US Virgin Is - Sarm Joan Lillian Heslop, 41, British, aboard vessel Siren Song, St. John, 7 Mar 2021

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Bane's been spotted in Grenada!

Sarm Heslop disappearance: Ryan Bane spotted in Grenada as his missing girlfriend's family pushes for answers

Bane has been keeping his catamaran, which he is trying to sell for $299,000, in the Le Phare Bleu Marina on Grenada, according to the U.S. citizen.

"I talked to Ryan Bane without realizing who he was. I love dogs and went to pet his dog and I asked him the dog's name," the U.S. citizen, who wishes to remain anonymous for her safety, told Fox News about their first encounter with Bane before they realized who he was.

"I remember in the moment feeling very uneasy about the man as he darted his eyes around and said 'Hunter' then walked away."
 
https://twitter.com/mikerreports/status/1460952383060594692

Michael Ruiz
@mikerreports
·
50m

A reader spotted Ryan Bane and his 47-foot catamaran #Grenada - almost 500 miles from where his girlfriend #SarmHeslop went missing in the #USVirginIslands back in March.
https://t.co/QgBou3xndr?amp=1




Michael Ruiz
@mikerreports
·
48m

In tow is the dog, Hunter, his ex-wife says he took from her when they split. The luxury boat’s name no longer appears as the Siren Song.


Michael Ruiz
@mikerreports

A few weeks ago #SarmHeslop’s friends warned that the boat may be up for sale — before Virgin Islands Police ever had a chance to perform a forensic search of the last place Sarm is believed to have been. The Siren Song’s new name appears to be Orion’s Belt.
 
@mikereports has had several good threads on Twitter of late.

Going back to March 2021 ...

Friends on the island [of Grenada] say Bane first met Heslop in the fall of 2020 in Grenada, where Bane had gone to ride out hurricane season.


Heslop vanished after a night of drinking with Bane at 420 the Center, a popular dive bar in Cruz Bay. According to Bane, the couple returned to his boat, which was anchored about 100 feet from the shore on nearby Frank Bay, on an inflatable dinghy and went to bed just after 10 p.m. Bane told authorities that he noticed Heslop was missing at 2 a.m. when he was awakened by the boat’s anchor alarm, which sounds if the boat drifts too far from where it’s anchored. The weather was calm although the current near the bay was rough, according to locals. At 2:30 a.m., he reported her disappearance to local police, who told him to call the US Coast Guard. Bane did not make that call until several hours later. The dinghy was still on Bane’s boat, according to a local sailor whose own boat was anchored close by.

FBI searching for man who sailed off after Sarm Heslop vanished
 
I wonder if he only made the report about her going missing because the alarm had gone off and investigators might notice that. Maybe there’s some record it would show up on. As in, they’d know he would have been awakened at that time so had to take action. Or maybe he was worried he would have been seen by other people moving around at that time so had prepare an explanation for it.
 
swedeheart said:
https://twitter.com/mikerreports/status/1460952383060594692

Michael Ruiz
@mikerreports
·
50m

A reader spotted Ryan Bane and his 47-foot catamaran #Grenada - almost 500 miles from where his girlfriend #SarmHeslop went missing in the #USVirginIslands back in March.




Michael Ruiz
@mikerreports
·
48m

In tow is the dog, Hunter, his ex-wife says he took from her when they split. The luxury boat’s name no longer appears as the Siren Song.


Michael Ruiz
@mikerreports

A few weeks ago #SarmHeslop’s friends warned that the boat may be up for sale — before Virgin Islands Police ever had a chance to perform a forensic search of the last place Sarm is believed to have been. The Siren Song’s new name appears to be Orion’s Belt.
Click to expand...

I’ve always heard that renaming a boat is bad luck. Here’s at least one article about that superstition.
The Superstition of Renaming a Boat - 321 Boat : The Best Boat Rental in Melbourne FL
 
Midwestmom2019 said:
I’ve always heard that renaming a boat is bad luck. Here’s at least one article about that superstition.
The Superstition of Renaming a Boat - 321 Boat : The Best Boat Rental in Melbourne FL
Click to expand...
I hope it brings RB a boatload of bad luck.
19.gif
 
This is just my thought, especially at this time of year, but really anytime. Why must we persist on wishing bad things on other people, before we even know if they have done anything to warrant that? I believe people should receive just punishment but not before they are proven to have done anything? They might look guilty in our eyes, but we are not the ones who get to judge each and every person. Let those who live in glass houses not throw stones. The ultimate judgement will be equitable when they meet their maker. MOO. Katt
 
Mr Bane, who was the last person to see Ms Heslop, was allowed to leave the US Virgin Islands. He has yet to come forward to offer police any assistance in their investigation .

Ms Heslop disappeared after the couple had dinner on the island and returned to the boat to sleep. When Mr Bane woke up at 2am on March 8, Ms Heslop was nowhere to be found.

Police said Mr Bane reported her missing to police at 2.30am local time, but did not inform the coastguard about her disappearance until around noon the same day.

Coastguard officials said that when they visited his boat that afternoon, during a search and rescue operation, they found him drunk and uncooperative. The 44-year-old refused to answer questions and physically prevented them from searching his boat, leading to him receiving a citation for impeding officers.

