Palermo:

British tech tycoon Mike Lynch died of suffocation after running out of oxygen, an investigative source said, citing initial examinations carried out on Saturday after his body was recovered from the family yacht that sank off Sicily’s coast last month.

Lynch, his daughter Hannah, 18, an onboard cook and four guests died when the British-flagged superyacht Bayesian sank during a severe and sudden weather event off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, on Aug. 19.

Initial results on Hannah Lynch’s body, whose examinations were carried out on Saturday, were inconclusive, the source told Reuters, only ruling out any traumas or wounds as the cause of death and leaving open the possibilities she either ran out of oxygen or drowned.

The bodies of the dead, except for the cook, were found in cabins on the left-hand side of the 56-metre (184-feet) vessel, where the trapped passengers may have tried to search for remaining bubbles of air, the head of Palermo’s Fire Brigade said last month.

Preliminary results from autopsies on four other victims – Morgan Stanley International Chairman Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judith, lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda – indicated suffocation as the likely cause of death, judicial sources said earlier this week.

Fifteen people survived, including Lynch’s wife, whose company owned the Bayesian, and the yacht’s captain.

Initial examinations of the Canadian-Antiguan onboard chef Recaldo Thomas indicated he died by drowning, the investigative source said on Saturday.

Further forensic tests have been ordered all the victims, with results expected in the coming weeks, the source said.

The sinking has puzzled naval experts, who said a vessel like the Bayesian, built by high-end yacht manufacturer Perini, which is owned by The Italian Sea Group, should have withstood the storm and not have sunk as quickly as it did.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

British business tycoon Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah Lynch were killed after their luxury yacht Bayesian sank during a storm off the coast of Sicily on Monday. On Friday, search divers recovered the seventh and final body from the sunken superyacht, reported The Washington Post.

Cosimo Nicastro, a spokesman for the Italian Coast Guard, confirmed the identity of the victim as Hannah. “I can confirm it to you, the last victim inside the hull has been found,” he said. Mike’s trial lawyer Christopher Morvillo, his trial witness Jonathan Bloomer, and three others were also killed in the tragedy. 

Hannah Lynch’s sister, Esme said that Hannah often burst into my bedroom and lay down with me, adding no matter what, she brought boundless love. “She was endlessly caring, passionately mad, unintentionally hilarious and the most amazing, supportive, and joyful sister and best friend to me,” she said.

She had even more love to give endlessly to all her friends and passion to give to her incredible studies and goals, Esme told The Guardian. “She is my little angel, my star.”

On behalf of the Lynch family, a spokesperson said they were devastated, in shock, and were being comforted and supported by family and friends. “Their thoughts are with everyone affected by the tragedy. They would like to sincerely thank the Italian coastguard, emergency services and all those who helped in the rescue. Their one request now is that their privacy be respected at this time of unspeakable grief,” the statement added.

Jon Mitropoulos-Monk, Hannah Lynch’s English professor at Latymer Upper School in West London was all praises for his student. He said he taught Hannah for four years and would remember her for what she taught him “kindness, compassion, and commitment”.

She said she had never taught someone who “combined sky-high intellectual ability with warmth and enthusiasm” like Hannah did. She lit up the classroom with her energy, passion for learning, the teacher said about the 18-year-old. 

Calling the 18-year-old “one of the best English students in the country”, she told the English daily, “By age 16, she’d read Joyce, Faulkner and Nabokov … She loved literature, learning and life. She was so excited to start studying English at Oxford, a goal she had worked so hard towards.”

When she got her place, she sought out every single member of the Latymer upper English department to thank them individually and give them a hug, the teacher added.

Hannah Lynch’s friends had nothing but kind words for their friend. The love Hannah had for everything she held dear was passionate and pure, said Katya Lewis, adding her friend had a warm and beautiful soul.

“When I think of Hannah, I think of poetry, sunshine and her beautiful eyes,” said Hannah’s classmate, Gracie Lea. “She was easy to love: sincere, dedicated, fiercely intelligent and genuinely kind. I’ll always remember her smiling.”

