U.S. Coast Guard can send divers to Bahamas to search for missing American woman Lynette Hooker, source says

The U.S. Coast Guard has been granted permission by the Bahamian government to send divers to canvass previously unsearched areas in the search for missing Michigan woman Lynette Hooker, a source briefed on the investigation confirmed to CBS News Thursday.

The permission was granted to the U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service, the source disclosed.

Hooker, 55, was reported missing on April 5, one day after her husband, Brian Hooker, told authorities that the couple had set sail for a nighttime ride aboard a dinghy from Elbow Cay in the Bahamas.

Brian Hooker told local investigators that his wife fell from the dinghy and was swept away in the current with the keys to the boat, forcing him to paddle back to shore. He was initially arrested in connection with her disappearance, but was later released and allowed to return to the U.S. He has denied wrongdoing and has not been criminally charged.

On Tuesday, CBS News learned that newly obtained GPS data had prompted U.S. investigators to relaunch the search for Lynette Hooker. The data appeared to contradict Brian Hooker’s account of where his wife was on the night she disappeared. 

Earlier this month, the sailboat the couple was using to travel around the Bahamas, Soulmate, was seized by Coast Guard investigators about 40 nautical miles south of Florida, sources told CBS News. 

CBS News also learned this week that aboard the Soulmate was an infrared camera capable of detecting heat radiation. Investigators are looking into whether the camera, which uses a cloud memory system, was in use on the night that Lynette Hooker disappeared. 

Federal investigators have also been seeking to identify the owners or occupants of a sailboat that may have been moored next to the Soulmate in Aunt Pat’s Bay on the night that Lynette Hooker disappeared. Investigators believe they may have information critical to the case. 

In an interview with CBS News conducted in the week after Lynette Hooker’s disapperance, her daughter, Karli Aylesworth, said her parents had separated in recent years, but reconciled and gotten back together. She told CBS News that she did not believe her father’s description of the sequence of events that transpired on the night of her mother’s disappearance.

“For one, I don’t understand how she got the key,” Aylesworth said, referring to Brian Hooker telling investigators that Lynette Hooker fell off the boat, along with the keys to the boat. “Brian’s always driving. So he basically is in charge of the key. So the fact that my mom had it doesn’t make any sense.”