Causes of death of two superyacht passengers killed when Mike Lynch’s £14m vessel sank in thunderstorm revealed
THE official causes of death for two victims of the Bayesian superyacht tragedy have been revealed.
The £14million vessel was caught up in a storm off the coast of northern Sicily on August 19, capsizing and sinking to the sea floor in mere minutes.
Autopsies carried out on couple Chris and Neda Morvillo confirmed they both died by drowning, sources said on Monday.
Officials found “no sign” of any other injuries which may have resulted in their deaths.
Autopsies on the remaining seven victims are set to be completed throughout the rest of the week as the judicial investigation into the tragedy continues.
The luxury superyacht was caught up in a horror storm last month which caused it to sink in the early hours of the morning.
Of the 22 onboard, 15 survived but tragically seven died including lawyer Chris and his wife Neda.
Brit billionaire Mike Lynch and his daughter Hannah were among those who died along with the yacht chef Recaldo Thomas.
Judy and Jonathon Bloomer also lost their lives.
It comes as the captain of the doomed Bayesian, James Cutfield, 51, is being investigated for manslaughter.
Kiwi Cutfield, along with two other members of his crew, are being investigated by Italian authorities for culpable shipwreck and multiple manslaughter.
Prosecutors are probing ship engineer Tim Parker-Eaton, from Clophill, Beds, and sailor Matthew Griffith, 22 under the same charges.
The investigation does not imply guilt or mean formal charges will be brought against any of the men.
Investigators are understood to be rifling through CCTV footage and photographs taken by locals on the night of the storm to understand why the boat sank so quickly.
At a press conference at the Termini Imerese Courthouse on Saturday, Chief Prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio said there may have been “behaviours that were not perfectly in order with regard to the responsibility everybody had.”
His team will probe if hatches were left open, allowing water to flood in.
They will also look into whether the crew raised the alarm before escaping.
He vowed to “discover how much they knew and to what extent all the people (passengers) were warned.”
Mr Cartosio added: “There could be in fact the question of homicide. But this is the beginning of the inquiry, we cannot exclude anything at all…We will establish each element’s (crew) responsibility.
“For me, it is probable that offences were committed — that it could be a case of manslaughter.”
Divers spent five days scouring the Bayesian wreck to retrieve the bodies of six missing passengers last month.
They found Mike Lynch and his four guests, Chris, Neda, Jonathan and Judy in the first cabin on the left.
Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah was the last passenger to be discovered in the third cabin.
Officials said the victims had scrambled to reach air pockets in the yacht as it sank stern-first before rolling onto its right side on the seabed.
The CEO of the firm that built the Bayesian told The Sun how crew error could be responsible for the disaster aboard the “unsinkable” boat.
The survivors of the wreck, including Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares, 57, left Sicily in a private jet last Sunday.
Inside The Bayesian's final 16 minutes
By Ellie Doughty, Foreign News Reporter
Data recovered from the Bayesian’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) breaks down exactly how it sank in a painful minute-by-minute timeline.
At 3.50am on Monday August 19 the Bayesian began to shake “dangerously” during a fierce storm, Italian outlet Corriere revealed.
Just minutes later at 3.59am the boat’s anchor gave way, with a source saying the data showed there was “no anchor left to hold”.
After the ferocious weather ripped away the boat’s mooring it was dragged some 358 metres through the water.
By 4am it had began to take on water and was plunged into a blackout, indicating that the waves had reached its generator or even engine room.
At 4.05am the Bayesian fully disappeared underneath the waves.
An emergency GPS signal was finally emitted at 4.06am to the coastguard station in Bari, a city nearby, alerting them that the vessel had sunk.
Early reports suggested the disaster struck around 5am local time off the coast of Porticello Harbour in Palermo, Sicily.
The new data pulled from the boat’s AIS appears to suggest it happened an hour earlier at around 4am.
Some 15 of the 22 onboard were rescued, 11 of them scrambling onto an inflatable life raft that sprung up on the deck.
A smaller nearby boat – named Sir Robert Baden Powell – then helped take those people to shore.