In those early hours of May 15, west of the Bahamas, the complaint alleges, Bennett poked holes in both of his catamaran’s hulls from the inside and popped open two portholes below the water line.
It says he later admitted doing almost nothing to find his wife, devoting all his efforts to loading onto a life raft foodstuffs, water, a satellite phone and a homing device. And some of the
tens of thousands of dollars in coins whose 2016 disappearance, while Bennett worked as a mate aboard a yacht in the Caribbean, led to Tuesday’s hearing at which the 40-year-old Bennett was sent to prison for seven months.
Tuesday’s federal complaint suggests it was the timing of the activation of those electronic devices that might have been the most dramatic clue.
“The fact that Bennett waited until the final leg of his voyage to activate those devices is indicative of the fact that he wanted to ensure his own rescue and survival after murdering his wife and intentionally scuttling his catamaran,” it said. It added that a professor at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy studied the evidence and agreed the catamaran “was intentionally scuttled.”
