he didn't throw the dinghy, the anchor of the dinghy down until he got across to

leopards, which is like maybe, I don't know, probably 2,000 yards away.

It's a long way and it didn't fire off the flare till it got there either.

What?

That's nutty.

It didn't make sense.

Let's go back to the wind.

So the firefly in took video with their surveillance cameras of those dogs.

Here's what it looks like at 7.15.

Do you see a screaming wind?

This is April 4th, at 7.15 at night.

I don't know what Brian's story is or what the real story is.

We know the photo of him walking down to the dock is at 7.

And we know he says it was 7.30 so I'm going to show you 7 o'clock, 7.15.

That is 7.15.

Look how calm that water is.

You're coming into a little bit of a bay here as you come into the firefly in, but sorry,

y'all.

This is not a screamer.

These are not 2 to 4 foot waves.

I don't even see any waves.

In fact, the boat that's going out isn't even spraying anything.

It's got no side spray because it's not hitting anything.

It's just calmly going out in the bathwater.

As it goes out a little bit, there's a ripple that starts, but a ripple is not 2 to 4

foot seas.

Again, that's 7.15 at night.

Right around the time that Brian is likely getting into the dinghy.

According to the video, according to him, it's 15 minutes later, according to the video

it's 15 minutes earlier, but you can see it for yourself.

Now if you want to go up the hill from the view that you're looking at, like go up high

on the island so that you can start seeing over the back of the island and you can start

feeling the wind coming from the Atlantic, well, I got that too.

That's at 7.30, and I want you to take a look specifically at the flags because the

owner of the Firefly Inn pointed it out to me and said, these flags aren't even standing

at attention.

You can see the palm trees moving, but the wind is not so fierce that the flags are

rigid in position at attention.

They're kind of fluttering and dropping a little, and they're fluttering again, and they're

dropping a little.

That is not a 30-knot wind.

That is not even like a 20-knot wind.

I don't even think it's an 18-knot wind, which is what some of the reports said the wind

was when Brian and Lynette were out there.

But you can see for yourself, this ain't a screamer.

This is April 4th.

This is the wind at exactly 7.30 on April 4th, and you can also see the effect.

It's a little harder to see because the digital look gets a little dirty as you get closer

to the water, but there are no white caps out there.

There's no two to four-foot seas that I can make out.

Now, this is the first actual video I have of the sea conditions, right in the leeward

side of the island, on El Boque, not even a quarter mile north of the Abacoin where Brian

and Lynette apparently cast off and tragedy visited them.

He visited her, but I don't know if tragedy visited him.

So just finding all the pieces of the puzzle slowly has been really hard.

It was hard when we were there for the five days that we were there, and it's been hard

since we've been back.

The royal Bohemian police aren't saying nothing to no one know how.

I've tried.

I've tried.

Brian ain't talking, probably smart, but photos don't lie, right?

These timestamps on the iPhone, they don't lie.

And now we have him walking across the street, finally, towards the pathway to the docket

7pm.

What happened next?

Where's Lynette?

What happened?

What's going on with that dry bag?

Where's Lynette's dry bag?

Did she have it back up at the end somewhere?

Did you do something between the last known surveillance video that Lynette's daughter

Carly and her boyfriend Steve saw?

They thought it was sometime around 6.38.

Well, that's 22 minutes earlier.

What happened in between that time?

Maybe their memory could be foggy, I'll just give that grace, because I mean, they're going

through hell, right?

Carly and her boyfriend Steve are going through hell.

And Lynette's mom, Darlene, is going through hell.

A, they want to know where their mom flashed their daughter is.

And B, they want to know if Brian had something to do with it.

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I want to play for you a couple of clips now that are really getting under my skin.

I'll tell you why.

Brian Hooker called the Friends of Lynette and Brian, right?

And just sort of spewed a whole bunch of stuff.

And the people he called were so much information coming their way that they started recording

it because they couldn't write it down fast enough.

They just wanted to make sure that they could go back and list everything out.