Mr Bane served 21 days in jail on a 60-day sentence for assault and battery on his then wife, Cori Stephenson, in 2011.
Sarm Heslop: Heartbroken family’s moving birthday appeal to find woman who vanished from boat

May Sarm's parents and friends find answers in the upcoming year. I'll say nothing more.
 
The parents of a British woman who vanished from her boyfriend's yacht off the US Virgin Islands a year ago have flown out to seek answers.

Ryan Bane reported Sarm Heslop, from Southampton, missing from his boat off St John on 8 March 2021.

The boat has never been searched and Mr Bane has not been questioned by police.

Her parents, Peter Heslop and Brenda Street, hope being on the island will help them piece together the last known movements of their daughter.

Sarm Heslop: Parents head to Caribbean a year after disappearance
 
O.Incandenza said:
It looks like Dateline is going to air an episode on this case tomorrrow: Dateline NBC March 11 2022: Sarm Heslop 'Siren Song'
Click to expand...
Finally got a chance to listen to this.

There wasn't a whole lot new, other than interviews with RB's ex-wife about his abuse of her and interviews with Sarm's friends and a VI police commissioner. They did clear up the timeline of the day a little for me.

RB and Sarm are seen on a surveillance camera leaving the restaurant/bar and sailing away in the dinghy. But the camera didn't include the boat in it's view, so they are unable to confirm them reaching it. It sounds like RB called the VI police at ~2 AM to report Sarm missing. They came down to the dock and he came to meet them in the dinghy. Then he went back to the boat and they tried to search the water. They also told him to contact the Coast Guard. He did not contact the Coast guard for another 9 hours. When the Coast guard came, they boarded his boat and briefly looked around. He showed them her personal belongings/passport and they quickly glanced in corridors/rooms to make sure she wasn't there. Then they left the boat and started a SAR operation which included a helicopter. When they couldn't find any sign of Sarm after searching all day, the coast guard returned to the Siren Song with VI police detectives. They said that RB was very intoxicated at that point and would not allow them on the boat. They cited him for obstruction of boarding and for some other safety violations, but weren't able to board and thoroughly search the boat. It sounded like he had also already retained a lawyer at that point.

Her friends said she had only been back and living on the boat for a few weeks at that point, and that none of them had heard anything but good things about her relationship. But RB's ex-wife said that he could go from calm to angry in an instant.
 
This case is still on my mind/radar. We still have no new information as far as I can tell.

I do think (based on some of the discussions we have held previously here) that the recent news about the UKVI premier is not insignificant. Even though it is a separate jurisdiction to the Spanish and US equivalents, the proximity is so close. Do they generally tend to cooperate in trade and business? I don't know a huge amount about the region beyond the Wikipedia entries!

British Virgin Islands premier Andrew Fahie replaced after drugs arrest​

 
JuicyLucy said:
The reports of previous DV are really alarming if true. There is also someone on the FB page (Christiane Daily, Day 10 comments) who has commented darkly that she's not surprised something like this happened from what she knows of him back in MI.

Missing Person: Sarm Heslop

The other person in all this whose behaviour I find intriguing is Flora Pickard ("Flora the sailing chef"), whose opinion seems to be all over the MSM and SM. She's usually described as 'a friend of the couple' but seems more to have been RB's friend than Sarm's and has been relentlessly in his corner - he's 'distraught', 'in pieces', 'confused'. I've even seen her getting into catfights in the comments section of some of the MSM reportage about his character, telling people who express suspicions to *advertiser censored** off etc. I'm curious to know more about her relationship with him. IMO she's protective about him more in the way you would expect of a girlfriend or admirer. Have they been involved in the past? It's interesting to me that she's also a chef - I heard in the original report on Sky that being a chef on RB's boat was a career change for Sarm. Who was in that role before Sarm left her job in Malta and returned to USVI? Was it Flora? And if so, was she really as thrilled that Sarm came back as she says?

She also seems somehow (already?!) to have an IMDB listing consisting of her celebrity appearances on broadcast media as 'Sarm's friend'. Is this normal?? I mean, I'm thinking not tbh.

Flora Pickard - IMDb

All JMO and speculation of course.
Click to expand...
I'm posting here over a year after this comment. I've always wondered why Flora Pickard so quickly deflected attention from Sarm being 'missing' by speculating that Sarm was out partying. Perhaps Flora even influenced the local police from the beginning by asserting that Sarm was a party girl and most likely somewhere on another island. Flora tried to cast doubt on Sarm's character and Sarm's commitment to Ryan. This has always bothered me about this case. Plus, why did Ryan Bane not immediately call the boats in the area for help and the coast guard? If someone is missing off a boat it is STANDARD to search the waters immediately, call the coast guard, and not take any chances. (My husband and I are sailors - Yachtsman and Day Skipper.) What transpired doesn't make sense at all. <modsnip>
 
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KALI said:
Actually, boats have more nooks, crannies and hiding places then you can imagine. Very few big enough to hold an adult body though.
Click to expand...
Well, our boat is a 43' (not nearly as big as the boat Sarm was on) and we have storage under our beds where you could put a human body. Most boats have lockers for fenders, extra sails, water hose, lines, etc., and the bigger the boat often the bigger the lockers.
 
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