Husband of Woman Missing in Bahamas Leaves Country

UPDATE Apr 15, 2026 2:51 PM CDT

Brian Hooker has left the Bahamas, two days after police released him without charge, and a day after he told outlets including ABC News that he planned to stay in the country to search for his missing wife. Attorney Terrel Butler tells NBC News that Hooker left "because his mom is very ill" but he plans to return. Butler says police, who questioned Hooker after the disappearance of Lynette Hooker, have been informed of his departure. Hooker, who told authorities his wife fell off a dinghy during rough weather, told CBS News on Tuesday that he "won't be able to stop looking" for her, expressing hope that she could have survived on one of the archipelago's "sandbars, little atolls, and spits of land."

• "Following his release from custody without charge, Mr. Hooker is now facing another emergency," Butler said in a statement. "In addition to the trauma of his wife of 25 years being missing, Mr. Hooker has received urgent word of his mother's grave illness." Butler said Hooker has traveled to the US "to be at her bedside during this critical time."

Apr 15, 2026 1:10 PM CDT

Cadaver dogs are now joining the search for a Michigan woman who vanished off a dinghy in the Bahamas nearly two weeks ago. A US Coast Guard K-9 team is set to deploy Wednesday morning to Hope Town in the Abaco Islands to look for 55-year-old Lynette Hooker, a Royal Bahamas Police official told ABC News. Hooker disappeared the night of April 4. Her husband, Brian Hooker, told authorities she fell overboard while they were traveling from Hope Town back to their yacht, Soulmate, off Elbow Cay in rough conditions.

Brian Hooker, 58, was arrested April 8 and questioned. He was released Monday without charges, though police say he remains a person of interest, People reports. He remains in the Bahamas and told ABC News his only aim is to locate his wife, "no matter how likely or unlikely that is." "I've never harmed Lynette, and I never would harm Lynette, and I want to find Lynette," he told the Today show. Bahamian authorities said they would suspend their search for the missing woman on Thursday because they are running out of places to look, reports the Detroit Free Press. The US Coast Guard is carrying out a separate investigation.

Brian Hooker told ABC he plans to return to the boat "and then hire or beg people to help me go find some areas to search." On the events of the night she vanished, his attorney did not permit him to answer questions, citing the ongoing investigation. Hooker said he's haunted by the feeling that he could have acted differently: "My one job, my one job was to look out for her, and that has not happened. And I'm gonna keep looking out for her now, the best I can."