Missing Wife’s Boat Had FLIR…So What? – Loose Cannon
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The latest news in the case of missing cruiser Lynette Hooker is the biggest red herring yet. This is what happens when news sources who don’t know anything about boats and boating are providing information to reporters that are equally ignorant. These are the headlines:
Lynette Hooker went missing on April 4 after her husband, Brian Hooker, said she fell from a dinghy in the Abacos during rough waters. Brian Hooker told police he searched for her but was hampered by the fact that the dinghy engine was disabled because the kill switch went overboard when she did. Derived from military technology, FLIR marine thermal imaging cameras allow boaters to navigate in the dark, detect unseen obstacles and locate individuals in the water by detecting heat instead of light. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Brian Hooker did not murder his wife. I know this may be difficult for some readers. Hooker’s story is that his wife fell out of the dinghy maybe a half mile to a mile from their anchored sailboat Soulmate. As shown in the CBS photos above, the FLIR camera is mounted on the mast. Using it in the search for Lynette Hooker would have required a fairly time consuming process. Again, assuming Brian Hooker is not a wife-killer, it probably wouldn’t have occurred to him to paddle his dinghy back to the mothership in blustery conditions, start the engine, raise the anchor and navigate back to the scene of the accident—all the while monitoring the FLIR display for a hot spot. Plus, the guy may well have been intoxicated after an afternoon of cocktails. Rather than expend precious time trying to employ a distant thermal camera, the conservative play would have been to stay and try to find Lynette Hooker in the vicinity of where she fell in. Nor is failure to disclose the existence of the camera necessarily evidence of “cognizance of guilt” on Brian Hooker’s part. Maybe it just didn’t occur to him. Now, if the man had a handheld FLIR camera and did not use it—or disclose it—that might justify those sorts of headlines.
LOOSE CANNON covers hard news, technical issues and nautical history. Every so often he tries to be funny. Subscribe for free to support the work. If you’ve been reading for a while—and you like it—consider upgrading to paid. |
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