Mystery death on the high seas
An Australian dual citizen faces life in jail over his wife’s death.
From his jail cell in Florida, Australian Lewis Bennett recently scrawled a note to a friend in England about his missing wife, Isabella Hellman.
“(She) was such a positive person and always encouraged me to focus on the ‘now’ and to enjoy each and every moment,” he wrote. “I try to take her advice but here and now for me at this moment is difficult to appreciate.”
The future for the 41-year-old Australian also may be difficult to appreciate as he contemplates the possibility of life behind bars for the alleged murder of his wife on the high seas during their Caribbean honeymoon.
Bennett is awaiting trial as the FBI seeks evidence from Australia and from around the world to piece together the mysterious life of the former Gold Coast plumber before that fateful night on their yacht.
Although Bennett has not entered a plea yet, he previously has stated that he is innocent and that the death of his wife was a terrible accident.
If the FBI is right, Bennett committed what initially may have looked like the perfect crime.
Early in morning of May 15 last year, Bennett and 41-year-old Hellman sailed Bennett’s 40-foot catamaran Surf Into Summer from Varadero in Cuba back towards Florida, where they both lived.
It was the last leg of a tropical cruise through some of the most beautiful parts of the Caribbean for the couple who had been together for four years but married only three months earlier.
Hellman was a glamorous brunette who had moved from her native Colombia to Florida and who had met Bennett online. She had learned English and found work as a bank teller before becoming a real estate broker. She and Bennett shared an apartment in Delray Beach, Florida.
Their relationship reportedly had been under strain since their daughter Emelia was born nine months earlier, so Hellman left the baby with her family to take what she described as a belated honeymoon with her new husband.
“Caribbean here I come,” she wrote on Facebook shortly before the cruise. As they sailed through the British Virgin Islands to Cuba she wrote: “Another day in paradise”. It was her last post.
According to Bennett, he and Hellman sailed from Cuba at 5.30am on May 15 bound for Florida. At 8pm, when the boat was in international waters just west of the Bahamas, he says he went below to go to sleep, leaving his wife on deck and in command of the vessel.
Hellman’s family says she called them at 8.30pm to say “we’re heading home”.
Bennett told investigators that at 1am he was jolted awake by a violent collision with an unknown obstacle. He says he raced on deck but Hellman was nowhere to be found. Because the boat was taking on water he says he launched a life raft and called the coast guard to report the accident.
At 4am, a US coast guard helicopter arrived and winched Bennett to safety.
For the following three days, four aircraft and three coast guard vessels searched in vain for Hellman in a hunt the area.
In his only public comments shortly afterwards, Bennett told DailyMail.com he was shattered by the loss of his wife.
“This is absolutely devastating for me. She is my soulmate. I thought we were going to be together forever. We were planning a great life together and now I am alone without her. I loved her very much.”
Bennett says he returned to Cuba after her disappearance in case she had turned up in a hospital there.
“(I) met the authorities there and checked every hospital but there is no sign of her,” he says.
But Hellman’s family were not so convinced that it was an accident.
The Palm Beach Post reported that a police report described how one of Hellman’s sisters, Elizabeth Rodriguez, confronted Bennett outside their apartment and accusing him of killing Hellman.
As the FBI investigated what it initially described as a “missing persons” case Bennett, a dual Australian and British citizen, took his infant daughter to Britain, where his parents live.
In Florida, the FBI started to uncover what they allege are major holes in Bennett’s story. When rescuers found Bennett, they also discovered the half-sunken abandoned catamaran. When the sun came up, investigators dived under the boat at took video and pictures of the vessel, revealing two holes, one in each hull.
But when they examined the footage closely, they noticed that the holes had been punched from the inside out, rather than from the outside in as would be the case if it had struck an object as Bennett claimed.
“The damage to the hull comes from the inside of the vessel — based on the spraying of the hull material outwards — and is in nearly the same location on both hulls,” the FBI says in its charge sheet against Bennett.
The photos also show that the escape hatches in both hulls were open — letting in water — despite the fact Bennett did not use them to leave the boat.
