How did my best friend vanish from Caribbean yacht?
MISSING Sarm Heslop’s heartbroken best friend has demanded answers over her disappearance.
Kate Owen, 41, travelled with Sarm to the Caribbean 15 months ago to start a new life.
She is desperate for news about her friend, who vanished from lover Ryan Bane’s yacht while it was moored off Saint John in the USVirgin Islands.
Sarm, 41, met Mr Bane last July via dating app Tinder.
She is thought to have disappeared from the wealthy American’s yacht Siren Song in the early hours of March 8.
Mr Bane, 44, refused to let detectives search his boat and it is now understood he has sailed away from the scene of Sarm’s disappearance.
Now best friend Kate has said she cannot understand why Mr Bane will not cooperate with detectives probing the disappearance.
She wrote online: “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.”
Untoward
Another friend, Anna Wilson, 40, said Mr Bane explained to Sarm’s friends that they had enjoyed dinner out together and taken the dinghy back to the boat.
Anna added: “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.”
Mr Bane claimed he was woken at 2am by an anchor alarm, which triggers an alert if the boat strays from its position, and found her gone.
Police said he was advised to ring the US Coast Guard. But it later emerged they did not receive the SOS call until more than nine hours later.
It was claimed Mr Bane reportedly refused to talk to police or let them on his boat.
He has repeatedly refused to comment publicly and has now been charged by the US Coast Guard with obstructing law enforcement agents.
Mr Bane was handed a citation,
which does not count as a criminal record, for not allowing officers inside the vessel.
When they boarded anyway, he is understood to have stood doorway and told them they not go inside.
Local police have said Mr Bane is not a suspect in the disappearance or a person of interest in the case.
But the FBI want to speak to him, it was said.
Toby Derima, a spokesman for the Virgin Islands Police Department, said: “Nothing so far actually confirms the couple went back to the yacht together that night.”
Sarm, from Southampton, had worked as an air hostess for eight years until 2016 and travelled with Kate, from Southsea, Hants, to the Canary Islands in December 2019.
From there, they sailed together to in a could the Caribbean to begin a new life in the tropical paradise. But Sarm then went to work as a cook on Siren Song.
Earlier this week it was revealed Mr Bane served 21 days in jail in 2011 for attacking ex-wife Corie Stevenson after driving back from a wedding in Michigan.
According to a police report, he flew into a rage and dragged her out of a truck before smashing her head into the dining room floor.
An officer wrote: “Corie’s front right tooth had a chip out of it. Her right ear lobe was bloody and scratched. Her right shoulder and the right side of her neck showed red scratches. Her right eyelid was scratched and red.”