PORTICELLO, Italy- The body of British tech tycoon Mike Lynch was captured on Thursday from the wreck of his family yacht that sank this week off the seacoast of Sicily during a violent storm, a senior Italian officer said.
Also, Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah is still missing, interior ministry official Massimo Mariani said after being informed by the emergency services.
The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56-meter-long (184-foot) superyacht carrying 22 passengers and crew, was anchored off the harbor of Porticello, near Palermo, when it sunk beneath the waves minutes after bad weather and rainfall struck early Monday.
Lynch, 59, was one of the UK’s best-known tech entrepreneurs and had invited his friends to join him on the yacht to celebrate his vindication in June in a U.S. fraud trial.
Seven people are believed to have died in the disaster, while 15 survived, including Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, who owns the Bayesian.
Italian officers verified they had captured on Wednesday the bodies of Jonathan Bloomer, a non-executive president of Morgan Stanley International, and Christopher Morvillo of the law establishment Clifford Chance, alongside their wives, Judy Bloomer and Neda Morvillo.
Investigators are now looking at why the Bayesian, made in 2008 by Italian dockyard Perini Navi, sank while a near sailboat remained purely unscathed. Fifteen of the 22 people aboard survived by escaping in a lifeboat, including a mother who reported holding her 1-year-old baby over the waves to save her. They were saved by the sailboat Sir Robert Baden Powell.
The vessel was anchored about half a mile offshore when it sank, leaving divers to search its housing on the seabed 164 feet underwater.
The dockyard was swarmed for days with journalists and photographers and curious residents taking photographs on their smartphones as rescue teams traveled to and from the point of the wreck.