FBI claims shipwreck a cover for wife’s murder
THEIR arguments were the mundane back and forth of so many couples, over money, where to raise their family and his work trips away from their Florida home.
But authorities in America say Australian sailor Lewis Bennett decided the only way he could get the final word over his real estate agent wife was to kill her at sea and stage a shipwreck.
Bennett, 41, denies he murdered Isabella Hellmann, the mother of their infant daughter Emelia, in May last year aboard his catamaran Surf Into Summer in the Caribbean sea off Cuba.
In a series of hearings in a Miami courtroom ahead of his December trial for second degree murder, the FBI has tried to build a case that escalating tensions in the marriage coupled with his greed drove Bennett to kill his 41year-old wife.
Assistant US Attorney Kurt Lunkenheimer said prosecutors believe the couple was “outliving their means”, spending about US$90,000 a year and earning about $70,000.
They allege Bennett, a dual British and Australian citizen who worked as a plumber for about six years on the Gold Coast, wanted full ownership of the couple’s Delray Beach townhouse, valued at US$160,000, about US$100,000 in insurance for the scuppered boat, as well as her car and bank savings.
“So he killed her for $300,000?” asked US District Judge Federico Moreno at a hearing last month.
If a jury finds him guilty, it won’t be Bennett’s first crime.
When Bennett was rescued by the US Coast Guard after the couple’s ill-fated, delayed honeymoon last year, authorities were surprised to discover that while his wife wasn’t aboard their liferaft, a cache of rare gold and silver coins was.
A further search of his home unearthed more of the coins, with a combined total value of US$70,000, hidden in boat shoes.
In a separate trial, he was charged with smuggling the coins, stolen from his former employer on the Caribbean island of St Maarten, and is currently serving a sevenmonth jail term.
Prosecutors last week said Ms Hellmann’s possible discovery of the coins, making her an unwitting accomplice to smuggling, may have sparked their final argument.
This “potentially led to an intense argument resulting in Hellmann’s murder”, Prosecutor Benjamin Greenberg alleged in court.
Bennett was charged with the murder of Ms Hellmenn, with whom he had been in a relationship for four years but had married only three months earlier, moments before he was sentenced for the smuggling in February.
Bennett explained that he had been asleep downstairs with the catamaran on autopilot when he heard it crash into something on the final night of their voyage. Ms Hellmann had earlier called her family in Florida to tell them she was heading home.
Bennett said he last saw Ms Hellmann before going to sleep and that she was wearing a lifejacket above-deck on the 12m vessel.
He said he boarded the liferaft when his catamaran started sinking, taking what he could, including the coins, but that there was no sign of Ms Hellmann.
In a strange twist, Bennett’s first phone call after the accident was not to American authorities, but an old friend in Queensland, who contacted the Gold Coast Coast Guard. This call was passed on to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority and then the US Coast Guard.
“Never before have I heard this happen,” Ian McPhail, an Australian Volunteer Coast Guard duty radio officer, told the Gold Coast Bulletin.
“They were quite panicky, the (friend) received a satellite call from (Mr Bennett) saying he had hit a reef and his wife had gone overboard.”
Bennett was rescued about four hours later, but a fourday 17,000sq km search found no trace of his wife.
Agents from the FBI were immediately suspicious, especially when the holes he said were caused by the collision appeared to have been made from the inside.
They cited his brisk application for Ms Hellmann’s life insurance, four months after her disappearance and in the absence of her body, as well as the fact he didn’t appear to have mounted any kind of search for her.
The FBI complaint says Bennett waited until Cuba, the last port of their sailing trip, to activate his satellite phone and locator beacon.
“The fact that Bennett waited until the final leg of his voyage to activate those devices is indicative of the fact he wanted to ensure his own rescue and survival after murdering his wife and intentionally scuttling his catamaran,” the FBI said.
Ms Hellmann’s family has been reluctant to speak publicly ahead of Bennett’s trial, but along with their grief over her death, they are also fighting to see her daughter.
Bennett moved Emelia, then nine months old, to the UK just weeks after Ms Hellmann’s disappearance, and the toddler is now being raised by his parents.