Not long after the Bayesian sank, fifteen people, including Angela Bacares, Hannah Lynch’s mother, were saved. During the preliminary search, Recaldo Thomas, the yacht pilot, was found dead.

TERMINI IMERESE, ITALY:

An Italian prosecutor has opened a manslaughter investigation into the deaths of British tech magnate Mike Lynch and six other people who were killed when a luxury yacht sank off Sicily this week.

The public prosecutor’s office of Termini Imerese, headed by Ambrogio Cartosio, announced the investigation, saying the probe was not aimed at any individual person.

Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, was also among those who died when the family’s 56-metre-long (184-foot) boat, the Bayesian, capsized during a fierce, pre-dawn storm on Monday off Porticello, near Palermo.

Fifteen people survived, including Lynch’s wife, whose company owned the Bayesian, and the yacht’s captain.

The captain, James Cutfield, and the other survivors have been questioned by the coast guard on behalf of prosecutors. None of them have commented publicly on how the ship went down.

Hannah Lynch’s body was discovered on Friday by divers who scoured the submerged vessel for the past five days. The five other dead passengers were recovered on Wednesday and Thursday, while the body of the only crew member who died, onboard chef Recaldo Thomas, was found on Monday.

The sinking has puzzled naval marine experts who say a boat like the Bayesian, built by Italian high-end yacht manufacturer Perini, should have withstood the storm and in any case should not have sunk as quickly as it did.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Rome:

Scuba divers scouring the wreck of British tech magnate Mike Lynch’s family yacht, which sank off Sicily two days ago, have found two bodies inside it, a source close to rescue operations said on Wednesday.

One of the bodies belonged to a heavily built man, the source said.

Rescue officials have been looking for six missing people, including Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter and Jonathan Bloomer, a non-executive chair of Morgan Stanley International.

The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56-metre-long (184-ft) superyacht, was carrying 22 people, and was anchored off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, when it capsized during a fierce storm on Monday.

Fifteen people survived, while the body of the onboard chef, Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, was found near the wreck hours after the disaster.

Inspection of the wreck, lying sideways at a depth of around 50 metres, was a “long and complex” operation, the Italian fire department said, with inside spaces obstructed by furniture and debris, and scuba divers having just 8-10 minutes beneath the water before needing to resurface.

Separately, the coast guard deployed a remotely operated vehicle to scan the seabed and take underwater pictures and videos that it said may provide “useful and timely elements” for prosecutors looking into the disaster.

The coast guard has been questioning survivors, including the captain of the Bayesian, and passengers on the yacht that was moored next to it who witnessed the ship going down, judicial sources said.

No one is under investigation at the moment, sources added.

MISSING PASSENGERS

Lynch, 59, is one of the UK’s best-known tech entrepreneurs and has been referred to as the country’s Bill Gates.

He built the UK’s largest software firm, Autonomy, which was sold to HP for $11 billion in 2011, after which the deal spectacularly unravelled with the U.S. tech giant accusing him of fraud, resulting in a lengthy trial. Lynch was acquitted on all charges by a jury in San Francisco in June.

The other missing passengers were Bloomer’s wife Judy, Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife, Neda Morvillo. Morvillo represented Lynch in the San Francisco trial, while Bloomer was a character witness on his behalf.

Experts have been at a loss to explain how a large luxury vessel, presumed to have top-class fittings and safety features, could have sunk within minutes, as recounted by witnesses. The yacht anchored next to it was unharmed by the tempest.

The Bayesian, which was owned by Lynch’s wife, was built by Italian shipbuilder Perini in 2008 and last refitted in 2020. It had the world’s tallest aluminium mast, measuring 72 metres, according to its makers.

BLACK SWAN EVENT

Its captain James Cutfield, a 51-year-old New Zealander who survived the shipwreck, was a “very good sailor” and “very well respected” in the Mediterranean, his brother Mark told The New Zealand Herald.

