More details emerge in mom’s disappearance
Friend asked husband not to leave with baby while search went on.
BOCA RATON — The day before the U.S. Coast Guard called off its search for her best friend, Sarah Cortes pleaded with Isabella Hellmann’s husband, Lewis Bennett, not to leave the country with the couple’s baby.
“I begged him to please understand that the family lost Isabella and the only piece of Isabella left was (the baby), and he needs to understand that he just can’t leave and take (her),” Cortes said Tuesday. “He said he understands, but he’s got his life in Australia.”
Cortes said she reminded Bennett, at the Hellmann family home in Boca Raton, about the huge effort by family and friends to find the two Tequesta teens lost at sea in 2015, and “suggested he do his own search. I mean, he’s a captain. He knows the sea. He knows the area. Do something. Not stay here. I would be looking for my wife.”
Cortes said in her brief conversation with Bennett on May 18, he told her pretty much the same thing he’d told the Coast Guard: Hi s c at amaran struck something while he slept, and he came topside to find the boat sinking and no trace of Hellmann — a 41-year-old real estate broker, his wife of three months and the mother of the couple’s 9-monthold daughter.
The Coast Guard and the FBI both have confirmed they are jointly conducting a “missing person investigation” into Hellmann’s disappearance.
Hellmann’s family has declined to talk to The Palm Beach Post.
The Post has been unable to reach Bennett, 40, a dual Brit-