Husband charged with murder in high seas honeymoon disappearance

A British man was arrested and charged with murder in connection with the disappearance of his newlywed wife last May, who he claimed fell from their catamaran during a belated honeymoon sailing trip to the Caribbean, authorities said today.

Lewis Bennett, 41, was arrested on Feb. 16 after an FBI investigation found evidence discrediting his story that his wife, Isabella Hellman, the mother of his 9-month-old daughter, vanished from their 40-foot vessel when it hit something in open international waters while he was asleep in the cabin below deck, according to a criminal complaint obtained by ABC News.

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By examining photos and video the U.S. Coast Guard took of the catamaran before it sank, an expert hired by the FBI to help in the high-seas mystery determined Bennett’s story couldn’t be true.

“Based on the analysis it does not appear the vessel sinking was caused by accidental damage. Rather, it appears the vessel was intentionally scuttled,” an associate professor of nautical architecture and ocean engineering at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy stated in court records.

Bennett was arrested when he appeared in a Florida court on unrelated charges of transporting $5,000 of gold and silver coins, which he pleaded guilty to in November, according to the complaint.

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“I respectfully submit that there is probable cause to believe that Lewis Richard Bennett knowingly and unlawfully killed Isabella Hellman with malice aforethought within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States,” FBI Special Agent James Kelley wrote in the criminal complaint.

Investigators suspect Bennett killed his 41-year-old wife in order to collect on an insurance policy and take sole possession of their marital assets, including bank accounts and a home she owned in Delray Beach, Florida, according to court documents. He also raised suspicions when he asked the Coast Guard for a “letter of presumed death” on the day they called off the search for his wife, four days after she disappeared, according to the complaint.

Isabella Hellman’s body was never found despite a 4,900-square-mile search for her conducted by the Coast Guard.

Bennett, who had been a realtor in South Florida, and Hellman were married in February 2017 and set out on a belated honeymoon in May, according to the court papers.

Bennett told investigators that he and his wife began their sailing trip from the Caribbean island of St. Maarten, journeyed to Puerto Rico and arrived in Cuba. They spent a day in Varadero, Cuba, before charting a course back to Florida on the evening of May 17, 2017, the complaint said. He claimed they had planned to either sail to Key West or Fort Lauderdale and around 8 p.m. he set the “auto pilot” on the vessel, told his wife to take watch on deck and headed below to sleep, according to the documents.

U.S. Coast Guard District 7, FILE

“Bennett claimed that he was next awakened by a ‘crashing underneath’ a few hours later,” Kelley wrote in the court papers. “Bennett said he went to the upper deck and Hellman was not there.”

Bennett told investigators he noticed the vessel was taking on water, so he gathered his personal belongings — including unexpended parachute flares, water, a tea set, and nine plastic tubes containing silver coins — and abandoned ship, jumping into a life raft and cutting himself adrift from the sinking catamaran, the court documents state.

When asked during a May 23 interview with investigators what efforts he took to locate his wife in the water, “Bennett said that he did not do anything,” the complaint said.

Instead, he used a satellite phone to call one of wife’s sisters, leaving her a voicemail informing her of Hellman’s disappearance, the complaint said. He then contacted a friend in Australia and asked that they contact the U.S. Coast Guard on his behalf, the complaint said.

“Bennett then made telephonic contact with USCG while awaiting his rescue,” Kelley noted in the complaint.

Within days of arriving back in South Florida, Bennett purchased airline tickets for him and his young daughter and took her to the United Kingdom on May 28.

He was arrested in the stolen coin case in August 2017, when he returned to South Florida for an interview on his insurance claim, the complaint said.

Bennett was arrested for his wife’s murder on the same day Hellman’s parents and sisters sent a letter to federal Judge James Lawrence King complaining that Bennett has kept them away from his daughter, Emilia.

“We do not want to say anything bad about Lewis, but we would like him to know how much it hurts us not to be able to see and spend time with our granddaughter and niece, Emilia, since he took her out of the country,” the family wrote in the letter obtained by ABC News. “Lewis knows that Isabella’s mother was very much involved in caring for Emilia from the time of her birth here in Florida until she was lost at sea.”