The FBI asked a professor of naval architecture at the US Coast Guard Academy to review the evidence.
“In those findings, the associate professor states that ‘based on the analysis, it does not appear the vessel sinking was caused by accidental damage. Rather it appears the vessel was intentionally scuttled’,” the FBI charge sheet states. “He noted that ‘the opening of both escape hatches is unexplainable as an accident and defies prudent seamanship’.
“In relation to the two holes in each hull, the professor said ‘I cannot think of any items that would accidentally cause similar holes on both hulls at roughly the same time’.”
The FBI also says that no navigation hazards were reported by the planes and boats conducting the search for Hellman.
What’s more, say investigators, the damage to the catamaran was not “catastrophic”, meaning Bennett could have kept the boat afloat using standard flood damage control procedures.
The FBI says Bennett told them he did not use flares to light up the ocean around the boat to look for his wife, nor did he search for her or even call out for her.
The FBI also says Bennett activated his satellite phone and registered his Personal Locator Beacon only in Cuba, rather than during other long-distance sailing legs of their Caribbean trip.
“The fact that Bennett waited until the final leg of his voyage to activate those devices is indicative of the fact he wanted to ensure his own rescue and survival after murdering his wife and intentionally scuttling his catamaran,” the FBI says.
The agency also says that on September 20 last year, only four months after his wife’s disappearance, Bennett filed a court request for a presumptive death certificate. Such a certificate would have given him full ownership of their apartment and Hellman’s bank accounts.
The FBI says “this request is extremely early” given that “a husband would normally want his wife to be found alive”.
In another strange twist to the story, the FBI discovered that one of the bags Bennett had taken on to his life raft as he abandoned his boat contained nine plastic tubes filled with silver coins.
The FBI soon learned that these had been had been stolen in May 2016 from a yacht in St Maarten, where Bennett had been working as a crew member. Bennett actually reported this theft to police at that time, allegedly to deflect suspicion from himself. When the FBI searched his apartment in Florida, agents discovered a larger cache of the stolen coins, worth about $US40,000, hidden in boat shoes.
So when Bennett returned from Britain to Florida in August to sort out insurance claims relating to his boat, investigators arrested him for stealing the coins. This ensured he remained in custody in the US while they continued their investigations into Hellman’s disappearance.
On February 20, as Bennett was in court to receive a seven- month sentence for stealing the coins, he was slapped with a charge of second-degree murder.
Now investigators are trying to piece together his past to see if they can discover more evidence that may explain why he allegedly murdered his wife.
Bennett lived for at least six years on the Gold Coast hinterland, but little is known about his activities there. He set up a solar company called Next Generation Solar between 2010 and 2016.
He also registered his catamaran in Sydney and gained Australian citizenship. Immigration sources say he left Australia in February 2016 and did not return.
Prosecutors have sought to delay Bennett’s trial to obtain his bank records from Australia and those of his company and an unnamed business partner. They also want to check the records of money transfers he made using OzForex Limited as well as the records of the Insurance Fraud Bureau of Australia and the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which registered the catamaran.
Bennett told his neighbours in Florida he was a plumber and he had come into some family money to pay for his boat. He said he made his living crewing other people’s boats. Neighbours say Hellman would fly to ports around the world to spend time with him.
Hellman’s best friend, Sarah Cortes, says Bennett and Hellman argued a lot about their daughter Emelia.
“It was little things but they were always arguing about how they wanted to bring her up,” she told The Palm Beach Post.
“He was very involved: how she needs to eat, what she needs to eat, what diaper she would wear.”
Since Hellman’s disappearance, her family in Florida has tried unsuccessfully get Bennett’s permission to visit Emelia in England, where she is staying with Bennett’s parents.
Meanwhile, in a handwritten letter to his friend in Britain that was leaked to London’s Daily Mirror, Bennett still says he grieves for his missing wife.
“Day to day life is very mundane,” he says.
“I am in a unit of roughly 120 inmates in an area the size of a tennis court. I think about my wife and daughter every waking moment and wish we could be together again soon.”
Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia.
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