British tech tycoon Mike Lynch drowned after his luxury superyacht sank off the coast in Sicily, while the cause of death of his daughter and two other friends remains under investigation.
A series of inquest openings at Suffolk Coroners Court heard Hannah Lynch, 18, Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer, 70, and his wife Judy Bloomer, 71, had all died on the stricken vessel with a cause of death not yet provided.
Detective superintendent Mike Brown of Suffolk Police said their deaths came after the yacht Bayesian “for reasons yet to be unascertained, sank rapidly” between 4.15am and 4.45am on 19 August.
He said: “Of the total occupants, 15 were rescued while seven were reported missing. The search began in the following hours and continued uninterruptedly for the following days.”
He added the boat was located 0.8 nautical miles from the port town of Porticello, and was waving a British flag when it rapidly sank during a freak storm.
The officer said the time of death for all four was recorded as 5am, with the Bloomers recovered by search teams on 21 August, Dr Lynch the next day and Ms Lynch brought ashore on 23 August.
The four inquests were separately opened and adjourned in Ipswich on Friday, until a hearing on 15 April next year.
Mr Brown said Dr Lynch’s provisional medical cause of death was recorded as drowning following a post-mortem examination by Professor Antonia D’Argo.
He said that the medical cause of death remained under investigation in the cases of Ms Lynch and Mr and Mrs Bloomer following post-mortem examinations by Dr Tomasso D’Anna, with a crew member of the boat identifying their bodies.
An investigation had been started by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) to “understand how the Bayesian sank” and the Italian authorities have started “their own independent criminal investigations”.
Dr Lynch and his daughter both lived in the vicinity of London, while the Bloomers lived in Sevenoaks in Kent, Mr Brown said.
They died alongside US lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda, as well as Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, who had been employed as the boat’s chef.
On Wednesday evening, a new ITV documentary shed further light on the yacht’s final moments, as well as the search operation to recover the bodies.
Recalling the moment the 56ft boat sank, the captain of a nearby ship Karsten Borner said: “In the lightning, I saw a big, black triangle – and this might have been the moment when the ship sank … We were looking at the radars and she was gone.”
A chilling final picture was also released, taken just 14 minutes before the boat went underwater. A passenger onboard a neighbouring yacht took the snap shortly before the fatal incident, which appears to contradict allegations that the crew mistakenly left the hull door open.
Dr Lynch had founded software giant Autonomy in 1996 and was cleared in June this year of carrying out a massive fraud over the sale of the firm to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011.
The boat trip was a celebration of his acquittal following the case in the US.
