Four bodies have been recovered from the sunken wreckage of a luxury yacht belonging to the wife of British tech magnate Mike Lynch. The 56-meter Bayesian yacht sank in a fierce pre-dawn storm off the Sicilian coast on Monday, leaving two people still missing.
The bodies were brought ashore and taken to nearby hospitals, but authorities have not yet released the identities of the victims.
Local media reports suggest the dead may include Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, as well as two financial professionals - Jonathan Bloomer, a banker at Morgan Stanley, and Chris Morvillo, a U.S. lawyer.
Fifteen people, including Lynch’s wife, managed to escape the sinking yacht. The body of the onboard chef, a Canadian-Antiguan national named Recaldo Thomas, was found near the wreck shortly after the disaster.
The Bayesian, built in 2008 and recently refitted, was equipped with the world’s tallest aluminum mast at 72 meters. Naval experts are baffled as to how such an advanced vessel could have sunk so quickly in the storm, with divers struggling to access the cabins where victims may have been trapped.
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Authorities have been questioning survivors, including the yacht’s captain, as they work to determine the cause of the tragic incident.
No one is currently under investigation, but prosecutors are gathering evidence from the underwater wreckage and eyewitness accounts.
Lynch, 59, was one of the UK’s best-known tech entrepreneurs, having founded the software firm Autonomy which was sold to HP for $11 billion in 2011. He was recently acquitted of fraud charges related to that deal.
