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A friend of Brian Hooker says the husband of a missing American woman had a $33,000 high-tech thermal camera on his boat that night, and never used it to search for her.
After leaving shore at Hope Town in the Bahamas at around 7:30 p.m. on April 4, Brian Hooker told authorities that rough waters caused his wife to fall off their dinghy. Brian Hooker paddled to shore and arrived at Marsh Harbour around 4 a.m. on April 5, according to authorities.
The couple was headed back to their sailboat, which is their full-time home in retirement, when Lynette apparently fell overboard. They frequently sail around the U.S. and Caribbean, according to their social media pages.
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(L) Brian Hooker and his sailboat Soulmate (R) (Matthew Symons for Fox News Digital and Coast Guard)
Daniel Danforth, who’s friends with the couple, told Fox News Digital that the couple’s boat, Soulmate, contains a thermal camera that Brian Hooker could have used to help search for his wife.
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“One of the neat features that they had on their boat that most boats don’t have is called a FLIR system. And it’s a forward-looking infrared. And what it is a camera system that’s not only night vision, but it’s also thermally operated that it can pick up heat signatures and stuff,” Danforth said.
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U.S. Coast Guard investigators search the boat Soulmate docked at their station in Fort Pierce, Fla., on May 13, 2026. The vessel belongs to Brian Hooker and his missing wife Lynette Hooker and was brought back to the U.S. from The Bahamas by the Coast Guard. (Obtained by Fox News Digital)
Danforth said he met the Hookers in 2023 while they were in New Orleans, Louisiana, and recalled an interaction with Brian Hooker where he said the thermal camera system kept them safe.
“He said, well, ‘don’t worry while we’re on the dock, we’re gonna be completely safe. This thing has auto-detect that you can set the temperature.’ So like he said that night, as an example, he set the temperatures on it to 86 degrees. Well, then you can see my wife walking down the dock and the camera automatically started tracking her going back to our boat, just because it was strictly off the heat signature,” Danforth said.
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Danforth, who lives on a sailboat with his wife, said the camera system “would have been my first choice like if i was trying to rescue somebody.”
In a text message sent to Danforth on April 6, Brian Hooker said Lynette “swam towards the sailboat” after she fell off.
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Danforth said Brian Hooker messaged him on Facebook after Lynette went missing. (Daniel Danforth)
Danforth said he told the Coast Guard about the thermal camera in early May, before the Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) seized Soulmate sometime between May 8 to 10. The Coast Guard has opened an active criminal investigation into Lynette Hooker’s disappearance.
COAST GUARD OPENS CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION INTO MISSING WOMAN LAST SEEN IN BAHAMAS
Lynette Hooker and Brian Hooker are seen in a picture taken in 2023 on a small boat. (John Waters)
“I told them about it and they were very interested. That was the first they had heard about that system being on the boat. And so they told me that they were going to file for a warrant of seizure for that because it has a serial number,” Danforth said, adding they might be able to recover data from the camera.
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Brian Hooker left the island for the U.S. to tend to his ill mother, his Bahamian attorney previously said after he was in police custody for five days. He hasn’t been charged with a crime.
His Michigan-based attorney previously asked Americans to give him the benefit of the doubt in an interview with ABC News.
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Lynette Hooker, a 56-year-old American woman, disappeared after going overboard during a boat trip in the Bahamas, according to local officials. ((Brian Hooker/Facebook))
“I would ask those watching to treat him the way you would want to be treated, to give him the benefit of the doubt, and to consider that not all of us, nor you, considering your own relationships, the way you speak to one another, we all handle things in different ways,” Crystal Marie Hauser said.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Hooker’s attorney and the Coast Guard for comment.