The family of missing sailor Beatty Thompson has hired a private investigator to probe the growing mystery of the captain’s disappearance last month.
The 85-year-old owner and operator of the 38-foot sport-fishing vessel, Re-Run, apparently departed Pensacola, Florida, on 4 April with West Bay resident, 69-year-old Densley Olsen Scott.
The two had been scheduled to arrive in Grand Cayman sometime around 9 April, but failed to appear. Police reported that the boat was stocked with sufficient provisions for two weeks.
Extensive sea and air searches of the Gulf of Mexico, the Straits of Florida and surrounding areas turned up nothing.
‘We hired the investigator because he [Beatty] was supposed to come in from the gulf, and the weather was extremely good, and everything was favourable as far as the conditions go,’ said Mr. Thompson’s brother, Norberg.
‘The US Coast Guard searched, all the ships in the area were alerted and nothing was found,’ he said.
The US Coast Guard abandoned its search of a 40,000 square-mile area after one week, but said no sea or weather conditions had threatened the boat, which did not have an emergency radio beacon indicating its position.
The failure to discover any trace of the navigator, companion or the Re-Run has sparked questions about Beatty Thompson’s actual whereabouts.
‘We are trying to determine if he left Pensacola at all, and what time,’ Norberg Thompson said., although he appeared less than sanguine about the possibilities.
‘Someone might have killed him or rolled him … We just don’t know,’ he said.
‘It’s not good,’ he added tersely.
Beatty Thompson’s grand-nephew, Greg, a member of the Cayman Islands Police Drugs Task Force, said the family nonetheless continued to hope, citing stories of lost boats suddenly appearing after a prolonged absence.
‘It’s been four weeks, yeah, but we are still optimistic,’ he said.
‘I know of one story where a group of Cubans left here in the middle of last year during the hurricane season. They surfaced about six weeks later on the US coast, in Texas somewhere,’ he said.
A recent rescue of a capsized boat 90 miles north of Cayman was not the Re-Run, but, Greg Thompson said, the family remained alert for developments.
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