WAS MISSING CRUISE WORKER MURDERED?
FOR SIX long years Rebecca Coriam’s parents have been searching for answers. The mysterious disappearance of their sports-mad graduate daughter from the Disney Wonder cruise ship in March 2011 has led to many theories: Did she commit suicide? Was she pushed? Or was Rebecca washed overboard by a freak wave as Disney Cruise Line claim?
Certainly, the latter theory is not one Ann and Mike Coriam believe, given that there were no reports of stormy seas in the area at the time the 24-year-old vanished.
Instead, they think she was sexually attacked and may have been murdered following the release of a new police report suggesting that Rebecca had sex with a male colleague in front of her American girlfriend before she went missing.
Two of Rebecca’s best friends who visited her parents after she disappeared claimed she had voiced fears of being raped while on the 83,000-tonne ship.
Now the Coriams are asking the UK Government to conduct an inquiry into their daughter’s case after they hired a private investigator who was able to gain access to the original police report following her disappearance.
The notes state: “[American woman in relationship with Rebecca] left to get more beer. Came back and Rebecca and [male crew member who was in a relationship with the American woman] chatting. She came back and all three went to [male crew member’s] room. [Male crew member] had sex with both. [American woman] left the room again to get beer. Came back and Rebecca and [male crew member] had sex.”
Furthermore, at 5.45am on the day she disappeared, reports have emerged claiming that Rebecca was seen making a call in a very distressed state on the ship’s internal telephone system. She also appeared to be wearing clothes that were too big for her.
Among the personal possessions returned to her distraught parents were a favourite pair of shorts, which had been ripped.
REBECCA was hired by Disney in June 2010. After training at the firm’s Florida headquarters she embarked on her first working cruise to the Bahamas before joining the Disney Wonder as it sailed from LA to the Panama Canal.
But a brief return home for her grandfather’s funeral in February 2011 was to be the last time her family saw her. Six weeks later, on March 21, 2011, Rebecca sent a message to her mother from the ship, promising to phone the next day.
However, when the Coriams’ phone rang the following evening it wasn’t Rebecca. Instead an official from Disney told the devastated couple that their daughter was missing: she had vanished from the ship overnight while it was sailing off the coast of Mexico, near Puerto Vallarta. Disney concluded that Rebecca had been washed overboard by a freak wave and that her disappearance was “not suspicious”; the firm even placed flowers against the six-foot wall next to the crew swimming pool from where she allegedly fell. But when Ann and Mike flew out to meet the ship they were told the Bahamas authorities carried out a short investigation but few results were brought forward.
A pair of flip-flops found next to the wall were not Rebecca’s and they felt witnesses had been “coached”.
Tickets had also been found in her cabin for her and her parents to visit Disneyland Paris, together with a scribbled message that read: “Ring mum, Friday morning, English time!!!” Her parents believe this proves Rebecca was not suicidal, as some crew mates claimed.
Other Disney employees told police that Rebecca was in the ship’s staff bar until 2am on the day she went missing and was in a “happy-go-lucky” mood.
Her parents hired a private investigator, Liverpool-based maritime expert Bill Anderson who was joined last year by Roy Ramm, the former commander of specialist operations at Scotland Yard, who volunteered to help with the investigation. The campaign for an inquiry is being co-ordinated by the family’s MP, Chris Matheson, who said: “The more you look into this the more it smells rotten; the more it smells like a crime has taken place.”
Rebecca’s family believe she didn’t consent to having sex with the man from Central America, and they suspect she was killed because she didn’t agree to an open bisexual relationship with the man and woman. With so many unanswered questions, the Coriams hope an inquiry will shed some light on what really happened to Rebecca.