Matthew Schanck, chair of the Maritime Search and Rescue Council, a UK-based non-profit organisation that trains sea rescuers, said the Bayesian was the victim of a “high impact” weather-related incident.

“If it was a water spout, which it appears to be, it’s what I would class as like a ‘black swan’ event,” he told Reuters, referring to a rare and unpredictable phenomenon.

He said he was confident the authorities would “get to the bottom” of what caused the shipwreck, thanks to the accounts of survivors, witnesses and examination of the sunken hull, which did not show any apparent signs of damage.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A superyacht that sank Monday off the Sicilian coast during a storm left six passengers missing, including British tech kingpin Mike Lynch and some of his inner circle, who were gathered to celebrate his victory in a long-running legal trial.

Lynch was acquitted in June in a U.S. fraud case and was apparently aboard the Bayesian with some of the people who stood by him throughout the ordeal. Another member of Lynch’s legal team who wasn’t aboard, Reid Weingarten, said the outing was intended in part as a celebration of the acquittal.

Here’s a look at the people who remain missing following the disaster, and also details of the death of an associate of Lynch in recent days who was not on the yacht.

Software entrepreneur Mike Lynch, along with his daughter, Hannah, are among those that police divers are searching for after the yacht was struck by a waterspout off of Porticello, near Palermo.

A spokesperson for Lynch said there were no updates Tuesday.

Lynch had been trying to move past a Silicon Valley debacle that had tarnished his legacy as an icon of British ingenuity.

A Cambridge-educated mathematician, Lynch made his mark with Autonomy, which made a search engine that could pore through emails and other internal business documents to help companies find vital information more quickly. Autonomy’s steady growth in its first decade resulted in Lynch being dubbed Britain’s Bill Gates and earning him one of the U.K’s highest honors, the Office of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2006.

Lynch, 59, sold Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011. But the deal quickly turned sour after he was accused of cooking the books to make the sale.

(Unravel the complexities of our digital world on The Interface podcast, where business leaders and scientists share insights that shape tomorrow’s innovation. The Interface is also available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.)

The fraud allegations resulting in Lynch being fired by HP’s then-CEO Meg Whitman and a decade-long legal battle. It culminated with him being extradited from the U.K. to face criminal charges of masterminding a multibillion-dollar fraud.

Lynch steadfastly denied any wrongdoing, asserting that he was being made a scapegoat for HP’s own bungling — a position he maintained while testifying before a jury during a 2 1/2 month trial in San Francisco earlier this year. U.S. Justice Department prosecutors called more than 30 witnesses in an attempt to prove their allegations against Lynch.

Lynch was vindicated at trial in June after being cleared of all charges. Lynch pledged to return to the U.K. and explore new ways to innovate.

Although he avoided a possible prison sentence, Lynch still faced a potentially huge bill stemming from a civil cased in London that HP mostly won in 2022. Damages haven’t been determined in that case, but HP is seeking $4 billion. Lynch made more than $800 million from the Autonomy sale.

Lynch later went on to set up technology investment firm Invoke Capital.

One of Lynch’s U.S. lawyers, Christopher Morvillo of the firm Clifford Chance, and his wife Neda were also on the yacht and are among those unaccounted for.

Morvillo is regarded as an elite defense attorney specializing in fraud and corruption cases. He was previously a federal prosecutor in New York who worked on the criminal investigation of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. His father, Robert Morvillo, was also a lawyer who represented high-profile clients, including Martha Stewart.

In a LinkedIn post soon after Lynch’s acquittal, Morvillo paid tribute to the team of lawyers who worked on the case and also his wife and two daughters.

“None of this would have been possible without your love and support. I am so glad to be home,” he wrote. The post ended with the words: “And they all lived happily ever after….”

In a legal podcast released last week, Morvillo recounted his involvement with Lynch’s case, starting from when his firm was hired in November 2012.

He flew to London to meet Lynch on Thanksgiving weekend that year and assumed he would be gone for a week, Morvillo told the For the Defense podcast. Instead, Morvillo said he “spent a significant portion of the rest of my life bouncing back and forth between London and New York.”

