Bombshell: “Massive Splash” Heard Near Soulmate After Lynette Hooker Vanished | Missing in Bahamas

Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield

True Crime

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2026

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A witness says they heard a “massive splash” near Soulmate around 9:30 p.m. the night Lynette Hooker vanished, and now one of the first rescuers on scene is raising major questions about Brian Hooker’s story. In this episode of Drop Dead Serious, Ashleigh Banfield speaks with Jim Todd of Hope Town Volunteer Fire & Rescue, one of the first people to pull Brian Hooker onto the rescue boat after he reportedly washed up in Marsh Harbour. Todd breaks down the new timeline details, the flare reports, what allegedly happened near Soulmate, and why Brian’s claim that he tried to get help after losing Lynette may be, in Todd’s words, “totally implausible.” Donate to Hopetown Fire & Rescue: https://www.htvfr.org

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, I'm Ashley Banfield. This is Drop Dead Serious. Thank you for being here.
0:10.7	Boy, do I have something to tell you tonight? I just learned something I had heard about before,
0:19.0	could never confirm, and now I'm hearing it from probably the best source, or at least one of the best sources I've had on the story of Lynette Hooker missing in the Abacos in the Bahamas.
0:31.6	You already know that her lying husband, Brian Hooker, says she just bounced off the back of the dinghy and I never saw her again,
0:38.1	right? And then everybody has had to, you know, launch hell and high water to try to find Lynette,
0:44.2	only to realize his story is so preposterous. Now we're really finding all the evidence to prove him
0:49.3	wrong. And I just found something. As it turns out, somewhere around 9.30 at night, and that would be more than two hours after Brian and Lynette left the Abaco in.
1:05.2	And only minutes later, she bounced off the back of the boat and he floated to Marsh Harbor and, you know, you know the rest of the story.
1:12.5	9.30, post 9.30 at night when nobody has been on Soulmate, right?
1:20.1	Their 46-foot sloop that they live aboard for the last four years, that's where the dingy was
1:26.3	headed when all hell broke loose.
1:29.4	They never made it to Soulmate.
1:32.6	Well, around 9.30 at night, a witness reported hearing a massive splash off of that boat.
1:41.9	Because that boat was only parked about 100 yards offshore.
1:45.8	And there are some lovely homes right there.
1:49.4	And that witness, she heard a big splash.
1:55.5	And it was so significant that it registered with her.
1:59.9	Not only that, I have a little more detail about those flares.
2:04.4	Remember the flares that a group of witnesses said that they saw a flare around 8 o'clock at night?
2:10.7	The timing may be off, but there's more resolution to the flare story now. And it's about the direction of the flare.
2:20.4	Because I've always said if a flare went up into the sky, everybody would have seen it.
2:24.6	We would have had so many more reports.
	...

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