Less than two years before she vanished in the waters off the Bahamas, Lynette Hooker confided in a friend over text that her marriage was over that she no longer wanted to be at sea with her husband, writing: “It was real bad. I can’t be out there with him.”
The 55-year-old Michigan woman had split from her husband Brian Hooker in 2024, years before he’d be questioned in her disappearance.
“I guess it was too much closeness. We decided to call it quits. I’m not going back,” Lynette Hooker wrote in early 2024 messages obtained by CBS News.
When asked whether the relationship could be salvaged, Lynette was blunt: “It was real bad. I can’t be out there with him.” Those texts, sent between January and February 2024, are now drawing renewed attention as Bahamian authorities question her husband in connection with her disappearance.
Brian Hooker, 59, told investigators with the Royal Bahamas Police Force on April 5 that she fell overboard during a nighttime dinghy trip on April 4 as the couple traveled from Hope Town to Elbow Cay. She was allegedly swept away by strong currents after falling into the water with the boat’s keys, causing the engine to shut off. She has not been found.
Hooker was taken into custody days later and is being held as a suspect, though he has not been charged. The U.S. Coast Guard has also opened a criminal investigation.
Hooker’s attorney, Terrel Butler, told The Independent he “categorically and unequivocally denies any wrongdoing” and has been cooperating with authorities.
As authorities are expected to decide on Monday whether or not to bring charges against Hooker, he is now in an “extremely fragile state,” his attorney said.
“His primary concern and source of intense frustration is his inability to continue the search for his wife of 25 years,” Butler said. “The trauma of her disappearance, coupled with his current detention as a suspect, has left him in an extremely fragile state.”
Butler also said her client suffered a knee injury after falling overboard while in handcuffs during a police search of the couple’s boat, the Soulmate, in rough weather conditions.
On Monday, Butler told Fox News Digital that there’s no evidence that Lynette has been murdered in the Bahamas.
“There has been no body located so there’s no evidence that she has been murdered,” she said. “We are not sure if she’s dead.”
Butler added that she believes her client should be released and that she is feeling optimistic that he will be.
The couple run a YouTube channel documenting their travel adventures under the name “The Sailing Hookers.” They recently shared a YouTube Short on their channel joking about not getting along with each other.
Now, the resurfaced texts appear to reveal insights into the couple’s relationship in the two years leading up to Lynette’s disappearance.
In the messages to friend Marnee Stevenson, who the couple met while boating in Florida in 2023, Lynette described abruptly ending their decades-long marriage shortly after embarking on a sailing lifestyle together.
“We were married 21 years. Our marriage lasted 6 weeks cruising,” she wrote in late January 2024, according to CBS News.
At the time, Lynette said she had upended her life to join her husband at sea, telling Stevenson she had “quit my awesome career, sold my house and gave away everything I own to cruise.” She later left the boat and stayed with her mother in Florida, according to the messages.
Despite those concerns, the couple appeared to reconcile weeks later. In late February 2024, Stevenson messaged Lynette, “Looks like things are on the up and up.” Lynette responded with heart emojis and a thumbs up.
Family members have since raised questions about the circumstances surrounding her disappearance.
Her daughter, Karli Aylesworth, has told NBC News that her mother was unlikely to “just fall” off the boat, and explained the couple has a “history of not getting along, especially when they drink.”
During a Fox News interview, Aylesworth also described her mother as a “very fit person: who was unlikely to lose her balance.”
“I do believe something might have happened to her,” Aylesworth said. “There’s history of them choking her out and threatening to throw her overboard. So the fact that this is actually happening makes me believe there’s more to the story.”
Just hours before he was reportedly taken into custody, Brian shared a Facebook post thanking authorities for their efforts to find Lynette.
“I am heartbroken over the recent boat accident in unpredictable seas and high winds that caused my beloved Lynette to fall from our small dinghy near Elbow Cay in the Bahamas,” he wrote. “Despite desperate attempts to reach her, the winds and currents drove us further apart. We continue to search for her and that is my sole focus.”
