A friend of an American woman who vanished during a sailing trip in the Bahamas claimed her husband did not tell investigators he had a $33,000 thermal camera on the boat.

Lynette Hooker has been missing since April 4 after her husband Brian Hooker claimed she went overboard a dinghy while on the way back to their yacht.

She and Hooker were headed towards their sailboat, Soulmate, when he claims rough waters knocked her off the small vessel at around 7.30pm. 

Hooker managed to paddle to shore and arrived at Marsh Harbour on the island of Great Abaco at around 4am on April 5. He was initially detained by Bahamian authorities but has since been released under investigation.

Hooker told police he tried to search for his wife by paddling around the water where she vanished for hours.

However, the couple's friend, Daniel Danforth, has questioned Hooker's version of the events and claimed that he failed to inform investigators about a high-tech camera known as a FLIR system, which may have helped in the search.

Danforth told Fox News that the camera, 'would have been my first choice like if I was trying to rescue somebody,' but claimed that Hooker did not appear to have told investigators about it. 

'I told them about it and they were very interested,' he said. 'That was the first they had heard about that system being on the boat. And so they told me that they were going to file for a warrant of seizure for that because it has a serial number.'

Danforth explained that Hooker, whom he met in New Orleans in 2023, had previously shown him how it worked. He set the temperature at 86F and it would automatically start tracking his wife's movements on the dock due to her temperature.

'And what it is [is] a camera system that's not only night vision, but it's also thermally operated, it can pick up heat signatures and stuff,' he told Fox News. 'This thing has auto-detect that you can set the temperature.'

Danforth said Hooker initially told him that they were on their way back to the sailboat when Lynette bounced overboard and strong winds blew him away.

'The impression I got he was more a victim of circumstances like, "Oh gosh I'm in a storm, she made it to the boat it's OK," but where the story started getting funny is when he told me he washed up in Marsh Harbor, then he said, "Oh my wife is missing, she's out at sea somewhere."

'Well you told me she was swimming to the sailboat, why wouldn't you go check there first before worrying about her being out in the water, so the story started getting real eerie.' 

Danforth previously shared messages with the Daily Mail between him and Hooker in which Hooker said he saw his wife swimming 'toward the sailboat' before they 'lost sight of each other pretty quickly.' 

'I drifted and tried to paddle with one oar for the next seven hours until I washed up behind the shore of the next island over and was able to get some help finally,' he Facebook messaged Danforth, who shared the screenshots. 

Danforth told the Daily Mail he has not heard from Hooker since. 

'He reactivated his Messenger and TikTok, but he didn’t reply to messages, and I commented on so many TikToks, [then] he deleted his account again,' Danforth told the Daily Mail. 

The Coast Guard told the Daily Mail it 'does not comment on ongoing investigations.' 

Soulmate is in the Coast Guard's possession in Florida. 

It is understood to have been sailed from the Bahamas by two men, neither of them Lynette’s 58-year-old husband, who was released after five days in custody and is still being investigated in connection with his missing wife.

Hooker told Bahamas police their outboard engine’s kill switch was attached to Lynette when she was pitched into the shark-infested waters, cutting his power and ability to rescue her on that fateful evening.

Police in the Bahamas let Hooker go after two intensive interview sessions and allowed him to return to the United States, where he is understood to have headed to see his sick mother in California.

However, a senior officer told the Daily Mail on May 12, shortly after he was freed, that the husband remains a suspect, adding: ‘Our officers continue to work this case, the matter is still being investigated.’

Hooker's attorney Terrel Butler had previously told the Daily Mail: ‘He categorically and unequivocally denies any wrongdoing.'

However, local experts told the Daily Mail they were skeptical of Hooker’s version of events, pointing to what they said were puzzling inconsistencies that could reveal mysterious ‘missing hours’.

Hooker was first spotted after Lynette went missing at 3.35am on April 5 on security surveillance footage at Marsh Harbour Boat Yard – some four miles from where Lynette vanished.

He had tied up the dinghy half a mile south in an area called Calcutta and walked over dangerously rocky shoreline terrain and through dense mangrove before reaching the yard.

The footage, which is in the hands of the Royal Bahamas Police and has not been released, has been seen by the Daily Mail.

It revealed Hooker wandering almost nonchalantly around the yard wearing a blue shirt, dark shorts, flip flops and with a cowboy-style hat perched squarely on his head.

In the footage, he walked up to the security fencing and raised his arms to attract attention, but there appears to be little sign of panic.

The husband, wearing a yellow ‘dry bag’ to keep items free of water damage, calls out: 'Hello, I need help. Hello. Help me.’ At another point, he also casually glances down at his watch.

But at no point in the footage seen by the Daily Mail does he immediately raise the alarm about his missing wife.

When he calls out, he doesn’t appear to be yelling. There is no apparent sign of panic, of desperation, of urgency, or of alarm for missing Lynette. He could, of course, have been exhausted.

The Hookers, married for 25 years and from Onsted, Michigan, were four years into a voyage they were documenting on social media that had started in Texas and drifted to the Bahamas via Florida when tragedy struck.

Hooker's attorney declined to comment. 

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