The case has “covered one third of my career,” he said. “It has been a constant presence in my life for the last 12 years.”

Clifford Chance said it was “in shock and deeply saddened by this tragic incident” and that its thoughts are with Morvillo and his wife. “Our utmost priority is providing support to the family,” the firm said.

The chairman of Morgan Stanley’s London-based investment banking subsidiary, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife, Judy, were also among the yacht’s missing.

Bloomer is non-executive chairman of both Morgan Stanley International, which covers markets outside the U.S., and the Hiscox Group, an insurer that does business on the Lloyd’s of London insurance marketplace.

Lynch appointed Bloomer to Autonomy’s board of directors in 2010, where he served as chairman of the audit committee at the time of the HP deal. Bloomer testified for the defense at Lynch’s trial.

Both Morgan Stanley and Hiscox said they were “deeply shocked and saddened” by the tragedy.

“Our thoughts are with all those affected, in particular the Bloomer family, as we all wait for further news from this terrible situation,” the bank said.

Aki Hussain, the group chief executive of Hiscox, said “our thoughts are with all those affected, in particular our chair, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife Judy, who are among the missing, and with their family as they await further news from this terrible situation.”

In a strange coincidence, another former Autonomy executive who was acquitted alongside Lynch of the fraud charges died days before the sinking of the Bayesian.

Stephen Chamberlain “was fatally struck by a car on Saturday while out running,” his lawyer Gary Lincenberg said in a statement.

Chamberlain, formerly a vice-president of finance at the company, was accused of artificially inflating Autonomy’s revenues and making false and misleading statements to auditors, analysts and regulators.

He stood trial with Lynch, and was also found not guilty.

“He was a courageous man with unparalleled integrity. We deeply miss him,” Lincenberg said. “Steve fought successfully to clear his good name at trial earlier this year, and his good name now lives on through his wonderful family.”

Chamberlain “was a much-loved husband, father, son, brother and friend,” his family said in statement released through Cambridgeshire Police. “He was an amazing individual whose only goal in life was to help others in any way possible.”

Police said the driver, a 49-year-old woman, remained at the scene in the village of Stretham, England, and was assisting with the investigation.

London:

UK businessman Mike Lynch, who was recently acquitted in the United States of an $11 billion fraud, is among those missing Monday after a superyacht sank off southern Italy, according to the head of the Civil Protection Agency.

The 56-metre-long luxury yacht, The Bayesian, had been moored off Porticello, east of Palermo, when the storm swept suddenly up the coast before dawn, tearing through beach clubs and little fishing ports.

Lynch’s wife was among 15 people rescued after the luxury yacht sank amid violent winds and rains off the Sicily coast, according to Salvo Cocina of the Civil Protection Agency, leaving six others missing. 

Italian authorities have opened a probe into the incident as the emergency response continued Monday.

Lynch, 59, was acquitted on all charges in a San Francisco court in early June after he was accused of the massive fraud linked to the sale of his software firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard. 

He co-founded Autonomy in Cambridge in 1996. 

US prosecutors accused Lynch of wire fraud and securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit offenses involving years of falsified records.

He had been extradited to the US from Britain to stand trial on the criminal charges.

A University of Cambridge graduate from Suffolk in eastern England, Lynch had disputed all charges and denied any wrongdoing. He was facing two decades in jail if convicted of the 17 charges.

A celebrated technology sector entrepreneur and investor, sometimes referred to as the UK’s answer to Bill Gates, he had won numerous awards and plaudits in Britain and beyond.

A spokesperson for Invoke Capital, another firm he founded, declined to comment.

Lynch was reportedly on board the boat with colleagues from the company when the storm struck.

Following his US acquittal, he had been critical of his prosecution in the US. 

He had told the BBC that the only reason he was free was “because I had enough money not to be swept away by a process that’s set up to sweep you away”.

“You shouldn’t need to have funds to protect yourself as a British citizen”, he said in the interview aired earlier this month.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)