Missing teen’s father must turn over texts
Parents of missing boy seeking access to Stephanos’ messages.
The family of Perry Cohen claims his friend Austin’s father has phone messages from the day Perry and Austin vanished at sea.
WEST PALM BEACH — William “Blu” Stephanos must turn over cellphone messages from the day in 2015 his son and another Tequesta teenager vanished while setting out on a fishing trip, a judge ruled Thursday.
The parents of Perry Cohen were seeking access to messages either received or sent by Stephanos, the father of Austin Stephanos, on July 23 and 24, 2015.
Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos, both 14, were last seen July 24, 2015, motoring a 19-foot boat out of the Jupiter Inlet and into stormy weather in the Atlantic.
Pamela Cohen, Perry’s mother, filed a lawsuit last July alleging that negligence on the part of Stephanos and other family members led to the boys’ disappearance.
Cohen claims that Stephanos knew of the boys’ plans to go offshore and set out to look for the teenagers himself before contacting authorities.
Authorities were notified by Nick Korniloff, Perry Cohen’s stepfather, that the boys were missing about 4:15 p.m., more than an hour after Carly Black, Austin’s mother, told Stephanos she had not heard from their son since that morning.
According to a document filed Thursday, Stephanos previously released records from his cellphone provider, but those records didn’t include messages either sent or received by Stephanos.
The Cohens also want to see messages from July 23, the day before the boys disappeared. The boys narrowly missed motoring into a storm that day, the filing contends.
“(The Cohens have) the right to discover and determine what Blu Stephanos knew about the incident,” the document from Judge Jeffrey Gillen states.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement ruled last June that there was evidence of child neglect in the boys’ disappearance but not enough to file criminal charges.
The boys’ boat was found in March 2016, but their bodies were never recovered. A Gainesville maritime firm concluded an analysis by saying the boys likely remained together until they died off the coast of northern Georgia.