They were so worried about their friend Lynette, right?

So after a while, they're starting to think something's rotten in Denmark here.

So the recording became critical to them to go back over everything that Brian said.

And these clips that I'm going to play for you are the reason why.

So Blaine Stevenson is this friend that was being downloaded with all this information

from Brian.

And a whole bunch of information he didn't need.

Because what Blaine wanted to know was, where were you coming from and going to when

this horrible thing happened?

That's critical.

That information.

You would want that question, right?

The answer that he got from Brian was just a fucking mismatching hall of blue of junk.

Just junk.

He starts off with coming out of Abaco in and turning left out of the White Sound Channel

and heading south on Abaco or on the elbow key.

But then he starts talking about, we've been in the harbor and we needed to get out

and we went to a great guana key.

Well, that was two days before.

Why are you adding all of this bullshit information?

It has nothing to do with what Blaine wants you to answer.

And that is, where were you coming from?

Where were you going to when your wife bounced off the back of the dinghy?

What are you talking about April 2nd for, right?

Just sounds like somebody who just is offering way too much.

I don't know.

So, where were you guys coming from going to?

Because that's what I couldn't figure out in any of the Facebook articles I was reading

and like, how to do a grid pattern search.

Like, I don't really understand the occurrence and times here.

I kind of rely on hope town, okay.

So, off of a place called elbow key and that's called elbow spelled elbow K C A Y.

And we were kind of in the middle of the key.

And there's a place called Tahiti Beach.

It's really popular here and it's a beach that dries out of low tide.

And so a barge runs up on it and serves dreams all day from there.

And there's a lot of manorase.

We'll go around your legs and everything and all of that.

And so we really liked that spot.

And we had been kind of stuck in the harbor for a while.

So we were getting out in the bow and we had to go to a different island called

Great Guanaquí to refill our scuba tanks and it was going all right.

And, yeah, I mean, it's been a strong Easter lease.

And that's what you get here is the trades.

Basically, you know, you're at the top of the trades.

And so we were having, you know, basically 20 not wins.

Daddy all day was a couple of gusts here and there.

And where we were anchored was pretty quiet.

But when we came out of this bar called the avocado and we came out of the channel

and instantly got into the shit into the chop.

Hold the phone, hold the fucking phone.

Did you just hear him say, I don't understand the current and the tides here?

Are you serious?

Are you serious?

You live on a keelboat.

I'm a captain of a keelboat, not all the time.

I have captained a keelboat, 34 foot CNC in the Witsunday Islands in Australia.

I was the captain and the only person on board with me didn't know how to sail.

So I know what you have to know to be on a keelboat.

I don't live on one.

This bro lives on one.

You know the currents and the tides.

If there's one thing you know on a keelboat, it's the tides, my friend, because the sea

of avocado is like being in a swimming pool and you're in a keelboat.

And your keelboat has a big old keel that will bang up on the bottom and tip you over.

If suddenly the tides go down and you're not in deep enough water, you know the tides.

What the...

I don't understand the currents and the tides here?

Bullshit.

You've been there five weeks.

You've been in the sea of avocado and marsh harbour this whole area.

You've been there five weeks at the least, okay?

You know the current and you sure as hell know the tides.

Before you would not have been coming into the bathtub deep water, right?

So there's one thing I just, I call bullshit on.

But also, you spent the night already, right off elbow key, because I saw you.

I saw you at the firefly end.

You dropped your anchor on Friday and you slept on board till Saturday and you pulled up

anchor at 11.30 in the morning.

So don't you tell me that you don't know the currents and the tides.

You dropped anchor and slept.

And as a former captain, I love saying that it's like I did captain a boat, but I'm no captain.

A keelboat.

You don't sleep because you're so worried about dragon anchor.

And if you don't know the tides, you're not even going to drop anchor and you are sure

as shit not going to bed.

Because you don't know if you're going to float and bring that anchor up and float away.

So don't you tell me that you don't know the tides, Brian Hooker?

