A 200-page file compiled by Lynette Hooker’s daughter to accuse her stepfather after her mother disappeared in the Bahamas

Lynette Hooker seemed to love her life on the water — then she vanished in the Bahamas

The Bahamas and, right, Brian and Lynette Hooker in a 2023 photo.Credit : Getty

In March, Brian Hooker caught up with an old friend, Rob Ramsey, who’d been following along online as Brian and wife Lynette chronicled sun-soaked adventures aboard the Soulmate, their two-bedroom yacht.

The Hookers were about to head back to the Bahamas, where they’d spent time since embracing a life on the water — including selling their home in Grand Rapids, Mich., in 2020 and retiring from their jobs.

Brian “didn’t have to worry about work,” Ramsey tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “He told me that the biggest concern that he had in life right now was barnacles.”

Or not. On April 4, Lynette, 55, fell victim to what Brian has called an accidental “cascade of failures” but law enforcement suspects might really be a crime.

After dinner that night, the couple headed back at sunset in their 8-ft. dinghy to their yacht anchored off the coast of Hope Town, on Elbow Cay in the Bahamas, when Lynette disappeared.

Brian, 58, showed up about eight hours later on the shore of a neighboring island some four miles away. He’d been forced to paddle there in the dinghy, he told police, because Lynette had the engine keys for the tiny boat when she “fell overboard” and was carried away by the current.

“She basically just bounced off,” Brian told a friend three days later, according to audio published by CBS News. Lynette didn’t have a life jacket, he said, but he’d tried to save her from the rough waters — with a flotation device, calling out for her into the night — long after she’d vanished from view in the gathering gloom.

“It’s amazing how small a person is,” he added, “in 2-3 footers and 25-knot winds.”

The story almost immediately put Brian under scrutiny, both from local authorities and Lynette’s loved ones.

He was taken in for questioning by Bahamas police on April 8 and released on April 13 without charge. Brian’s attorney Terrel A. Butler told reporters she was “happy to see that justice is really working” and said investigators “have no evidence.”

However, police say Brian remains a “person of interest.” The U.S. Coast Guard is conducting its own criminal investigation.

The Hookers traveled from Florida to the Bahamas in early April; Lynette went into the water off the coast of Elbow Cay, her husband said.Alamy (2)

Butler told PEOPLE that Brian “unequivocally denies any wrongdoing,” and Brian said in his own statement that his “sole focus” is locating his wife.

“Mr. Hooker’s primary focus remains the search for his wife of 25 years. He is dedicating his full emotional and physical energy toward coordinating with relevant parties to find her,” Butler said in a new statement on Tuesday, April 14.

For their part, however, friends and family have been left to grapple with an unnerving tragedy that, they fear, masks something even worse.

“I just want there to be a thorough investigation to find out if this even is an accident,” says Lynette’s daughter Karli Aylesworth, 28, “or if there’s evidence of him hurting her in any way.”

From left: Lynette Hooker with mom Darlene Hamlett and daughter Karli Aylesworth in 2025.

‘How They Started Was Not Healthy’

To hear Lynette’s family tell it, there had long been issues in her marriage.

“How they started was not healthy,” says Aylesworth, a student and retail worker and Lynette’s only child. “When you start out not healthy, that’s usually a sign of how the relationship is going to be.”

Lynette married Brian, a Marine corporal turned AT&T technician and father of three, in 2002, immediately after divorcing Aylesworth’s dad, Rick.

The couple had met while they both worked at AT&T, where Lynette was also a technician, according to Ramsey, Brian’s friend, and wed within a year, Aylesworth says.

“She’s never really been single, so I don’t think she knows how to be,” Aylesworth says of her mom. “She really clung onto that relationship any way she could.”

The couple bonded over their adventurousness and their love of the water, often documenting their boat trips on social media — where they were known as “The Sailing Hookers” — as they cycled through larger and larger boats over the years. Their latest, the Soulmate, came complete with a living room, two bathrooms, a TV, a kitchen and a solar-powered oven.

“They were pretty set to live off-grid,” Aylesworth says. It was a dream for Lynette: “She always wanted to sail around. That’s what they were practicing for.”

From left: Lynette and Brian Hooker.Facebook

Ramsey describes Brian as sociable and unafraid. “He was not only big and imposing and smart,” remembers Ramsey, who says Brian was his union steward at work, “but … part of his charm was that if your boss is giving you a hard time, he’s gonna put the fear in him.”

Lynette was more than his match, according to Ramsey: “When the two of them got together it was like, ‘Wow, this is the power couple.’ ”

But they were combustible too, and they were known to drink and break up. As recently as March, Lynette’s daughter says, she had talked about leaving Brian. Says Lynette’s mom, Darlene Hamlett: “It’s been a volatile relationship for years.”

In 2005 Brian was arrested after he was accused of choking his biological daughter, then a minor, from a previous relationship, records show; he was later found not guilty. (Aylesworth says the dispute originated over a textbook’s mention of religion, which incensed Brian, an atheist.)

A decade later, Aylesworth says, she witnessed Brian choke her mom. He and Lynette — who were both intoxicated — accused each other of assault, according to a police report, which states that officers saw Brian’s nose bleeding but no injury on Lynette.

She spent a night in jail, though neither was charged due to “insufficient evidence as to who started [it].”

As the investigations into Lynette’s disappearance continue, one thing everyone agrees on is this: The one person who saw what happened to her is her husband.

Since being taken into custody, Brian “appears completely heartbroken,” says his lawyer. But appearances can be deceiving, Lynette’s family maintains.

Her daughter spent a long weekend with her and Brian on the Soulmate in late February. “It was fun. It was great to see another country,” says Aylesworth, who plans to return to the Bahamas while she awaits answers. “My mom did complain about how he gets when he drinks. Whenever they started to have an argument, they would talk about something else in front of me. My mom didn’t want to show they were having problems.”