U.S. Coast Guard

In his statement, Kelley indicated that Bennett’s story of his catamaran crashing into something in open waters raised suspicions. He said, according to the complaint, that the catamaran’s two escape hatch portholes were inexplicably opened and that holes seen in both hulls were almost identical, according to the complaint.

“I cannot think of any item that would accidentally cause similar holes in both hulls at roughly the same time,” the FBI’s nautical architecture and ocean engineering expert noted in the complaint.

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Trump encourages Pennsylvania Republicans to challenge new congressional districts

President Donald Trump on Tuesday encouraged Republicans in Pennsylvania to challenge the way the state’s Supreme Court redrew congressional districts to more closely reflect the partisan composition of the state, saying the original districts drawn by Republicans were “correct.”

As part of a gerrymandering case, the court created a map that’s more compact and splits fewer counties and municipal areas than the Republican map, which has been used in the past three congressional elections. Analysts predict the new boundaries could allow Democrats to pick up several U.S. House seats.

“Hope Republicans in the Great State of Pennsylvania challenge the new ‘pushed’ Congressional Map, all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary,” Trump said in a tweet Tuesday morning. “Your Original was correct! Don’t let the Dems take elections away from you so that they can raise taxes waste money!”

Hope Republicans in the Great State of Pennsylvania challenge the new “pushed” Congressional Map, all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. Your Original was correct! Don’t let the Dems take elections away from you so that they can raise taxes waste money!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 20, 2018

The tweet was one of more than half a dozen the president sent Tuesday morning, most of which complained about the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Democrats and former President Barack Obama. Trump appeared to start his day, as he often does, by watching “Fox Friends” and tweeting his responses. At one point, the three hosts of the conservative morning show – seated on a white couch behind a chyron reading: “Trump: Why didn’t Obama do something?” – featured some of Trump’s recent tweets and discussed why Obama didn’t do more to prevent Russian meddling in the election.

The president responded at 7:24 a.m. and thanked the morning show for their “great timeline on all of the failures the Obama Administration had against Russia.”

The “Fox Friends” team then played a clip of Obama speaking about three weeks before the election, responding to Trump’s assertions at the time that the general election would be rigged against him and insisting that there was no way to rig a U.S. election. Steve Doocy, one of the show’s hosts, noted that when Obama made this statement, he knew that the Russians were trying to influence the presidential election.

Trump responded by tweeting a quote from Obama that was featured in the clip and then commented: “That’s because he thought Crooked Hillary was going to win and he didn’t want to ‘rock the boat.’ When I easily won the Electoral College, the whole game changed and the Russian excuse became the narrative of the Dems.”

“Fox Friends” also featured a new survey conducted by The New York Times and Survey Monkey that found growing support for the Republican tax cuts. Fifty-one percent of those surveyed this month approved of the tax overhaul – up from 46 percent in January and 37 percent in December.

“What’s going on? Well, people are realizing they got a little more money in their paycheck, plus all of those tax cuts impact the companies, so they’re able to give $1,000 bonuses, $2,000 bonuses, as well,” Doocy said.

Trump chimed in and seemed to point to another poll, one recently released by McLaughlin Associates, that shows Democrats leading a generic 2018 congressional matchup. Although this sort of polling has tightened, it has yet to show Republicans in the lead, as the president has repeatedly claimed.

Later in the morning, the “Fox Friends” crew interviewed Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, about the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference that starts Feb. 21. Trump responded on Twitter, calling the conference “another exciting event” and noting that there’s now a “big difference from those days when President Obama held the White House.”

And the president tweeted about the new congressional map in Pennsylvania, which “Fox Friends” had also reported on that morning, noting that the new boundaries could benefit Democrats.

The president then came back around to Russia and Obama, tweeting: “I have been much tougher on Russia than Obama, just look at the facts. Total Fake News!”

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