You do so.

You brag to people that you haven't tied up to a dock for two years.

You know the tides.

You know the currents.

All right, this next clip.

Blaine Stevenson asks a very, very clear and concise question.

Were you anchored off of abacoin?

This is a very easy answer.

Yes, but slightly south of the channel that takes you into the abacoin there that I answered

it.

Instead, you're going to get yet again verbal loggeria from this motherfucker.

He just goes on and on and then just starts to throw in like the risk.

He starts talking about the people down at Tahiti Beach, you know quarter mile away who he's

bragging to.

I mean, listen, a lot of people who live aboard or, you know, our cruisers, they literally

live on sailboats and they move around the cabin.

They like to say, I haven't tied up to a dock in X number of days, months, years.

It's kind of a bragging, right?

But this guy, this guy is now bringing it into the conversation.

Don't ask me why.

Don't ask me why.

His wife is still missing only a couple days.

He's started to bring into the conversation that, you know, we talk about how risky it

is.

And here I am.

I've lost my wife now.

What do you know?

Really?

This is what you want to say to Blaine Stevenson when he just wants to know where were you

anchored?

Have a listen.

So you guys were anchored outside abacoin, like by white sound or Joe's K.

We were anchored out by just we were anchored out, I would say a half mile south of the

channel, the white sound channel on elbow key, or as to he beach, it's it up to we're at

the south end of something called on Pats Bay, a bike, like Californian state ant, you

know, or western or state ant, but, um, and we had gone, whatever, half a mile or so

three quarters to to he beach, where that's the popular place, I'm out there all day,

met people that later, the next days later, cool people, and I remember, you know, how

it is people that don't do what you, you and Mariel and that, they think we're fucking

awesome.

And I waxed pontifical about having an authentic life and it's authentic because there's

a risk.

And then I lost my fucking wife, um, that same night, I feel like the gods were listening

in, um, this guy, this guy, you know, there's the old expression though, doth protest too

much.

And what I hear from Brian Hooker is a guy who just can't shut up.

He is getting in his own way, and he's talking way too much and adding way too much detail

that's unnecessary and why.

I have a huge favor to ask of you, huge, huge and critically important.

The American Coast Guard investigators who are working on this case, they need your help

and I need your help.

So if you were in this area on Saturday night, April 4th, the night before Easter, at any

time, do you have video?

Do you have photos?

Were you snapping pictures of the sunset at the abaco in?

Because you may have captured images of Lynette or Brian.

You may have captured images of their dinghy.

There's so much information in those images.

So if you would be so kind, send those images, videos to drop dead serious info at gmail.com.

Drop dead serious info at gmail.com.

The link is right below, we're making it easy for you.

If you don't want to send them to me, okay, I get it.

Send them to cgistyps.com, it's a website.

But if you want, there's a QR code on the screen as well, and they have an app, I'm looking

at it right here, they have an app, cgistyps, submit anonymous tips.

So cg for Coast Guard, IS for investigative services, cgistyps.com or check that QR code

on screen.

We're going to have the link there as well.

If you are watching this and you know someone who's on elbow key or you know someone who

was there who's just gotten back, check your photos at the abaco in any time between 630

and 8 o'clock at night.

If you took pictures from your friend's house of the abaco see, send those to me and copy

them to the United States Coast Guard.

You might actually have the one thing that cracks this case.

Hey, listen, thank you so much for listening, thank you so much for watching, I have a lot

more coming your way.

Don't forget to subscribe right here, right, and become a member too because we're dropping

stuff all the time, I don't want you to miss these episodes.

Go back and check those other episodes that we just did five days in the Bahamas.

I have so much information about the case in those episodes leading up to tonight.

In the next couple of days, hmm, chill, why I'm like this close to a couple of real big

Kahuna factoids and pieces to the puzzle of this case so make sure you tune in and I'll

have them for you right here.

Thank you again for being here and if you remember one thing, the truth isn't just serious,

it's drop dead serious.