Mike Lynch yacht latest: Tycoon’s wife ‘didn’t want to leave boat without family’

Two more crew members from the Bayesian are under investigation for manslaughter, including the ship engineer and sailor.

A source said that Tim Parker Easton is suspected of having failed to protect the yacht’s engine room and operating systems, while Matthew Griffith was on watch duty on the night of the incident.

Read the full article from Tara Cobham here:

The captain of the Bayesian yacht chose not to respond to prosecutors’ questions as he was spoken to for a third time on Tuesday, his lawyer has said.

James Cutfield, a 51-year-old New Zealand national, is under investigation for possible manslaughter and culpable shipwreck charges.

“The captain exercised his right to remain silent for two fundamental reasons,” lawyer Giovanni Rizzuti told reporters. “First, he’s very worn out. Second, we were appointed only on Monday and for a thorough and correct defence case we need to acquire a set of data that at the moment we don’t have.”

Being placed under investigation does not imply guilt or mean that charges will necessarily follow. Chief prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio has said his team would consider each possible element of responsibility including those of the captain, the crew, individuals in charge of supervision and the yacht’s manufacturer.

The Times reported one of Mr Cutfield’s lawyers as saying that the captain is “understandably very shaken up” after the ordeal last Monday.

A court-appointed armed guard, tasked with ensuring Mike Lynch did not abscond while facing fraud charges, has paid tribute to the tech mogul, saying the security team “became less of a detail and more like a family”.

Rolo Igno also described “the memory of a beautiful soul” in Mr Lynch’s daughter Hannah.

Mr Igno said he had the “privilege” of spending “almost every waking moment” with Mr Lynch while he was in custody in San Francisco, describing the detail as unlike any other he had ever worked and one that was “life changing”.

“As an executive protection agent, the number one rule is simple, don’t ever get close to the principal,” he said.

“They aren’t your friends, they’re a client and the relationship is strictly professional. But with Mike, that didn’t fly with him and for me that rule quickly dissolved.”

The sinking of the 56-metre yacht Bayesian and the tragic deaths of British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his guests and boat staff have given the public a glimpse into the rarefied world of superyachts, writes Boat International’s Lucy Dunn.

There are currently 12,626 superyachts on the water around the world with 1,166 superyachts in build or on order. If you have been to a Greek island this year, or maybe the Amalfi coast, you may have glimpsed them coming in and out of harbours and wondered who owns a yacht like that. Or who can afford to charter a yacht like that – which have an average price of around £180,000 a week.

While you may think of glossy influencers and A-listers, the superyachting fraternity is where millionaires are sorted from the billionaires from the centi-billionaires; the 0.001 per centers. Rarely will you find a celebrity with the financial clout to afford a yacht owned by Lynch, these are generally under-the-radar industry titans who don’t have household names.

So, what exactly makes a superyacht super? According to Boat International, where I work, it can be applied to any boat, motor or sailing yacht which is over 24 metres in length. Size, in the superyacht world, is everything – and yachts are getting bigger all the time.

Three people are being investigated by the Italian authorities for manslaughter after the sinking of the Bayesian yacht off the coast of Sicily.

On Monday, the boats 51-year-old captain James Cutfield, from New Zealand, was put under investigation. He declined to respond to prosecutors during questioning on Tuesday

Two British crew members are now also being investigated. Ship engineer Tim Parker Eaton and sailor Matthew Griffith are being investigated over the same crimes.

A source told Reuters that Parker Eaton is suspected of having failed to protect the yacht’s engine room and operating systems.

Being investigated does not imply guilt and does not mean formal charges will follow.

Recaldo Thomas was the superyacht’s chef and the first person whose death was confirmed.

The Canadian-Antiguan national was found by the Italian coastguard near the sunken boat. A friend of Mr Thomas, who asked to remain anonymous, said the yachting community has been saddened by his death.

She told The Independent: “He was a one-of-a-kind special human being. Incredibly talented, contagious smile and laugh, an incredible voice with a deep love of the ocean and the moon. I spoke to him nearly every day. He loved his life his friends and his job.”

Autonomy, the software firm which Mike Lynch sold in a £8.64bn deal in 2011, was a pioneer of business data analysis, using machine learning and what Mr Lynch called “adaptive pattern recognition”.

It used a statistical method called “Bayesian inference” at the heart of its software, devised by the 18th-century mathematician Thomas Bayes.

The yacht’s name, Bayesian, harks to the same model that was at the heart of Autonomy’s – and Mr Lynch’s – success.

Hannah Lynch had just completed her A-levels and secured a place to study English at Oxford University.

Her former English teacher Jon Mitropoulos-Monk said she was “one of the best English students in the country” having scored 100% in her English Literature GCSE.

Patrick Jacob, a family friend, paid tribute to her on Friday, saying: “Hannah was charming and ferociously intelligent with an insatiable thirst for life and knowledge. She was also warm, loving and deeply considerate; remarkably for her age.

“I am 50 years older than her and in my life I have never met anybody like Hannah. We have lost one of our brightest stars whose future held so much promise. Her loss is unbearable.”