She is a daughter, a sister,a niece and an auntie & she’s my best friend... WE WANT PAL’S INFORMATION PLEA ANSWERS
THE heartbroken best friend of missing Brit Sarm Heslop has said: “We deserve answers.”
Kate Owen quit Britain 15 months ago with former air hostess Sarm, 41, to start a new life in the Caribbean.
She is desperate for news about her pal, who vanished from lover Ryan Bane’s yacht while it was moored 50ft off St John in the US Virgin Islands.
Wealthy American Mr Bane has refused to let detectives search his 47ft luxury catamaran, Siren Song.
His whereabouts are now unclear after he apparently sailed away from the scene of Sarm’s disappearance – and it has emerged that he has now hired a lawyer who has represented Ghislaine Maxwell.
Kate, 41, has told pals she cannot understand why Mr Bane has cut contact with her and been refusing to cooperate with detectives probing Sarm’s disappearance in the early hours of March 8.
She is helping with ongoing efforts in the Caribbean and wrote online of her pal: “She is a daughter, a sister, a niece and an auntie. A Godmother, a girlfriend, a colleague and my best friend.
“We will not leave quietly, we need a thorough investigation, we deserve answers. She deserves answers.”
Pictures posted online show Kate on a boat with Sarm, who worked for the nowdefunct airline Flybe while living in Southampton, Hants.
A second friend, Anna Wilson, 40, also said reports about Mr Bane’s past and claims he was hampering the search for Sarm by refusing to talk were worrying.
But a third pal posted a 1,700-word web message defending Mr Bane – in which she said she fears Sarm may even have been kidnapped.
Anna, for whom Sarm was a bridesmaid, said: “Ryan had contact with Kate in the early stages but ceased contact.”
Asked what Mr Bane, 44, had told Kate, she added: “He just said everything was fine and they had dinner out and then took the dinghy back to the boat.
“Nothing seemed untoward. They went back to the boat at about 10pm and watched a film. Ryan said that he woke and realised she was gone but that her phone and wallet were still aboard the boat.” The Sunday
People last week revealed that Mr Bane has since refused to talk to police or let them on his boat – the last place Sarm is known to have been seen alive – and that this had piled further agony on her loved ones, including her father Peter and mother Brenda.
Mr Bane has also repeatedly refused to comment publicly. And it was yesterday revealed he has now been charged by the US Coast Guard with obstructing law enforcement agents who boarded his boat hours after Sarm’s disappearance. Mr Bane was handed a citation, which does
not count as a criminal record, for refusing to allow officers inside the vessel.
When they boarded anyway, he is understood to have stood in a doorway and told them they could not go inside. Anna told the People: “It’s hard to understand
and it’s so hard to know that the last place Sarm probably was hasn’t even been properly looked at.
“The Virgin Islands Police Department are in touch with Sarm’s mum and dad, who are finding it very difficult. They’re
trying to reassure her parents they are doing everything they can.”
Mr Bane told police he raised the alarm after finding that Sarm was missing at 2am on March 8.
He said he had been woken by his yacht’s anchor alarm, which goes off if it detects the vessel is drifting.
Police said he had called them at 2.30am and they told him to contact the Coast Guard – which he did nine hours later.
Sarm had worked as an air hostess for eight years until 2016 and travelled with Kate, from Southsea, Hants, and her partner to the Canary Islands in December 2019.
From there, they boarded their own boat and sailed together to the Caribbean to begin a new life in the tropical paradise.
“Sarm wasn’t an experienced sailor prior to going,” Anna, from Whiteley,
Hants, said. She met Mr Bane on dating app Tinder last July.
Messages
Local police have said he is not a suspect in her disappearance or a person of interest in the case – but they and the FBI want to speak to him.
Anna added: “The last messages I had from Sarm were that she was with Ryan and he had this big dog and they were enjoying themselves on the boat. She seemed happy and didn’t give any sense that she wasn’t or that there was anything to worry about.
“We love her and we miss her and we just want to find her.”
Fellow Brit Flora Pickard, a friend of both Sarm and Mr Bane, posted a lengthy Facebook message defending the American and questioning the capabilities of local police. Flora, who is from Bournemouth but works in the US Virgin Islands as a chef, said: “I am aching so much now as my heart goes out to poor Ryan.
“I feel almost as heavy for him right now as I do for losing Sarm, as I feel like we are losing a second life.”
She claimed detectives had “**** ed up... from the very beginning”, adding: “I don’t trust the USVI police individuals with even a strand of my hair.”
And Flora added of Sarm: “She liked to adventure and party, and there is a possibility she could still have gone off the boat to someone else’s boat or even ashore.
“Sarm and Ryan had been out to dinner, and knowing them they would have had a fair few drinks – we are all yachties! That’s what you do after a charter! So anything is possible.
“Sarm also could have fallen off the boat while she got out of bed for a smoke. She could have hit her head, she could have even been kidnapped. But no one actually knows what happened. Not even Ryan!”
Locals on the island of St John are adding their efforts to the search, which is being bolstered by support from officers in Britain.
Meanwhile, it emerged Mr Bane has hired US Virgin Islands-based attorney David Cattie as his lawyer.
Mr Cattie has represented British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, 59, in her lawsuit against her late ex-lover Geoffrey Epstein’s estate to pay for her legal fees.
Maxwell is awaiting trial in the US on charges including sex trafficking – all of which she denies.
Mr Cattie also previously represented a boat captain who was accused of manslaughter and acquitted in 2019.