Italian authorities say tech mogul Mike Lynch is among the five people whose bodies have been recovered after they went missing while aboard the sailing yacht called Bayesian. The Bayesian sank in a violent storm along the shore of Sicily on Monday.
Lynch’s body was identified on Thursday, according to The Associated Press and other news outlets, citing the Italian coast guard. The agency did not immediately respond to messages from NPR.
With one person still unaccounted for, the sea rescue operation comprised 27 divers on Thursday, according to the Italian fire brigade. Robotic craft have also been used in the search.
Local newspaper Giornale di Sicilia reports that Lynch’s daughter, Hannah, 18, is believed to be the only remaining missing person from the calamity.
15 people survived the catastrophe
Bayesian, with a length of more than 180 feet, had 22 passengers and crew aboard when it sank in the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning. Eyewitness accounts cited a waterspout — a highly localized spiraling storm that’s essentially a marine tornado. One body was found, and 15 survivors made it to safety. That left six people unaccounted for.
Since then, the Italian Coast Guard has been working to find survivors — and as time passed, what started as a rescue effort became a recovery operation to retrieve bodies from inside the sunken ship.
The Palermo Coast Guard told NPR that the operation has been complicated by the depth and position of the hull, which lies on the seabed at a depth of around 50 meters, about a half-mile from the port in Porticello, Sicily.
Who are the missing people?
The six passengers who had been unaccounted for include Lynch and his daughter, along with Morgan Stanley International Chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife. Judy. A lawyer for Lynch named Chris Morvillo, and his wife, Neda, were also missing in the days after the yacht sank.
One member of the crew — Recaldo Thomas, the yacht’s chef — also went missing. Local news reports have suggested it was Thomas’ body that was found soon after the ship sank.
Who survived the sinking?
Survivors include Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, along with Charlotte Golunski, who works at Invoke Capital, Lynch’s venture capital firm. Golunski was on the ship with her daughter, Sofia, who had just celebrated her first birthday.
In an interview with La Repubblica, Golunski said that as the ship sank, she used all her strength to hold her arms above water and prevent Sofia from drowning. Sophia’s father was also onboard and survived.
Ayla Ronald, a lawyer who worked on Lynch’s fraud case, and her partner also escaped the wreck. Other survivors include several crew members, including two women in their early 20s who were part of the ship’s staff.
Who was Mike Lynch?
Lynch, 59, was the founder of Autonomy, a search engine and software company. Hewlett-Packard bought Autonomy for $11 billion in 2011, but Lynch then faced accusations — and then federal fraud charges — that he had misrepresented his company’s financial health and prospects. Lynch denied the claims, saying HP was blaming him for its own problems.
This past June, a lengthy trial in San Francisco ended with Lynch’s acquittal of all charges against him, after he testified on his own behalf. The sailing voyage along the coast of Sicily has been portrayed as a celebration of the end of the court case.
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